Something They Will Not Forget

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 students no longer had to admit they couldn’t remember much of the material they studied in previous years? 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 They 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.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Parenting, Teaching, Christian, Unfinished

118 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2019

Reviews

[Jill Courser · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this immediately after finishing Know and Tell: The Art of Narration by Karen Glass. What an interesting counterpoint (not dissonance) of ideas! My mind is caught up in the potential of an education in which catechism and narration formed the basis of its pedagogy. Something They Will Not Forget is one of the most thought provoking books of educational philosophy I have read in a long time. Much to contemplate and, eventually, practice.

Update after re-reading in 2022: my dream of an education rooted in narration and catechism is coming to fruition. I am hosting a training seminar for my Schole group and guess what we are talking about?? Narration and catechism:). Thanks to Gibbs for this insightful book…it was even better on the second read!

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that's very focused on two concepts: the value of creating "catechisms" for classical classrooms tailor-made for each subject, and the value of testing students on their personal applications from the literature rather than simply on Grammar-level content. It doesn't get into much beyond that, but I prefer books that have one or two main ideas it really hammers home than books that try to cover everything (and thus, by extension, nothing).

With regards to catechisms, I'm rather captivated by the idea. I'd never heard of the concept before, loved the examples, and am very interested in trying it out in my classes, perhaps with a test group this year and then with the rest next year if it goes well. Perhaps I'll return to this review in a year with further thoughts on how it went.

With regards to testing, I was persuaded years ago that Grammar-level tests aren't the best for high school level students in a classical school, so there was no argument from me there. My tests, however, tend to focus more on literary analysis skills (where I give students a short story and have them analyze it using literary techniques we've been discussing in class) than a student's ability to apply the lessons of a particular work of literature to their lives. The latter seems a lot harder to grade, but Gibbs' arguments intrigued me and I'm likewise probably going to try this out at some point this year to see how it is.

While the book is largely focused on those two ideas, however, there were a lot of different tidbits of advice that Gibbs sprinkled throughout that I found rather valuable--as well as a lot of stories I could instantly latch onto as being exactly what it's like to teach at a classical school. This isn't one of those dusty education textbooks written by people who have been out of the field too long. It's written by someone who gets the necessary pragmatic aspects that sometimes get in the way of teaching and what real teaching truly looks like.

With regards to some of my criticisms of this book, the way that Gibbs spoke about the value of classical literature was interesting. At times, he almost elevates the Western canon into a mythic or almost-inspired status, and I wasn't sure how much I agreed with him in the role of curriculum within the classroom. Yes, classics are better to teach than a bunch of wishy-washy modern stuff, but I had some concerns with the analogy of teacher & literature to pastor & Bible that he was making, since he didn't make the qualifications I think one ought to make when making such a comparison.

This book probably also doesn't have much to lend for classical math/science teachers. Gibbs does briefly address such teachers in a final coda chapter, but I didn't think his advice there would be particularly helpful. The lack of solid advice for teaching math/science classically is one of my pet peeves, as a lot of classical ed folks do so and I'm more-and-more convinced that a lot stems from a fundamental misunderstanding and shuttering away of the Quadrivium and its value. Gibbs gets points from me for attempting to tackle this somewhat, but this is really a book mostly designed for humanities teachers.

Nonetheless, while this book is perhaps only helpful for humanities teachers, for this literature teacher, the book was quite valuable and enjoyable to read. I read it straight through over the course of a couple hours and loved the book. Definite recommendation to fellow humanities teachers on the ideas. May update this review with the results after a year of trying some things out.

Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).

[JR Snow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a lot of great ideas in it without being a great book overall–Gibbs is an interesting character, and tripped some major red flags with me.

The good: Gibbs confronts a major issue in education: retention rates. Studies have demonstrated what teachers and students already know, which is that an astonishing amount of what we learn, we forget. His solution is to construct a class and subject catechism with important quotes from the texts used in class that is recited at the onset of every class. Great idea, one which I've copied.

