What Is Modern Classical Education?
CO: Welcome, listeners to the Modern Classical Education at Home podcast! We are
Jenn Naughton,
Courtney Ostaff,
and Andrew Campbell.
Today we’re going to get down to brass tacks about the whole subject of this podcast. The title is “Modern Classical Education at Home,” right? But what exactly do we mean by “Modern Classical Education”?
JN: Most of our listeners are probably familiar with the two main types of classical education: traditional classical and neoclassical. If not, and you want an in-depth discussion of these two methods, you might want to listen to episode 7, Oak Meadow, and episode 8, Michael Clay Thompson (MCT) ELA.
AJC: For now, we’ll just summarize them briefly for you.
Traditional classical education traces its roots to the ancient Mediterranean world, and it centers the study of the histories, literatures, and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome—or what, at the university level, would be called “Classics.” Traditional classical educators will typically teach Latin and Greek and will prioritize mastery of those languages. Overall, this style of education tends toward depth rather than breadth; multum non multa—quality, not quantity—is its motto. As a result, the range of subjects is limited and the content is often Eurocentric, sometimes to the complete or near-complete exclusion of other cultures. It also privileges high culture: the Western literary canon, European classical music, art, dance, and drama. Most (though not all!) traditional classical educators are Christian and seek to impart a religious worldview to their students. Some examples of curriculum providers for this style are Memoria Press and Kolbe Academy, both of which draw, more or less explicitly, on Jesuit educational models.
Neoclassical education is based on the ideas of Dorothy Sayers, a 20th-century novelist and playwright. She reworked the medieval Trivium—the classical language arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric—into stages of child development. This style of education was popularized in the 1980s among conservative evangelical Christian homeschoolers and quickly became the dominant style of classical education for homeschoolers. If you hear someone referring to “the grammar stage” or “the logic stage,” you’ll know they’re coming from a neoclassical perspective. The best-known curriculum providers for this style of classical education might be the Well-Trained Mind and Classical Academic Press. Although it started in a deeply religious milieu, neoclassical education is also popular with secular homeschoolers.
So that’s just a thumbnail sketch of the classical education landscape for background.
JN: For the past few years, we’ve been having discussions with homeschooling parents who are attracted to the rigor of one or another of these classical models but are put off either by the Eurocentric approach, or by the Christian elements, or both. The Facebook group I started four years ago, in April 2018, was in part an attempt to articulate what a secular, non-Eurocentric form of classical education might look like for homeschoolers. This focus on inclusive, rigorous academics that didn’t exclude religious curricula turned out to be so popular that we stepped back from managing the group—it had grown beyond our ability to handle it. Although we no longer run the group, it’s still going under the name “Inclusive Academic Homeschoolers,” and we have every faith in the folks we tapped to take over group ownership.
In the intervening years, we’ve tried on several different names for the kind of education we tried (and in some cases still are trying) to give our kids. We’ve referred to it as progressive classical, global classical, and most recently, modern classical. In terms of methods, it shares a lot of characteristics with both traditional classical and neoclassical education, which is why you’ll hear us recommending curriculum from the “other classical” folks.
AJC: While our understanding of our goals has changed over time, at this moment in time, we’ve found some ideas and values that resonate with all three of us—some parts more so than others, but we do have some mutual understanding. We thought we’d share this with you today.
Before we start, we want to make it clear that, while Jenn and I both use the term “modern classical” to describe our businesses, it’s not a trademark or any kind of clearly defined method. It’s one approach to classical education among several. Our discussions in this episode are meant to explain how we use the term and why we think it’s helpful. We also want to clarify what modern classical education as we see it is not.
CAO: I offer you some ideas in tension with each other. First up: Utilitarianism: Get a good job. Otherwise known as Margaret Thatcher’s vision of education. You learn so that you get a job so that you can support yourself. With this underlying philosophy, it’s perfectly reasonable to cut out art and music—they don’t directly contribute to jobs, right? Science? Only the kind you get paid for. Etc. I will say that there is virtue in doing a job – we cannot all “do what you love” and so we do need to teach our children skills that will contribute to their future economic success in our society.
AJC: I’ll echo Courtney, and offer my own definition. I call this Education for Career. If you asked most adults what the purpose of education is, I’d wager a strong majority would say “to get a job.” Whether that goal is near or deferred for a few years by college, gainful employment remains the single most pressing concern for most students, and especially for their parents. Although the career portion of that well-worn phrase, college and career readiness, is often assumed to refer only to students who plan to enter the workforce immediately after high school, it applies much more broadly. Virtually all students will eventually need to find work, and many who enroll in college will not complete a degree. Strong literacy and numeracy skills, a broad knowledge base, and the soft skills employers prize therefore remain a pressing need for all students.
