Our inspiration and teacher in life is Russell Kirk. We have had other teachers, but just about everything my wife and I learned to love and do together began the year we lived in Mecosta. We knew him in his last days. I worked in his library, sorted his mail, and read his published works and correspondence.
He introduced me to Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, and T.S. Eliot. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, Dawson's The Crisis of Western Education, and Newman's The Idea of a University are great works scarcely read or understood today. We agree with these authors that the life of the soul is paramount and that utilitarian education is likely to result in what C.S. Lewis called "men without chests." We agree with Dawson: "It is the religious impulse which supplies the cohesive force which unifies a society and a culture.... A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture." We agree with Kirk that a good education is less about appropriations and bricks and mortar and more about will and a commitment to teaching Eliot's "Permanent Things."Though we looked at several books and programs for Catholic and classical homeschooling, we found the Classical Liberal Arts Academy (CLAA) last summer. We read everything we could about it and realized that its founder, William Michael, is fully committed to education in the Trivium and Quadrivium as enlightened by Christ and His Church, and he believes a great education can be administered online. Besides beginning this Classical Liberal Arts Academy in 2008, he assists with Catholic missionary schools through his direct involvement with the Missionaries of the Poor (MOPS) in Kingston, Jamaica.
Our daughter is now enrolled in five courses: Classic Catechism I, Latin Grammar I, Classical Arithmetic I, World Chronology I, and World Geography I. In addition, we have her in several other activities: gymnastics, piano, art, 4H Club, and target shooting (BB guns). She has a very good play group with local kids who are also homeschooled, and she has friends who attend modern schools. She also attends my sacramental prep class (for kids who missed 1st communion class in 2nd grade) as a spectator. (She knows much more than the kids in the class.) We have memberships at museums and attractions in the nearest metropolis.
The CLAA Catechism course covers all four parts of the Catholic catechism: prayers, creeds, commandments, and sacraments. Its common method is to teach one of the prayers or creeds by memory and to explain the origins and theology behind it. So far, she has memorized and studied the Our Father, The Apostles' Creed, The Angelus, The Confiteor, The Act of Contrition, and Prayers at Meals. The lessons are not difficult for my daughter, though they are theologically rich, and she clips through them fairly rapidly.
Latin Grammar has been excellent so far. I know just enough Latin to make a mess out of teaching it. It is a difficult subject for self-study, and I cannot afford a tutor. Even if I found a tutor, the number of people proficient in Latin who can teach effectively is next to nil. If we wait until she is just a few years older than she is, her God-given ability to acquire languages will be significantly diminished. The program is built on memory work. Our daughter has memorized the first twenty-three verses of the Gospel of John from the Vulgate. With some of the prettiest scriptures ever written swimming in her head, she has also memorized dozens of grammar rules and the first three declensions.
If that sounds horrible to you, just recall how when you were younger than twelve, you could memorize anything. For me, it was airplanes, ships, tanks, battles, generals, and dinosaurs. In contrast, by the time I became interested in forestry and botany in junior high school, my ability to memorize had diminished, and to this day my interest in plants remains strong, but my knowledge of them has never advanced as it has in history and other subjects.
The quizzes and exams are taken online, and she has to master a lesson before she can move to the next one. Thus, the inherent problem of public school- passing a student because failure is embarrassing to the student, the parents, and the school- is simply not practiced. It is not allowed. Periodically, the students are required to retake old exams for review.
So after five months, I believe I have found a program through which my daughter can learn the primary language of the West and the Church. We are very excited and wish we could have gotten this good an education ourselves. (My wife and I both attended public schools.) We are especially happy that the primary text for study is the Gospel of John: "In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum." Saint Jerome, pray for us.
We are just as pleased with Classical Arithmetic. The approach is Aristotelian: practical in application, yet philosophical in its end. She began with definitions and measures. She moved on to proofs, axioms, numbers, ratios, addition, subtraction, and multiplication. She is learning the commutative, associative, and distributive properties. Though there is plenty of memory work, e.g., the multiplication tables, the focus is on mastery of the principles of reason and their application by analogy. I speak as someone who loves the humanities and did not learn mathematics well as it was taught, so I am sure some of my readers might find this approach wanting, but I know if I had been shown at a young age that mathematics is more than problem sets and busy work (and staying after school) and is the foundation of both higher reasoning and engineering, I might have studied more enthusiastically.
After we had begun Catechism, Grammar, and Arithmetic for about a month, we added the course in World Chronology I. I knew my daughter would love it, because she loves history, or more specifically, she loves a good story. Nonetheless, she loves it, in particular, Greece and Rome. The course begins by introducing four epics: Ancient History, Classical History, Medieval History, and Modern History. The lessons trace the origins of Western civilization in the Hebrews, the Hellenes, and the Romans. She has learned about the life and times of Abraham, Moses, Achilles, Odysseus, David, Solomon, Homer, Romulus, Lucretia, Hosea, Hezekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, Cyrus, Ezra, Socrates, Alexander, and the Maccabees. Kirk, author of The Roots of American Order, would appreciate the lessons' sweep and breadth. As a teacher, I appreciate their order and clarity. Continuity, not change, is the predominant theme. Revelation and reason have informed almost everything man-made that we call good. If we sever Athens from Jerusalem or Jerusalem from Athens, we will become poor.
We added World Geography I this month. We knew she would love it, and she does. The course begins with globe skills: the equator, the poles, latitude & longitude, tropics and polar regions. The exercises use Bing Maps to explore the world. I like best its interdisciplinary approach: earth science, geometry, oceanography, meteorology. These are not covered in depth so far, but their foundations are laid. We have enjoyed every day of it.
That is my report. There is no perfect way to educate a child. We have good days and bad days. Sometimes we throw up our hands and take a field trip. I do not hold a person in contempt for disagreeing with my approach and beliefs. After all, nothing reveals one's aspirations and beliefs as does education (except, perhaps, one's funeral).
[Above: John Henry Newman, and Albrecht Durer, Saint Jerome in the Wilderness.]
UPDATE: A Lutheran discusses classical learning and William Michael's Classical Liberal Arts Academy here and here and here.
