We began homeschooling almost eight years ago, when my daughter was beginning kindergarten, and right out of the gate, we joined a "community" that described itself as "classical". The sales pitch of what that meant resonated with me and my husband. It made so much sense! "Children learn differently at different ages! Look how that lines up with the skills of the Trivium! And this Bible verse in Proverbs says the same thing! Following this program will prepare your child for the deeper high school years! And look at our incredible graduates!" Convinced that this was a stellar approach, and thankful for a community of fellow homeschool moms, I signed on the dotted line, paid our tuition, and even agreed to be a tutor. I was all in.

For six years, we followed that approach and trusted that system. I even signed up to be a licensed business owner myself and recruited others to join it, until partway through my daughter's fifth grade year, when I began to question a whole lot of things. Most were on the business/ethical side, but some were on the academic side. My biggest academic question was if the “system” in which we had invested so many years was really all it was cracked up to be - especially with middle school just around the corner. I started to read about classical education from writers outside of our chosen system, and realized that what I had believed was THE definition of "classical" was actually only one perspective. Not only that, there were many other companies and teachers and writers who had a VERY different understanding of classical education. The more I read articles and books and listened to podcasts and talked with other homeschool parents, the more I felt that a door was opening to a whole new world that I needed to explore.

Now, two years down the road from that “aha” moment, we are firmly removed from our former organization. We spent last year putting together our own eclectic classical curriculum for grades two and six, and all the while I was still reading and learning about classical education, including two summer graduate classes from Memoria College (a new arm of Memoria Press). One was Introduction to Classical Education and the other The Practice of Classical Pedagogy. I also recently discovered the book The Liberal Arts Tradition, an amazing book that unpacks yet another understanding of classical education, and we have now adopted most of the curriculum from Memoria Press as our blueprint for our children's learning (you can see our plan for this year here).

To claim I now have a firm grasp of what classical education is would be extreme hyperbole - but I do have a better grasp, and I thought I would share here what I now believe a truly classical education looks like. I offer it tentatively, as a relative newcomer to this ancient tradition. I also offer it in contrast to what I consider a pale imitation that is often offered to new homeschoolers like myself, who may have heard of this thing called "classical education", but only know enough to make it attractive, and not enough to distinguish between what is actually "classical" and what is trendy.

The idea of "classical education" is not unique to the West. Classical education in general is a system of learning that transmits the traditional culture of a society to the next generation. In India, this is based on the study of the Vedas and subjects based on it, such as medicine, music, archery, and martial arts. In China, this involves the study and understanding of the Four Books and Five Classics, the authoritative books of Confucianism. In the West, this focuses on the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome and the educational path blazed from that time through the Middle Ages, and up to the time of the progressive educational movement, at which point it began fading in popularity.

Classical education has experienced a revival in the last several decades, in part due to the publication and interpretation of a paper presented at Oxford in 1947 by Dorothy Sayers, in which she draws an interesting (though not necessarily correct) analogy between current child development ideas with the skills presented in the ancient classical trivium. Her analogy was made popular by a couple of modern writers, and now both the trivium and classical education mean entirely different things, depending on who you ask and which camp they are in.

In the reading and learning I've done, I've looked a lot at two aspects of classical education - what the goal is, and what it actually contains. In my reading, two resources have been particularly helpful to me. One is "What is Education?" and other articles by Martin Cothran. The other is The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain. Let me sum up what I have learn from them, and others, below.

This is just a sampling of what I have found others to say about the purpose and goals of a classical education:

• holistic wisdom for life
• to shape the culture for the common good and the glory of God
• to teach men how to learn (Dorothy Sayers)
• to seek out truth, goodness, and beauty
• wisdom, virtue, and the formation of the "ideal man"
• "cultivate men and women characterized by wisdom, virtue, and elegance" (Liberal Arts Tradition)
• learn how to think and what to do (Martin Cothran)
• to pass along Western Civilization, the culture of the Christian West
• the cultivation of wisdom and virtue through the Great Books and the development of critical thinking skills in order to pass on and preserve Western civilization

The main thing about classical education is that those who pursue it generally have a goal that goes far beyond preparation for a career or future learning. Classical education is about preparing students to live, often bundled up in the idea of "virtue and wisdom". 

