Philosophy of Education
At Austin Classical School, we offer our work of educating students as a prayer to God. We trust that His goodness, mercy, and grace will bear fruit in the lives of the students entrusted to our care. We believe that our job as educators is to be faithful stewards of both the young people who pass through our doors and of the educational tradition that we embrace. When done well, our work is characterized by hopefulness.
Throughout history, Christians have built not just cathedrals but hospitals and schools as well. As Christians, we pay attention to the body and the mind because we know that the intellectual and physical virtues reinforce the moral and spiritual ones. At our school, when we say that we aim to educate the “whole person,” it is not because we think we have uncovered something earth shattering. It is because we don’t know how to do it any other way. The mind, the body, and the soul all occupy the same space. An excellent education engages all three.
Cultivating the Imagination
Scripture teaches us that we are made in the image of God. Each of us is a representation, an image, of the divine. We are not the divine. We are an image of it. Since we are image-bearers, our school takes images and the cultivation of the imagination seriously. From the beginning, we introduce our students to images that are good, true, and beautiful. These images, when artfully presented, take root in the imagination and shape the way our students perceive the world. And since our imaginations have a direct relationship to what we find desirable, through this practice, we provide students with equipment they can use to order their desires. After all, desires that
are properly ordered are the foundation for virtue.
As students mature, we introduce images that are unpleasant, false, and disfigured so that students can learn to distinguish between images they can trust and images they should hold at a distance. And since we believe that evil is a perversion of good and not something in-and-of-itself, we believe that even false images can teach things that are true. Through this practice of twisted-image inoculation, we hope to cultivate in students the ability to see God’s goodness, truth, and beauty in the fallen world around us.
Our Educational Approach
We cultivate the imaginations of our students by engaging in a proven method of teaching and by introducing students to excellent content that is grounded in a historical perspective and that aims to develop in students a mature appreciation of beauty. When it comes to our method, we don’t view education as an experiment to be conducted with child participants. Though we do not disparage novel approaches, we trust the tried and true. Our school’s educational method is pre-Progressive. We believe in the approach of the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—and we have structured our curriculum loosely along those lines. When it comes to the content of our curriculum, we study the Bible, the great works of the Western tradition, history, grammar, logic, rhetoric, Latin, English composition, art, music, math, and science. We also view physical education and athletics as an integral element of an Austin Classical School education.
The Trivium |
Grammar |
With infinite amounts of information at our fingertips, it seems quaint to train the memory. However, since our school takes the imagination seriously, we must train the memory. Memory is where we store the images that shape our desires. When we memorize something, when it is drilled into our brain through repetition, we make it our possession—a possession that cannot be taken from us unless the memory fails. But even more importantly, when we memorize something, it becomes a part of who we are. It continues to shape us even when the memory fades. Socrates viewed books as a crutch for those who could not remember without their aid. Imagine what he would say about the internet and smart phones! When our students memorize a fact, they gain independence from outside sources of information. They become mentally hardy, and their desires become more resistant to external stimulation. |
Logic |
But facts and images alone can take us only so far. We must cultivate our reason in order to perceive the connections between the various images, their similarities, and their differences. We believe there is a natural order on display in God’s good earth that students discover when they apply their reasoning abilities. This order exists among the things that cannot be otherwise and never change, such as mathematical, scientific, and theological principles. But God’s order also exists among the things that are variable and that change constantly, such as politics and economics. Additionally, since we are made in God’s image, the things that we make as humans, our artifacts, reveal the order of creation as well. At our school, we attempt to place equal weight on developing all three types of reasoning. Each type of reasoning corresponds to the three different types of knowledge, which Aristotle labeled as theoretical, practical, and technical. In order to develop their reasoning capacities, we teach students the rules that are proper to the different types of reasoning. We then teach them how to construct valid demonstrations, arguments, or compositions that reveal the natural order of things. We reinforce this knowledge through repeated practice. Finally, we employ the Socratic method in our classrooms as a means of testing the truth of what students produce. |
Rhetoric |
While necessary building blocks, we believe that an education focused exclusively on the cultivation of memory and the development of students’ reasoning capacity leads to an entirely self-focused education. To counter this possibility, we teach the art of persuasion, which draws us out of ourselves and connects us to our friends and neighbors. To be skilled in the art of rhetoric is not the same thing as to be a skilled communicator. For instance, a skilled communicator could write a very compelling ransom note. But that ransom note simply conveys a demand. It is a threat; it is not persuasive. Persuasion involves crafting desirable images that move the audience to ascent to the perspective presented by the speaker or writer. Rhetoric, when properly practiced, aims to reveal the truth in a persuasive way. Students at our school practice the art of rhetoric mostly by means of imitation. We teach students to read good writing and analyze famous speeches in the same way a master builder would study a well-constructed building. They are to adapt what they see to their own attempts at persuasion. In our time, the art of persuasion is a dying art. Yet, if we cannot communicate shared images in a reasoned way, then we are helpless to align the desires of our friends, family, church members, and countrymen. Without persuasion, we cannot discover the common good, and any cooperative action rests upon violence, coercion, force, and fraud. We teach our students the art of persuasion so that wherever they might find themselves in the future, they will be prepared to make the community they are in both a little more peaceful and free. |
The Content of the Curriculum
We train our students’ memories, develop their reasoning capacity, and equip them with persuasive tools in hopes that God will add to their virtue, knowledge, and to their knowledge, wisdom.
