An American family’s classical education

Education is as old as parenting, for education originally meant to raise, rear, or bring up (from the Latin educare). Schools should come alongside mothers and fathers to assist in this responsibility to raise a child in virtue, wisdom, and holiness.

Such a general definition of education we might call classical. This word, like the word education, has a wide semantic range, so that when one says, “good education,” we hardly know what is meant. Classical education, in the simplest sense, is the kind of education that has been around a long time—arguably since the Greeks and Romans, then adapted and transformed by the Christian church. With few exceptions, nearly every form of Christian education prior to about 1890 was classical.

Before that time, we did not speak of “classical education.” We simply spoke of education, or sometimes liberal education—an education that liberates men and women to flourish as human beings who can know the truth, do the good, and love the beautiful. The curriculum was the liberal arts, the great books, and the natural sciences. The pedagogy was marked by mentorship, academic friendship, and even discipleship. The animating spirit, especially in Christian contexts, was love for Christ and His church. Christ was understood to be the teacher in our midst and the author of all truth, goodness, and beauty.

Recently, I set out to study American education through the lens of one storied American family: the Adamses. John Adams, signer of the Declaration and second president of the United States; his son John Quincy Adams, our sixth president; and his grandson Henry Adams, diplomat, professor, historian, and journalist. The educational lives of these men span from the mid-18th century to the turn of the 20th, offering a microcosm of American education itself.

I began with reading David McCullough’s biography of John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2002), followed by Paul Nagel’s biography of John Quincy Adams (Knopf 1997). These books reveal not only American political history but a fascinating educational thread that runs from generation to generation.

John Adams was educated first at home by thoughtful parents and relatives, then at a local grammar school, then a Latin school, and finally at Harvard College, which then enrolled only about 100 students. His education was grounded in the traditional liberal arts: Latin and Greek, history and literature, logic and rhetoric, mathematics and natural science. Books were scarce, treasured, and read deeply. Both John Adams and his son John Quincy kept regular journals that testify to sustained, serious reading. In John and Abigail Adams’ letters, we see they were united in the conviction that the end of edu­cation was moral and intellectual formation—not mere vocational utility.

In a letter to John Quincy in 1781, John Adams wrote, “You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.”

As a father, John Adams was also a tutor and model. John Quincy accompanied his father on diplomatic missions to France, the Netherlands, and England. In the midst of political life, Adams continued his son’s education in Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, and literature, even recommending the regular contemplation of poetry.

What John and Abigail had done for their son, John Quincy and his wife Louisa sought to do for theirs. John Quincy followed his father to Harvard, later teaching there himself, even while serving as a U.S. senator. Like his father, he served as a diplomat abroad—in France, Russia, and Germany—and once again a son, Charles Francis Adams, accompanied him.

Charles Francis, in turn, was educated much like his father and grandfather. He attended Harvard, served as an American diplomat, and became ambassador to Great Britain during the Civil War. And once again, like his father, he brought along his son: Henry Adams.

It is Henry Adams, however, who reflects most self-consciously on education in his autobiography The Education of Henry Adams (1918). Born in 1838, he came to believe that he had been educated for the 18th century but forced to live in the 19th and 20th. The revolutions of the modern world left him feeling intellectually unprepared. He lived into the Progressive Era, which increasingly rejected the old liberal education as narrow, formal, and ill-suited to mass immigration and a rapidly industrializing, scientific, and bureaucratic age.

Henry Adams points out the ways in which the traditional classical education had become crusty, defensive, nostalgic, and resistant to needed adaptation and innovation. Many in Adams’ time rejected the “old education” and determined to reform education as science rather than a practiced art.

The history of American education from the founding forward reveals a confluence of competing theories and practices, both classical and progressive. This is revealed in the study of the Adams family, where we see the American stream of classical and Christian education flowing through John Adams and into his son John Quincy and then his grandson Charles Francis. In Henry we witness confusion as that stream meets and blends with a new one, flowing fast. Darwin, the steam engine, the Civil War, the dynamo—all of these trouble the waters and muddy them.

In many ways, this is where we remain. Most of us are, in ways we are not always conscious, a blend of the classical and progressive. We must recover the insights and blessings of the classical tradition, but scrape off the barnacles, prudently adapt to changing circumstances, and sail on the clearest rivers we can find.

—Christopher Perrin is a classical educator and curriculum author who writes on pedagogy, formation, and the history of education. He serves as CEO of Classical Academic Press.