A variation on this is Education for College. Or, education for more education. Since a bachelor’s degree is now the minimum educational requirement for many white-collar jobs and master’s degrees are increasingly expected for career advancement in many fields, college readiness means career readiness for many of today’s students. High schools that offer a college-preparatory curriculum are expected to provide not only courses in the arts and sciences that meet college entrance requirements, but also a level of academic rigor that will allow the graduating senior to succeed academically once enrolled.
JN: This is one of the pillars of modern classical education on which we all agree. This kind of education is academically focused, but not just for college preparation. As we say on our website, an excellent education is every child’s birthright. As homeschoolers, we’re not afraid of rigor or challenging subjects like logic, rhetoric, classical and modern languages. We also believe that students should have as much math and science as they have aptitude for.
CAO: Second, citizenship: Become an active member of our democratic society. The logical extension here is the Sudbury-style democratic school, where students have equal say with the teachers, and students are responsible for their own education, just as citizens are responsible for their own behavior in a democracy. While I’m not a fan of student-led education, I must agree that our students do need to know how civics works in our society.
AJC: Again, I think, Education for Citizenship is another common goal that we share. Because all adult citizens in a democratic nation share responsibility for maintaining the country’s democratic institutions, society benefits when children receive an education that prepares them well for that task. Where education for citizenship is a primary goal, students should not only learn the bare facts about their government, but will also be expected to adopt the civic virtues associated with democratic societies: tolerance, civility, fairness, cooperation, and so on. Inculcating these virtues is therefore a part of education for citizenship, and proponents of citizenship education—such as E. D. Hirsch, Jr.—call for schools to promote national unity by encouraging patriotic sentiment. (For more on this, check out our episode from October 2020 where we review Hirsch’s most recent book, How to Educate a Citizen.) While some would not endorse the civic religion Hirsch proposes—and I am in the “could we not?” camp—most would likely agree that students should, at very least, understand how their government works, what their rights and responsibilities as citizens are, and how to advocate for just and prudent public policy.
JN: We agree that becoming an equal member of society doesn’t mean that children should do the heavy lifting in changing society. Likewise, we believe in adult-directed education. We’re not unschooling fans. We recognize that kids don’t know what they don’t know, so it’s the responsibility of adults to teach them. This includes teaching them knowledge, skills, and abilities that they may never have discovered on their own. Whether that includes classic books, the Pythagorean theorem, the Big Bang, or writing expository essays is up to each homeschooling family, but we’re definitely in favor of teaching all of those items. We’re not going to skip something because we think it’s too hard, for our children or for us.
This does not mean that we believe in punitive education—writing 500 cursive lines of “I will not lie” is something we’ll never recommend. We’re also not in favor of authoritarian education, or never letting children have a say or study something they’re interested in. Instead, we’re more about making sure the basics are covered first, and then allowing our children to “follow their bliss.” We want our children to know deep in their hearts that the adults in the room are looking out for their best interests, present and future.
CAO: In the classroom, you might see this next one called Liberal Arts. A short summary is “truth, beauty, and goodness.” Students learn truth by analysis, whether it’s math to be able to double-check mortgage payment amounts using financial equations, science to evaluate claims about the effects of climate change, or reading the fine print on cell phone contracts. But also, students learn about the beauty of literature and the fine arts, because teachers train students’ taste in poetry or painting. And goodness, not just in the religious sense, but also in the goodness of humanity and what it means to be good to others. Which can, yes, include an understanding of the justice in social justice.
AJC: I’ll take this one from a different angle, and call it Education for Culture. Education is the formal part of the enculturation process by which young people internalize the values of the society in which they were raised. Seen from this perspective, education’s primary purpose is to ensure cultural continuity from one generation to the next. In its most conservative form, education for culture can easily reinforce the social, political, economic, and religious status quo by replicating dominant cultural norms, however prejudicial. We see this all too often in classical curricula that champion “Western Civilization” or in lawmakers who refuse to confront painful histories and their resulting social and moral ills. Retrograde traditionalism is not the only possible outcome of education for culture, however. When all students are afforded access to the cultural capital enjoyed by the elite, education for culture can encourage social mobility, economic uplift, and critical engagement with tradition. This is the mission of the Core Knowledge Foundation and also of certain charter schools.
