Plodders Always Win

"I wonder what the Puritans would have been able to do with a word processor?"

This is a regular question from an acquaintance of mine, and it comes from the well-known fact that the Puritans were remarkably productive people.  They lived in the 16th and 17th centuries, a time at which technology was at a minimum, yet almost to a man, they were astoundingly prolific.  Choose a Puritan writer at random, and his complete works will probably take up most of a bookshelf -- all accomplished with just a quill pen. And with a word processor?

The point is that they didn't need one.  They had something better: order and diligence.  Today, we like to run the numbers and find a "solution" for things, and we're very interested in the latest science that proves there's finally a quick remedy to such-and-such an old difficulty.  But the Puritans knew something we've forgotten: one of the only silver bullets you'll ever find is diligence.  They knew the importance of order and routine.  They plodded.  Their progress was slow, but it was an everyday-progress.  They were creatures of habit -- and far from becoming inhuman machines, they produced some of the most creative, insightful studies on mankind, culture, and God.

Segue to education.  If you take a diligent, methodical student in a crummy public school and compare him to an unstructured student in a top-rated classical Christian school, put your bets on the public schooler.  The classical schooler may have bright flashes of occasional brilliance, but without the habits of daily faithfulness in seeing little jobs through to the end, he won't succeed.  The plodders always win.  The tortoise beats the hare.  The quill pens in steady hands outstrip the distracted fingers on a keyboard.

Let's give our kids good, steady, unromantic routine.  Or as Solomon said, "Seest thou a man diligent in his business?  He shall stand before kings" (Prov. 22:29).

The Common Core & Classical Education

One of the best ways to learn certain things is by not thinking very hard about them.  If these things are over-thought, the returns on learning immediately begin to go down.

For example, a valid outcry against the Common Core is its attempt to make young students "think conceptually" or to "think critically," or even to "think independently" in every possible setting, and way too soon.  The Common Core wants students not just to know their multiplication table, but also to know how numbers "relate to each other."  Here's what Diane Briars, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics says about it:

"Part of what we are trying to teach children is to become problem solvers and thinkers . . . We want students to understand what they're doing, not just get the right answer.''

Now this is an admirable vision, one we should all be happy to get behind.  But it has to have its place.  What if I asked a 1st-grader what the 9 planets were in order, and she answered correctly, but then I also said, "Now tell me how the proximity of Mars and Jupiter to the asteroid belt affects their respective environments, and whether you think it more likely that a terrestrial or Jovian planet might impact Earth's climate in future evolutionary epochs?" Maybe this is a good question for a high-schooler (then again, maybe not), but it certainly has no place in an elementary curriculum.  In the same way, we shouldn't muck up kids brains with the fact that numbers are really ideas and not things, and that "numeral" is really the proper word, and that even then, numerals are just adjectives.  No, they just need to memorize their multiplication table and go outside and climb a tree.  This is the old way, the way of our parents, and it works.

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and that goes for education.  This is precisely why we make our ACA littleuns memorize lots of stuff, good and solid, and why we only start asking them critical-thinking questions in the 5th-grade range. Why?  Because that's how their bodies work.  That's how God wired them up.  Slamming a 1st-grader with demands to "understand" and "conceptualize" all the time is like giving them a bottle of wine and expecting them to be able to handle it.  Jesus turned water into wine, and adults drink it, so it must be a good thing for all ages. Right?

To everything there is a season, said Solomon.  And as my mother always said, "A place for everything, and everything in its place."

Great Books on Classical Education

Though classical education's modern-day resurgence is still relatively new, its overall history is long, rich, and varied.  Standing on the shoulders of this tradition, the last two generations have given us a wealth of ideas for thinking about classical education, and for improving our own lives and minds alongside those of our children. Below are a list of wonderful and engaging books that ACA recommends as essential reading for parents pursuing classical Christian education over the long term. In the spirit of staying ever-engaged for our kids, join me in tasting and re-tasting these delicious feasts. (Publishing blurbs included.)

The Case for Classical Christian Education by Douglas Wilson.  In this greatly expanded treatment of a topic he first dealt with in Rediscovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Wilson proposes an alternative to government-operated schools by advocating a return to classical Christian education with its discipline, hard work, and learning geared to a child's developmental stages.

