One of our sister schools in Spokane is headed by a gentlemen named Brent Harken. He is an experienced, wise, and respected head of school whose perspective is frequently helpful.
One of the things he routinely tells his school parents is this: “I’m doing this for your grandkids.”
He explains that the work they’re doing at Spokane Classical Christian School is building the sort of appetites and abilities that will not just effect worldly success and happiness now, but generational effectiveness and blessing.
Brent realizes that students who can reason well today will have reasonable dinnertime conversations when they have their own kids.
Students who understand the progression of Western thought and influence, students who realize they’re being given a baton with “CULTURE” etched on its side, are mindful of handing that baton to someone else…and making sure it’s not fumbled in the passing.
Students who have been challenged and stretched develop a sturdiness that has utility everywhere…and they are also able to assure their own kids that just because something hurts doesn’t mean it’s causing harm. Muscle soreness is a feature, not a bug.
I appreciate Brent’s one-liner above, as it encapsulates a principle we depend on at ECS. We’re interested in the long-term. Enculturation is a marathon, not a sprint. We’re more interested in winning wars than winning battles. We’re teaming up with parents for sake of their kids…not trying to replace the parents.
If I only have an elevator ride to explain the distinction between modern education and classical education, I’ll usually say this:
Modern education focuses on the transfer of information;
classical education focuses on the transfer of culture.
This brief explanation is supported by the classical training enjoyed by our forebears. From the Protestant reformers to our founding fathers, the shapers of our culture collectively were very concerned that those who came after them would be able to continue their work. Because of this, their (and their kids’) education was heavy on training in the great works of Western Civilization as well as classical languages (especially Latin), logic, and rhetoric. Sound familiar? They figured that these ingredients were going to be very important if culture were to advance.
Modern education has largely abandoned these ingredients and the results speak for the themselves. When is the last time you saw logic being employed in a daytime talkshow or Latin or Greek being invoked outside of medical school? Pathos goes unchecked by ethos or logos. The culture our forebears worked to build is literally disintegrating, and in some cases it is on purpose.
God has been very gracious to our culture, and we’ve presumed upon that grace. Now we depend on the Western ideals of freedom of speech and freedom of religion to say we hate the evil West and Christians are bigots. A culture of death has echoes everywhere, and the same people who would wail over the felling of an old-growth cedar would celebrate the in-utero dismemberment of a fellow image-bearer. Many of them include their pets in their wills because they have no children and don’t want them.
If they had read the books your children are reading, they might know that this is not a good formula for human flourishing today, let alone thirty years from now.
Can such a culture continue? Yes, but it will require repentance and some help. Like Brent Harken, we are doing our work for you grandkids. We do hope that you and your grandkids flourish, but if the fight stops there because the family tree is either stunted or poisoned, then we will not succeed in our mission.
May God find us faithful and bless the work of our hands.
Risus est bellum!
Jonathan