Classical Education: Towards the Revival of American Schooling

by Gene Edward Veith Jr., Andew Kern

towards the revival of American Schooling

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

Paperback

Published January 1, 1997

About the author

Gene Edward Veith Jr., is the Culture Editor of WORLD MAGAZINE. He was formerly Professor of English at Concordia University Wisconsin, where he has also served as Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. He is the author of numerous books, including Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals, and God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.

Postmodern Times received a Christianity Today Book Award as one of the top 25 religious books of 1994. He was named Concordia's Adult Learning Teacher of the Year in 1993 and received the Faculty Laureate Award as outstanding faculty member in 1994. He was a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation in 1994-1995 and is a Senior Fellow with the Capital Research Center. He was given the layman’s 2002 Robert D. Preus Award by the Association of Confessional Lutherans as “Confessional Lutheran of the Year.”

Dr. Veith was born in Oklahoma in 1951. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1973 and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Kansas in 1979. He has taught at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College and was a Visiting Professor at Wheaton College in Illinois. He was also a Visiting Lecturer at the Estonian Institute of Humanities in Tallinn, Estonia. He and his wife Jackquelyn have three grown children and live in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Reviews

[Skylar Burris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a concise overview of the modern classical education movement, which began in the 1970’s, and I include it in my article Learning How to Think: A Reading List for Parents Considering Classical Education.”.It covers classical education in both its Christian and secular (democratic and moral) forms. It discusses classical education at the elementary, high school, and college levels, with mention of some specific schools, educational innovators, and associations. It is more of an overview than a sustained argument in favor of classical education, although it does critique modern and postmodern educational methods and offer some factual support for the success of classical education methods. Classical schools, the authors summarize, “integrate all elements of the curriculum, and learning is unified and cumulative. Students are taught to recognize how areas of knowledge relate to one another, and how basic knowledge learned in earliest childhood is the foundation for more complex ways of knowing…Classical schools cultivate a student’s interest in first principles and ultimate purposes. They are not afraid to delve deeply into philosophy and religion, but encourage questions and answers about knowledge, faith, and meaning….Classical schools educate for citizenship…[and:] are communities of learning.” It’s a good introduction to classical education for those who know little about it, but not a particularly in-depth or intriguing book

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book did a better job than other books about classical education to lay out different approaches to and applications of the "classical model". Although the book authors have bias, the book was written with a more objective tone than other books on classical education. My only disappointment is that this book is already twenty years old, and I am curious about what updates there may be throughout the book.