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton is one of the most brilliant books of apologetics in the English language. Chesterton wrote Orthodoxy in 1908 in response to a challenge from one of his readers to state his creed. Rarely has any challenge been more gloriously and chivalrously met. This is early Chesterton at his best: sparkling paradoxes, breathtaking wordplay, trenchant argument and blinding logic. The reader is treated to a witty and insightful work, that illustrates how reasonable orthodoxy really is, despite the attacks of its critics. The book also provides a spiritual autobiography, as Chesterton employs his own discovery of orthodox Christianity in order to defend its beauty and its sanity against modern secular schools of philosophy. The book manages to intellectually challenge the reader, while still appealing to a child-like sense of awe at the world around us.

The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise . . . The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there’s no reason you can’t read and enjoy Shakespeare’s sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the “Great Books” without a guide and a plan . . .

Norms and Nobility is a provocative reappraisal of classical education that offers a workable program for contemporary school reform. David Hicks contends that the classical tradition promotes a spirit of inquiry that is concerned with the development of style and conscience, which makes it an effective and meaningful form of education. Dismissing notions that classical education is elitist and irrelevant, Hicks argues that the classical tradition can meet the needs of our increasingly technological society as well as serve as a feasible model for mass education.

For over thirty years The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer has been the landmark book that changed the way the church sees the world. In Schaeffer's remarkable analysis, we learn where the clashing ideas about God, science, history and art came from and where they are going . . . The God Who Is There demonstrates how historic Christianity can fearlessly confront the competing philosophies of the world. The God who has always been there continues to provide the anchor of truth and the power of love to meet the world's deepest problems.

In Climbing Parnassus, winner of the 2005 Paideia Prize, Tracy Lee Simmons presents a defense and vindication of the formative power of Greek and Latin. His persuasive witness to the unique, now all-but-forgotten advantages of study in and of the classical languages constitutes a bracing reminder of the genuine aims of a truly liberal education.

In the classic The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. Both astonishing and prophetic, The Abolition of Man is one of the most debated of Lewis’s extraordinary works.

Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans. To succeed in the world today, students need an education that equips them to recognize current trends, to be creative and flexible to respond to changing circumstances, to demonstrate sound judgment to work for society's good, and to gain the ability to communicate persuasively.

The Paideia of God by Douglas Wilson. And, you fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). In this passage, Paul requires Christian fathers to provide their children with a "paideia of the Lord." To the ancient world, the boundaries of paideia were much wider than the boundaries of what we understand as education. Far more is involved in paideia than taking the kids to church, having an occasional time of devotions in the home, or even providing the kids with a Christian curriculum. In the ancient world, the paideia was all-encompassing and involved nothing less than the enculturation of the future citizen. He was enculturated when he was instructed in the classroom, but the process was also occurring when he walked along the streets of his city to and from school. The idea of paideia was central to the ancient classical mind, and Paul's instruction here consequently had profound ramifications.

From the ACA Board

Dear Augustine Classical Academy Friends and Supporters,

In the latest issue of "The Classical Difference," a publication of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, is a beautiful and powerful article by an American teacher who traveled to Rwanda.  There to share some classical teaching methods and understand her hosts' passion for this distinct approach to education, she asked her hosts this fundamental question:

Why, we ask, does [this pastor] -- already a prolific evangelist and church planter -- consider academics a crucial part of his mission?  Why not stick to spreading the gospel?  His answer, framed by the backdrop of blood-spattered killing walls and shelves of fractured skulls, takes my breath away.  Moral education would have prevented the genocide.  Education that is Christian and thoughtful, cut along the grain of God's own nature and the nature God gave to man, is an antidote to the genocidal theologies and "the key to a better future for Rwanda."

That's big, heavy stuff -- and true.  Classical, Christian education is not just a benefit to our kids.  It's a gift to our communities and our culture because it equips students with a whole understanding of God's story, as it's expressed in all of life (even, yes, geometry and grammar); it nurtures a love of truth that seems shockingly absent from much public discourse today; and it cultivates nimble minds, who can follow an argument to its logical end and propose fresh ideas rooted in substance.

