In 1750, for example, it took 4-6 weeks to sail by ship from New York to London. By 1850, with the advent of the steam engine, the trans-Atlantic journey was reduced to around 1 week. Today, we can fly from New York to London in just 8 hours.

This acceleration in travel illustrates a new value that has emerged for us in the modern world: speed. “Time is money,” we are told and the finance report does not lie. The litmus test for the quality and success of an endeavor is how fast we can complete it. For the sooner we can cross a task off our list, the more quickly we can move on to the next task. Then the next task. Then the next task. Only here’s the catch in a knowledge economy: the list is infinite. 

In education, this obsession for speed materializes in daily schedules, pacing charts, and lesson plans. We move from subject to subject, concept to concept, and assignment to assignment at the speed of light. But is this approach best for students? Is it cultivating virtue? Are they actually developing mastery over what they are learning? Or are these moments of quick exposure creating the illusion of learning instead? 

Festina Lente: Make Haste Slowly

In The Good Teacher (Classical Academic Press, 2025), Christopher Perrin and Carrie Eben argue that it is not. Of the ten principles for great teaching they present in their book, the first is “Festina Lente, Make Haste Slowly.” They propose that instead of engaging in the rush to cover content, it is better to master each step in a lesson, setting a pace that is fitting for the time available. 

Perrin and Eben go on to provide two examples of this principle in our world today. The first is drawn from Aesop’s beloved fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” In this well-known tale, two creatures, a quick-footed hare and a contemplative tortoise, engage in a foot race. While the hare is expected to win with its focus on speed, it is actually the tortoise who wins the race. The upshot is that while the hare was certainly faster, its pace was not sustainable. The tortoise, on the other hand, moves at a slower yet sustainable pace, making haste slowly, and ultimately becomes the victor. 

The other example is Jim Collins’ “Twenty Mile March” concept in Great by Choice (Random House, 2011). Imagine two hikers setting out on a three-thousand mile walk from San Diego, California, to the tip of Maine. One hiker commits to twenty miles a day, no exceptions. Whether the conditions are fair or poor, the itinerary is the same. The other hiker adjusts his daily regimen to the circumstances before him. Depending on weather, terrain, and energy levels, some days he may walk 40 miles, other days he may not walk at all. Like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, the winner of the race is the hiker committed to the wise, disciplined journey, choosing sustainability over speed. 

Now, it must be pointed out that every analogy has its limits. Not every speedster struggles with the overconfidence exhibited in the hare or the weak will of the second hiker. It is possible to be both fast and virtuous.The key insight is not that we need to choose between the two, but in our present culture’s emphasis on speed, we would do well to slow down, resist the lure of speedy completion, and focus on a process that will instill virtues of diligence and perseverance.

Connecting the twenty-mile hike example to teaching, Perrin and Eben write,

Classical education can be compared to the long journey in this story. Each segment should be intentional, planned, and exercised wisely, with ample allotted time. Students, like the winning hiker, should use time well, as they are guided and modeled along each segment of their academic journey. (p. 24)

Working at a Natural Pace 

Interestingly, Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email, is on to a similar idea in his latest book, Slow Productivity (Penguin Random House, 2024). 

Newport observes that we as a culture have succumbed to what he calls pseudo-productivity, “the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort (22). So we work longer hours, send more emails, and complete more projects, all in the name of productivity. The only problem is that we burn ourselves out, ultimately accomplishing less and at a lower quality. 

Newport’s solution is to adopt a different philosophy of work, one in which we accomplish tasks in a sustainable and meaningful manner. His three principles for this approach are:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.

My colleague at Educational Renaissance, Jason Barney, has written extensively on these principles for the classical educator in this blog series. I encourage you to check out all four articles as he interacts with the likes of Aristotle, Quintilian, Charlotte Mason, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiy, and others.

Regarding our present focus on how to manage time in the classroom for the sake of virtue formation, Jason writes, “There must be a purposeful movement in a meaningful direction at the same time as a willingness to delay over the details to ensure quality and a student’s developing mastery. Great teachers can discern when to slow down and when to hasten on.”

Rather than sending students off to work on a frenzy of assignments at once, moving from one worksheet to the next, it is better to slow down and hone in on one worthy assignment that will lead students toward a greater depth of understanding.

True Mastery: Getting the Practice Right 

Here we come to a key distinction that must be made. Thus far, I have been encouraging teachers to focus on virtue over speed, process over outcome, and mastery over pseudo-productivity. But what does true mastery look like? And how is it achieved?

I suggest that mastery is achieved when a student can repeatedly demonstrate a particular skill or lucidly explain a concept on demand. In The Good Teacher, Perrin and Eben are adamant that until this happens, teachers should not move on to the next objective, whether it is moving on from addition to multiplication or 3rd to 4th grade (21-22). They are also careful to identify a distortion of festina lente, namely, using the principle as an excuse to focus too long on one concept at the expense of others (27). 

The key clarification I want to make as we seek to implement a mastery-focused approach is regarding the type of practice we ought to implement to meet this end. It would be natural to assume that if the focus is mastery, teachers should engage in what is called massed practice: practice over and over a specific skill until it is mastered, and only then move on to the next skill. Make haste slowly, right?

In Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Belknap Press, 2014), the authors draw upon cognitive science to argue that this sort of practice can only take you so far. They seek to dispel of the myth that the focused, repetitive practice of one thing at a time is the way to mastery. 

They write:

If learning can be defined as picking up new knowledge or skills and being able to apply them later, then how quickly you pick something up is only part of the story. Is it still there when you need to use it out in the everyday world?…The rapid gains produced by massed practice are often evident, but the rapid forgetting that follows is not. (p. 47)

Interestingly, the authors of Make it Stick are putting their finger on the same concern as Perrin and Eben: prioritizing speed over mastery. Instead of practicing one skill over and over again until students can demonstrate mastery, they suggest mixing up the practice. 

In a past article, I write more about this topic, unpacking three key ways from Make it Stick to practice toward mastery:

Spaced Practice: Instead of intensively focusing on one skill for a single, extended session, space out the practice into multiple sessions. Work on it for a while and then return to it the next day or week. The space allotted between each session allows for the knowledge of the skill to soak into one’s long-term memory and connect to prior knowledge. Revisiting the skill each session certainly takes more effort, but that’s the point.

Interleaved Practice: While we experience the quickest gains by focusing on one specific skill or subset of knowledge over a period of time (momentary strength), interleaving, or mixing up the skill or concept you are focusing on in a practice session, leads to stronger understanding and retention (underlying habit strength). It feels sluggish and frustrating at times, for both teachers and students mind you, because it involves moving from skill to skill before full mastery is attained, but it leads to both a depth and durability of knowledge that massed practice does not (50).

Varied Practice: Varying practice entails constantly changing up the situation or conditions in which the skill or concept is being applied. It therefore strengthens the ability to transfer learning from one situation and apply it to another, requiring the student to constantly be assessing context and bridging concepts. Because this jump from concept to concept triggers different parts of the brain, it is more cognitively challenging, and therefore encodes the learning “…in a more flexible representation that can be applied more broadly” (52).

To be clear, these forms of mixed practice will be more difficult for students and the practice sessions will take longer. But that is the point. To “make haste slowly” when it comes to practice, you want to support your students in meaningful practice that will lead them toward long-term, not temporary, mastery. 

Conclusion

As classical schools, we are playing the long game as we seek to instill wisdom and virtue in our students. In our fast-paced world, this commitment will surely be misunderstood. We are told that a school’s effectiveness ought to be measured by the number of students enrolled, the number of accolades of its graduates, and the impressiveness of test scores.

But if our goal is true mastery for a life of virtue, instilled with the principle of festina lente, then we need to think more like the tortoise than the hare. We need to be intentional with practice, focus on depth over breadth, and mix it up in order to strengthen the durability of the knowledge gained. This is no doubt the harder road, but with our own perseverance at work, we trust that over time it will bear much fruit.

The post Mastery over Speed: The Lost Art of Cultivating Virtue appeared first on .

In the final book of the Ransom trilogy, That Hideous Strength (Scribner, 1945), C.S. Lewis presents his readers with a stark contrast between two communities: the residents of St. Anne’s on the Hill and the conspirators of the N.I.C.E. in Belbury. In doing so, Lewis offers two pictures of humanity. One is characterized by relationship, nature, and beauty, while the other is marked by bureaucracy, cold rationality, and deception. 

To explore these contrasting visions, Lewis follows Mark and Jane, a married couple, in their individual journeys for meaning, belonging, and ultimately, redemption. Mark is a trained sociologist and fellow at the fictitious Bracton College. Despite his marriage to Jane and successful academic career, Mark is lonely and unfulfilled. In the opening pages, he takes immense pleasure in simply being included in a clique. Meanwhile, Jane, an academic herself, regrets the toll her marriage has taken on her academic career, and the current state of her and Mark’s relationship. She is bitter, hopeless, and discontent with the cards life has dealt her. 

In this article, I want to briefly sketch out some pivotal moments in the novel and then offer some insights for educators today. For while this story’s plot is thick enough to stand on its own, Lewis shares in the preface that there is more to the story, so to speak. He writes, “This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man” (7). Let us proceed with seeking to uncover this “point” to see what Lewis what might teach us.

