Teaching the virtues

Classical education proponent Christopher Perrin is the co-founder and CEO of Classical Academic Press, a publishing and consulting company that launched ClassicalU.com, a training resource for teachers, and Scholé Academy, which offers online classical education courses. An author, podcaster, and frequent speaker at education conferences, Perrin was previously the founding headmaster at Covenant Christian Academy in Harrisburg, Pa. Here are excerpts of our interview, edited for brevity and clarity.

In a nutshell, what’s classical education? My elevator-speech explanation is that classical education is a tradition we’ve received that is the liberal arts, the natural sciences, and the great books—the archive of wisdom, of the best ideas collected and preserved by humanity; the good, the true, and the beautiful from wherever we’ve been able to collect them and harmonize them under the lordship of Christ and Scripture.

You say the word classical can be misunderstood? The term can have different connotations depending on who you’re talking to. It can sound elitist. It can sound old and out of date. It might even sound nostalgic and antiquarian. “You should have been born in the 15th century or something, then you’d be happy. You’re one of those types.”

But it’s still a useful term? What we know of education is from what we’ve experienced over the last 125 years or so. Memorizing facts and material for a weekly or monthly or midterm examination—that’s normal to us. But it’s not normal if you look back over, say, a 2,000-year period. Modern grading was invented about 130 years ago. Starting around 1890 in the progressive revolution, this new thing usurped and replaced what education was before that. So we’re using this word classical because it’s indicating we’re going back to something that had enduring excellence.

Describe a typical class at a classical school. High schoolers and sometimes middle schoolers will often be taught at a large table, seated together, to facilitate close reading, debate, and discussion of great texts. In K-6, you might observe students singing all manner of songs pertaining to natural science, Latin vocabulary, historical events and timelines, Bible passages, or catechism Q&As. Children usually begin the study of grammar in the third or fourth grade, typically by learning Latin.

You say learning virtue is also central. But is virtue something that can be taught in a classroom? Virtue is chiefly caught rather than taught. Not only is the teacher a model of virtue, so are those figures studied in history, literature, and Scripture. Selections from Scripture, literature, and history are studied and discussed for the purpose of inspiring and instructing students in the cardinal virtues, academic virtues, and theological virtues.

Classical ed seems particularly popular among Christians, yet the model has a significant basis in Greek works. What’s the connection to Christianity? The early Christians were, many of them, Greeks and Romans. By the time you get to the 300s, Christianity had overcome the Roman Empire, and so then you have people like Augustine and Basil saying that all truth belongs to God, and anything that’s good, true, and beautiful that we’ve received, even from our Greek and Roman traditions, comes into the Church like jewels placed into the crown of Christ. That’s what they believed. Anything that’s true, good, and beautiful belongs to God, even if it’s been used with corruption.

Has interest in the classical education model grown recently? Starting with the 1970s, Christian schools were using secular curricula, then adding a Bible class so that we could have prayer in schools again. But we were still educating the same way. That’s still the case in many Christian schools—they don’t differ very much in their curriculum and pedagogy. As the culture is becoming more secular, Christian parents are saying, “Well, I can’t do that anymore. So what are my options?” And they’re hearing that there are these schools that are classical. They’ve grown enough that in every major metropolitan area there’s one or two classical schools, and a lot of home­schoolers are doing classical education.

Do voucher programs and education savings accounts play a role? Yes, because if we are providing true school choice that way, then more parents can afford to homeschool or enroll their kids in a classical Christian school. We’re seeing it happening already, in places like Florida, where there is ­universal school choice.

How common is classical education outside of the United States? Classical Christian education never completely disappeared. It is the inheritance of the Church, and it’s starting to reemerge in lots of other countries and cultures. I just came back from a trip to Brazil at one of the first classical Christian conferences in that country. There were 92 schools represented, 700 teachers. It’s also reemerging in Africa, Australia, Canada, the U.K., the Netherlands. In China people are finding ways to do it, even if it’s in little house churches and house schools.

Does classical education have any blind spots? Knowledge puffs up, love edifies, and so 1 Corinthians 13 always applies—to every Christian, and to educators. Though my children speak with the tongues of Latin and Greek, but have not love, it will profit them nothing. And they’ll be a clanging gong. I saw this when I was a head of school for a while. We were so focused on getting this curriculum right we started to burn out our kids. And they stopped loving the lovely, because we were force-feeding them. If you don’t have a culture of Christian love, you’re done for.

Classical schools are known for academic rigor, yet you stress “restful learning.” How do you define that? Rigor, properly defined, is a good thing—if you mean accuracy, precision, clarity, and industry. But rigor for rigor’s sake becomes life-killing. I prefer vigor, which means “life.” You want the student to be full of life, so that their study, even the industry that you see in them, is coming forth like a spring because they have a love and a zeal for the true, the good, and the beautiful. So their work doesn’t feel like work sometimes. That’s why we emphasize rest, to create a harmony and balance. Rest is associated with the virtue of contemplation—to learn how to receptively gaze and enjoy and contemplate something that’s true, good, and beautiful. There’s so much to contemplate, especially in the natural world. Have you seen a stick bug? It’s a bug that’s a stick, or it’s a stick that’s a bug. When you’re 6 years old, this is amazing. It still amazes me.