Help! I am about to attend a Classical School!

A guide for the anxious student (and the anxious parent)- Comfort Food Issue 1

Dear All and Sundry,

There is a faint aura of panic in the air around this time of the summer. It comes from you, dear Sundry, you, the student who is about to enter a classical school. Some of you may be homeschoolers who are attending a traditional school for the first time. Some of you may have gone to public or parish schools and are not sure what the differences will be. Some of you may already attend a classical school but would still appreciate a tip or two.

Whatever your situation, you will be entering territory that is not as familiar as you might like it to be. You will probably be hearing new phrases in the near future and navigating a new set of academic expectations. There are a lot of unknowns, and that can be stressful.

Thankfully, The Banquet is here to help! This issue of The Banquet will present

• What is this Classical Education good for anyways?

• Transcendentals? Trivium? What does it all mean? A guide

• Ten tips for success at a Classical School (the last one may be the most important!)

• A list of ten books to read before you get to that Classical School

My mother always said, when in doubt, eat. So settle down, dive in and calm those nerves with another Banquet.

So what is this Classical or Great Books Education anyways?

Both the terms Classical and Great Books assume a historical approach, based on the exchange of ideas between works as they wrestled with the philosophical, scientific, social, and political questions that rose in society in each age. The great books usually start with the ancient Greeks: the epics of Homer and the Philosophy of the pre-Socratics. From the Greeks, later ages will learn a great deal. At first, the Romans, Byzantines, Arab empires, and later the medieval kingdoms of Christendom, and the nations that rose from them, will in turn take what they inherited, think on it, weigh it, add what they can and pass it along.

The result is that your classes will be part of one story, like a great intellectual relay race, and what you study in history class will appear in your philosophy class, your literature class, and perhaps in your arts or science classes, too.

In a traditional school, a college prep school or a public school, the emphasis is more on skills acquisition, and knowledge accumulation. The overall structure is not prioritized. Each class, even each unit, is like a little island in itself, where efficiency and practicality rule the day. Because of this, each class is atomized, and students can get lost in the flood of information and have no standard by which to judge or prioritize the knowledge they have been given. Each particle of information is only important because the gate keepers say it is - you may encounter a question on that specific bit of trivia on an AP test. At a classical school, that is not the case. The knowledge gained is knowledge good for adult thinking humans to know.

Another result, hopefully, is intellectual humility. We live in a time that is disdainful of the past and its accomplishments, and our schools sadly reflect this. As has often been said, however, we stand on the shoulders of giants-we see farther because of their greatness, not because of our own.

Your education will emphasize how our culture came to be-what forces, ideas and dilemmas produced the age we live in. Many of those currents are very old, as old as civilization itself, and many will continue to shape our own culture, to carry it into the future. It is, therefore, a practical education, but more importantly, it is an education in wisdom, in how to be the best human being you can be.

The New Phrases: A Guide for the Perplexed

You will hear one or all of these phrases in your time at a Classical or Great Books school. Don’t be intimidated by them!

Integrated curriculum: The contents of your classes has been chosen not only due to their appropriateness to that field, but because they are in dialogue with other disciplines. This means that your classes are linked. What you learn in one will be applied in another. This happens within grade level but also happens over time. Pay attention your freshman year-some of what you learn will come back in in sophomore, junior and senior year (and beyond!).    

The Transcendentals: The idea that Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are One, and are irreducible qualities of Being was posited by the Scholastic philosophers based on what they found in the literature of the ancients. Because they are objective, they are not dependent on culture or ideological claims, but transcend them.  Cultures and ideologies approach them but Truth, Goodness and Beauty exist as qualities outside of any particular expression. Everything you study at a classical school is trying to form in you a sharper image of these three qualities.

Socratic method: An approach to education that prioritizes discussion, the Socratic method proceeds by examining ideas through questioning. This approach is based on the dialogues of Plato which show Socrates asking questions of others in order to arrive closer to the truth. In the Socratic method the teacher guides the discussion of the students, but you and your fellow students are generating many of the answers yourself. It means your opinion is important but is only worth as much thought as you put in it. It is not a lecture, and it takes surprising turns. It also takes time to develop and to achieve a satisfactory conclusion. Enjoy the process, and don’t be too eager to be told the right answer.

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: These are the three most often named transcendentals (See above). These are not only objective attributes of Being but are also held by many to be the attributes of God. Because of this unity at the source, they are ultimately interchangeable. The Great Books are going to be driving towards these qualities-and hopefully refining in you an appetite for true things, good things, and beautiful things. Your education will be an education in how to recognize them, appreciate them, and ultimately, how to create them. Our world needs them.