Surprised by Joy

Early in the novel, Mark is brought into an exclusive group of the college, the Progressive Element, and eventually invited to join the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) itself. Through this process, his desire for belonging is quenched, though never fully, as he makes his way further and further into the inner circle. Still, it is a painful process. Despite repeated attempts to understand his job description and the reporting structure of the institution, his requests are constantly pushed aside. The deputy director John Wither is evasive and dismissive, despite regularly referring to the N.I.C.E. as a family. 

Meanwhile, Jane finds herself being drawn to a very different kind of community. Despite the men and women at St. Anne’s on the Hill referring to themselves as a “company” and “army,” they live together in a beautiful and spacious manor, fulfilling the vision of family that the N.I.C.E. allegedly claimed to be. In her first visit to the manor at St. Anne’s, she walks through a beautiful garden, teeming with life and beauty. Later, she meets with the director of the community, Dr. Ransom, and leaves overflowing with joy (149). 

Interestingly, the source of her joy when meeting with Dr. Ransom was not the conversation they shared together, but the transcendent experience of encountering his divine and royal aura. For the first time, her soul had touched the heavens, as it were, awakening in her a desire for beauty that had grown dormant over the course of her life. Suddenly she gained new eyes for the beauty of nature, from rays of sunlight to grazing wildlife. She longed to hear the chorales of Bach again and read the sonnets of Shakespeare afresh. She cherished the speech of her cabinmates in the train and rejoiced in her hunger and thirst for buttered toast and tea. Her conversion had begun.

Isolation and Objectivity

In contrast, Mark’s progress through concentric circles of exclusivity in Belbury finally leads to his own isolation as he sits alone in a cell awaiting his training in “objectivity.” Professor Augustus Frost, a leader in the innermost circle of the N.I.C.E., shares with Mark his vision for humanity as a race of pure mind and liberated of emotional preference. He desires to destroy all human instincts for what is right, noble, and beautiful. Interestingly, Mark’s training takes place in a room of disproportion with a ceiling covered in specks at irregular intervals. On the walls of the room are pictures, many of them with scriptural themes, yet each of them distorted through bizarre elements of horror and strangeness. Professor Frost’s goal is clear: destroy all of Mark’s intuitions for what is natural, normal, and right. 

To Frost’s surprise, however, the room soon began to have the reverse effect. The striking abnormality and ugliness of the room engendered in Mark a longing for the straight, whole, and normal. The narrator Lewis writes, “As the desert first teaches men to love water, or as absence first reveals affection, there rose up against this background of the sour and crooked some kind of vision of the sweet and the straight. Something else–something he vaguely called the ‘Normal’–apparently existed” (296). In the end, Mark finds himself choosing a side, aligning himself with the mountainous pull towards the moral universe, and rejecting Professor Frost’s vision for objectivity untethered from objective value.

And yet, the ultimate test was yet to come. For, in a pivotal moment of the training in the objective room, Professor Frost, with demonic calculation, instructs Mark to trample on a full-sized crucifix and insult it. Unlike the moral defense against the other exercises that had risen inside of Mark, this was different. There was nothing about the wooden figure nailed to the cross that was inherently straight and normal. Though Mark is not a Christian, his conversation was already underway, and he realizes that the crucifix is…”what happened when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight–what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross” (333). In this decisive moment, this test of tests, Mark refused to desecrate the image.

Hope for Redemption

In the end, both characters encounter elements of redemption, not only for their marriage, but for their moral and spiritual salvation.

Jane’s struggle with pride, most visibly manifested in the novel through her repudiation of traditional gender norms, is overcome as she realizes the goodness of being a creature under the authority and care of God. And yet the divine goodness she accepts comes at a high price: control. She must give up herself to another, to God himself, and let him mold her as he sees fit (316). The universe now appears to her much larger than she imagined. It is massive, stormy, beautiful, and unbending, existing independently of any human emotion or idea. She must embrace the truth that this reality is greater than herself by recognizing she is a creature of God.

Mark’s conversion is different. Though he exhibits the moral courage to resist Professor Frost’s training in objectivity, he has not had the benefit of being formed by the community at St. Anne’s. Only in the end does he begin to recognize his own shortcomings as a husband and lover. His fear is that it is too late, that what would be best for Jane at this point is to move on. But then, in the last available moment, love strikes him as only the goddess Venus can, and his soul is saved.

Insights for Schools Today

There are so many layers to this story, from the redemption of Mark and Jane to the heavenly presence of Dr. Ransom to the demonic nature of the N.I.C.E. It truly is a battle for the abolition of humanity.

In The Abolition of Man (Harper Collins, 1971), Lewis warns against a dystopian future in which humanity abandons traditional moral values in the name of scientific progress. Though he is clear that his argument is not against science itself, in his context he can see that the many successes of modern science have created a lure to conquer nature completely. In the end, all that will be left is to conquer human nature. He writes, “Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won” (59).

Inspired by That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man, I will conclude this article by offering three suggestions for schools in order to resist the coming abolition.

1. Create communities of joy and hospitality.

One of the most endearing elements of the story is the community of St. Anne’s. While I did not focus on the themes of comradeship and belonging so much in this article, it is well worth study and imitation. It can be easy to think that the abolition of man is ultimately a philosophical debate and therefore will take place at an intellectual level. But the reality is that strongest way we can retain our humanity and moral values is through creating beautiful spaces of belonging for learning to occur. From filling our schools with beautiful art and nature to building time for deep relationships to thrive, our schools can become their own manifestations of the idyllic St. Anne’s community.

2. Champion the reality of objective moral values.

Certainly Lewis’ greatest warning in The Abolition of Man, manifested in the N.I.C.E. at Belbury in That Hideous Strength, is the rejection of traditional moral values, what Lewis calls the Tao (pronounced “Dao”). As Alasdair MacIntyre addresses at great length in After Virtue, the modern West has traded out objective moral belief for mere emotional preferences. Ideas of virtue and duty have been reduced to mere subjective responses that cannot be used for moral evaluation. In this framework, a solder sacrificing his life to save his squadron is a story that can engender emotions of high praise, but it is not representative of a deeper truth that we are morally obligated to imitate.

But as Lewis argues through different means in both books, moral truth, goodness, and beauty does exist independently of human perception. In their own journeys, Mark and Jane encountered what Lewis described as a mountain–an entity that existed apart from themselves that is firm, immovable, and embedded in the universe itself. This is natural law, or what Mark experienced as the Straight and Normal.

Our schools need to cling to and proclaim the reality of objective goodness, truth, and beauty, for the future of humanity is at stake.

3. Connect the study of science to worship of our Creator.

There is a warning in both books regarding the dangers that emerge when modern science, or any discipline for that matter, is untethered from moral and biblical truth. In the case of Belbury, the scientific activity literally became demonic. While it is important to equip our students with understanding of the scientific method, steps for conducting a successful lab experiment, and other elements of modern science, we should regularly connect our study of creation to worship of our Creator. For scripture commands us to subdue and cultivate creation, not conquer it out of human arrogance and pride.

It is this temptation toward human arrogance and pride that is the “hideous strength” of which Lewis warns. As the inhabitants of Shinar sought to make a name for themselves through erecting a great tower at Babel, so the temptation to be our own gods resided in Mark and Jane, as well as in us today.

The post To Belbury or St. Anne’s? A Vision for Moral Education in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength appeared first on .

“Umm,” you begin.

“It’s the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric.”

“It’s…classical art and music. Like Beethoven and Mozart. Plus math and science.”

“It’s the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty. And Latin.”

Now I would not say any of this is incorrect per se, but as Chuck Evans, author of Wisdom and Eloquence, has noted, the focus is on the features, or the “how” of classical education, not the “why.” The “why” of a movement or organization is going to be its ultimate purpose, cause, or belief. It will be rooted in a story that generates a visceral reaction.

To explore the “why” of classical education, this article will focus on a a pivotal time in the development of Western Civilization: the Golden Age of Greece.

What is Civilization?

Before I examine the history of ancient Athens, it is important to reflect briefly on the nature of civilization. As I discussed in my previous article, civilizations are difficult to create and even harder to preserve.

Historian Will Durant defines it as such:

“Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end.

For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.” 

Notice the defining feature of civilization: cultural creation. When the four elements Durant identifies are present, the resulting outcome is creativity and constructiveness for what can then become, what we will see in the Greek’s case, a free and flourishing society.

The Beginning of Democracy

In light of these insights about civilization, let us now to turn to the development of ancient Athenian society, specifically how democracy emerged in this context. To be clear, the Athenians did not necessarily weigh the different forms of government—dictatorships, aristocracies, and democracies—and choose democracy. Rather, they stumbled into it, classical warfare style.

In 507 B.C., a conflict broke out as Athenians sought to overthrow the tyrant Hippias. While the Spartan king Cleomenes was able to defeat this tyrant, he soon set up a pro-Spartan oligarchy, essentially a proxy state for Sparta. But then, in a surprising turn of events, an Athenian named Cleisthenes rallied his people and was able to take over control of Athenians, setting up equal rights for all citizens within a democratic structure.

Cleisthenes was instrumental in setting up ten districts, replacing a familial clan structure, in order to mitigate bias and align loyalty with the new democracy. Each district selected fifty representatives by lot to serve on the Council, which would submit proposals for approval or rejection by the Assembly, the gathering of all citizens, to make laws and resolve civil disputes.

Incidentally, Cleisthenes also introduced the idea of ostracism, whereby one could be banished for up to ten years with a vote of 6,000 citizens (of about 43,000 citizens total). In a tragic case of irony, we are told that Cleisthenes himself was ostracized at one point.

