Timothy Paul Jones: Debunking the myths of classical education

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next, classical education. WORLD Opinions contributor Timothy Paul Jones says teaching Western Civilization and the great classics is good for everyone—no matter a student’s background.

TIMOTHY PAUL JONES: According to a recent investigative report in my local newspaper, classical Christian education promotes white supremacy. One of the articles suggests that the terms “Western” and “Western civilization” are “euphemisms for whiteness.” A professor quoted in the report declares: “You hear Judeo-Christian or you hear Western and it is a very thinly veiled dog whistle term for white.”

Augustine of Hippo, whose works make appearances in almost every classical school, would be shocked by the news that classical education promotes white supremacy. After all, Augustine was a North African Berber. He was also the towering theological influence of the Christian Church, even as Rome and its empire were in decline.

The news that classical texts are Trojan horses for whiteness would have surprised Frederick Douglass. The great orator studied the speeches of Cicero so he could speak more eloquently in defense of equality for African Americans.

Anna Julia Cooper would have been equally shocked to discover that classical education is a dog whistle for whiteness. Newly emancipated after the Civil War, this young African American woman received a classical Christian education at Saint Augustine’s Normal School. By the time she started college, Cooper had read works by Caesar, Virgil, Sallust, and Cicero in Latin, in addition to her studies in Greek. She went on to become the president of Frelinghuysen University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C. Cooper’s experiences reveal, in the words of professors Anika Prather and Angel Parham, that “classical Christian education is also part of Black history.”

Classical Christian education stands in a long tradition that emphasizes seeking truth, goodness, and beauty through the diverse corpus of texts that have shaped Western civilization. Classical education does not merely prepare students for professions; it equips them to live as free people who know the purpose of their labors.

What the texts that form the framework of classical education promote is not ethnic supremacy but shared humanity.

Introducing children to classical works consistently contributes to academic success in ethnically and economically diverse communities. The Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy Charter Schools in New York City are promoted by Barack Obama as models for inner-city educational reform. He praises them for eliminating racial achievement gaps and enrolling nearly all of their graduates in college. One key component of the Promise Academy curriculum has been “early exposure to literary classics,” particularly the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Despite the proven value of classical schools, many children in low-income families have no access to such education. One way that some states have reduced this barrier is by allowing school tax dollars to follow students into the schools that their parents choose. Another way to provide broader access to better education would be to follow the pattern of Hope Academy in Minneapolis, where income-adjusted tuition rates and private donors combine to make classical Christian education available to children in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

I do not deny that some individuals have attempted to smuggle reprehensible ideologies into classical education. Yet, any attempt to tie classical Christian schooling to white supremacy reveals deep ignorance of the sources that sustain such education. The texts of classical antiquity emerged from diverse contexts around the Mediterranean Sea at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Adoption has blessed our household with children from four different ethnic backgrounds. My wife and I have sent them to classical schools to prepare them to take their place in a perennial conversation that crosses cultural boundaries so each one of them might become “a citizen of the world” for the sake of the gospel. Training in classical texts is no dog whistle for white supremacy. Done well, classical Christian education can be a trumpet call of liberty, inviting students to see the common humanity in every ethnicity.

I’m Timothy Paul Jones.

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