Classical Education Today

Ah, this time of year and season, with our children running about us, it is a time of celebration for most and possibly family vacations for some others. Even as I type, I can hear neighborhood children outside lighting fireworks in the street. Then, there are some dear friends of ours busily preparing for a family vacation to Mount Rushmore this next week. I am terribly jealous Teresa!! It all has such a patriotic theme doesn’t it? It seems as soon as summer begins to shine there is the mentioning of all things American… like apple pies and baseball games. It’s all good and fun… baking pies that is… as long as it’s not blazing hot! Uh yeah, let’s wait until fall at least.

Well ironically for me, summer is a time for me to prepare for the next school year. So while most are out celebration the independence of our great nation, and others are planning trips to Mount Rushmore... I find myself getting hot and bothered over the coming school year. For this past week I have been planning and preparing Hannah and Sara Kate's coming school year, and today I purchased Hannah's Latin curricula to continue studying the Latin language, which can be previewed and purchased through http://www.memoriapress.com/. There website is amazing, they also provide FREE online Latin games as well.



While perusing their website I was able to read some articles on Classical Education, the form of education that we have followed in our family. First let me say, I am gratefully there are many forms of education available today, so that each may choose the course most fitting to their needs. As for us, a classical education has been the most fitting. The following excerpt from an article speaks to the reasoning of why a classical education is often seen as cumbersome in such a modern age. In the end, I have found, just as in the end of this article, there is no other way I would rather encourage the learning of our family.

The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers
by Martin Cothran

Classical Education Today

To become inspired by the great deeds of great men is to obtain the motivation to do similar things. We become great partly by seeing what other great men did and being inspired to do such things ourselves. But while beholding the great deeds of others gives us the motivation to be like them, it doesn’t equip us to achieve what they achieved. We can admire other men, but that won’t necessarily make us more like them. In order to become like those we admire, we must not only admire them, we must do what they did.

It is tempting to look back on the education of these great Americans and think that what they did is too difficult for the students of today. But that would be a grave mistake. Yes, they enjoyed some advantages over us, mostly in terms of having fewer distractions, but that is something we have the power to control. The fact is that we have advantages they didn’t have. For example, the educational resources available to colonial children were not only harder to find, but of vastly inferior quality.

We can, moreover, say we lack their fortitude, but that is not something they brought to their education; rather, it is a benefit they received from it.Education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. In deciding how to accomplish this with our own children, we would do well to see how it was done in a time when wisdom and virtue were more prevalent than in our own.

The article in its entirety can be found at http://www.memoriapress.com/ under the link Articles.