Now it is helpful to clarify here that the Greek view of citizenship was not rights-based. That is, citizenship was not grounded in natural human rights as we understand them today. Citizenship was based on one’s heritage. Both men and women could be citizenship, but only men could vote. So, as we can see, this Athenian democracy was far from perfect, but it was a step in the right direction for with citizenship comes responsibility, and responsibility implies freedom. Indeed, as Will Durant puts it, “Never before had the world seen so liberal a franchise, or so wide a spread of political power” (Will Durant, The Life of Greece, 267).

Democracy is Threatened

But would this nascent democracy last?

In 490 B.C., the Persian king, King Darius I (not to be confused with King Darius from the Bible), attempted to conquer Greece, a conglomerate of city-states such as Athens, Sparta, Argos, Syracuse, and so forth. But surprisingly, the Greeks held them off at the Battle of Marathon. The “Great King,” as he would be known, apparently did not realize that he was opposed by men who “owned the soil they tilled” and who “ruled the state that governed them.” They were free citizens, and with freedom, it turns out, comes fierce responsibility. 

As the story goes, after the Athenians won, one soldier, covered in blood, ran a far distance on foot back to Athens in order to share the news and declare victory. Upon arrival, he praised the goddess of victory, Nike, declaring “Rejoice, we have conquered!”, before falling over dead. This endeavor would inspire both the “marathon,” a long-distance foot race, and the name for a particular modern athletics company.

After his defeat, King Darius retreated back to Persia and was eventually succeeded by his son King Xerxes (known as King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther). King Xerxes sought to conquer Greece again, this time with an alleged two million soldiers. He defeated the Spartans at the famous Battle of Thermopolae, despite the courage and sacrifice of King Leonidas and his three hundred men.

Ultimately, at the decisive Battle of Salamis, the Athenians were able to give the Persians a final blow. By assembling a massive naval fleet, they soundly defeated the Persians. The story goes that Xerxes watched his ships burn to the ground from a distance, left a lieutenant in charge, and retreated back to Persia. The Persians would not return for over 1,000 years, during the rise the Ottoman empire.

With the Persians soundly defeated, the Athenians were now able to focus on creating and constructing their civilization. They rebuilt their city and set up a strong naval defense through founding the Delian league, uniting city-states across Greece, and moving the treasury to Athens.

This pivotal time in history would allow for one of the earliest and certainly the most well-known democracies of the ancient world to flourish. It would be marked by rule of the people, not a dictator. In fact, the military victories that occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars are so crucial for the future of Western Civilization that John Stuart Mill, the great economist, once stated the following:

“The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings.” -John Stuart Mill      

The Golden Age of Greece

With the Persians dispelled, the golden era was ready to begin. It would be characterized by the rise of free peoples and an experiment for a short while in the exercise of individualistic freedom over communal dependence.

This era would also be known as “the Age of Pericles,” named for the great statesman who led many of the reforms and historic architectural feats. He built strong defensive walls around the city of Athens, strengthened the navy, and secured thirty years of peace with the Spartans.

It was during this time that an explosion of creativity occurred, including the building of the Parthenon, the great temple in honor of Athena, on the Acropolis. The arts, architecture, literature, mathematics, history, and philosophy all experienced historic creative innovations during this time.

Some examples of the art and architecture include:

Luminaries of this brief eighty-year period includes names such as:

• Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aristophanes (Literature)
• Anaxagoras and Hippocrates (Math and Science)
• Herodotus and Thucydides (History)
• Parmenides, Democritus, and Socrates (Philosophy)

The Centrality of Education

In addition to all of this innovation in the arts, sciences, and learning, the Athenians also knew how important education would be for this civilization to continue.

If Athens was going to be ruled by the people, that is, citizens, not a group of oligarchs–or worse, a tyrant–then the citizenry needed to be educated. They need to think carefully about what makes for just laws, along with the virtues to promote, and vices to suppress. What leaders of character, called archons, to elect. How to ensure the right laws were well-argued for and represented in the assembly.

Freeborn boys were educated from age six to sixteen. They were brought to school by slaves called pedagogues where they were then taught by their teachers. The curriculum had three main divisions—writing (reading and math), music (the lyre), and gymnastics (wrestling, swimming, and using the bow or sling), and later drawing and painting.

Higher education was provided by professional rhetors and sophists, who offered instruction in oratory, science, philosophy, and history. These instructors were quite expensive, and would later be critiqued by Socrates as disingenuous at times, but they did their part of educating the citizenry to represent themselves well in assembly. For if a civil dispute occurred, citizens had to represent themselves in court before a jury of peers.

After age sixteen, boys were trained for military service and civic participation as soldier-youths. Through physical training and instruction in democratic governance, literature, music, geometry, and rhetoric, they were preparing for full-freight citizenry. At age 21, they would be formally admitted by taking a solemn oath to the state, ancestral faith, and legal order (Durant, 291).  

Thus the seeds of the liberal arts, the tools for a free people to create and construct, were born.

Conclusion

Although the Golden Age of Greece, manifested through Athenian democracy, only lasted around eighty years (480-399 B.C.), it would impact the future of civilization for centuries to come. Due to war with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and encroaching Macedonian invaders led by Philip II, the Athenian democracy would eventually end. Historians often point to 399 B.C., when Socrates was tried and convicted in the assembly for impiety and the corruption of youth, as the turning point in this crucial age.

To be clear, the Athenian democracy was not perfect. Nor was Greek morality. It is important to note that there was a separate, and even more important civilization developing, which ran parallel to the Greeks at this time: the call of Abraham, the nation of Israel, the giving of the holy scriptures, and ultimately, the coming of Christ.

The eventual meeting of Athens and Jerusalem would become the great nexus of Western Civilization. With the fusion of the legacies of these two cities, this civilization would spark a new era for humanity. It would go on to produce some of the world’s first hospitals, orphanages, and universities. And it would promote distinct values of objective truth, human rights, equality, compassion, modern science, and human innovation. To be sure, this civilization has its flaws and dark moments, as all civilizations do, and yet we can also so say that it provided pivotal contributions for the flourishing of humanity. Future eras such as the Hellenistic period, the days of the Roman Empire, Christendom, the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment would all harken back to ancient Greece for inspiration and insight.

As classical Christian educators, the story of ancient Greece, particularly the “golden age” examined in this article, offers a glimpse into the sort of education we seek to pass on to our students today. For as G.K. Chesterton famously stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

And as Will Durant cautions:

“For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.”

The post The Story of Civilization: The Golden Age of Greece appeared first on .

So begins the first chapter of the first volume of an eleven volume series by Will Durant entitled, “The Story of Civilization.” This series, which Will and his wife Ariel wrote over the course of four decades (1935-1975), covers the history of western civilization, from the ancient Near East to the Napoleonic conquests.

Durant begins his series by noting the preconditions and causal factors for a civilization to emerge in the first place. For example, if a region is frozen over by ice or if its soil is barren of nutrients, social order promoting cultural creation becomes very difficult. But as soon as these geological and geographical preconditions are met, the four causal factors for a civilization (economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and education) can begin to do their work. 

To illustrate the necessity of each of these factors, Durant turns first to economics. He writes, “A people may possess ordered institutions, a lofty moral code, and even a flair for the minor forms of art…and yet if it remains in the hunting stage…it will never quite pass from barbarism to civilization” (2). In this way, the economic transition to agriculture is a key form of development for a people as well as the building of towns and cities. For in cities, the wealth and brains of the region gather–to invent, to trade, to debate, and to create.

In the context of the civitas, the gathering of citizens, the other causal factors for the development of a civilization begin to gain traction. Political organization occurs through the creation of laws and formation of government. Moral traditions, rooted in values for the good of the community, develop. And the pursuit of knowledge and the arts launch a broader pursuit of truth and beauty that transcends mere survival. The harshness of life, from infant mortality to severe weather to social conflict, is offered meaning through moral narratives of purpose, hope, and redemption.

As the process of civilization unfolds, the civilization itself becomes its own form of independency, in some ways moving from effect to cause. Durant writes, “It is not the great race that makes the civilization, it is the great civilization that makes the people; circumstances geographical and economic create a culture, and the culture creates a type” (3). This type becomes the anchor of the civilization, the north star to which it it perpetually points. It is the set of ideals, the defining characteristics, of the city, the family, and the individual.

Thus we can see how civilizations begin, and can use this criteria to generally predict how they might end. The disappearance of any of the aforementioned conditions threaten to destroy them. For example: a geological catastrophe, a deadly pandemic, the failure of natural resources, mental or moral decay, the decline of social discipline, a lack of leadership, a pathological concentration of wealth, financial exhaustion, or declining fertility rates. 

Of course, the end of a civilization is not necessarily sudden or dramatic. Though Rome was sacked in 410 C.E., it was another fifty years before the empire fell. Nevertheless, the end of a civilization is in sight when its enduring values are lost. The set of ideals that define a civilization is its precious inheritance, a treasure that is to be faithfully passed on from generation to generation.

But what if this type, this set of ideals, is lost?

Five Crises Facing Western Civilization

In How to Save the West (Regnery Publishing, 2023), classicist Spencer Klavan identifies five major concerns that threaten the future of Western civilization specifically, moving this question from a theoretical exploration to an actual crisis. While he admits that it is a relatively recent practice to talk about “the West,” as a distinct historical phenomenon, historians and scholars are “…observing, in good faith, threads of continuity that stretch back through time and space” (xx). He therefore goes on to offer a working definition of “Western” as “the vast and complex inheritance of ‘Athens,’ the classical world, and ‘Jerusalem,’ the Jewish and Christian monotheists of the near east (xix).