JN: We see modern classical education as something that includes the whole world, not just a Eurocentric perspective. Because we see virtue in including all of humanity, we strive to include a full range of voices, including, here in the United States, Black Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color. We include LGBTQ+ culture and history, as well as those who fought for disability rights. While the “great man” theory of history is popular, we’re also interested in social history, including that of the working class folks who get things built and made, and who care for children. We appreciate those of us who are neurodivergent and differently wired, both in terms of what we study, and as students and families. We do, actually, say “gay.” We also say “autistic” and “disabled” and “ADHD” and “dyslexic.” We say that gender-affirming healthcare is a human rights issue. While we may not always achieve our goals, we do take a look at historical, cultural, and social critics. When we study Thomas Jefferson, we study the Declaration of Independence, and we also study the residences of the enslaved at Monticello.
CAO: Next, I group several items under Self-Actualization: This is a loose aggregation of ideas that culminate with unschooling. Our job as teachers is to help students develop their own interests, skills, and talents, whatever those may be—for their own use. In operation in classrooms, project based inquiry and differentiation pull the teacher in 30 different directions, because the teacher has 30 different students who are all interested in their own thing. To me, this philosophy is actively against the concept of school, where students come together as a group and learn together.
AJC: I think of this a little differently. I’d start with the idea of Education for Cultivation.
If education-for-culture represents the outward-facing, social aspect of education, cultivation is its inner counterpart. Here, education aims at developing the capacities of the human person to their fullest extent. In the context of liberal arts education, cultivation refers to the development of intellectual habits—often labeled critical thinking skills—urbanity, and a certain liberality of outlook. A quick survey of college brochures and classical curriculum catalogs will show that teaching students how to think and broadening their intellectual horizons remain widely held educational goals, apart from any economic advantage they may confer. Education for cultivation can also encompass broader personal growth goals, or what Courtney refers to as self-actualization.
A related but distinct goal is education for character. Education-for-cultivation molds the intellect, while education-for-character forms the will. Like culture and cultivation, character formation—also known as virtue education—is one of the primary goals held up by many classical educators and virtually all religious ones, but it is by no means limited to them. You will find the individual character virtues in all types of educational settings under names like grit, resilience, and work ethic, while their social counterparts appear as kindness, cooperation, and empathy. There is even a small library of guides to character education, complete with didactic literature.
CAO: Social Emotional Learning, or SEL, is a common component of public school education these days. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), offers a handy infographic they call a CASEL wheel, as well as a curated database of classroom curricula. West Virginia has grade-by-grade curriculum standards and objectives for social emotional learning, although I find some of them to be, shall we say, less than optimal.
JN: When we think of modern classical education at home, we think of secular curricula, but we are definitely not anti-religious. Unlike certain folks and groups, we don’t have an ideological purity test for individuals or their curricula. Instead, we’re looking at curricula from a practical point of view. Does it work for the intended purpose? Or for our purposes? We’re not afraid to talk about modifying religiously-based curricula, or just plowing right into it, even if we are not of that religion. Again, we’re more interested in academics than ideological litmus tests. For that reason, we prefer curricula that focus on ‘mainstream’ science. This would be science that doesn’t sidestep the age of the Earth or the universe and that doesn’t omit evolution. For reference, about ⅓ of public high school biology teachers teach both creationism and evolution either by action or omission, or endorse creationism.
AJC: We can sum up the answers to the central question—What is the purpose of education?—with the six C’s we’ve just covered. The first three are utilitarian responses; they are means to desirable ends, or what Aristotle would call instrumental goods. These are, in short, Education for Citizenship, Education for Career, and Education for College. The second three are what we might call intrinsic goods, or things that are good in and of themselves. These are Education for Culture, Education for Cultivation, and Education for Character.
CAO: I’d also like to lean into the idea that modern classical education is evidence-based. We’re interested in cognitive science. If you haven’t listened to our book review of “Why don’t students like school?” then you might find it interesting, because there is a science of how people learn—and especially how children learn—and it’s changed dramatically in the last 25 years or so. Children are not miniature adults and they’re not miniature scientists or engineers, and that matters when choosing what and how to teach.
Like we said last time, background knowledge matters. I read Jack Schneider’s Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality last week, and I found the emphasis on teaching critical thinking a bit dismaying, because as we said in our 2020 episode on critical thinking, that’s not really something you can teach directly. Back then, we pointed out that if you teach students to use certain criteria for evaluating a thing, and then you have them evaluate the thing with that criteria, voilà, they do better than students who are taught general principles rather than evaluation criteria. Which is great, but this is not what most people think about when they envision critical thinking, is it? Instead, we want the sort of general skills that transfer from one situation to another.