Other good: Gibbs focuses on the superiority of moral cultivation rather than the accruing of knowledge. This is standard "classical ed" fare and a good reminder for us: education is the cultivation of a person, not an accumulation of facts. He also writes about the importance of recognizing that some things are beautiful and good and true for their own sake, and should not be thought of as merely useful for something else. God is useless, because everything is for God, God is not for another purpose. Likewise, studying beautiful and good and true things is a delight in and of itself. Students are "terribly practical" in that they often check out if they don't perceive an immediate utility for what they are learning. Smush it, gentlemen, smush it.

Here is the problem, however. I see a lot of Catholic and Orthodox (Gibbs is Orthodox) sound this "learning is done for it's own sake" stuff a lot, but I think it is important to remember that the idea of vocation and work should be at play here, and we should recover a sense of godly preparation to provide for ourselves and our families. This should bring a sense of realism to our curriculum goals in our schools. We should remember that it is a good, true, and beautiful thing for young men and women to master skills for the purpose of serving one's neighbor with those skills, and providing for oneself and family with it. Gibbs seems unbalanced in calling for the class to be mostly about moral improvement rather than mastery of class content. I'm not calling for all one and no other, I'm saying it should be balanced.

Another problem: As other reviewers have noticed, Gibbs seems to give too much authority to tradition, namely the western great books tradition. Perhaps this comes from his commitment to EO, in which tradition is the major authority, but he ends up advocating for a vague kind of syncretism:

"We have not convened to judge the ancients, but to be judged by them; we have not gathered to speak our minds but to have our minds formed by the western canon."(36)

um...No? My goal is for my students to be formed by God's holy Scriptures, so that they can judge what is good and true and beautiful in everything else. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." –Romans 12:2.

Gibbs views the teacher as a conduit to pass on the "tradition" to students, rather than someone who can help them discern between good and evil: "The dead have told me what they want from you. I am an intermediary between you and the dead." [tradition] (41). While I agree that there is an inherited "dogma" in the western tradition that is worth passing on, and we shouldn't pretend that our curriculum is all about critical thinking and above dogma (Hicks has a great chapter on this in "Norms and Nobility") but dogma must be filtered through a higher norm of the Bible, or else it will become a norm of it's own. Tradition should be an authority, but a subservient authority to the Bible.

What Gibbs advocated for is simply not a correct philosophy of Protestant education. Here is my concern: Protestants need to be wary of putting "the western canon" on too high of a pedestal, as wonderful as it sounds. This tradition-heavy emphasis is found in much of Classical Academic Press's materials (Matt Perrin is Eastern Orthodox) and many humanities teachers in classical schools are EO or RC. That is fine. I graduated from a conservative RC school (University of Dallas) and profited much from it.

I would read this book, because it has great ideas in it. But be wary, protestant educators. Sola Scriptura should govern education as it should govern our churches.

[Blossom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book to help with educating in a more meaningful manner. The first portion of the book, chapters 1-3 and some of 4, I found to be quite useful. Gibbs explains the issue with the mainstream system of teaching, testing and student’s retention of the information. Much of the test is arbitrary, and due to the practice of teaching to the test, so is some teaching. As Gibbs is a classical educator the emphasis on memorizing is not surprising here but his material is interesting. Very interesting and this is what I had really hoped the focus of the book would have been. The latter chapters, rest of 4 through the end, were not as useful to myself who has not been teaching other people’s kids for that long and not in a classical manner. Gibbs seems to assume that his readers will have a very good base to apply his example to. His scenarios, however, seemed a bit too “talky” for my personal liking.
I do really appreciate the inclusion of catechisms to help retain what’s important from the material we teach our students. I would like more on this from Gibbs and/or other classical educators.
I wanted to give this 3.5 stars.

[Ella Edelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If the teacher requires students to say deep things and draw connections between things and ideas and philosophies and theologies and art and saints, his students might become interesting and virtuous human beings. Knowledge is merely knowing that certain things are, but wisdom is knowing how the souls of things rhyme with each other"(16).

In this book, Joshua Gibbs presents the problem of classrooms that churn out students who believe that class periods are wastes of time, of exams that students and teachers alike dread, and of lessons that have little lasting power with their hearers. He advocates for the use of catechism in the classroom which serves to refocus students' scattered minds, presents the feast of knowledge to come, and precludes the burden of assessments-as-accountability, which he effectively dismantles. While Gibbs' own experience and examples come from high school classes, many of the principles he presents can be used across ages and adapted for numerous scenarios. His authorial voice, (and what I would guess his teaching voice as well) comes across as intellectually rigorous yet thoroughly un-self-serious.