This “inheritance,” I suggest, functions as the type, which Durant refers to as the foundation for a civilization. In the case of Western civilization, it is the set of ideals and masterpieces treasured through the generations that fit within a broader Great Conversation, full of wrong turns and dead ends, that nevertheless pursue a common vision for goodness, truth, and beauty. This conversation is not bound by race, ethnicity, or even geography. Nor is it restricted to a particular gender or social class. Rather, it is an unfolding story of humanity’s united search for meaning, composed of luminaries as diverse as Cicero and Frederick Douglass, Aeschylus and Shakespeare, Hildegard von Bingen and Abraham Lincoln.

While Klavan does frame his concerns in terms of a looming crisis at hand for the West, as a classicist, he helpfully reminds his readers that at every turn, a civilization can appears to be on the verge of collapse:

The intoxicating rise of Athens in the fifth century B.C. came to an abrupt and gory end in the Peloponnesian War. No sooner had the ancient Israelites made their way to God’s promised land than they strayed after foreign gods and suffered under foreign oppressors. The Western Roman empire crumbled into warring tribal oppressors; France’s revolution devolved from utopian optimism into terror and bloodshed; Communist uprising in Russia led to socialist dictatorship and millions of deaths” (xiv).

At the same time, here I am, in the twenty-first century, writing about Western civilization…in the West. Obviously certain events occurred which led for the transmission of the heritage to continue, for the ideas and values to be passed on. Whether it to be Jerome writing the Vulgate translation of scripture, Charlemagne sponsoring new schools, Celtic monks building libraries in medieval Europe, Johannes Gutenberg creating the moveable-type printing press, or American colonists creating a new republic, the civilization has endured.

Nevertheless, Klavan identifies five modern crises that could lead to its undoing, briefly stated as follows:

Crisis of Reality: A rejection of the eternality of objective truth and moral facts in favor of relativism, expediency, and virtual reality

Crisis of the Body: A rejection of the physical body with a turn to the inner self and posthuman technologies

Crisis of Meaning: A rejection of metanarrative, a transcendent explanation for existence that is grounded in objective truth

Crisis of Religion: A rejection of belief in God in exchange for a misplaced confidence in modern science

Crisis of the Regime: A rejection of the principles for a republic to endure, such as rule by law, popular sovereignty, and checks and balances

Solution: Educate One Child at a Time

It is beyond the scope of this article to explore each crisis in detail, much less to review the solutions Klavan suggests. A strategy for saving the West from the crises above is complex, multi-layered, and requires a deeper dive into ideas and philosophy.

At the risk of appearing simplistic, however, I want to suggest one straightforward strategy that could slow down these trends, if not reverse them: educate one child at a time according to enduring biblical values.

The 19th and early 20th century British educator Charlotte Mason famously championed the idea that children are persons. Created with immense potential as divine image-bearers, they enter the world eager to explore, create, build, think, and love. Education, then, is the process of helping children encounter the relations of the world they are born into–relations with God, others, creation, and knowledge. In this way, Mason famously called education “the science of relations.” By simply teaching children in a way that exposes them to enduring stories, poetry, nature, music, art, math, and science, we are forming them in a biblical view of reality that will enable them to respond accordingly.

After all, the underlying thread of the five crises described above is simple: a rejection of goodness, truth, and beauty. By offering an education that introduces children to these ideas, we shape their views of knowledge, reality, morality, and desire. This, in turn, will shape them into people who not only keep the economy going (one of the four factors of a civilization), but can run government, pass on moral traditions, and uphold an unrelenting pursuit of knowledge.

Mason writes,

We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room;’ should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? (School Education, p. 170).

Notice the end goal for Mason: living a full life. Is this not the proper end of education and civilization itself?

And how do we go about this education for a full life? Mason gives us a clue:

I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children. (School Education, p. 171)

Conclusion

G.K. Chesterton famously stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” Through this exploration of civilizations–factors for their beginning and crises that can lead to their demise–we can understand this insight with fresh perspective. Great civilizations do not occur by accident. Certain preconditions must be met, and, on top of these preconditions, specific causal factors are at play.

Civilizations continue when they take on an existence of their own, grounded in an ideal type, which functions as the north star for the ongoing formation of its inhabitants. When this type is preserved, the civilization flourishes and human flourishing is the result. But when we lose sight of this ideal, the ground becomes shaky, moral intuitions uncertain, and truth itself up for grabs.

There is, therefore, work before us now as there is in every era. For, as Will Durant puts it, “For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization” (4).

The post On the Beginning…and End of Civilizations appeared first on .

Each cultural time period generates new challenges for this objective, and ours is no exception. While classical Christian education emerged in Christendom, an era of western history in which the Christian faith was the cultural paradigm, this is no longer the case today. The “Age of Faith” may continue to cast its shadow over western society, but Christianity has lost its cultural cachet.

What does it look like, then, for Christian schools to prepare students for this new era? We cannot simply look back to the last century, or the century before that, or even the millennium before that. The last one thousand years all share a quality that the two thousand twenty-sixth year of the Common Era (i.e. 2025) does not: they occurred in a time when the intellectual, political, and cultural powers of the day viewed Christianity as the authority. If Christian educators want to glean wisdom from the past that is relevant for today, they must go all the way back to the days before Christendom, a time when Christians lived as strangers in a pagan society. This would take them to the 2nd and 3rd centuries when the young Christian movement was finding its way under the persecuting yoke of the Roman Empire. 

This article will explore how the early church engaged its pagan world intellectually and culturally in order to offer insights for modern Christian educators. The reality is that the world we inhabit today is, in many ways, more similar to the 3rd century than it is to the 20th century. A new form of paganism has emerged–an odd amalgamation of modern science, romanticism, and modern politics. In order for Christian educators to prepare their students to engage a pagan world, they need to understand it, and consider how their Christian brothers and sisters engaged it before them.

A Modern Pagan Society

Do we really live in a pagan society? Surely this is an exaggeration. Paganism connotes the widespread practices of superstition, animal sacrifice, and the occult. Even if practices like reading horoscopes are on the rise, they are certainly not mainstream.

In Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church (Eerdmans 2024), Stephen O. Presley suggests that the secular direction our culture has trod is a new form of paganism. Referencing Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s renown work A Secular Age, Presley observes that Christianity has become intellectually suspect and morally bankrupt. In its place lies “expressive individualism,” a form of epistemological and moral relativism that prioritizes internal feelings over external norms. Not unlike the 2nd century, in which the Roman Empire permitted a plurality of religious options so long as one bowed the kneed to Caesar as Lord, so our culture celebrates a religious pluralism for each to worship as he or she pleases.

Interestingly, contemporary culture has somehow made peace between the materialism of modern science with the romanticist qualities of the expressive individualism mentioned above. Truth, we are told, can be found through the deliverances of the scientific method and the inner revelations of ”who one is inside.” In this way, our culture prizes the objective truth of modern science and the subjective truths of the psychological “self,” yet not in an internally coherent manner. A dizzying schizophrenic oscillation of the objective and subjective is the result, in which both are valued but not simultaneously. You can have Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, but not together. 

Christianity, on the other hand, is paradoxically where the objective and subjective meet. “In the Beginning was the Word,” the Gospel of John tells us, and “…and the Word became flesh.” Simon Kennedy, a research fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia, makes this point in Against Worldview: Reimagining Christian Formation as Growth in Wisdom (Lexham Press 2024). In this book, Kennedy argues for a new way of thinking about Christian worldview, underscoring that only God possesses the authoritative Christian worldview. Humans can develop a Christian worldview, subjectively speaking, but only through seeking a true apprehension of objective reality “that is obtained through the process of learning about God, the self, and the world (15). 

Even while the objective and subjective remain unreconciled in contemporary culture, there is a third ingredient we must consider: modern politics. One quality of a secular society, again, according to Charles Taylor, is the “buffered self,” the idea that cosmic and spiritual forces do not impact everyday life. If this is the case, there is an authority and power vacuum, one that is quickly being filled by modern politics. We could see this phenomonon in the most recent election: the desperation, angst, and fear-mongering that occurred throughout the process. Both sides of the aisle used rhetoric in a way to indicate that democracy was on the line and that only their ballot nomination could save us. Many people today longing for good news about peace and security look not to their churches, but to their political leaders. The new hope is in public policy, elected officials, and the preservation of democracy as we know it.

The effect of the amalgamation of expressive individualism (truth is found inside), scientific materialism (the physical world is all there is), and modern politics (only effective government can save us) is the new paganism. This paganism rejects a transcendent creator over and above all things, and replaces him with a worldview of immanence. This immanence takes normally good things in this world–the individual self, scientific method, and democratic government–and deifies them. In order to equip students to engage our neo-pagan world, let us now examine how the early church did so long ago. 

To Sanctify a Culture

In his book cited above, Stephen Presley argues that the early church’s model for engaging the pagan culture of the day was not isolation or confrontation, but sanctification. The earliest Christians were living in a world in which Caesar was king, and the empire promised peace through strength. Perpetual violence, sexual license, unbridled leisure, and oppression of the weak were core elements of this ancient culture. Christians were required to think prudently and biblically about how they would navigate such a world while being faithful to Christ.