Augustine Classical Academy is proud to be this type of school, and we're writing to ask you to support our important mission, for the sake of our students and the Denver community at large.

At the beginning of this academic year, we launched The Augustine Campaign, a three-year fundraising effort to raise $600,000 for operating expenses (teacher salaries and rent), financial assistance, and classroom supplies.  We have $85,000 left to raise to meet our year-one goal.

Here's how you can help:

Skip a Starbucks: By giving $5 or $10 a month, you can help equip our classrooms with necessary materials.  Sign up for automatic giving at augustineclassical.org/giving.

Invest in Enrollment: The best way for ACA to continue to thrive is to build enrollment.  We've seen growth each of our last six years, and we are only at about 35% capacity in our current facility.  Help us reach more families with a $100 gift toward our marketing efforts.

Sponsor a Scholarship: We will award $66,000 in financial assistance in the 2016-17 academic year. Making a gift designated for scholarships relieves stress on our operating budget and allows us to continue serving families with high financial need.

Introduce Us: Think about who would be excited by ACA's distinct model and mission.  Would your church sponsor a scholarship?  Does your company have a grant-making arm that supports local non-profits?  Who do you know who would love to give their children this type of education? To expand our reach and build our school, we need the help of all members of our community.

You can make a one-time or recurring gift online at augustineclassical.org/giving or by mailing a check, made out to Augustine Classical Academy, to:

480 S. Kipling St. | Lakewood, CO 80226

Thanks for your continued partnership in this exciting work of equipping students to know, love, and practice what is true, good, and beautiful, for the good of all people and the glory of God.

Yours sincerely, The Augustine Classical Academy Board of Directors.

Wishing Peter Pan Could Do Something About It

One of the pitfalls of modern education is that it comes down to the student's level and gets stuck. Students are "reached," not educated, and much of the curriculum is student-driven. On the other hand, a pitfall of traditional education (often seen in Dickens' novels) was that it whacked students over the head with a standard and demanded conformity. The modern method tailors ever-changing standards to kids' "needs," with all the backbone of Jabba the Hutt, while the older method often didn't see kids at all -- just objects to beat and lecture to.  And where past teachers could be defined as those who always wore wigs and never wore smiles, the modern teacher (and better yet, the youth minister) can be defined as he who sits on chairs backwards eating pizza, hoping to be cool and relevant with the kids.

Generalization granted.  But there's still got to be a better way to educate children than the typical pendulum swings to the far opposite corners of whatever the last generation did.  And, by golly, it just so happens that Love and Rigor can sometimes be friends.

Call it loving students up to the standard.  We get down to their level so that we can bring them up again with us, and we are committed to bringing them up again with us because we know that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child (Prov. 22:15), and that there is a specific way in which children should be brought up (Prov. 22:6). Childhood is a glorious, God-given phase, but it is not a phase marked by its wisdom and understanding.

So what happens if we have too romantic a view of childhood? We cuddle and coddle and cater to our kids, worrying about how dangerous the world is (mostly with germs) and wishing Peter Pan could do something about it. We can't bear the thought of disciplining them, or of making them do something they don't like, and when they throw fits, let's give them what they want and make them happy, poor dears. We want them to love Jesus, but we also want them to follow their hearts, and one day we wonder why our daughter Lizzie has grown up and cut her hair funny and calls herself Larry and thinks Jesus and Buddha are basically the same person.

Or on the flip side, what about a narrow view of childhood? We correct and we spank, but always with frowns and lectures, and if our children cannot finish their homework, it's their own fault for not having paid enough attention in class. Smiles are reserved for Friday nights only. Movies are always a waste of time, and any students with Facebook are likely not Christians, and if you don't agree with me, son, I'm your father, and you will go to your room immediately until you learn respect. And while you're at it, you can memorize scripture and forget bowling tonight with your friends.

In both cases, like clockwork, the kids go off to college, do a full 180, and the parents are somehow just dumbfounded.

Love them up to the standard.  Teach them how to live by showing them how to live. Work with them. Help them. Talk with them. Sacrifice for them. Expect much from them. Allow no compromises or excuses from them because you do not make excuses or compromise yourself. Teach them diligence by being diligent yourself. Make them widely interested children by being widely interested yourself. Teach them service by serving, love by loving, and devotion to Christ by being devoted to Christ.