The Liberal Arts: A system of education dating back to the medieval period, the seven Liberal arts were traditionally divided into the Trivium: Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar, which were mastered first, and then followed by the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy.

The Trivium was an education in Thinking (logic) and how to apply (and communicate) that thought in Writing (grammar) and in Speaking (rhetoric). The Quadrivium was dedicated to studying number (arithmetic) and space (geometry) and their application in music and astronomy.

They were called the Liberal Arts because in studying them, the human intellect was made free, liberated from ignorance and the accidents of time and place.  They prepared the student for a life of bearing the responsibility of freedom.

The Universal Human Condition: This idea assumes that as human beings, we all share basic circumstances-we have the same potential, the same limitations, the same temptations, and ultimately, the same end. Because of this, what is good for one may be good for another. We are more alike than different.  

Your education will include learning about these traits, the traits that make us human, our strengths and weaknesses. Only by understanding these fully can we propose solutions to problems that plague our communities. Otherwise, we stand a good chance of coming up with bad ideas that make our problems worse.

Some Keys to Success:

So, what can you do to improve and ultimately thrive at a Classical school?

1. A classical education sees moral education and intellectual education going hand in hand. A good student will be one who works on student virtues: persistence in desiring to learn, discipline and time management, and academic and intellectual integrity.  Do all that you can to defeat laziness, combat sloppiness, and avoid dishonesty.

   Find a group of students who have these qualities. They will help hold you to that standard, and not only will your grades improve, you will be happier, because people with these qualities not only make good students, they also make good friends.

2. Be patient! Patience (with yourself, classmates, and with the program of study) is key. You will often not see the point in an exercise, or why a certain unit is being studied, much less why a student or teacher is raising a particular question. Reserve judgement. The reason is often one that is best discovered by the student in time. But even then, some mysteries will remain. Don’t expect your teachers to fill in all the blanks.

3. Don’t assume that your classmates know more than you do. Don’t assume your teacher expects you to know things you don’t. Your classical high school is interested in forming you-your intellect and your character. It isn’t the “content” or “what you know” that is important, at least at the moment. More important is your investment in educating yourself, your hunger to get real answers to your actual questions. Ultimately, you are responsible for your education. Own it and pursue it fiercely.

4. Don’t be afraid to throw your ignorance out there. Risk being wrong. You will benefit yourself and your classmates.

5. But don’t ask if something mentioned in class will be on the test. This signals to the teacher that you don’t care about learning, only about passing tests. Education is not hoop-jumping. Because class discussion can range far afield, a teacher may choose to use something that came up or may not. The purpose of the test is to see if you are connecting the dots. How did the conversation explore questions raised by the text? What questions seemed most important?

6. Work on your reading comprehension! Most of your classes will demand strong reading skills, and an ability to closely analyze a text.

   If you are not a strong reader now, start working on it. It is not too late to start. Pick books you enjoy (particularly from the thousand Good Books of John Senior) though there are plenty of books not on that list that are excellent and will also help. Historical fiction and works written before the last seventy years are a good place to start. See the list below.

7. Paying attention and engaging during your class time is more valuable than time spent cramming.  A hundred times more valuable.

   Avoid cramming-classical education is not about the test—it is about the slow accumulation of knowledge and the wisdom that comes from reflecting on that knowledge and bringing it to the discussion to be sharpened and shaped.  Talking to your teacher outside of class, continuing a discussion with a classmate in the halls, or rereading the text are all better uses of your time. As you pay attention now, you will make the later years easier.

8. In any Socratic class, you will have three teachers-the text, the teacher, and your fellow student. Pay attention to all of them but learn to prioritize them as well.

9. Do all your math homework and do it as early in the day as possible.  

10. Lastly, turn off your phone and get enough sleep.

And for a subjective, necessarily incomplete and entirely personal list of books to help you prepare for a Classical School, see below. In a later Banquet, we can discuss some of the reasons behind these choices.

The Ten Books you should have read before attending a classical high school:

1.       Aesop’s fables: I like the version illustrated by Milo Winter; 6-8

2.       Robin Hood by Howard Pyle; 9-12

3.       Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; 10-14

4.       The Arabian Nights trans. by Andrew Lang; 9-12

5.       Redwall series by Brain Jacques-the entire series is wonderful; 7-10

6.       The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham; 6-8

7.       The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder; 8-14

8.       The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien; 8-14

9.       Little Women by L. M. Alcott (for girls); 11-14 OR Men of Iron by Howard Pyle (for Boys); 11-14

10.   Black Ships before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff, illustrated by Alan Lee 9-12

I hope you enjoyed a little comfort food at the Banquet today! Until next time!