There's a problem. And the problem is that different academic and non-academic disciplines have their own steps, their own goals, their own standards, their own ideas about what makes something true. And it's part of what makes movies like The Cutting Edge so funny. I don't know if you all remember this, but it was a hockey player who had to transfer into learning to figure skate, and it was hilarious. He would forget the toe pick every time, because someone who's an expert in one discipline cannot easily transfer those skills to another discipline. So we need students to become experts in multiple disciplines that they’ll use as adults, and that takes a long, long time. There’s a reason that we offer 12 or 14 years of education to our children.
AJC: What modern classical education at home is not matters too. We’re not going to use methods that don’t work because “we’ve always done it this way” or “so-and-so on Instagram swears by it!” We spend a lot of time examining education orthodoxy like “balanced literacy.” For those of you who don’t know, EL Education has a nice definition of balanced literacy. They say,
“Balanced literacy” is a term that grew out of the “reading wars” of the 1980s between the “whole language” and “phonics-first” camps, with the idea that a combination of the two approaches that would work best. Instead, research over the past three decades has pointed powerfully to a set of approaches known as “The Science of Reading.”
We highly recommend Emily Hanford’s podcast series on this topic, by the way. The first one is “Hard Words.”
Another common but mistaken approach to education, both in the classroom and in homeschooling, is learning styles. Teachers spend a lot of time learning about learning styles and designing lessons centered on learning styles, with the idea that learning styles are evidence based. They are not. Cognitive scientists would very much prefer it if teachers knock off with trying to design for something that simply doesn’t exist. The Vanderbilt Center for Education has a good introduction to this topic, and you’ll find a link in the transcript.
Likewise, we’re not going to recommend a method just because some famous nonspecialist promoted it. Dorothy Sayers was undoubtedly a sharp individual, and she was a translator, a writer of mystery novels, a writer on Christian doctrine, and a poet. However, her expertise in the theory and practice of education was limited, and while she had a child, she didn’t raise or educate him. Therefore, it’s probably not great that a single essay out of all of her writing, "The Lost Tools of Learning," became the foundation for a lot of modern neoclassical homeschooling. There are other good reasons to use neoclassical education, but simply saying that Sayers endorsed it isn’t good enough for us. That’s an argument from authority—which is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.
CAO: Our curmudgeonly tendencies apply to the new hot and totally unproven thing, too. Just because it looks pretty on Instagram doesn’t mean that it offers a high quality education. How does that curriculum compare in a head-to-head competition against the current offering? Why would you change what you’re using if the new thing isn’t better? If someone asks about a math program, as happened this week, I’m going to compare it to existing homeschool curricula like Math Mammoth, RightStart, Saxon, Beast Academy, Singapore, MEP, Miquon, CTC, Life of Fred, Math-U-See, and Teaching Textbooks. That’s a long list and it’d have to be something special for me to say, “Oh, that’s definitely better, you should use it.”
Many times, when folks come to me and ask about a program, like I was asked yesterday, my question then becomes, “What would you have to give up if you use it?” Yes, you could add this literature program in, and I do like this literature program, but you say that you have something that works well for you. Why would you change that, if your children are successful? Just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean you need it. Don’t succumb to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
Another question to ask is, “What are the strengths and weaknesses?” There is no One, True, Perfect curriculum. Everything has good and bad points, and we need to be honest about what those are in order to make a useful evaluation. For example, Fishtank ELA does a good job with inclusive choices of literature, but I would not call it a high-quality composition instruction program. That’s OK—one could successfully use it—but we need to be aware that some places will require supplementation or additions.
What about prerequisites? Beast Academy doesn’t start in kindergarten, although they’re working their way down. What do children need to know before they start there? Killgallon is great for refining sentence-level composition, but students need some solid skills in comprehension and text generation before they start with Killgallon. Do you really want to start your child’s history education with American history? How do you explain colonists without explaining Native Americans first? Or King George without explaining Great Britain first? Prerequisites matter.
JN: If a curriculum doesn’t offer a scope and sequence, then you might want to stop and think twice, because the author probably hasn’t. Why isn’t the curriculum thoroughly planned, so the author is able to list and explain when the skills are covered? Your homeschool planning depends on someone else’s curricular planning, and if you can’t count on that, the whole building has a weak foundation.
