Oct 28, 2018 | Parents and Family
In my first post on classical education I explored modern progressive education, and why it’s a disaster. In my second, I shared how I came to not only appreciate classical education, but have become an evangelist for it. Here I want to give a brief introduction to exactly what classical education is, and why it’s so important for Christians to embrace it.
As I said previously, classical education is rooted in history, specifically the history and ideas of the classical world, both Greek and Roman. This became infused with the Jewish and Christian worldview through the Middle Ages as Christian thinkers who took the ideas of the ancients, and wrestled with them through the lens of Christianity. It was in fact the Christian influence that systematized and humanized (as in, for example, man is made in God’s image and worthy of infinite value) classical thought. Part of that systematizing came in what’s called the Trivium, and that is the model of K-12 classical education. What is it? (more…)
Oct 20, 2018 | Parents and Family
In my previous post, Take 1, I didn’t relate that I was late getting on the classical education bandwagon. I’ve always been a fan of the liberal arts, the humanities and such, but the term “classical education” meant little to me even into my 50th year. I was so clueless that when my wife insisted that our youngest son was not going to our public junior high school, I thought she was being irrational. We survived a public school education, I told her, and turned out fine. Our older daughter and son did as well. And we couldn’t afford that Christian classical school she was so excited about anyway. What an idiot I was. When family stepped up to help us afford it, I resented it, that it might inconvenience me. It so happens that God’s providence (and mercy), and results, intervened to enlighten me.
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Oct 14, 2018 | Parents and Family
That’s actually another book in my brain, and one I think needs to be written (and there are plenty already out there, but I may have something unique to add to the conversation; we’ll see . . .), but right now a blog post, or two, is the best I can do. I was inspired to write something on classical education because of a piece I recently read about education in the American Thinker that didn’t even use the phrase classical education. The title made it a necessary read for me: “Marxism and Education.” The author tells the story of how American education became radically re-envisioned in the early part of the 20th century, and you can infer from the title that Marxism was a seminal influence in that process. As he says, very few people today in or out of education are aware of these influences, but Marxist assumptions are ubiquitous in the American education marketplace.
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Oct 7, 2018 | Culture
I don’t often get into political discussions here because this is a website about apologetics for my Christian faith and worldview, but I’ve also practiced apologetics for my political and economic convictions with my kids all their lives. These convictions of course stem from my Christianity, so are an extension of my Christian view of reality. I have sought to persuade my children that they make sense to me, and ought to make sense to them as well. I am convinced my children would no more become left-wing, progressive, liberals than that they would become secularist agnostics or Hindus. Which brings me to Tim Keller and the concept of “social justice.”
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Oct 3, 2018 | Notable Quotations
But in the end, we can’t make the difference. As Western country after Western country devolves into a battle between the Hard-Heads of left and right, we’ll need a force more powerful than smart ideas to keep us from ripping apart. Or from enacting policies that serve good ends by wicked means. In fact, Hard-Headed laws can’t even save us. Nations with vanishing birth rates can build all the walls they want. (And of course, they should.) But they’ll die off by natural causes even without Islamist invaders unless they rediscover the goodness of life, dig down to the roots of their culture which are watered from the Cross.
As David P. Goldman wrote in How Civilizations Die, it turns out that once contraception exists, people won’t bother replacing themselves unless they believe in God. Only the prospect of eternal life is enough to make this one bearable. Or to make the sacrifices entailed by child-rearing worth it. If you really think you’re just a dying animal on a dying planet in a universe gradually winding down to its heat death, it makes perfect sense to grab all the happy moments you can. That doesn’t leave much room for bawling infants and diapers, sullen teenagers and their tuition.
So all the conservative causes we cherish because they make sense, are fair, and effective … they’re doomed without the Gospel. Every nation which abandons God pretty quickly gives up the ghost.
—John Zmirak, “The War on Kavanaugh Shows Us Why We Needed Trump, and Why Trump Needs Jesus”
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