[Ellen Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provokes useful reflection on how educational structures, including assessments and use of class time, communicate certain assumptions about what a human being is and why they are sent to school. Gibbs' own context is high school literature/humanities and it is for such classes that his suggestions are most salient. In particular, I think the challenge to teach a high school literature class so that everything that must be memorized is memorized on class time and all assessments are open-book is a powerfully reorienting one.

In terms of method (although a colleague familiar with his podcasts noted to me that his vision has shifted somewhat since writing the book), it seems to me from what appears in the book that he blitzes through what Adler would describe as the "analytical" level of reading and jumps prematurely to the "synoptic." Perhaps relatedly, the book gives no sense that his teaching consists of much in the way of material that is not ordered either towards memorization or personal application. To me, it seems that, at least in terms of time spent, memorization is a prologue and personal application, at least in the overt manner he encourages, an epilogue to the main work that goes on in the classroom.

[Matt Pitts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a game changer for me when I read it last year. I re-read it this year and it's still changing the way I think about teaching. I can't say enough good things about it.

Original review:
The claim of this book came to me with added force due to what seemed an unfortunate circumstance. The profit and pleasure that has come from reading articles by Gibbs was enough to convince me I wanted this book and would enjoy reading it. So I ordered the book and hoped to receive it in time to be both an encouragement and a help as I began my second year of teaching in a Christian school. But something went wrong and the book was delayed in arriving. In the mean time, school began and something significant happened. One day in class I referred to John 1:1 and students I had last fall began to rattle off the first nine or ten verses of John's Gospel. We had memorized most of John's prologue together the first semester. These students had not rehearsed these verses for me since December (we had a different memory verse passage in the spring) and yet they were able to recall half or more of what they had memorized almost a year earlier with almost no prompting and no review.

Then came Joshua Gibbs's book. He argued what I had just witnessed: that students remember best what they memorize together and forget almost everything else. His solution to this embarrassing truth has already changed the way I'm teaching this year and likely beyond.

I do wonder if Gibbs might have said more about the gospel as the ground of true virtue. Perhaps he provides this in his book on virtue, but it would have been helpful to include it here as well. Despite this there is no doubt that he has hit upon something that many students and teachers will be helped by beyond the next lesson plan or exam. Take up and read, teachers, parents, administrators, and students. There is a better way and Gibbs can help us take another step that way. Let the classical education movement, where it is protestant and where it is not, take up the protestant cry, semper reformanda.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book was fantastic. Even if it is a repackaging of ideas previously put forth in other venues, it was my first time encountering some of them. Much of what Gibbs says about memory and the point of a classical education has made me re-examine my own approach to teaching. The second half of the book, however, was less than useful. While I enjoyed reading Gibbs’ inventive tests for his literature students, there was very little that I could take away for my own teaching. In what is labeled “A Handbook for Classical Teachers”, I would have much preferred the theoretical truths to be applied in more varied suggestions.

3 stars: 5 for the beginning, and 1 for the second half.

[Stefan Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book could not have come at a better time. I’ve been clinging to Joshua Gibbs’ words on the Circe blog and this book was just as excellent. The treatise for catechizing those things that are most important in each class (think virtues over facts) was incredibly compelling and a must read for anyone teaching children. The sample tests near the end showed that yes, it is possible to uphold virtue and heart formation well above college preparation in a classical school, as it should be. This will be a book I read over and over.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gibbs, Joshua. Something They Will Not Forget: A Handbook for Classical Teachers. Concord, NC: CiRCE Institute, 2019.

Main idea: the practices of memorization and recitation turn information into formation.

Resist the urge to ask “practical questions” in literature and social studies. They usually aren’t practical and no one cares. Moral questions, however, are far more interesting and almost naturally engage the student.

Let’s be honest. Even if you are the best teacher, students usually don’t care about the content and won’t remember it. That’s because there are different ways we “memorize facts.” The most important way to memorize facts is by habitual use. That puts the literature teacher in a strange position, since most of us (myself excluded) don’t carry around copies of Shakespeare so we can memorize it in our spare time.