Presley proposes that the posture these early Christians adopted was one of cultural sanctification. He writes, “Cultural sanctification recognizes that Christians are necessarily embedded within their culture and must seek sanctification (both personal and corporate) in a way that draws upon the forms and features of their environment to transform them by pursuing virtue” (12). In other words, Christians should continue to live in their local communities, engaging in normal cultural practices (so long as they are not sinful), even as they determine when to abstain, holding fast to their identity as pilgrims destined for an eternal home.

Presley then goes on to offer five ways the early church engaged in this “slow and steady process of living faithfully and seeking sanctification both personally and corporately in ways that transform the culture” (20). 

First, the early church crafted a distinct Christian identity. Through catechesis and worship, believers grew to understand who they were individually and communally as followers of Christ in a Roman world. They understood that even though they lived in a largely pagan society, Caesar did not lay claim to their ultimate identity.

Second, early Christians lived out a political theology in which they submitted to civil authorities and worked to be active citizens. They took seriously the teaching of Jesus to “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” even as they faithfullly worshiped God as the supreme authority over all things. Moreover, they understood that their ultimate citizenship is in heaven.

Third, the early church navigated the intellectual climate of its day with wisdom and eloquence. The church developed its own public intellectuals, equipped to evaluate the dominant ideas of the day and provide a defense for the Christian faith. These Christian intellectuals, such as Irenaeus and Origen, did not cave to the attacks on their faith, but instead provided persuasive arguments and responses.

Fourth, these believers engaged in public life with humility, compassion, and courage. They did not abstain from contributing to society in normal ways–having jobs, partaking in innocent leisure, having families, or even serving in the military. Rather, they participated in these societal functions with wisdom and virtue. In addition, they displayed exceptional compassion, caring for the poor and marginalized of society.

Finally, the early church was resolute in its hope in the coming kingdom of God. While their neighbors trusted in the glory of the Roman Empire, early Christians rooted their faith in the salvation they received through Christ and put their hope in the future resurrection. This hope served as a north star for them, guiding them through the complexities of living in a pagan society with a clear vision for the future.

Through these five avenues, early Christians avoided isolation, such as “the Benedict Option,” and confrontation, attempting to seize the empire for themselves. Instead, they learned to live under the authority of the Roman Empire and engage a contemporary pagan culture, while not abandoning their faith in Christ and commitment to Christian virtue. 

Seek the Welfare

In our modern pagan society, the church has a new opportunity to live out its identity in this way. The idea of cultural sanctification allows believers to approach culture, not as a world to flee or fight, but to help flourish. This approach is reminiscent of the Lord’s instruction to the Jewish exiles in Babylon back in the 6th century:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah 29: 4-7 (ESV)

Here God commands his people to seek the welfare of the city, to contribute to its flourishing and success. Rather than waiting idly by for the eventual return to Israel, he instructs them to lead responsible lives, to engage in the culture, and to be productive members of the city. Moreover, he encourages them to pray for the city, remaining faithful to their Jewish identity even while they seek the city’s welfare.

In today’s pagan society, opportunities abound for Christians to embed themselves in culture while seeking to sanctify it. Christians simply committing to living virtuously will offer a stabilizing force for society and will set the church apart as a unique community. Engaging as active citizens and finding ways to serve in their neighborhoods is an additional way Christians can live out their calling to an unbelieving culture as God’s people. Finally, remaining conscious of prevailing ideologies of the day that run counter to Christianity, especially expressive individualism and what Carl Trueman calls the triumph of the modern self, will prove essential for preserving biblical doctrine.

These practices are all elements of an ancient Christian way of engaging a pagan culture, cultural sanctification, which “…sees Christians embedded within their culture but seeking sanctification so as to promote virtue and reject vice in their personal lives, in the church and in the activities and institutions of the surrounding world” (164). 

Insights for Christian Educators Today

What does it look like for Christian educators today to pursue this vision of cultural sanctification for their graduates?

Let me offer three suggestions.

First, Christian educators should reclaim the classical vision of education, which is the pursuit of wisdom and cultivation of virtue. The most important work teachers can do today, in partnership with parents, is to train students to be wise and discerning, both regarding intellectual ideas and practical day-to-day decisions. Presley’s observation regarding the virtuous lives of early Christians is profound, and yet, we must remember that virtue does not happen by accident. A virtuous persons is formed through the intentional cultivation of moral habits over the long-term. While grades, college acceptances, and accolades have their place, the cultivation of virtue must remain at the center of what Christian schools aim to do.

Second, Christian educators should equip graduates to grapple intellectually with the cultural ideas of the day. The way this occurred in the classical tradition is through training students in the liberal arts, the tools of learning. Modern education today is preoccupied with the pragmatic. Popular-level literature, worksheets, and 1:1 tablets is the strategy today for moving students from grade to grade. But for students to truly understand and evaluate competing ideologies, they need more than to study the “right answers.” They need to think through the ideas themselves, learn to define their terms, apply basic principles of logic, and debate opposing views.

Finally, Christian educators must infuse graduates with a theology of life that is grounded in scripture and tethered to a local church. It is no accident that Presley’s list regarding how the early church engaged culture begins with identity. If students are going to engage in cultural sanctification, they need to have clarity regarding their own life purpose. A robust theology of life provides students with the fundamentals of who they are in Christ, the different phases and stations of life they can expect to navigate, and a focus on the importance of staying connected to a local church.

The post Preparing Students to Engage the World appeared first on .

As Christians, we need to resist this inclination. One way we can preserve the sacredness of Christmas throughout all phases of life is to uphold our elders and the wisdom that often comes with the privilege of having lived many years. 

Renowned poet Malcom Guite gestures in this direction with a particular poem in his Advent anthology Waiting on the Word (Canterbury Press, 2015). The piece he directs us to is “Old Age” by Edmund Waller, a 17th century English poet and politician whose style was built upon later by Alexander Pope. 

“Old Age” by Edmund Waller:

The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;

So calm are we when passions are no more.

For then we know how vain it was to boast

Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.

Clouds of affection from our younger eyes

Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Drawing from this poem, what follows are three ideas to stir up hope in Christ this Advent season, particularly as they relate to old age.

First, Waller compares youthful passions to the winds that stir up a rough sea. If you have ever been to the ocean or a large lake, you will know how quickly the water can become choppy as the winds pick up. In contrast, the seas become calmer as the winds dissipate and the water returns to a peaceful state. Similarly, youthful passions–the enthusiastic hunger for pleasure, adventure, and exhilarating experiences–certainly bring lots of excitement to life. But they also bring unpredictability and, at times, unsettledness.

This Advent season, we can easily get swept into the thrill and busyness of the season: listening to sentimental Christmas music around the clock, feeling the pressure to take advantage of the latest shopping deal, and attending as many Christmas parties as possible. But this poem prompts us to pause, slow down, and rest in the quiet. There is a deep and lasting joy to be found when life is slow and the day is unscheduled. Find times during this season to rest and meditate on the promises of Christ.

Second, the poem cautions us against putting our confidence and pride in fleeting things that are “…certain to be lost.” Our culture’s approach to the Christmas season is fleeting, practically, by definition. As Thanksgiving comes to a close, the shopping ads come out and the rush to put up Christmas lights begins. The next four weeks become a blur of activity that leaves most of us surprised at how fast it all went. One way we can put our confidence in the right things this Advent season is to set healthy rhythms of focus on lasting things. To be clear, I have no objection to gift-giving, decorations, and holiday parties. But the eternal things that will last with us this season will occur through deepening our walk with Christ and strengthening our vision and love for the beauty of the incarnation. What can you do each day to focus on things that will not be easily lost when this season is over?

Third, Waller observes that wise men become stronger through weakness. Most of us, I am sure, would express a desire to grow in wisdom. But less of us, I suspect, have counted the cost. For one sure way to grow in wisdom is to experience the humility of weakness.

Across time and place, the natural human condition has gravitated toward strength, honor, and success. But the truth is that moments of weakness and failure have the most impact on deepening our faith and shaping our character. We need only look to the God we worship, who became a man, entering the most helpless state as a mere infant. This Advent season, take time to reflect honestly on your weaknesses and ways in which God provided for you in those moments. Remember, as the apostle Paul reminds us, that Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness, and therefore, when we are weak then we are strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ESV). 

Amidst the noise, activity, and focus on youth, this short poem prompts us to consider a different approach. There is a joy that comes in the quiet, the peaceful, even in old age. As Malcolm Guite remarkes, “He (Waller) is realistic about weakness, but not bitter or resentful; rather he sees in the calm, and even the melancholy, the sense of emptiness that sometimes comes with age, an opportunity to God for a new wisdom” (38). 

This Advent season, may we experience this for ourselves, and as we encounter our finitude, take joy in the “eternal home” for all who put their faith in Jesus Christ.

The post A Poem for Advent appeared first on .

“In a typical lesson you decide, often quickly. Then you decide, decide, and decide again. You are a batter facing a hundred pitches in a row…What do you need to decide quickly, reliably, and well, while thinking about other things under a bit of pressure in the form, of, say, twenty-nine restless students, twenty-five minutes’ worth of work left to get done, and a ticking clock to remind you that you have fifteen minutes left in the class period?” (3). 

His solution is a mental model, that is, a framework to understand complex environments. In this case, teachers can filter the plethora of time-sensitive decisions before them through a grid of principles for a successful lesson. While teaching is a craft that takes extended time to master, Lemov believes that growth in the craft can occur much more rapidly through adopting a mental model composed of core principles. 

