The Old Schoolhouse Magazine: Homeschooling and Classical Christian Education

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine: Homeschooling and Classical Christian Education

Gene Edward Veith on classical education: "If you go back to the Romans and the Greeks, there were basically two kinds of education. Slaves were taught to do their job and do it well and only know what to do to contribute to the economy. But the other education was for the free citizens of the Greek democracy or the Roman republic. For those free societies to work, the citizen had to take part in the decisions that were necessary, to weigh the facts and analyze problems, to plan a good course of action. One had to have a certain kind of education to be a citizen equipped in the running of the country. Citizens had to be able to use their minds, think clearly, have a knowledge bank, and persuade others of their ideas. To develop leaders and other cultural contributors, the objective was to cultivate every part of the human mind as much as possible.

"The liberal arts were put together into a system by Christians in the early church. There was the trivium, meaning the three ways... grammar, logic, and rhetoric. This was designed to train someone to think and use language well. Every subject has a 'grammar' -- basic rules and laws and facts that you just need to know. But it's not enough to just know a bunch of facts; you also need to be able to think. So after grammar comes logic, where you learn to understand what you've learned. That's not enough, either. Rhetoric is the ability to creatively express and apply what you've learned."