Reformations are messy, but so is the gospel.  And for our kids, the gospel starts at the kitchen table and on the living room floor.

Letting Them Play in the River

Once upon a time, there were two children from different families, and their names were Boris and Natasha.  They were happy children and obedient.  They always ate their veggies, went to bed before nine, and never skipped church.

While young, Boris and Natasha loved to play together, which was convenient, since they lived next door.  But as the years went on, they drifted apart, much like two sticks in a limpid stream drift apart.  And though this may seem like a very poor analogy, it isn't, because that is precisely what was happening to Boris and Natasha: they were each floating down separate currents.  They were destined never to be friends again.

You see, despite appearances, their parents had very different standards for them.  Whereas Boris was encouraged to practice reading via Christian comic books (where the sun always shines and the landscapes are made of cotton candy), Natasha was given fairy tales, Greek myths, and biographies. While Boris was corrected for scuffing up his shoes, Natasha was allowed to play in the river.  Boris's parents read bits of the Bible every night, particularly the verses that show up with baskets of puppies, and Natasha's parents read her the Bible all the way through, including the gnarly parts.  Boris got A's in all his high school classes, even though his parents had to try six different schools before they found one that "suited" him, while Natasha got mostly B's, and an occasional A or C, in her honors and AP courses.  And when they were older with families of their own, Boris, generally apathetic about most issues, would always say that his education was worthless, because he'd never really "used" it.  But Natasha was interested in everything.

The Different Faces of Diligence

Here's one of my favorite sayings:

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business?  He shall stand before kings" (Prov. 22:29).

Short and sweet.  (Or as the fellow once said, "Hebrew literature: adage without padage.")  In any case, diligence is a good idea, and one of its rewards is influence in high places.

But for our kids, it isn't so romantic.  For them, there are two kinds of diligence, and one of them never seems to work.

Before we get into that, though, let's remember what it's like for our kids in school.  They are going somewhere (academically) they have never been before, and they don't know what the end of their road looks like.  (Neither do you.)  They're being made to sit still, focus with their ears, and think strange new thoughts, none of which they signed up for. The homework-jobs are hard, they often just don't see the point, and in short, on any given day they'd probably rather be headed down a different highway.  Maybe the one to recess, or the ski slopes.

Enter diligence.  Diligence is like the car that helps your kids reach that unknown and elusive destination. It muscles through distraction, dislike, and stress. Diligence is grinding gears, revved engines, and plenty of exhaust(ion). It has torque and gets you places.

But diligence also dresses up as something else, not a car at all.  Often, diligence is an old slow geezer with a cane who talks more than he walks. So much for getting you places.

Diligence is both the car and the geezer -- and your kids can't pick and choose which they get.  They place an order for it, and it's anyone's guess which kind will show up.  Sometimes, their diligence produces quick results, measurable and satisfying.  They buckle down, block out all distractions, forego the party with friends, and hammer their math facts.  With great fanfare they get an A+ on their test -- a real break-through.  But other times, they buckle down, block out all distractions, forego the party with friends, and hammer their math facts -- and get a C-.  Again.

These are the two kinds of diligence.  One gets immediate, measurable results.  The other just won't.  But (here's the key) they are both essential and unavoidable parts of the learning process.  Sometimes diligence struts its stuff and lights up report cards.  Very good.  But much more often, it bides its time and offers little hope.  This kind of diligence takes faith, but it teaches powerful lessons.  It is a slow burn with deep roots.

Growth and education are funny things.  They are unpredictable and defy all parental expectation.  But over time, in the video (not the snapshot) of our children's lives, full of countless insignificant acts of diligence and faith and no day-to-day assurance of a shining future, God raises up young men and women for his glory.

2014-15 Annual Report

From our Board of Directors:

Dear ACA Families, Friends, and Supporters,

On behalf of the Board, I’m pleased to share with you Augustine Classical Academy’s first-ever annual report, which gives program highlights and a financial overview of ACA’s 2014-15 academic year.