Gibbs argues that “knowledge is knowing that certain things are, but wisdom is knowing how the souls of things rhyme with each other” (Gibbs 16). That’s a very beautiful sentence, but doesn’t it suggest that memorization is not needed? The truth of the matter is that memorization happens best at the intersection of knowledge and wisdom. In other words, “what is the eighth or ninth impression you have on a topic?”

When are We Going to Use This in the Real World?

No one playing sports ever asks this question. You learn the plays in sports because you perceive them as good in themselves. Most of the things we love are quite useless. Strictly speaking, so is God. God is the End, not the means to an end. Therefore, he isn’t a “use.”

And while Gibbs doesn’t make this point explicitly, most of the “practical math” a student learns is quite useless in reality. No, Timmy, you won’t be an astronaut when you grow up. The most “practical” class I took in high school was “business math.” I wish I had stayed in Pre-Cal instead.

Catechism as Ritual Performance

Groups remember better than individuals (26). Strangely enough, no one studies for a test this way. Try it: if you are a literature teacher, connect all of the books you all read this year in the form of a catechism.

Have you ever wondered why classroom journal entries never worked? Remember when the teacher (or maybe you did this as a teacher) made you respond to some supposedly “deep” question during the first five minutes of class? Again, no one cares. That is the least productive time of class because students are still in transition from the hall.

I’ll be honest. His use of turning rote knowledge into a catechism is nothing short of amazing. That’s what bumps this book from four stars to five.

This allows students to transition from “cold” to “ready to learn.” Recitation is the bridge. While I am not a huge fan of classical education, this highlights one of the better aims of it. If classical education is about self-denial, then beginning with other people’s words, rather than pseudo-pious exercises in “self-actualization,” is the place to start. To be honest, most students won’t remember those super Socratic discussions you thought you had with them. Again, no one cares.

This makes a lot of sense. We want students to be good in discussion, but let’s be honest: few of them know how to have a good conversation. That’s why your Socratic circles usually aren’t very good. Even though students talk a lot in class, they don’t know how to speak.

For example, if the question is, “What is human society?” the answer will be about a four sentence response from Edmund Burke. If the question is “What is virtue?” then you could respond from Thomas Aquinas or Jane Eyre. This forces the student to give more in depth answers and also integrates classic literature into his daily life.

The book ends with examples of final exams. Two comments: they make for amazing reading. There is only one question and it is several pages long. I was drawn into the stories they were telling. Here’s the problem: given the nature and structure of the exam, if you give a student negative marks and his parents complain to the principal, you will almost certainly lose. Doubly so if you are a new teacher.

Quotables

“If Wikipedia could ace your exams, then you are not teaching human beings but machines” (16).

Anything worth memorizing as a class is worth saying out loud every day for two weeks. If it isn’t worth saying, then it isn’t worth memorizing (27).

“The work performed in a ceremony establishes the identity of the people involved because ceremony is neither for amusement nor edification; ceremony is a way of being, a way of besting the vanity of life under the sun” (28).

“As a teacher, I represent the dead” (41).

“Teachers are complicit in the cult of self-affirmation whenever they read long passages of classic literature aloud in class only to ask a room full of fourteen year olds, “So what do you think?” as though the answer truly mattered” (43).

Criticisms

I get his point that using a rubric does not escape the shadow of “subjectivity” in grading. That’s true. It does minimize the subjectivity, though, and the teacher is usually successful in arguing why he gave the grade he did based on the rubric. Parents know that. His case is even stronger if he gives out the rubric ahead of time. I grant his point, however, that subjectivity is not the same as arbitrary. A subjective judgment considers the worth or value of x, not necessarily its substance.

[Amelia Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for teachers hoping to give something to their students that will help them endure the trials and temptations they’ll face for the rest of their lives.
While Gibbs provides catechism and test examples geared toward high schoolers, I still benefitted greatly from this book as a 3rd and 4th grade teacher. This is because the goal of the teacher remains the same: to instill virtue in students. One of the best ways to do this in a lasting way is to fill the mind, memory, and mouth with great texts, day in and day out.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Josh Gibbs makes me think of me, but a good bit smarter, a good bit more focused, and with oceans more self confidence. He seems to actually think, as I sometimes pretend, that bookish, humanities-oriented people like us are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Anyway, here's the argument of the book: kids don't retain any information from year to year in school, therefore the idea that school is about the acquisition of information is either incorrect or damning in itself. (I find these premises inarguable.) Therefore in order to help students retain the information we pass on in our classes, we ought to do something that has proven effective over centuries: we should make a catechism for our classes.
There's a lot of other stuff in here too. Some very good. Some beguilingly close to good. Some intensely irritating.
I made a catechism for my twelfth grade class after reading this. I'll send it to you if you're interested.