While Doug Lemov was developing his mental model for a successful lesson, classical education expert Christopher Perrin has been refining his own set of principles for sound classroom pedagogy. His course Principles of Classical Pedagogy through ClassicalU offers ten principles, or pedagogies, of great teaching. 

In this article, I will briefly review Lemov’s and Perrin’s lists of principles before going on to suggest three points of similarity, followed by three areas of difference. In doing so, I will demonstrate the value of insights gained through cognitive psychology and learning science, while arguing for the importance of situating any great teaching practice within a broader philosophy of education that takes seriously the full-orbed reality of what it means to teach and form human beings.

The Mental Model for an Effective Lesson

Through offering a mental model, Lemov seeks to help a teacher, first, grow in understanding of how learning works and, second, perceive accurately what their students need most to thrive in their classrooms. It is one thing, Lemov thinks, to have a set of teaching principles, such as “check for understanding” or “ratio,” two common phrases in the TLaC series. It is another thing to have an additional set of learning principles that “…can help explain why certain methods work as well as how and when to use them” (5).  In this way, Lemov’s five principles that comprise his mental model seek to offer guidance for both teaching and learning simultaneously. 

Let us review them now:

Principle 1: Understanding human cognitive structure means building long-term memory and managing working memory.

Lemov’s first principle focuses on the distinction between long-term and working memory in order to implement teaching practices that build long-term memory. The general idea is that while working memory is immediately accessible, it is extremely limited in capacity. Humans can only hold so much new information in their mind’s eye. Immediately following the exposure to new information, the forgetting process begins. The way to build long-term memory and strengthen the durability of knowledge is to implement retrieval practice techniques in which students are called upon to remember, or retrieve, what they were taught in the past. 

Principle 2: Habits accelerate learning.

Similar to the first principle, this second one offers guidance on how to use one’s cognition as efficiently as possible. The reality is that each day we are bombarded with common, everyday activities that require our attention. But what if we could put the mental effort of these mental tasks on autopilot in order to focus on more important work? This is the concept, described in cognitive terms, of a habit. The more we can help students put menial scholastic work on autopilot, from reading fluency to math fact automaticity to getting out a notebook to begin writing, the more they can focus their minds and wills on understanding deeper, more complex concepts. If you haven’t already, be sure to download Patrick Egan’s free Ebook and watch the webinar on how to help students build great habits.

Principle 3: What students attend to is what they will learn about.

This may go without saying, but focused concentration is the key to efficient and effective learning. And yet, we are all aware that there is a growing deficit of ability to attend to something for an extended amount of time in our world today. This principle seeks to equip students “…to lose themselves in a task and work at it steadily for a significant period of time, which means a setting where concentration can reliably be maintained and tasks and activities where the ability to focus is carefully cultivated” (20). Jason Barney’s The Joy of Learning offers a great path forward to implement this idea, known as “flow,” in the classical classroom. His webinar on the topic is also excellent.

Principle 4: Motivation is social.

It can be tempting to focus on the learning of each individual student, but this principle reminds us that humans thrive when they work together. In this way, the learning process, including the motivation to learn, occurs at both the individual and social level. Successful lessons occur within classroom cultures in which the norms and values of the classroom encourage individual hard work and intentional team work.

Principle 5: Teaching well is relationship building. 

The final principle Lemov identifies for an effective mental model of teaching and learning focuses on the power of relationships. Specifically, he emphasizes that the teacher-student relationship is one in which the student feels safe, successful, and known. Safety includes physical safety, yes, but also the intellectual safety to take risks. Success refers to the fact that a key objective of any lesson should be to help a student learn or do something. Finally, a student feeling known fulfills a core desire wired into all human beings for them to develop a sense of belonging. 

Overall, I find Lemov’s mental model, understood through these five principles, to be a helpful framework. The task of learning and mastering 63 “techniques” for a new and developing teacher is daunting. But equipping them with five big ideas, or principles, through which to filter their classroom decision-making and priorities, can simplify the teaching craft and clarify where to focus.

Perrin’s Principles of Classical Pedagogy

Now let us turn to classical education expert Christopher Perrin’s ten principles of classical pedagogy. According to an article written this past summer, Perrin is currently working on a book with fellow classical education consultant Carrie Eben that will seek to unpack these principles in order to equip great teaching. As a side note, we interviewed Eben on our podcast, which you can listen to here.

While Perrin does not use language of a mental model, it seems that his principles function in a similar way. By call them principles, rather than practices, he is directing us to think about the broader convictions teachers can adopt to govern specific practices. In other words, these principles exist less as a checklist and more as a filter. Teachers can measure a lesson against these principles in order to gain insight about how to strengthen the teaching and learning that goes on in their classrooms.

Given that Perrin’s article linked above provides brief descriptions for each principle, I will simply refer you to that article and list them out here. They are as follows:

1. Make haste slowly: take time to master each step.
2. Do fewer things, but do them well: it is better to master a few things well than to cover cursory content.
3. Repetition is the mother of memory: revisiting and reviewing past lessons deepens both affection and understanding.
4. The one who loves can sing and remember: the importance of songs, jingles, and chants.
5. Wonder commences learning that will last.
6. Order time and space for deep thought: cultivate leisure (schole) and contemplation. 
7. Embodied rhythms, liturgies, and routines shape the soul.
8. Students learn by teaching: knowledge taught is twice-learned.
9. The best teacher is a good book: the teacher becomes the tutor and a three-way conversation begins.
10. Learn in community through conversation: this creates a friendship of the soul that gives birth to deep and mutual learning.

What a fascinating list! Immediately, we can see the contrast between Lemov and Perrin in light of the language they deploy. Lemov’s focus is primarily material, in nature: cognition, socialization, and relationships all exist within an immanent frame of being in the world. In contrast, Perrin clearly values the spiritual and transcendent dimension on the same plane as the immanent. His desire for students to grow in love, virtue, reverence, and contemplation–beyond mere cognitive achievement–stands out.

What the Principles Have in Common 

There are three key ways I see Lemov and Perrin displaying similarity in the principles they prescribe. 

First, both approaches respect deep work and the building of durable knowledge. Lemov captures this value through his distinction between working and long-term memory as well as his emphasis on habits and attention. Perrin encourages teachers to proceed slowly and deeply through a lesson in order to build a strong foundation.

Second, both approaches appreciate the power of habit and attention. Obviously, habits and attention are the explicit focus for Lemov. He underscores the value of cultivating the right processes for learning to occur. It is not merely what or how much a student learns; it is how. Similarly, Perrin encourages the mastery of each step and using strategies like liturgies and chants to strengthen the learning experience.

Third, both approaches underscore the centrality of relationship in the learning process. Lemov grounds relationships in the power of motivation and social-emotional learning. Perrin looks to classical ideas about friendship and the formation of the soul to demonstrate the centrality of community in the classroom. 

How the Principles Diverge 

Nevertheless, there are core differences in which the prescribed principles diverge.

First, it is clear that while Perrin conceives of education as the full formation of a student (mind, heart, body, and soul), Lemov prioritizes the cognitive and emotional. While I do not think it is fair to say that Lemov values product over persons, I do think his view of humanity is limited by his secular vantage point. This anthropology lacks a moral dimension as well. If students are basically a bundle of cells directed by a nervous system, then the most that teachers can do is strengthen cognition and build “productive” social environments. But if students are eternal and embodied souls made in God’s image, then we need a different list, such as Perrin’s, to shape these souls accordingly. 

Second, and related, Perrin offers a compelling vision for learning, whereas Lemov only offers pragmatic motivation. From the very beginning, Perrin is clear that the goal of all education is wisdom and virtue. He writes, “By employing the following principles, teachers will naturally cultivate virtues of love, humility, fortitude,  diligence, constancy and temperance in the lives of their students.” In contrast, Lemov’s focus continues to be college and career readiness. While his preface does indicate a vision for cultivating an equitable and just society, within the D.E.I. stream of thinking, you can tell he is wrestling with the merits of this ideology, and ultimately fails to move beyond a myopic focus on the pragmatic benefits of education.

Finally, Perrin honors the situatedness of students in time and not merely space. He does so by recognizing the value of carrying on the rich tradition of goodness, truth, and beauty from the past into the future. His emphasis on great books, contemplation, poetry, and liturgy remind us that education possesses a broader cultural and civilizational significance, and therefore, responsibility. While both Lemov and Perrin rightly emphasize the paradox that humans both exist as individuals and members in communities, Lemov fails to address that we exist in communities of both space and time. A central goal of education includes honoring one’s intellectual, cultural, and religious heritage, and passing on the torch of this heritage to future generations.

Conclusion

In sum, there are benefits to both the mental model that Lemov proposes and Perrin’s list of pedagogical principles. Where Lemov falls short is where modern education usually does: failing to grasp the full-orbed nature of a human being and the implications this places on educators. Insights from cognitive psychology and the latest learning science will continue to improve the learning that goes on in our classrooms, and classical educators do well to implement these strategies in the classroom.

But we must not lose sight of the deeper and fuller reality of what it means to be human: that our students are made in God’s image, that they are embodied souls, that there is a moral universe to navigate as well as a physical one, and ultimately, that there is a God who intentionally designed and commissioned the human race to cultivate His goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. Through the incarnation of the Son of God, we are reminded that humanity is indeed special and unique in God’s sight, that our embodiedness is indeed good, and that through Christ, our fallenness can be redeemed for His purposes, including in the classroom.

