Traditional Classrooms and Student-Centered Learning

Depending on who you talk to about kids, you might encounter two different ideas about classroom structure: the traditional model and the student-directed model.  A classical school is one of many examples of the former, and a Montessori school might be an example of the latter.  The basic issue comes down to this: are teachers the primary drivers of what and how a child learns, or do the child's interests dictate what is taught, and how?

Though ACA is a traditional school, this is an important topic to think about. Is there anything a traditional classical school can learn from student-centered or student-directed methods, and vice-versa?

One of the benefits of nontraditional student-centered learning, for example, is the humility it fosters in teachers.  Teachers, particularly at more advanced academic levels, can easily become egotistical or self-centered.  They view themselves too highly and are too easily frustrated with, or disdainful toward, their students.  Student-centered learning, such as Montessori schools provide, force the teacher to constantly look outside of themselves.  Teachers are attuned to the student as an individual with unique interests, and they learn to respect and foster those interests.  This is a crucial skill for teachers to develop, as students learn best when they feel recognized, encouraged, and appreciated. They are humans, after all, and need love and validation.

On the flip side, a student-centered environment can be dangerous for children.  While it fosters affirmation on a personal, short-term level, it may not provide some important structures that all children need.  For example, when student choices are emphasized, this assumes students have a standard from which to make a good choice.  Would they rather learn to spell or play with blocks?  I would have rather played with blocks.  Would they like to draw or memorize the multiplication table?  I would have rather drawn.  This thought experiment does not mean that drawing or playing with blocks are bad (they're actually good), but it does mean that poor choices can be made.  For everything there is a season. Are teachers facilitating poor choices in their students by allowing student direction at inappropriate times?  One of the reasons we educate our children at all is because we know they don't yet know how to make good choices.  Allowing them to make repeated bad choices doesn't make them creative and independent; it just makes them even better at making more bad choices.

Another way of saying this is to think about your backyard fence.  Few parents release their kids to play outside without one.  With a fence in place, however, most parents do (and wisely) let their children roam at will.  They head for the sandbox, find sticks, dig in the dirt, and kick the ball -- all as they please.  But the fence is there the whole time.  So are other rules the parents have set up: don't throw baseballs at the window, and don't pick up fat black spiders.  With these structures in place, a child's freedoms get a whole lot better.  They're safe, and they're following the rules life comes with. In other words, fences facilitate freedom.  Without one, kids are in the street, and here comes the UPS truck driving too fast.

God made our children to love rules, and he also made parents to love their kids.  So when we ask our children, "Are you making the right choices?" we should first be sure they know what the right choices are. 

The Trivium in the Eyes of a Five-Year-Old

As parents in classical education, we've all heard of the Trivium.  On the flip-side, because it's a Latin word, it also carries some measure of weirdness.  We know what the Trivium is . . . and yet we kinda don't.  How does the breakdown go again?  So sometimes it's helpful to think of classical education and the Trivium from a slightly different angle.

For instance, instead of trying to recite something like this:

The Trivium is an age-old method of teaching, highly revered among The Chosen of Parents, in which children ages 5-9 enjoy the Grammar Stage, a time of rigorous instruction in facts and figures, in drilling and in chants, and in the importance of discipline, discipline, discipline; and in which children ages 10-13 are exposed to the Logic Stage, namely, to the high mountain air of logic and sharp rationality, discerning truth, exposing falsehood, questioning, answering, and explaining, and, as good Saint Paul said, rightly dividing the word of truth; and in which children ages 14-18 discover the pristine Rhetoric Stage, learning to dance in the ecstasies of speech, persuasion, and beauty, recognizing the creative splendor in the world through the Author of All Things, together with the thrilling joy that comes from first gaining, then sorting, and then beautifying knowledge . . . .

we could instead (thank heaven), illustrate it like this:

"The Trivium in the Eyes of a Five-Year-Old, or, 15 Minutes Building a Lego Bullet-Castle":

Step One (The Grammar Stage): Dump out entire Lego set on kitchen table.  Allow good portion to spill onto floor.  Sort pieces into various lengths and colors while singing snippets of "Frozen" and "Green Grow the Rushes" repetitively. Name and handle each piece as you prepare to determine what you will build.

Step Two (The Logic Phase): Determine that you feel moved to build a castle, preferably one that "shoots bullets."  Begin building a square base, observing that pink Lego pieces are ill-advised for this project, and that Barbie dolls will not be the castle's inhabitants.  You'll want to assert publicly that this is not a rolling castle, like Ezekiel's throne-chariot, and therefore will take no wheels, and that neither is it a flying castle, as in Gulliver's Travels, and therefore will take no sails.  You should accordingly erect ramparts, turrets, and cannons only.