AJC: Similarly, your planning depends on how easy a curriculum is to use. Can you just open and go? Maybe you have time and spoons to shuffle across multiple books to create a daily list of activities, but many parents don’t. Busy homeschooling parents have limited time and executive function, and they need something that they can count on to tell them what to do and when, or the subject simply won’t get taught.
CAO: I have forgotten the number of times someone has excitedly told me about a curriculum—often a pricey curriculum—with no actual lessons. Good lessons include a materials list; retrieval practice; a prerequisite knowledge check; step-by-step presentation of new information in small chunks; built-in checks for understanding with specific examples and nonexamples and common mistakes; diagrams of concepts; guided practices and scaffolds for independent practice with, preferably, 20% new problems and 80% old problems. This doesn’t even include the needed formative and summative assessments. I also need to know how it interlocks with other curricula. Etc etc etc.
JN: Those of us with neurodivergent households—that means family members who are autistic or ADHD or learning disabled or different in some way from the quote-unquote standard human—we want curricula that work for us, too. Does a given curriculum lean on interpreting social situations without much explicit instruction? Probably not a good fit. Does it require shuffling around three or four different texts every day in order to teach it? Not easily usable for us. Does it require lots of hand-copying of material? Either we’re going to alter the way we use it, or we’re not going to use it at all. Is there little review and practice for the student who needs lots of extra reinforcement? Hard pass. We don’t have the luxury of using so-so curricula and getting away with it, because we’ll end up with children who aren’t learning.
AJC: Let’s review the main points we’ve covered. When we think of modern classical education, this is what we’re talking about:
It is academically focused, but not just for college preparation.
It is rigorous, adult-directed education aimed at preparing students to live in a functioning liberal democracy.
It is inclusive, with studies of often-marginalized groups.
It is focused on secular curricula with mainstream science, when available.
It is evidence-based, drawing on cognitive science and pragmatic applications of educational theory.
CAO: And here’s what modern classical education is not:
It is not the minimum amount to get by. We believe that every child has the right to as much hard academics as their aptitude permits.
It is not child-led, or biased toward inculcating culture warriors. We believe in preparing children to engage as adults with civil society.
It is not Eurocentric. We believe that the world is interconnected, so all societies are worth studying.
It is not anti-religious. We believe in the sanctity of religious beliefs and practice, and the need for respectful study of religions other than our own (if any).
It is not necessarily traditional or aesthetically pleasing. We believe that what happens in the mind is more important than having something to put on the refrigerator.
AJC: That’s it for today’s topic. Jenn, what’s up at Bookish?
JN: We’re past the long, gray days of winter and looking forward to warmer weather here in the northern hemisphere. The Bookish Society has a summer bookclub on offer, as well as our regular bookclubs next autumn. But, new this year, by popular request, I’m offering a Modern Classical Education at Home online cottage school. You teach math, I’ll teach everything else. I’m a morning person, so for the younger students, I’ll take them for morning time—you drink your coffee. AJ, what’s going on at Quidnam Press?
AJC: I’ve put together a custom pack of Exploring the World through Story just for the Bookish cottage school, and I’m really excited about that! In other news, EWS-F for grade 5 is coming April 1st, just in time for our big Spring Sale! If folks want to get the coupon code for the sale, they can follow the Quidnam Press page on Facebook or the Instagram account. We’ll have links in the transcript. I’ll also be releasing the Wisdom Tales bundle for Levels D-F. Finally, after creating more than 1500 pages of curriculum in the last year, I’ll be taking an extended break, but I’ll be back working in the fall. I’m planning to start releasing the middle school EWS units in 2023. Courtney, what about you?
CAO: As for me, I’ve got five spots left in my live Saxon Algebra I at WTMA, and a couple of slots left for asynchronous students. I have four seats left in my new Dolciani based math fundamentals class, and one single spot left in my logic stage World Geography course. High school astronomy is full! I’m super excited about that new course.
JN: Thanks for listening to Modern Classical Education at Home. Before we go, show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us a review, then stay tuned for next month. This year, we’re doing book reviews every other month. Next month’s is Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.
SHOW NOTES
https://quidnampress.com/renewing-classical-education/
https://quidnampress.com/purpose-of-education/
WHERE TO FIND US ONLINE
Modern Classical Education at Home website, Facebook, Instagram, Substack
The Bookish Society (Jenn Naughton): website, Facebook, Instagram
Quidnam Press (Andrew Campbell): website, Facebook, Instagram