[Lara Ryd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly excellent. Gibbs offers a far more realistic and humane vision for teaching and testing than is found even in many classical schools. There is a real retention problem among today’s students (I can attest to it as a former student who has forgotten a lot of what I “learned”). Gibbs does not think this is inevitable. The problem lies in teachers who test on the wrong things—always staying objective, never venturing into the subjective, which Gibbs argues is more lasting—and in uninspiring, unmemorable ways. Gibbs explains how the use of catechisms helps ground students’ memory and underscore why what they are learning matters for their lives. He also includes several sample exams he’s given to students in his humanities classes—none of which are what you would expect and all of which I would be DELIGHTED to take.

[Jennifer Trovato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really inspiring idea. Pretty straightforward, but sounds like a lot to implement. But also worth it. I would love to hear of this take for younger children than high school.

Even as a Classical Christian School Grad, I feel like this would have been so appreciated and maybe have changed my perspective while in school. Of course now as an adult I see all the amazing things we read and learned about and wish that I had cared more. I think the teacher has a lot to do with it as well as your particular institution and method. The idea of a daily catechism seems like it gets to the heart and soul of learning, not just memorization for facts and to look impressive.

[RAW · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mandy read this summer so I picked it up. Incredibly powerful and perfect for my present start to homeschool and my new appreciation for morning time and narration from last year. Lots to ponder and challenges to work through. Have made a catechism for our school year and plan to implement next week during MT.

[Glenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was quite interesting. The suggestion that starting class reciting a catechism of material which is the most important things to learn that year is intriguing. His examples are helpful and allow one to ponder what is best to include.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book turns learning, grading, and testing upside down. It is a vision for what is possible. A dream of beauty in the classroom. I want to be a student in Gibbs’ class!

[Rachel DeWeese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in preparation for my teaching job this fall! :)

Overall I enjoyed reading this book. I will be teaching at a classical Christian school for the '24-'25 school year, so Gibbs was very helpful in giving me a good overview of what classical education might look like on a practical level. I'm excited to use a catechism in my own classroom and see how today's students retain information when using this particular memorization tactic.

There are just a few things I read about that left me with some questions that I hope to have answered soon:

1.) Gibbs seems to give a lot of credit to classical authors, even calling their works "divine" at some points. Though I agree that there is something to be said about classic books, especially because they've been around for so long, I wouldn't necessarily put them on the same level as the Holy Scriptures, as Gibbs alludes them to be. Even if he was using it as a metaphor, I'm not sure if it was necessarily an appropriate one.

Along with this point, Gibbs refers to The Communist Manifesto as one of the enduring works of literature, and yet it seems to escape his principle of things that are old being good. It seems like if we can make exceptions for old books, we can also critically consider new books to see if they belong among the "great books," even if they may not have been around as long.

2.) Gibbs does not want students to necessarily think for themselves. Instead, he believes that if students glean important and virtuous principles from the great works of literature, they will learn both how to think and what to think. Besides, he remarks that teenagers do not even know how to think for themselves at this developmental stage. This is where I disagree. I believe that Scripture points to discernment as being an important virtue, and I don't believe that this is simply directed towards those over the age of 25 (1 Timothy 4:12). Students should be able to look at the works of Frederick Douglass, Jane Austen, and James Madison and be able to critically evaluate which parts are worth remembering and applying to life and which are not. If all Gibbs expects students to value is that which has endured for many years, how can he stop them from taking the works of Karl Marx to heart?

Also, it he truly believes that the authors of these great works are the end all be all behind the Bible itself, what about the future Douglasses and Austens and Madisons that may be sitting in his own classroom? Though I can appreciate the idea of giving students the tools with which to live by (Proverbs 22:6), I also think that students need to be given a little more credit than Gibbs gives them in developing their own thoughts and opinions on things.