In the early years, classical tools include repetition, memorization, copywork, and imitation, with a lot of emphasis on building a strong foundation before moving on to other things. As students get older, these tools change to include debate, analysis, and more advanced conversations, research, and Socratic discussion. However, the tools are not the essence of classical education. The real meat of it is what it contains and offers to students.

Martin Cothran, who taught my classical education classes last summer, is fond of boiling the essence of classical education down to the three arts and the three sciences.

The three arts (from the Latin ars, or "skill") are the liberal arts, the fine arts, and the manual arts. The
manual arts (from Latin manus, hand) are trade skills and other practical life skills. They are not ends in themselves, but used to reach other ends. The fine arts (from Latin finis, end) are those that are an end in themselves, consisting in part of music, theater, dance, painting, drawing, and sculpture - things we do for the sheer joy of doing them.

The liberal arts are seven in number, composed of the three arts found in the trivium (the verbal arts) and the four arts of the quadrivium (the math arts). (Contrary to popular belief, at no time in history has the "trivium" been used to describe ages and stages of learning, which was a construct wholly from the mind of Dorothy Sayers as she attempted to encourage a return to the "lost tools of learning" in the face of modern educational ideas). The verbal arts are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The mathematical arts are arithmetic, geometry, music/harmonics, and astronomy.

The word sciences (from Latin scire, "to know or understand") refers not just to scientific experimentation, but to an organized body of knowledge. The moral sciences have to do with human concerns - literature, history, and philosophy, also referred to as the humanities. The natural sciences have to do with knowledge of the natural world - life sciences (biology, zoology, botany) and the physical sciences (physics, chemistry, earth science, astronomy). Finally, the theological sciences have to do with God, and include dogmatics (Christian belief), ethics (Christian morality), and apologetics (intellectual defense of the Christian faith).

The combination of these arts and sciences is what makes a solid Christian classical education, according to Mr. Cothran. I liked this description very much, but had questions about how to apply this throughout my children's education. What should come first, and what after that?

For that, I turn to the description of classical education I found in The Liberal Arts Tradition.

The writers of The Liberal Arts Tradition also have a succinct description of Christian classical education. They write, "Grounded in piety, Christian classical education cultivates the virtue of the student in body, heart, and mind while nurturing a love for wisdom under the lordship of Christ." The unpack this in their acronym PGMAPT, which stands for piety, gymnastic, music, liberal arts, philosophy, and theology.

In their paradigm, the first three elements - piety, music, and gymnastic - are the foundation upon which other skills and knowledge are laid.

• Piety is proper love and fear of God and man. Is the duty, love and respect owed to God, parents, and communal authorities past and present.
• Gymnastic refers to the physical conditioning of a child through sports and exercise, which helps develop self-control, patience, and habits of hard work.
• Music is not limited to what we think of as music, but is that which the ancients believed to be inspired by the muses, to include poetry, drama, fine arts, literature, history, geography, and astronomy. The authors describe music as "soul-craft [which] carried out properly...tunes the soul and makes one receptive to truth and goodness". With this perspective, stories from the past (both history and literature) builds a child's moral imagination; science builds a wonder and awe of God's creation. These contains in "seed form" the liberal arts and philosophies that will come later. (It is interesting to note that these are areas that seem to be well-modeled and well-loved by advocates of the Charlotte Mason approach, which I see as one type of classical learning. CM purists may disagree, but I think there is much in common!)

Upon this foundation, the next step is the liberal arts, which are the same as described above: the trivium of grammar (to include the rules of language as well as Latin and Greek), dialectic (the art of reasoning, dialogue), and rhetoric (using language to persuade and to speak truth in an appealing way); and the quadrivium of arithmetic (discrete number), geometry (deductive reasoning, continuous number), astronomy (application of continuous number, math in time and space), and music (the application of discrete number, mathematical ratios, proportions, and harmonics). The final elements of a Christian classical education are philosophy, divided into divine (understanding being and truth, moral (social sciences today), and natural (what we think of as science today), and at the pinnacle, theology, the science of divine revelation.

I liked this, too, although I found Martin Cothran's description of the sciences to be easier to wrap my mind around than Clark and Jain's description of philosophy. I have some rereading to do there! What I liked most about Clark and Jain’s work was seeing how the younger elementary years can and should be focused on building wonder and joy and an understanding of how they fit into their community, and not on regurgitating a lot of facts out of context, which, sadly, is what many people think classical education is all about. (I also was challenged by their description of the quadrivium, which led me to the Euclid Geometry program Classical Mathematics One.)

