Articles From The Classical Teacher

Order and Simplicity
by Martin Cothran
Letter from the Publisher in Winter 2006 Classical Teacher

One of the first things you notice when you talk to parents at a homeschool conference is that many of them think of education in terms of their own public school experiences. They remember having studied six or seven subjects in a day, and they think that's what they have to do too. Education seems so complicated, and they feel overwhelmed.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed at some homeschool events. At some conventions the exhibit halls are so big that you can spend an entire day and still not see everything there is to see. I suppose there was once a time when the problem with homeschooling was finding enough materials to do it. Now the problem is just the opposite: there is so much material published that it's hard to even keep track of all that is available.

I remember the movie Moscow on the Hudson, where a man comes from Soviet Russia to the United States. At home he was used to having to stand in lines to get what little food was available. But then he enters an American supermarket. He walks up to a cashier and asks, "Where's the line for coffee?" and she tells him that the coffee is in aisle 17. He goes to aisle 17 and finds can after can of coffee in various brands and countless varieties. He is so overwhelmed by the experience that he passes out cold.

I sometimes wonder if new homeschool mothers feel like that when they realize the sheer amount of material they have to choose from. I'm a bit surprised they don't have ambulances standing by at the back of some of the exhibit halls, with stretchers ready, just in case.

Memoria Press has tried to address this problem in two ways. The first is to bring an orderly philosophy to the task of education. The second is to stress that education is not as complicated as many people think.

One of the nice things about classical education is that it is not new. After all, the human race has been engaged in education for at least two millennia now--surely it has learned something. Classical education is cumulative; it contains its past within it. Unlike new philosophies of education, which are still trying to figure it all out, classical education contains the wisdom which it has accumulated over numerous centuries.

The liberal arts, which are essential elements of classical education, are not a fad. They were developed in ancient times, and they will be here as long as human beings strive to educate their children. The great books, too, will not go away. They will have other books added to their number, but they will not change.

These things--the liberal arts and the great books--are maps that we today can use on the road to learning. They give us an order to follow that is well thought out and simple. It involves Quintillian's suggestion to teach solid basic skills early on (yes, a Romans teacher of the first century knew the importance of phonics). It involves following structured study in basic skills with structured study of Latin, logic, and rhetoric--as well as math. And it involves reading widely in the works of the three great cultures: those of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.

We tend to think that, while math is objective and structured, language is subjective and disorderly. But the Romans and Greeks, and the medieval Christian culture that subsumed them, knew better. The study of Latin, logic, and rhetoric give a structure to the study of language that we tend to find only in math and sciences today.

Martin Cothran is the author of the Traditional Logic, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric programs, offered by Memoria Press.