Something They Will Not Forget: A Handbook for Classical Teachers

by Joshua Gibbs

EVERY TEACHER has suffered the demoralizing realization that most students quickly forget the content they are taught. Many sophomores, for example, could not pass a literature exam or history quiz which they aced during freshman year. While most teachers are too embarrassed to admit this, their students know it is true, which leads many students to think school is ultimately pointless. What is more, students know that most missed class periods can be made up with five minutes of homework, which leads them to believe that every hour-long class they attend is a fifty-five minute waste of time. This is not simply the state of American public schools, but many classical schools, as well.But what if there was another way of conducting class? What if every class was vital, necessary, and worth going to? What if teachers could make the most of all their class time, including the first five minutes, when students are chatty and their brains are still stuck in their last subject?

In Something ey Will Not Forget, Joshua Gibbs lays out a solution to these problems which is both elegant and effective. His solution caters to classical beliefs and presuppositions, but is easily implemented in any classroom— elementary or secondary, public or private, traditional school or homeschool. If you have struggled with classroom management, dull exams (which you dread grading), or a feeling of helplessness when confronted by how quickly students forget, help is here.

Joshua Gibbs is the author of How to Be Reflections on the Pursuit of Virtue. He teaches great books at Veritas School in Richmond, VA. His wife is generous and his children are funny.

122 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 4, 2023

Reviews

[Ashlee Haddan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was wonderful and helped me form lesson catechisms for our homeschool this year. But not only that, it helped me to see why it can be beneficial and important. I’m excited to add this into our morning time and see what seeds of virtue these ideas plant in my children.

[Lachlan Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's one main idea in this book: repeatedly reciting something will commit it to memory. If you're a teacher and you can pack the hard essentials of your class material into a "catechism" of ~1500 words, and you all recite this catechism every day for the term, you might find your students accidentally memorising everything you wanted them to know, even before you've finished properly teaching it to them. And they'll remember it far longer than anything else they'll learn at school.

This effect is especially useful if your subject refers heavily to old texts, and you use quotes from those texts in your catechism.

That's the main thesis here. Aside from that, there's a heap of fascinating and profound insights into teaching under God, for example: school should be practice for life, so tests should be given just like God gives tests: open-book, but messy, wisdom-based questions, not simple fact recitation.

There's also a few weirdly specific hang-ups (like dress codes and posture) that, not being immersed in a Classical Christian education culture, I don't quite get. But on the whole, worth reading.