With all that background, here is where I am now landing on what Christian classical education is for our family. First, my working philosophy of classical education:

Christian Classical education is a natural extension of our God-given responsibility to bring our children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4), making use of traditional tools, habits, curriculum, and pedagogy, to the end that they may enter adulthood as fully integrated human beings...

• whose relationships with God, family, neighbor, and community are marked by and grounded in piety
• whose bodies, minds, and hearts are formed by gymnastic, music, and the liberal arts
• whose knowledge of the world, man, and God (the sciences) fits harmoniously in a distinctly Christian philosophy
• whose lives are informed and governed by historic Christian theology
• whose days are marked by belief in Jesus, availability to His calling, service to others, and sanctified living.

In elementary education (through grade 5, with some overlap with the level to come), I focus on these areas with my children:

• piety: early Bible knowledge, memorization, and training in behavior that follows and reflects the Scriptures
• gymnastic: physical training and habits leading to self-control
• music: stories to inspire (including biographies), poetry, music, drama
• immersion in the world of nature to build awe of the Creator
• planting the seeds of future learning, focused on narration and imitation, as well as foundational arithmetic, reading and writing skills, and beginning grammar and Latin
• introductory training in basic manual arts and fine arts

From grade 5 through eighth grade (again, with some overlap on either side) we focus the following

• continue to lay the foundation of piety, gymnastic, and music as above
• continue training in manual arts, to include life skills, computer skills, home management skills, etc.
• within the liberal arts, emphasis on:
  • grammar, including Latin and Greek
  • logic skills, beginning with early critical study of literature, history, and natural sciences, as well as algebra and Euclid geometry; we will save formal logic study for high school, but these other area will build thinking skills that will serve them well in it
  • rhetoric (expressive, persuasive skills), beginning with early stages of the progymnasmata (a series of exercises to teach writing), and moving forward to advanced study of rhetoric
• within the quadrivium, emphasis on arithmetic (including moving toward algebra), and geometry (including Euclid)
• more formalized study of the sciences - literature (including some of the Great Books), history (especially Greek, Roman, and Hebrew), natural sciences, Christian belief, ethics, etc.
• training in how to handle and study the Scriptures on their own

In high school, especially in grade ten and up, our classical study will focus on these areas:

• more formal study in the sciences (theological, natural, and moral) with a greater emphasis on the critical study of these areas; this includes the Great Books and, within theology, apologetics
• advanced study of chosen fine and manual arts
• advanced study of the mathematical arts (music and astronomy and the modern mathematical topics associated with them)
• formal logic study
• advanced rhetorical studies, concluding the steps of the progymnasmata and applying grammar, logic, and rhetoric to both speaking and writing

The tools that we have found to do all of this are fairly straightforward:

• ​Academic curriculum: Memoria Press for most subjects, Saxon and Polymath Classical Tutorials for math, a scattering of materials from Bright Ideas Press, and some ideas and inspiration from Ambleside Online. I also hear great things about Classical Academic Press, publisher of The Language Arts Tradition.
• Awana for Bible verse memorization. If you don’t have a group in your area, you can order the books and do the program on your own. And there are materials through high school!
• American Heritage Girls and Trail Life USA. There are other Christian scouting/service organizations, but these are what we have found and they are great. They have been an indispensable tool in building the virtue of service in our children, and also an outlet for developing many skills.
• Youth recreational sports through the YMCA
• Church activities, family devotions, and family activities.

I hope this is helpful if you are also exploring classical learning for your children! Please feel free to contact me with questions and comments!

“I received a discount on these materials in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, not was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC regulations.”

Math is one of those subjects that seems to be a dividing line - you either are a "math person" or you aren't, and the topic of math among home school parents is one that prompts all kinds of conversations. What works? What doesn't? How do you know you are hitting all the skills?

For better or for worse, even though I'm a writer and a word person, I'm also a math person. I have always loved math and found it relatively easy to learn. However, even among math people, there are divisions, especially between the algebra people and the geometry people.

I'm an algebra person. I like numbers and letters and making things equal on both sides and plugging values in and having it all work out in the end. Numbers are my friends.