Did you enjoy this article?

Sign up for our weekly newsletter today. You can also take advantage of these great resources to learn more:

The post The Search for Great Teaching: A Comparison of <i>Teach Like a Champion 3.0</i> and Christopher Perrin’s Pedogogical Principles appeared first on .

• The material cause is the physical “stuff” that makes up a thing’s composition. 
• The formal cause is the design, shape, or arrangement of a thing.

• The efficient cause is the agent that brings the thing into existence.
• The final cause is the purpose or end for which the thing exists.

Together these causes serve as the foundation for whatever knowledge we can know about anything that exists.

In this article, I will explore the final cause, or purpose, of teaching. It practically goes without saying that there is great confusion in the world today about what the purpose of education is, broadly speaking, and teaching in particular. What precisely is the teaching act and what is its end goal?

Let us take a modern primer on teaching as an example. Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion series of primers on teaching techniques provide excellent advice for equipping teachers to lead effective, efficient, and dynamic classrooms. From implementing tactics like “Cold Cold” to “Least Invasive Intervention,” new teachers can quickly take charge of their classrooms and provide an environment for inspiring learning to occur.

But the underlying problem with Lemov’s approach is that it fails to provide a satisfactory final cause, or purpose, of teaching. The subtitle for his books continues to point to “putting students on the path to college” as the goal. This objective, though important, is outdated, shortsighted, and paints an incomplete picture of what it means to be human. It is outdated because college is decreasingly the primary target for high school graduates. With the exponential increase in the cost to go to college and the growing attractiveness of trade schools, the traditional college route can no longer be taken for granted as sufficient motivation for PreK-12 education. Second, Lemov’s implicit purpose for teaching is shortsighted because even if college is, or should be, the sole target for high school graduates, it is only preparing them for the next four years. But what about life after that? What about the early years of one’s career? What about marriage and family? What about church membership, community involvement, and civic participation? What about navigating life’s challenges as a son or daughter, uncle or aunt, husband or wife, father or mother? With this wide range of stages and challenges for people to navigate, how can PreK-12 education only focus on college?

This leads to my final point: these techniques, though useful in some respects, paint an incomplete picture of what it means to be human. Not only do they only aim, at best, to prepare students for a four-year phase, the focus on the cognitive domain of a student’s development generates confusion about what it means to be human. To put a sharper point on it, Lemov’s work is not merely a myopic focus on the cognitive domain to the neglect of say, the moral. It is ultimately an economic, or careerist, approach to human development. In our secular world, the focus is on living one’s best life now: on experiencing as much pleasure as possible, accumulating as many possessions as one can, earning as much status as possible, and living with optimal comfort. In this sense, we could just as easily rephrase the Teach Like a Champion subtitles to “putting students on the path to an affluent and comfortable life.”

This is a sorrowful and depressing vision for the good life indeed. God created our students for so much more than to merely pursue a comfortable life. Made in the image of God, humans are created with the unique capacities to reason, to create, to cultivate beauty, and, ultimately, to steward their lives, including the people and duties they are responsible for, with excellence. If our students are to fulfill this vocation, their teachers need to grab hold of a bigger vision for the goal of what they do. They need a final cause, as Aristotle would put it, that is worth true dedication to their craft.

Let us explore, then, some alternative ways to think about the great cause of teaching.

Putting the Puzzle Together

In The Idea of a Christian School (Cascade Books, 2024), Educational leader Tom Stoner argues that education is one of the most powerful influences in our lives. A key reason, writes Stoner, is that education aids a child in her constructed understanding of the world. The formation of this understanding is like putting together a puzzle. Each piece represents a different bit of information children receive, including ideas, emotions, experiences, facts, and knowledge (2). Schooling plays a major role in the assembly of this puzzle. 

So it seems that one way dimension of the goal of teaching is to help a child develop a coherent understanding of the world, one in which all the pieces fit together. Note that even with this cognitive focus, the goal is not college; it is human development. In addition, Stoner will go on to demonstrate that behind the scenes of helping a child “put the puzzle pieces together,” lies a particular vision of the good life. The puzzle, when put together, makes a big picture. What is that picture? Drawing from the classical tradition of the ancient Greeks, Stone believes that this picture, or vision, inevitably dictates a school’s priorities, including what teacherse expected to accomplish in the classroom.

In other words, teaching possesses a cognitive aim, helping a child make sense of her world, and a moral one. The moral aim is to help students grasp a particular vision for human flourishing and desire it. In this way, the goal of teaching, we could say, is not only educational, it is formational. 

One Goal in Seven Laws

John Milton Gregory, author of The Seven Laws of Teaching, seems to agree. In the opening pages to his book, Gregory puts forward a vision of human flourishing that find its culmination in “the full grown physical, intellectual, and moral manhood, with such intelligence as is necessary to make life useful and happy, and as will fit the soul to go on learning from all the scenes of life and from all the available sources of knowledge” (11). The goal of teaching, for Gregory, is the work of transforming a child into a mature and intelligent human. 

Interestingly, however, Gregory does not stop there. In his exposition of the seven laws of teaching, Gregory offers clues for the ways the different elements of the teaching process fit together to achieve this purpose. For example, the first law focuses on knowledge and the importance of the teacher knowing that which she would teach. The second law focuses on the role of learner, a pupil who attends with interest.

If we put all of Gregory’s laws together into a singular formulation of the goal of teaching, it might go something like this: The goal of teaching is to cultivate a student’s growth in wisdom and virtue through the dynamic interrelation of teacher and student as they conjointly pursue knowledge for ever-deepening understanding.

Tried and True

So far in this article, I have examined one primer on teaching, the Teach Like a Champion series. More recently, Daniel Coupland, professor of education at Hillsdale College, published his own primer: Tried and True (Hillsdale College Press, 2022), “a teaching manual of best practices for sound pedagogy.” This book seeks to introduce the fundamentals of teaching for a new teacher through fourteen “imperative statements.”

Interestingly, Coupland himself does not articulate an overarching goal of teaching. He therefore does not align with Lemov on a college-preparation approach, but nor does he offer an alternative. No doubt, in interest of his primer remaining brief and practical akin to Strunk and White’s grammatical primer The Elements of Style, he avoids the philosophical. The result, however, is that the book comes across as overly focused on the cognitive, that is, the head knowledge without the heart (moral and spiritual formation).

To his credit, Coupland does spend a chapter on connecting one’s teaching to the broader purpose of one’s school. His first imperative statement is to “Follow the School’s Mission.” Certainly whatever the goal of teaching is, it is inextricably linked with the purpose of the school in which it occurs. Insofar as the school’s mission does articulate a purpose for what happens in the classroom, this could provide a satisfactory goal for teaching.

Another way the primer points to a broader goal of teaching is Coupland’s seventh imperative, “Plans Lessons Purposefully,” in which he advises teachers to focus on student learning. Here he distinguishes between the nebulous phrase “covering content” and actually teaching it. Coupland encourages teachers to craft objectives for each lesson regarding the knowledge, skill, or experience they are aiming for their students to obtain. This emphasis on the cognitive aspect of teaching is not dissimilar from Gregory’s. The chief difference is that while Gregory goes on to articulate a moral dimension of the goal of teaching, Coupland remains focused on the cognitive.

What Bloom Gets Wrong

Here, of course, I cannot help but think of Jason Barney’s recent work on Bloom’s taxonomy. In Rethinking the Purpose of Education (Educational Renaissance, 2023), Barney offers a critique of Bloom’s organization of the cognitive aims of education and proposes a replacement through retrieval of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. In doing so, Barney helpfully points out that the training of intellectual abilities and skills is at best an incomplete picture of what it means to educate humans.

In Chapter 4 specifically, B​​arney maps out a correspondence between Bloom’s six objective categories in the cognitive domain with Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues, including the seven liberal arts. After commenting on this correspondence and then offering a restructured approach in which Bloom’s is filtered through Aristotle’s virtues, Barney writes, “In summary, then, Aristotle’s intellectual virtues restore the intellectual virtues of the body and heart, the educational importance of beautiful craftsmanship and skill, as well as the moral wisdom of a life well lived. In addition, the virtue of philosophic wisdom clarifies a new crowning achievement of true education that Bloom’s Taxonomy does not have the resources to grasp” (72).

In this way, through returning to an Aristotelian framework, Barney proposes a profound and deeply human purpose of education, and by extension teaching, that will prepare students for a life, not mere college experience, of flourishing.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explored various ways to think about the final cause, or goal, of teaching. If we are to train teachers well in the craft of teaching, they need to understand the purpose for this craft. While teaching primers are valuable for providing techniques and practices for immediate implementation in the classroom, if they are disconnected from the final cause of teaching, the work will grow stale. In this way, we could say these primers address the material and formal cause of teaching, but do not address the efficient cause (the teacher) or the final cause (the goal). My hope is that through reading this article, you have gained an expanded vision for what this goal could be and the implications teaching possesses for helping students experience a full and flourishing life. In the end, the cause of teaching is not merely final, it is truly great.

The post The Great Cause of Teaching appeared first on .

To prepare for a launch year, there are a number of elements for school founders to discuss, care for, and organize into a cohesive plan. These elements, many of which are minute, taken individually may at times feel trivial, disconnected, and unimportant. The truth is, however, these factors and logistics combine to form not simply a plan, but a culture. If school cultures are made up of the habits and routines that together form a school’s identity, then these elements are nothing less than the invisible glue that holds the broader school culture together.

