Articles From The Classical Teacher

“What is Classical Education?” Revisited
by Martin Cothran
Classical Teacher, Summer 2005

Two issues ago, we ran an article by Andrew Kern of the CiRCE Institute entitled, “What is Classical Education?” On the one hand, the article was very simple; on the other hand, it dealt with some fairly deep philosophical issues. The answer to the question posed by the article’s title was this: Education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue.

There is, however, another, complementary way to answer this question that addresses some of the more practical questions concerning what classical education is and how it works.

Those who have used our Material Logic course will know that there are four questions that must be answered in order to know what a thing is: What kind of thing is it? What is it made up of? What brought it about? And, what is it for? Mr. Kern’s article dealt largely with the first question. He gave us what in logic is called the “formal cause” of classical education. He told us what kind of thing it is.

Let’s try to answer the second question: What is classical education composed of? We know that classical education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue, but what does it do to actually bring this about?

From this perspective, we would say that classical education has two parts. The first has to do with content and the second with skills. The first aspect of classical education is (to steal a phrase from the great literary critic Matthew Arnold) the study of the best that has been thought and said. The second aspect of classical education is the study of the liberal arts. The first deals with the "what" of education and the second with the "how."

In regard to the "what" of education, classical educators have always made one thing the focus of their educational endeavor: Western Civilization. There are a number of reasons for this, most importantly, that we are all products of Western culture. But we live in a troubled and confused time, not only in regard to our attitude toward Western civilization, but in regard to our basic knowledge of it. Even if we have an opinion about Western civilization, we don’t always know exactly what it is we have an opinion about. So let’s ask a further question, “What is Western civilization?”

The answer is that Western Civilization is made up of three things: Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. Why is Western civilization important? Why should we want to study it? Most of us know why we would want to study the culture of the Hebrews; their history is a fascinating account of how God deals with men and nations. But what’s so great about Greece and Rome?

The Greeks were philosophical and speculative. Almost every great philosophical and literary idea, good and bad, can be traced back to some Greek thinker. The Romans were practical and political. Unlike the Greeks, they knew how to organize and govern. Many of our political beliefs and practices have a Roman origin. We may not agree with a particular Greek or Roman thinker, but they are the wellspring and foundation of Western Civilization. We have to know them to know ourselves.

The second aspect of classical education, the liberal arts, is the set of generalizable academic skills that prepare a person to learn and do anything. And just as we needed to ask what Western Civilization is, so also we need to remind ourselves what we mean by the “liberal arts.”

In the minds of classical and medieval thinkers, there were seven intellectual skills, or liberal arts, that were considered primary: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The first three of these, which we call the “trivium,” were language skills. The last four, the quadrivium, were mathematical skills. Although we have made a great deal of progress on the mathematical disciplines in the last few hundred years, there has been much less progress on the language side of the curriculum. Some would even argue we have gone backwards.

Classical education seeks a renewed emphasis on the permanent things in education: the perennial truths about God, men, and the world that are dealt with in the great literature of Western culture. It aspires also to inculcate in students those intellectual habits and skills that are summed up in the seven liberal arts.
Hopefully you will find in this catalog a few things that will help you to understand not only what classical education is, but what it’s made up of–and how to do it.

Memoria Press' Classical Studies program includes the Famous Men series, D'Aulaires' Greek Myths, and more!