Classical education has exploded in the last ten years, and for good reason. Education has descended into a utilitarian pursuit, though an ineffective one at that. By focusing primarily on career readiness, we have sunk to new lows with graduates unable to speak convincingly about the history and institutions of our nation, not having read the greats or unable to comprehend them, and even without much readiness for a career.
It’s no wonder that classical education has grown by offering a deeper formation of the mind through teaching “the best that has been thought and known.”
Some push back, contending that focusing on “the best” puts classical schools in an elitist category. Parents worry their children will be left behind by reading Homer, unable to compete against students saturated in the latest technological fads. Others worry that reading the Great Books pushes an outdated narrative of one particular culture that marginalizes minority groups. Catholics watching this latest battle within a larger educational war might wonder what to do.
Looking to our own tradition can address many of these tensions, overcoming the dualism of the classical and progressive approaches, as I lay out in my new book, Words Made Flesh: The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education (Catholic Education Press, 2024). Offering a sacramental approach to education, the book seeks to reconnect things that are often separated. Career preparation and intellectual formation can be brought together as the Benedictine integration of prayer and work demonstrates. The book takes seriously the Church’s tradition of beauty, community, and prayer, connecting them to a robust formation in the liberal arts tradition. The Catholic tradition is one of unity, inspiring us to connect body and mind, ideas and experience, reason and imagination, prayer and practice, school and family, past and future.
A sacramental approach to education proposes growing in literacy of the great heritage we have all received as Catholics. It even proposes lists for reading and experiencing art to become more familiar with our own traditions. We need wisdom to address the key problems of our times, such as artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and the ongoing breakdown of the family. Turning to the past does not prevent us from looking forward and shaping education in a way suited to the needs of our day.
We have such a rich treasury of thought, artistic masterpieces, social expressions, and holiness in the witness of the saints. The heritage of the Catholic tradition equips us to meet the world’s challenges better than any other group. Catholic education should reinforce our children’s identity as made in the image of God and called into a great work of renewing civilization, drawing from the past and imaginatively giving it new life today.
It’s time to rediscover our heritage, enabling Christian culture, much more than the classics, to shape our educational approach. I’m happy, therefore, to recommend another recent resource on our Christian heritage to schools, edited by my friend Dr. Joseph Stuart, a professor of history at the University of Mary. He has produced a rich and thorough library resource called The Milestones of Christianity (Schlager Group, 2024). It’s a compelling collection that contains not only gems of the Catholic intellectual tradition but also testimony of “lived experience on the ground,” as he describes it in a recent interview. Stuart points out that the “formation of Christian culture” stretches “around the world primarily as a grassroots movement in which local inculturation is continually happening.” The Catholic story stretches across the globe, uniting students from across cultures in a common family.
Rather than float along with current trends, we can begin to build Christian culture in our communities by living the faith robustly. This requires immersion in prayer and taking on today’s problems through the lens of faith. Our graduates should be poised for leadership in the world precisely because we don’t just do what everyone else does. We can give our students so much more: a complete education that truly forms the whole person– one that doesn’t sacrifice the deepest formation in favor of worldly success–and unites the knowledge of faith in reason through their common source in the word. He is the source of all truth, the one who created the world, redeemed us from sin, and continues to enliven us through the Blessed Sacrament. He is the living center of a sacramental approach.
Education is in crisis, and we must return to the centrality of teaching in the Great Commission given to us by Jesus, making disciples and teaching them to observe all that he commanded so that we can be happy with him forever. We see the damaging effects of educating only certain aspects of the person and neglecting others–the most important aspects of our lives, in fact. Only Catholic education can truly educate the human person fully in a way that is ordered toward our true end and purpose.
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This author has walked the walk when it comes to Catholic and education. Now I hope that his book might help local Catholic schools get themselves back on track. Too many have adopted the utilitarian Common Core curriculum and do not know where to begin to change that. Too many perhaps feel they have to walk a tightrope to accommodate their non-Catholic students and families. Groups like the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education are transforming schools but too many families and principals simply resist any change. It is too hard. Maybe if church parishioners take an active stance to help the community realize that Classical IS Catholic!
Two points about classical education, and then an afterthought about synodality.
First, the convert Fr. George Rutler proposes continuities between the seven components of classical education and the seven theological and cardinal virtues. And, Second, the value of “imagination” should be more explicitly drawn out of the program for application in the workaday world of careers.
FIRST, Fr. George Rutler:
“We might say that the cardinal virtues have their counterparts in the ‘quadrivium’: music and Justice are both sciences of harmony; arithmetic and Prudence are sciences of order; geometry and Temperance are sciences of imagination; astronomy and Fortitude are sciences of transcendence.
And the theological virtues comport themselves with the fundamental ‘trivium’: grammar being to discourse what Faith is to supernatural conversation; rhetoric being to grammar what Hope is morally to faith; and dialectic providing a natural analogy of the heavenly discourse of love, just as Love is the highest logic of creation. It is an arbitrary scheme, to be sure, but a fair reminder of the community between natural and spiritual sciences” (Fr. George William Rutler, “Beyond Modernity: Reflections of a Post-modern Catholic”, Ignatius 1987; p. 123).
SECOND, about the too-frequent absence of imagination in the modern work place and halls of power:
One case study might be the global economic meltdown and recession in 2008 which was triggered by overly-clever investment practices in the United States (“derivatives,” or the bundling of bad apples with good). Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board during the lead-in years, later testified to Congress: “I couldn’t imagine [!] that the banks would not look out for their own self-interest.” Couldn’t imagine! (And this from a man with an undergraduate degree in music.) His other comment had to do with the courage (like Greek heroes!) to think and step outside of the box. He said that as chairman he wouldn’t bring up the question (shaky practices) because no one else on the board had brought it up. Instead, the mechanics of just moving things along; to get along, go along…and then all hell breaks loose. Sins of omission by a failure to imagine consequences or alternatives!
Another case study on failure of imagination in high places was the 2001 conjunction of suicidal jihad aircraft and two tall buildings. About which, the 9/11 Commission follow-up report included this recommendation: “Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies [!]…It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination” (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, “The 911 Commission Report,” 2004). Let us routinize and bureaucratize (!) imagination… imagine that!
THIRD, within the Church we can grieve for the fact that, in more capable and faithful hands, “synodality” could have gotten at this kind of bureaucratic/boardroom mindset (“clericalism”)–without procedurally (and intentionally?) obfuscating Matthew’s Gospel and the apostolic succession, the living magisterium, and stable moral theology.