Geometry, though - well, I sympathize with Anne of Green Gables, of whom it was said, "In geometry, Anne met her Waterloo." Proofs and shapes and lines and points in space hurt my brain in a way that numbers and letters never did. I struggled with geometry in high school, and I haven't been looking forward to teaching it to my children either!

That is, until now, when I discovered an approach to geometry, Classical Mathematics One, that has me excited both to learn it myself and to share it with my children!

A bit of background - we have been homeschooling for seven years, and we have used Saxon math the entire time according to this schedule:
Kindergarten: Saxon 1
Grade 1: Saxon 2
Grade 2: Saxon 3
Grade 3: Saxon 5/4
Grade 4: Saxon 6/5
Grade 5: Saxon 7/6
Grade 6: Saxon 8/7 (including Pre-algebra)

My daughter is in seventh grade this year, and we pressed forward with Algebra 1, even though that is typically taught in ninth grade, or sometimes in eighth. She is doing well with it, which made me get online and research other high school math a bit earlier than I had planned.

Polymath Classical Tutorials began in 2013 as an online tutorial service "dedicated to providing classically grounded Christian education" with a goal of participating in "the modern rebirth of classical Christian education." One of those classes has now been packaged as Classical Mathematics One, a geometry course that guides students through five books of Euclid’s Elements (I-III, V-VI).

Classical Mathematics One is available for $59.99. For this price, you get:

• Student book - spiral bound book of 31 weeks of lessons
• Exam book with four exams included
• Video lessons - one for each week, to be watched at the conclusion of the week; these are available on the Polymath Classical Tutorials website
• Teacher guide - this is currently being upgraded and is scheduled to be completed by July 2021; Cycles (weeks) 1 through 16 are currently available for download.

In addition to these materials, the following items must be acquired:

• The Elements - Euclid
• Introduction to Arithmetic – Nicomachus* ($8 purchased from Polymath Classical Tutorials)
• Mathematics for the Nonmathematician - Kline
• A quality bound blank journal (I am using something similar to this, but I found it for half the price at Walmart; I strongly recommend either blank or "dotted" pages.)
• A straight-edge and a compass.

The course is divided into 32 "cycles" (weeks) that are further divided into four "epicycles" (daily lessons). Each lesson and assignment is clearly laid out in the student book, with reading or exercises taken from Kline or Nichomachus in the first four cycles, and from Euclid from cycle five and onward. Assignments are intended to be completed in a blank journal, with encouragement from instructor and author Daniel Maycock to attend to neatness and clarity, as the student is essentially writing his or her own textbook. The video lessons follow each four-day cycle and can be watched alone or in a class setting prior to a class discussion.

Since we are still a year off from using this with my daughter, I decided to take this year to go through the class myself! I am currently in Epicycle 6, and very much enjoying it! While I would like to finish it before my daughter begins it, as long as I stay several weeks ahead of her, I think I'll be okay.

Here are my initial observations, based on my own experience thus far.

1. Classical Mathematics One is marketed as a high school math course that is a classical alternative to modern geometry textbooks. I plan to use it with my daughter in eighth grade, and I believe she will be able to handle it. I'm not sure she could have handled it this year, in seventh. It is not a simple curriculum, but neither is it beyond the reach of teenage learners, especially considering that Euclid's Elements was the standard geometry textbook for centuries, until the earlier part of the twentieth century. Remember how geometry was Anne's Waterloo? She was a young teenager at that point in the story. It could be done before Algebra, as classical educators suggest, but right now I don't recommend it before 8th grade unless you have an exceptional math student.
2. The first four cycles are heavy with reading about the history of mathematics and then playing with the relationships among numbers, as seen by Nicomachus, a Greek mathematician from the first and second century AD. As such, there is a bit of philosophy and more essay-writing than you might expect in a math course. It is tempting to skip over some of that, but I encourage you to see it through, even it if means reading some of it together. I had never given much thought to the way math developed over time, and found it more interesting than I had expected! For myself, I replaced an assignment to write an essay about the history of mathematics with a detailed timeline, and I may do something similar for my daughter, but I won't skip it. Grounding her in the history of the things we study is an important part of our classical education. (Another book I found in Sam's Club, that will be available on Amazon in March 2021, is An Illustrated Guide to Mathematics, by Anne Rooney. It is a bit more colorful than Kline's book. It would not be a substitute for it, but could be a nice supplement.)
3. The videos are meaty! As the course goes on, these are forty- to fifty-minute lessons digging into what the student has done for the previous four days. Again, don't skip them. I would suggest watching them with your student to make sure all points have been understood before moving on. Euclid's ideas, definitions, and propositions all build on one another, so if earlier points are not mastered, later ones will be difficult to follow.
4. Customer service is superb. I wrote to Daniel Maycock several times with detailed questions and he responded promptly and with helpful answers.