3.) Though I agree that in some ways education should be consider an ends to itself, I also think that it is important for Christian educators to consider what comes for students after they graduate high school. Though I totally agree with the idea that Christian educators should train up students in the way of the Lord, they should also be creating twenty-first century citizens that have the ability to succeed in college and/or the work force.

4.) I think that Gibbs holds his students at a bit too high of a standard in a way that seems pretentious. Kids are kids, and they need days they just lay around and play video games and not not think about work or school. Even God Himself knows that we need rest, and that is found in the Sabbath. Also, the fact that Gibbs forbids his students from yawning or looking at the clock rubs me the wrong way a little bit. They are human after all! Also, there is scientific evidence that points to the idea that doodling in class helps some students focus better (and I have had students with this accommodation written into their IEPs). I know this is Gibbs' personal classroom rule, but I have no intention of implementing this myself.

Another big thing within this point is the expectation of student participation. Though I understand that classical education revolves around Socratic discussion, I also know the amount of students today that struggle with severe, clinical anxiety. I think there are other ways students can prove they are paying attention and engaging in the content without speaking up during every single class period. Because of this, I do not plan to grade students as harshly as Gibbs does for this (I do agree with some of his other grading methods though).

5.) Finally, I think Gibbs's sample assessments were unnecessarily long. I get the point of getting students to practically apply what they are learning in the books they are reading instead of regurgitating character names and dates, but I also think Gibbs is a little too lengthy in how he proposes students should be assessed.

Despite these criticisms, I am genuinely excited by most of the things I read! I am excited to begin my journey in classical education the fall.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was assigned reading for teacher professional development, and I was immediately interested in the idea of using catechism regularly in the classroom. While I did come away with some useful tips on crafting catechisms, I found Something They Will Not Forget to be generally impractical and often pretentious. Gibbs wants to address the problem of content retention, especially in the humanities. For example, his own students in a medieval literature class could not provide a date range for the middle ages at the end of their course. Gibbs blames the traditional cycle of test-taking for overemphasizing “objective information” (names, dates, definitions, etc.) and training students to cram, then forget information once their tests are over. If the goal of education is moral formation, he argues, students should instead be taught to ruminate on subjective ideas in art, literature, philosophy, and theology. Gibbs’ solution to the problem is catechism. He spends the first seven minutes of his classes drilling catechisms crafted from the essential ideas and events of the course. He includes several example catechisms in Something They Will Not Forget, and I found these to be the most valuable part of the book. I was especially interested in the way that his questions and answers do not always align perfectly. For example, a question like “what does it mean to be human?” might be answered “the virtues are…” These kinds of catechisms provoke the student to consider the relationship of humanity to virtue and to ask whether or not someone is more human if he or she is virtuous. When I finished the book, I was immediately motivated to try my hand at building a catechism, and I found the process to be challenging and enjoyable. Nevertheless, I do not think that catechism is the answer to the retention problem, nor that reciting catechism is a process of “intellection,” as Gibbs describes it. (How many times has my mind wandered while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance?) At best, Gibbs’ catechism provides a kind of safety net for the teacher: if all else fails, students will leave the year with the material they have had drilled into them at the start of class. No doubt these memorized passages will return at important moments in students’ lives and continue to impact their moral formation. But brainwashing is not teaching. The teacher still needs to teach in a way that helps students process and retain information without resorting to long sessions of rote memorization. Moreover, Gibbs too readily dismisses the importance of objective information. Names, places, and dates may not be memory-friendly at first, but they ultimately help with retention because they create the superstructure into which other ideas can be organized and stored. The test-taking model of education, although it is not entirely “humane,” has the benefit of encouraging the formation of independent study skills which are the building blocks of self-education and lifelong learning. Still, I am grateful to Gibbs for introducing me to the idea of catechism, even if it only becomes a supplementary method in my own classroom.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intentional catechesis (unintentional catechism is in play all the time) as the heart of a curriculum is a new idea to me, but it makes so much sense at the upper school level.

They won't remember much, so choose what they'll remember carefully.

They won't remember much, so dedicate significant class time to helping them remember things worth remembering.

