Status Updates From The Case for Classical Chri...

"In a fallen world, truth cannot go out unadorned and remain what it is. Truth is always incarnational"

"if kids learn more about the true meaning of kingship from Aragorn than from Solomon, something is seriously wrong... Modern evangelicals are terminally irreverent" — Ch. 18

On Wilson's direct opposition to grades—"how can you assign a grade to X? What does 3 credits of Y even mean?" Well, we have ways of defining standards and elucidating nuance. Classical folks should be best at this due to extensive linguistic and rhetorical training. Unless?

As an assessment professional I find his perspective surprisingly wanting.

A third contention: grades. Classical educators rightly despise that students of rhetoric should submit to a test on merely the grammar of rhetoric, for instance. It is easier to grade a MC test on rhetorical terms than to evaluate a student's command of language and persuasiveness in an actual rhetorical argument. However, assessment—have we succeeded in whole-person formation or not?—can always be graded.

Secondly, it is often argued, by such as E. D. Hirsch, all people should be educated to a given level of literacy in order to support the demands of both industry and democracy. But since democracy has yet to be established as an intrinsic good by either of these authors, I feel unsure about the intrinsic value of the high level of literacy they are advocating.

I disagree with Wilson on two major points. First, not everyone needs a classical education. The fact that all people are made in the image of God does not mean that they are all made for the same earthly purpose. Education is teleological an immediate sense as well as in an eternal sense. Farmers do not need to learn the quadrivium as much as they need to learn animal behavior.

Chapters 15 & 16 helpfully elucidate the history and development of classical education that the classical movement tends to substantially overlook. Wondering how we'll address the quadrivium, since 7 liberal arts/pillars have been named, but only the Trivium has been directly addressed. This book has had the perhaps unintended effect of piquing my interest in classical Catholic education, too, re: classical virtues

Louis Berkhof “The image of God is the most fundamental thing… in the child specifically. And… cannot be ignored in its education without doing injustice to both the child and its Creator and without turning its education into perversion.”

“The Bible does not speak of subordinating the emotions to reason as the rationalists desire, or even of subordinating reason to the emotions as the romantics want. Rather the whole man — body, soul, and spirit — should be subordinated to the word of God… You shall love the Lord your God…”