Step Three (The Rhetoric Phase): Construction nearly complete, you now confirm that all castle sections are of uniform color, that all flags are flying high, and that all cannons are aimed skyward.  Most importantly, you'll want to be sure to parade this castle around the house, showing it to parents, singing its praises, energetically pointing out its most notable features, referring to it regularly as "My Bullet-Castle," and firing off several exhibition rounds from the cannon.  It is your crowning achievement, your glory.  Just think if you had stopped along the way!  Part of a bullet-castle is no bullet castle at all.  And you've inspired your family and friends to similar great exploits.

What Does Your Child Need to Hear?

We are given many unshakeable truths in life, but few guarantees.  The book of Proverbs is like this, and if we're not careful, it can seem to contradict itself: "Answer a fool according to his folly." (Proverbs 26:4)

"Do not answer a fool according to his folly." (Proverbs 26:5)

Great job, Solomon.  Doug Wilson puts it this way:

The book of Proverbs does not give us head-for-head commitments and promises. They are proverbs. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and sometimes you wind up in Congress banning light bulbs for the rest of us. But as a general rule, hard work leads to wealth, and laziness to poverty, only not in every instance.

If we wrote a book of educational proverbs, we could make a couple like this:

"Straight A's are deceptive, and he who lays off his homework will find peace."

"He who does not study diligently will come to poverty."

Both are true, and that's the beauty of it.  But here's the rub: which truth do each of our different children need to hear?

$10K in 20 Days Challenge

From our Board of Directors, May 6 Dear ACA Families:

As we look forward to the end of another successful school year, we thank God for tremendous gifts this year: a talented and devoted staff, two locations that have proven to be great learning environments, marketing efforts that are helping boost enrollment (we will welcome at least 14 new Grammar School students next year!), more robust Parent Council and Board of Directors teams, and a strong community of families who support ACA's mission to help our students know, love, and practice what is true, good, and beautiful, for the good of all people and to the glory of God.

To help support all of this good work, we fundraise, and to date, we've raised $90,000 of our $175,000 goal for The Augustine Campaign, which supports operating expenses (teacher salaries and rent), classroom resources, and financial assistance. The Board continues to meet with prospective donors and seek out grant support--and as we wind down the year, we have a donor who is willing to give $10K in a matching donation if we can raise $10K by the last day of school: Thursday, May 26.

We're calling it the "$10K in 20 Days" Challenge.

Please help ACA finish the year strong! Share this race-to-the-finish with friends, family, and other supporters of ACA's mission. To contribute, go to augustineclassical.org/giving and click "Make a Donation."  Or send checks to:

Augustine Classical Academy 480 South Kipling Street Lakewood, CO 802236

Thanks for all you do to make our school a remarkable place. May God continue to bless our students as they pursue truth, academic excellence, and a life of service for Christ's kingdom.

The Board of Directors

Mothers and Mother's Day

Woman. Wife. Mother.

In the morning of the world, God looked at Adam—the man he’d just made, sinless, greater than Gilgamesh, Achilles, Solomon, Alexander, Caesar, or Alfred—and said, “Not good.” This near-perfect creation, fashioned after the likeness of God himself, was bad news.

Adam was alone.

So God broke Adam. He split him in two, separating him from himself, and with that rib he made Eve—Woman. Wife. Mother. Then he put Adam back together—“and the two became one flesh.” The alone-Adam, the broken-Adam, the incomplete-Adam, was now Whole, and the first song in Scripture records his jubilation:

This now is bone of my bone And flesh of my flesh: She shall be called Woman Because she was taken out of man.

A great mystery. An Adam without an Eve was a non-Adam. A non-Man. A not-Good. God broke the not-good, introduced Woman, and there was rest.

Woman: life-giver. Eve gave life to her Adam, she gave life to her sons, and she transferred that deep magic to all women since. Wives give life to their husbands, and mothers give life to their children. Woman is the garden that nourishes the seed, the gardener that tends the tree, and the harvester that rejoices in the ripened fruit. But like the ultimate Gardener and Life-giver, she gives herself up. She gives her body to her husband and children—making love, making babies, making food, making dirty clothes clean, making plans, making beds, making children sleep (while she doesn’t), making toddlers tinkle, making stories, making soccer stars, making college grads, making godly children, making a strong husband—making it all out of her own body.

A wife and mother dies a lot. Every day. And her deaths bring her family life.

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.