They won't remember much, but they will be formed in the remembering.

I thought this would be a theoretical, idealistic masterpiece with no practical help, but I was wrong. This is an intensely practical book. Gibbs lays out many examples of what catechism and assessment can look like in a great books high school class. I finished feeling like I could take the first steps of this approach in my own classroom of older students some day.

This stuff gets me excited.

"Would writing essays for two hours likely prove a greater spiritual help to these students over the long haul of their lives? What kind of learning metamorphoses the student? The patient and tedious work of, say, synthesizing Augustine's view of hell with Dante's view of hell, or in slowly unpacking Anselm's ontological argument until it makes sense--such work is part of this metamorphosis, but not the whole thing. A great many of the watershed moments of human life are simply yielded to, submitted to, experienced in silence with delight....Anyone who believes a trip to the Met would be more valuable if it were followed by a twenty-question quiz on the Robert Lehman Collection is mad." p. 109

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If Wikipedia could ace your exams, you are not teaching humans but machines.” Page 16

Gibbs has wit, sarcasm, and a precocious sense of “what’s wrong with education these days”. He lays out the problem of students walking away from 13 years in the classroom with very little they remember which teachers labored endlessly to provide. Everyone feels like they’ve wasted so much time and tears.

Yet, the goals of a great teacher are pretty simple. We desire to prepare the students for what is to come, and give them an anchor to hold onto when life throws them the temptations, trials and trivialities that inevitably come our way.

As a homeschooler in a classical Christian homeschool community, there was a lot in this book that applied much more to a teacher in a class setting, not a tutor or a homeschool parent. But many of the principles can very much be applied. The chief of which is to respect the humanity of my students (my own kids, and those I tutor in community) by not wasting their time in the class (or worksheets and other such tchotchke) or in wiki-friendly assessments, and to value the long view: the students’ lifelong pursuit of truth and virtue.

I recommend this to all parents and teachers desiring to give kids “Something They Will Not Forget”.

[Stratkey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Self-aggrandizing and overly prescriptive in an unnecessarily limiting way, but also some very helpful pedagogical ideas—just not the only ones that matter. One wonders what kind of student this project would produce, strictly adhered too? Probably little disciples of Gibbs at worst, maybe stunted snobs who look down their noses at their peers, and perhaps (and here I’m being charitable) lovely well-rounded humans who stand athwart the general epithumatic chaos of our day—so long as they have other voices in their lives. I’ve experienced just enough of this sort of thing to throw up a caution flag when I see it.

[Josie Heinrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever wavered before a rabble of 4th-graders who just tumbled upstairs from recess, and then tried to engage them with a friendly Koine Χαιρετε:

If you've ever wondered whether the things you say or assign will make a difference:

If you've ever wanted your students to love what is good and true beautiful:

This book will help you by usurping the way you teach. Gibbs blends theory and practice into a compact and engaging guide that will transform you, your classroom, and your students.

[Matthew Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read text, which could be read in an afternoon, for anyone in Classical education, or for Christian teachers in general. A convicting book, it tackles the problem that all teachers know to be true, that our students simply do not retain the bulk of the material that we believe to have "taught" them. Gibbs applies a pedagogical philosophy of love for and submission to the text being taught and the ancient method of catechism to this problem, opening a pathway to not only lessons but also tests on things that matter, that the students will hopefully keep with them for the rest of their lives.

[Rachel Dorminy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better books on education that I’ve read. Much of what he has said has changed my views on classical education as not merely a method of education pushing for the same goals as the pagans but truly something that is striving for virtue. It really swung open the door to a lot of change in my homeschooling.

[Kayla Dorminy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joshua Gibbs has really changed my outlook on education. I never fully understood the benefits and use of a catechism. It seemed like a memorization tool that one could never memorize, rather than something you read and recite over and over and it becomes your own in many ways. Doing this for younger and homeschooled kids seems like a challenge worth undertaking, and evolving as they mature. Really exciting book about education!

[Leah Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading for classical teachers

[Amanda Gauthier-Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will read this again.

[Nate Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure, uncut, one-hundred-percent straight talk, based in an ethos of love and a near-holy reverence for the old masters. I learned more about teaching reading this book than in half a year of actually interacting with students.

[Jason Anger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply amazing.