I'm excited about this course and highly recommend it to anyone seeking a manageable way to study and teach Euclid's Elements either instead of, or alongside, modern geometry curricula. It fits well with Saxon's math series, which includes much geometry as part of Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. It is challenging, but not overwhelming, and shows that original classical sources are not out of reach of students in the twenty-first century. Find all ordering information on their website, Polymath Classical Tutorials.

These are unprecedented days, we keep hearing, but through it all, God remains, and Christmas is a wonderful time to remember that He is steadfast, He keeps His promises, and brings hope in the darkness. "A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices..." May your Advent and Christmas be filled with hope.

'Twas late in 2020, and the virus remained,
Causing sickness and death and suffering and pain.
For ten months and counting, the virus had spread.
"We're ready for life to be normal," the world said.

"We're weary of sickness, of masks and quarantines,
Of lockdowns and face shields, of keeping things clean.
Weary of staying home, and social distancing, too,
Weary of e-learning, weary of Zoom.

"No more new normal!" the people all buzzed.
"When can we go back to life as it was?"
But the virus ignored them, pressing on like before
And with it came rumors of what was in store -

More restrictions and closures, more unrest and strife,
More tensions, more anger, more not-normal-life.
The virus-weary world looked ahead to December.
"This won't be like the Christmases we remember.

"No concerts or pageants like we had in the past,
No visits with Santa without wearing a mask.
No candlelight service with faces aglow,
No big group of carolers out in the snow.

"But we still can go shopping, the stockings to fill
As long as our income will cover the bill."
So the world spent Advent shopping online
Desperately hoping it all would be fine.

"The year has been awful, but maybe," it said,
"More stuff will help in the darkness ahead.
More movies, more music, more candy, more holly,
More Christmas trappings to make the day jolly.

"More trinkets, more tinsel, more trees and more lights!
More presents, more magic, more fun in our life!
Christmas-as-it-was is gone," the world supposed,
"But at least our presents are still wrapped up with bows!"

"Pooh pooh to the saints," the world was grumbling,
"Who needs their Christmas or the hope of Jesus coming?
They're finally waking up to what matters in life.
It's not fairy tales! It's what brings us delight!"

And then in the midst of the world's frantic pace,
It happened to notice the look on the face
Of its neighboring saints as they went through their days
With a song in their hearts, and on their lips, praise.

Each week, one step closer to the joy of the birth
Of the One who had come to bring real peace on Earth.
The virus had failed to keep hope away,
Somehow or other it came just the same.

And the world with its focus on presents and glee
Stood puzzling and puzzling, "Just how can it be?
"They don't have the help of normal traditions
Like potlucks at church or pageant auditions.

Singing is frowned on, and so are the crowds, 
And most of what they like is just not allowed.
Even Christmas Eve service is canceled, we heard,
So this hope you're expressing, to us seems absurd."

Then the world thought of something it hadn't before.
Maybe peace, hope and joy don't come from a store,
Nor from traditions, nor absence of war.
Maybe peace, hope and joy mean a little bit more.

And what happened then? Well, just like in the spring,
The story's not done. What do you think?
How will you spend your Advent this year?
In worry and frenzy and panic and fear?

Will you follow the world, filling your days
With shopping and grumbling, or prayer and praise?
The world is weary, and I know you are, too,
But in unprecedented times, the world's watching you

To see if the Source of your hope and your joy
Is the God of Creation, or just lights and toys.
So this year at Christmas, let this be our prayer
As the virus and worry rage around everywhere.

May the world behold Peace when it looks at our lives.
May the world see Joy as we show it the Light.
May the world find Hope as we point to God's Son.
And may we show them His Love in 2021.