Scripture tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Scripture also exhorts us to get wisdom, get understanding, forget it not. We are told that wisdom, that great lady, will preserve us when we love her. At Austin Classical School, we begin and end our search for wisdom in the pages of the Bible, God’s holy, inerrant, and infallible Word. Scripture is a lamp that lights the way. We need the illumination of Scripture because our natural perception of things is dim, and without God’s revelation through his Word, we would never see Christ, our salvation.
Scripture brings many truths to light, and it deepens our understanding. We would be lost without it, and at our school, we seek to model for students a faithful reliance upon Scripture. The Bible also is an incredible work of literature that for centuries on end has shaped the lived experience of the entire world. As such, the Bible takes its rightful place at the center of the great conversation about the true, the good, and the beautiful that has taken place over thousands of years and is recorded in the great books of our civilization. At Austin Classical School, we study those great books, and we are unapologetic about doing so.
We study these works because they have stood the test of time. We know they work; they are dependable. To be sure, we study new books as well. We also study the writings of our own teachers and students, going as far as to listen as a community to Seniors present and defend a thesis! We study works from cultures outside the West and from perspectives hostile to Christianity. We study the ideas that dominate our current cultural conversation. We search for wisdom anywhere it can be found, and we fear not. But the Bible and the Western canon are home base.
Our approach to education is historical in its perspective. We study the past with an eye to God’s providential work in history. We also study the past because it brings to light people, circumstances, and actions that do not arise naturally in the narrow slice of time in which we live. To know our time and place only is to lack context for our everyday experience. When we know about the past, we are set free, at least partially, from the prejudices and blindness of the present. We know that certain things have not always been so, and that they could be different. We know also that certain things never change.
For the same reason, we study Latin—a dead language that is life-giving! Any person who has made a serious study of a language beyond their native tongue knows that language shapes in fundamental ways the way we view the world. If you learn French well enough, you can begin to think in French, which means you can begin to think like a Frenchman. When students study an ancient language, not only do they gain a better grasp of the way their own language is constructed, but also, they board a time machine that allows them to begin to think like a Roman would think. An ancient language is a portal to times past. Learning an ancient language allows us to view the world through much older eyes.
However, even though our approach to education at Austin Classical School is historical in its perspective, we study history not so that we will hate our own time and place but to enjoy the present even more. One of the benefits of a classical education is that very little startles classically educated students. They can be shocked by vulgarities or be scandalized by obscenity, but they will not be flighty in the face of whatever the world sends their way. History is terra firma, and a knowledge of history prepares students for what they should expect in their own time and place. And if a student is not easily pushed off-kilter by the perceived chaos of the world around them, then it is much easier for that student to see what is beautiful about their own country, their own family, their own church. Students of history approach the present with a deeper knowledge and a more mature appreciation of beauty in the world around them.
And the mature appreciation of beauty is one of the benefits of an education that is both classical and Christian. There are many good books on the topic of classical Christian education, and we encourage our parents and teachers to read them. But we don’t usually give them to our students to read. Instead, we provide the experience itself.
There are pleasures that arise from the classical Christian approach to education that cannot be described well to those who have not shared in the experience. In order to find pleasurable the experience of reading Homer or demonstrating a Euclidean proof, a student must undertake the proper preparations. But once the preparation is complete and the groundwork has been laid, once the hard work is done, then Dostoevsky’s characters suddenly come to life and are in the same room as you are. Dante can take you to Hell with him, and you can survive with Virgil as your guide. You can stand by Thucydides on the edge of a quarry in Sicily and weep at the folly of the Athenian army. You can hear Abraham Lincoln speak, and you can be moved, eight score years later, to complete the work that others have thus far so nobly advanced. You can hear Mary sing her triumphant song and imagine a world turned upside down by God’s radical dispensation of grace. You can see it all like you are there.
This appreciation of beauty extends well beyond the subjects traditionally designated as the liberal arts. From an early age, our Austin Classical School education is a musical education. Songs, chants, and rhymes fill our grammar school. Our upper school students all sing together in a Choir. Many of those upper school students participate in theater, and all our students receive an introduction to studio art. At Austin Classical School, we also have placed a greater emphasis on the hard sciences and math than some of our sister schools. We offer honors programs that push students to embrace the challenge of upper-level Math and Science courses. And we teach math, from an early age, as a fun course, not as something to be dreaded.
