Did you know? Trivia on the Trivium

Which of America’s founding fathers were educated in the classical Christian tradition?

At the time of the founding fathers, all schools used the method that inspired the rebirth of classical & Christian education. John Adams (and his wife Abigail), John Quincy Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry are just a few examples of those who were formally classically educated in a Christian worldview. Most of the other founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, were also classically educated.

In which of CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia does Lewis allude to the benefits of classical education and the dangers of modern education?

In “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, the professor from whom Peter and Susan seek guidance regarding the magic wardrobe exclaims: “Logic! … Why don’t they teach Logic at these schools?” The professor again refers to classical education in “The Last Battle”, “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!” Since formal Logic, philosophy, and the great books are central in classical schools and are all but absent in modern schools, the criticisms are something less than veiled. In “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and “The Silver Chair”, Lewis refers negatively to the modern school which Eustace attends as “Experiment House”. Modern education is characterized by experimentation with curricula and learning methods, rather than holding to the classical model of education. Taken in concert with “The Abolition of Man” and “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”, Lewis takes the opportunity to critique the direction that modern education is progressing.

Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Mortimer Adler (University of Chicago, Editor of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and The Great Books of the Western World), and Robert Hutchings (Adler’s partner) all predicted the disastrous consequences of modern education in the 20th century.

Which scholar and Chief Editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica began a return to classical education?

While Mortimer Adler is the immediate answer, Robert Hutchings also played a role, as did dozens of scholars from across the country and in Europe. In the 1950’s, they began one of the most academically ambitious initiatives of the 20th century. They convinced the Encyclopedia Britannica company to fund and publish a 54 volume set of the Great Books of the Western World. As if agreeing on the list of books was not enough, they developed a 2 volume index to the Great Ideas– 103 ideas that shaped Western culture. From Angels to Love, from Sin to Man, the ideas we take for granted were thoroughly documented in their development. Each idea was followed through the course of those thinkers who developed them– Aristotle, Plutarch, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Locke, and dozens of others. The masterwork was then completed with a “Great Conversation” reading course that takes the student through them at varying levels of complexity. We use this as a roadmap for our upper school reading program. Adler went on to use it in the Paideia Schools which he founded. Many of these schools remain some of the country’s finest, following the classical model. 

In which Idaho city was the restoration of Classical Christian education begun in recent times?

Logos School in Moscow, Idaho is probably the first new classical Christian school founded in recent times. It was founded in 1981 by a group of Christians, one of whom was Douglas Wilson. He later wrote extensively on the success of this school in “The Lost Tools of Learning.” Oddly, classical education’s cultural history is in the northeast and the south. In both of those regions, many schools still practice some form of classical education left from colonial times. These schools tend to be highly academic and expensive preparatory schools. (Examples include Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, and Boston Latin School. Today these are liberal and non-Christian, but a vestige of their original classical Christian tradition can still be seen.) Classical Christian circles remain dominated by southern and northeast schools. It certainly does seem providential that the first of these schools was in Idaho.