You’ll see here what it takes financially to keep ACA running, which is significant, though still less per-pupil than the per-pupil expenditures at area public school districts. You’ll also see how carefully we steward our dollars and that they primarily—and appropriately—go to staff salaries and benefits.

While the data herein are important, the true highlights of ACA’s life aren’t captured in this report. They are the light-bulb moments when a preschooler finally gets that elusive “qu” phonogram; the thrills of spotting butterflies during a second-grade nature walk and wondering, What must our God be like, that He creates butterflies?; the wonder of building an aqueduct modeled after the ancient Romans’ innovation; and the adventures offered by such classics as The Hobbit and Treasure Island.

These moments—and the millions like them that define our children’s days at ACA—aren’t run-of-the-mill. ACA is, without a doubt, a remarkable and rare place, and we thank God for the richness of this experience for our community of families.

As we look to 2016 and beyond, the Board will continue its focus on marketing, fundraising, and careful stewardship of the resources we have. We invite you to join us in any of these endeavors if you feel so called. (You can email board@augustineclassical.org to reach us at any time, or come to the public session of our Board meetings the first Tuesday of every month at 7 PM.)

Thanks for your part in building this small but mighty place. My prayer is always that God would help us grow in enrollment and influence, and that God would use ACA to help an ever-growing group of students to know, love, and practice what is true, good, and beautiful.

Sincerely, Hilary Oswald Chair, ACA Board of Directors

Drills and Drama

For parents and teachers, there is an inconvenient truth about children:

They don't come with a USB port.

Try as we might, we always get an error message when we attempt to upload information onto their hard drives. ("Here is a slice of pure, clean knowledge.  Please file it somewhere neatly in your brain.") They are what has been termed human and tend to reject all formalized learning categorically.  This fact has created perhaps the single most debated question in all the Educational World (an unwieldy and corpulent world), which is this:

"How do we get kids to love and accept what we're trying to teach them?"

Or:

"How do we get kids to actually be diligent and attentive?"

Two basic schools of thought exist.  The first says the solution is to drill, baby, drill.  This is an old and traditional method with exclusive emphasis on repetition, chants, drills, routines, discipline, and consequences.  The second school of thought says the solution is to show the students a real good time.  Are they interested in horses?  Let them skip math class and ride one!  Or more reasonably, a math teacher's paramount role is to make math fun.

Both are wrong by themselves.  Both are right (except for the part about skipping math class) when combined.

As we teach our children both in the classroom and at home, our goal should be a heady combination of both rigor and love.  Put a different way, students of all levels need a dynamic combination of distasteful drills and rousing drama -- that is, the dramatic adventure inherent in learning.  Without the first, there is no structure or standard for knowledge, and so a child never receives meaningful content.  Without the second, the masses of rich content the child does receive are packaged in bitterness and resentment: there is no love of learning.

In the classroom, ACA teachers regularly ask themselves: "Given the importance of both rigor and adventure (or love), what should I emphasize in this particular subject given what I know of this particular set of students?"  We should ask the same question as parents.  The specific answer is always different, ever developing, but it always seeks the ideal marriage of discipline and love.

Says Who?

Last month, you may have noticed a quote from our ACA Twitter feed:

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

This a sobering truth, no mistaken idea, and it is one that we must always teach our children.  Apart from a universal standard for truth, finite man's laws are basically arbitrary.  Without that standard, might makes right, and laws are based on the whims, bad or good, of the ruling government.  Perhaps they are "good" laws, but we have no universal means by which to verify their goodness.  Perhaps they are "evil," but we have no ability to condemn them.  There is no moral Law-Giver, and therefore no moral law, by which to distinguish good from evil.

During the formative years, our children must never assume that "rights" and "wrong" are moral absolutes of themselves, as though they are terms with intrinsic authority. Conversely, we must never let them think "right" and "wrong" are ideas without any moral content whatsoever; that right and wrong are relative to opinion.  We must teach them that the only way to condemn evil -- whether Hitler, racism, Planned Parenthood, or whacking lil sis on the head with a toy truck -- and the only way to praise what is good, is to appeal to an absolute, changeless, and loving standard of truth.  That truth can only rationally and satisfyingly be the gospel, the Story of the God-Man whose name is Truth, and who loves us infinitely and personally.