In fact, we try to teach all courses as fun courses. Education is hard work, but at a classicalChristian school, education is also a type of play. Unlike in times past, our students are free from the necessity of daily labor and can focus on the cultivation of their young minds and bodies. They are at leisure to study and to play. If anything, we hope to bring some of the seriousness of the classroom to the play of our students, while bringing some of the play of the playground to the classroom experience. Accordingly, the education we are pursuing at Austin Classical School extends beyond the classroom to the ballfield, the gym, our house competitions, and our school dances. When we work and play together as a community, we complete the education of our students and plant the seeds for joyful, life-long learning.
Collaborative Community: Students, Families, Co-Teachers, and Teachers
We have made the deliberate choice to engage in a collaborative model for our school. We spend significant time teaching and training parents who serve as co-teachers for their students. In the younger grades, this teaching happens shoulder-to-shoulder with students on homeschooling days. In the middle grades, co-teachers are looking over the shoulders of their students to check their work or answer questions. In the final years, the collaborative piece takes on more of a community approach as we all work together with parents to launch these students into the world.
We believe that parents have a God-given duty to provide for and oversee the education of their children. We love partnering with parents and entire families who are fulfilling their duty to educate their children together. We think that the classical Christian approach is well suited to the collaborative model, and we are committed as a school to maintaining our classical, Christian, and collaborative character.
In our model, co-teaching parents partner with classroom teachers who provide the curriculum, lesson plans, and direction to our co-teachers. Classroom teachers also conduct the majority of testing for our students. We expect a great deal from these teachers, and we hold them to a high standard. All our teachers at Austin Classical School are professed Christians who are committed to teaching their students from a Christian perspective. We expect these teachers to model proper behavior and to maintain order in the classroom. We empower teachers to provide discipline when necessary and to promote an environment conducive to learning.
We also require teachers to be good subject-matter experts on the content they teach. Nothing destroys the joy of learning in students quite like teachers who do not understand what they are teaching, or even worse, who dislike what they teach. Teachers must first be excellent students who have learned to love the material that they present to their pupils. We train and observe our teachers diligently and provide ongoing educational opportunities so that the classroom experience is consistent across the entire school.
Finally, we rely on our teachers to model the pursuit of knowledge in a humble way. Scripture informs us that knowledge puffs us up. In the pursuit of knowledge, we must always keep the simplicity of the Gospel in front of our eyes. Augustine’s great refrain in his Confessions is that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Our teachers are charged with reminding their students that all our ambitions, including our academic ones, must be laid to rest at the feet of Jesus. To aid in this task, we begin each on-campus instructional day with Chapel, where students and teachers together can humble themselves in prayer and meditation before God.
Distinctives
Austin Classical School is not a church, it is not a family, and it is not a branch of the government. Austin Classical School is a community that is founded on the shared work of providing students with a classical Christian education by means of a collaborative model.
Because we value community, we attempt to regulate the student academic load to allow for participation in multiple, non-academic pursuits. We have prioritized student participation in athletics because we believe in strengthening the body and challenging students through competition. Athletics also serves as a community-building experience. Families attend school sporting events where their children are not even playing. Similarly, our theater program is very popular, and its plays and performances are packed. Our annual Fun Run brings the whole community together for a day to run and enjoy each other’s company, and our annual Recitatio showcases the work of our students before the entire community.
At the same time, we demand excellence from students in the classroom. Intellectual virtues must be developed. Raw intelligence is not a virtue: it is a starting point. At our school, raw intelligence is not celebrated. However, the application of a student’s intelligence is honored. We believe that a classical education, though rigorous, can be made to work for most students. Students begin at different levels of raw intelligence and talent. Our educational approach is designed to challenge each student where he is.
Though we offer several honors tracks and dual credit courses, we do not view our school as a traditional college preparatory institution. We anticipate that many of our students will continue their education after graduating from Austin Classical School and will be well-prepared to do so; however, our goal is not to prepare students for college but for life. In that vein, our school accepts students with learning differences whose parents have committed to participating in the accommodations we provide their children. Similarly, while we do monitor student progress by means of the Classic Learning Test, we reject the idea that high stakes standardized testing is the primary way that student achievement should be measured.
Finally, at Austin Classical School, we have made the deliberate choice to ban access to most electronic devices during on-campus instructional days. Our students are happier and more sociable as a result.
Conclusion
In closing, we would add that we are not engaging in classical, Christian, and collaborative education because we believe that this approach guarantees the salvation of our children or their growth in wisdom and virtue. This educational approach is no lucky charm or whispered spell, nor is it an ancient relic that conveys mystical powers. Rather, we educate children in this way because we are persuaded that this is the call God has given to us. We trust that God’s grace will add to the work we are doing, making the educational experience at Austin Classical School profitable for our students. It is with a humble reliance on His provision that we offer the work of the school as a prayer to Almighty God. May our students grow to be wise, virtuous, and humble representatives of the glorious news of our Savior, Jesus Christ.