In this article, I am going to suggest five elements new schools want to get right regarding specifically their faculty culture on Day 1. While there are just about a million things founding school leaders could prioritize when building their team of faculty, these five elements will strategically position the school to cultivate a great faculty culture throughout its first year of operation.

1. General Expectations

This is the least inspiring of the elements, so I will address it first. The truth is that any functional work environment requires clarity and accountability regarding the basic expectations all employees will be held to fulfill. What is the dress code? What time should faculty arrive each morning? How long should they remain on campus after school is dismissed? What is proper email protocol for style, formatting, and response time?

These questions may feel mundane, but the truth is that ambiguity in these areas over time chips away at a cohesive culture. As Patrick Lencioni points out in Five Dysfunctions of a Team, a lack of clarity leads to a lack of commitment. While it is important to balance procedural clarity on the one hand with professional independence on the other, upfront communication regarding the general expectations that matter will prevent unnecessary confusion and a lack of commitment in the long-term.

2. Relationships

How are the various constituents of the school going to interact with one another? How will they speak about one another? Schools exist as a unique social conglomeration of children and adults, parents and teachers, with varying levels of authority. It is important for the school to provide clarity for faculty on Day 1 regarding how students will be permitted to speak to their teachers, how teachers will interact with parents, and how teachers will speak about parents.

The two leading values for a healthy relational culture are kindness and respect. Kindness is the disposition of goodwill we all desire to be exhibited toward us, and therefore should exhibit toward others. Kindness begins in the heart and is manifested through action: the words we say, the gestures we use, and the responses we have, especially in pressure-filled moments.

Respect is the due regard we owe one another. In a school setting, there are two general types of respect. The first type is the respect we owe all people based on their personhood and worth as divine image-bearers. In this sense, all members of the school, including children, should be recognized and treated as persons. The second type is the respect we owe various constituents of our community based on their role and position in authority. You can lay the groundwork for a strong faculty culture by taking time up front to talk about the ways different groups within the school will interact and providing specific examples for how kindness and respect should be modeled.

3. Parent Partnership

Parent partnership may sound like a carry-over from “relationships,” but the emphasis is different. Cultivating a faculty culture of parent partnership means forming teachers who understand that parents should be viewed as assets, not obstacles, in the educational journey. The reality is that teachers learn so much about a student in a single year, but this knowledge pales when compared to what the parents know about the child from years in the home. School leaders can promote a faculty culture of parent partnership by instilling good practices for keeping parents informed and inviting them to provide insight into a child’s needs and growth areas.

It is worth mentioning as well that a faculty culture of parent partnership will greatly assist with yearly retention. Parents will choose to re-enroll their children if and when they believe and trust that the school is delivering on its commitments. The primary vantage point parents possess for making this determination is through the relationship they have developed with their child’s teacher. This is all the more reason to prioritize parent partnership for teachers on Day 1.

4. Planning Ahead

This may sound obvious, but again, I return to the importance of details and building institutional habits. In the first year, it is important for schools to establish what kind of school it is going to be, particularly in the classroom. Will it be a school that flies by the seat of its pants, plagued by a lack of preparation, unpredictable decisions, and the tyranny of the urgent? Or it will take time to slow down and prepare, investing the extra time on the front end to sow seeds of preparation and calm?

School leaders, especially in the first year, will not have time to review with teachers every planning detail. My suggestion, therefore, is that they prioritize holding teachers accountable to writing and submitting good lesson plans. A good lesson plan provides the avenue for a teacher to think through the plan for the day, from time-bound procedures to teaching objectives to classroom assignments. Planning in advance will reduce the burden on a teacher’s working memory and allow her to be more present with her students. If a school can establish a faculty culture of planning ahead, particularly through good lesson planning, it will save itself from a plethora of issues down the road.

5. Text-Centered Learning

For a school just opening its doors, it needs to decide what will be the core values of the classroom. What matters most in the daily instruction of students? While there are lots of possibilities to choose from, I suggest that for classical schools specifically, it is important to instill a faculty culture of text-centered learning. Here I mean a form of learning in which the text, not the teacher and not the student, serves as the primary GPS for what will be taught and learned. This is not to suggest that the text is or should be infallible. Nor is it to imply that the teacher’s or student’s opinions do not matter. Rather it is to clarify that amidst all the opinions and ideas swirling around in a particular lesson, we are going to let the text, assuming it is well-chosen, be our chief object of inquiry. This is the surest way to implement the core elements of a liberal arts education.

One practical way to promote a text-centered culture is through narration. Narration, which we have written about extensively at Educational Renaissance, is a teaching method that exposes students to rich content and then gives them the opportunity to share in detail what they recall about the content. This practice instills in teachers and students alike an acute alertness to understanding the text before moving on to exercises in analysis and critique.

Conclusion

If school founders can instill these five elements in their faculty culture, they will be well on their way to not only a great inaugural year, but to a successful first chapter in the school’s short history. Amidst all there is to do and plan, the key is to prioritize what matters most and remain committed to these values. May the Lord lead and guide you as you seek to do the Lord’s work for the sake of your community and the next generation!

The post 5 Elements of Faculty Culture for a New School to Implement on Day 1 appeared first on .

I then went on to offer two general ways a Christian school can engage in the discipleship of its students. The first way is what I deemed holistic discipleship. Holistic discipleship is the integration of faith into the thoughts and activities of everyday life: habits, meals, learning, and leisure, for example. Holistic discipleship in a Christian school can include Bible studies and prayer meetings, but more often, it occurs organically. One teacher may choose to end her literature class in prayer after an intense debate. Another teacher might catch a student after class to keep the conversation going about the relationship between science and faith. And so on. 

The second way I suggested a Christian school can engage in discipleship is through training students to think through a Christian grid, or worldview. We all approach knowledge and questions with particular assumptions and presuppositions about how the world works. Our students are no different. Likely formed through popular culture and social media, students have grown up within the milieu of a secular society and naturally see the world through this lens. Teachers can disciple their students to think Christianly about the world by drawing attention to secular worldview assumptions that often go unchallenged and going on to lay out a compelling biblical alternative. 

But are these two approaches to discipleship sufficient? Are there additional ways? What about the idea of spiritual formation and the impact it could have on the Christian school’s approach to discipleship? In this article, I will explore the use of spiritual disciplines in the context of discipleship and take a special look at the spiritual discipline of study.

Transformation Through the Disciplines

In his classic book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster argues that spiritual disciplines are the gateway to spiritual transformation. Interestingly, in my first article on discipleship, I mentioned nothing of being transformed spiritually. And yet, is this not central to the aim of discipleship? If growing as a disciple is being conformed to the image of Christ, it will be nothing less than the utter transformation of a person into someone new.

Foster believes spiritual transformation happens first and foremost through receiving the free gift of righteousness. But he goes on to caution that this grace is received, not through passive antinomianism, but through active “sowing to the spirit” (Gal. 6:8). He writes, “Once we clearly understand that God’s grace is unearned and unearnable, and if we expect to grow, we must take up a consciously chosen course of action involving both individual and group life. That is the purpose of the spiritual disciplines” (7).

In a similar way, Dallas Willard begins his book Spirit of the Disciplines with the statement that modern Christianity has failed to take human transformation seriously. Therefore, the church must clarify and exemplify realistic methods of human transformation, thereby showing “how ordinary individuals…can become, through the grace of Christ, a love-filled, effective, and powerful community” (ix). Willard goes on to contend that the church today largely misunderstands how experiences and actions enable us to receive the grace of God. His solution: pursue a life of spiritual disciplines.

It seems to me that Foster and Willard are on to something. If the goal of discipleship is to help someone follow Jesus and grow in conformity to his image, we need to equip disciples with practical ways they can do that will lead to the transformation we desire. Just as a soccer coach has a collection of drills and exercises to strengthen the skill of his players and overtime to develop them into better soccer players, it seems that the would-be disciple-maker would possess a similar collection. And yet so often today, students growing up in Christian homes proceed through their young adult years without this training.

Types of Disciplines

So what are the disciplines that lead to spiritual transformation and which ones can be promoted in a Christian school context? Richard Foster divides the disciplines into three groups: inward disciplines, outward disciplines, and corporate disciplines. 

Inward disciplines focus on cultivating one’s inward life through prayerful contemplation and reflection. These practices include meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Outward disciplines, on the contrary, are oriented toward one’s interaction with the external, often physical world. These practices include simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. Finally, the corporate disciplines underscore the practices that occur in community with others: confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. 

Interestingly, Dallas Willard groups the spiritual disciplines into only two categories: disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. Disciplines of abstinence are the practices we employ to gain control over “…the satisfaction of what we generally regard as normal and legitimate desires” (159). He is careful to point out that these desires are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves. But in our sinful human condition, it is these desires that often run “…a rebellious and harmful course.” The goal is to bring these desires back into coordination of a life aligned with Christ. Willard’s list of the disciplines of abstinence include solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice. 

Conversely, the disciplines of engagement are those that realign our desires and practices with proper engagement with God. While disciplines of abstinence counteract tendencies of commission (the things we ought not do), disciplines of engagement counteract tendencies of omission (the things we ought to do). Willard’s list here includes study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission (158).

Whether you prefer Foster’s groupings or Willard’s, the upshot is that there is an arsenal of disciplines at the disciple’s disposal for growing in Christ. While these disciplines take effort and intentionality, when pursued in and through the power of the Holy Spirit, they contain the elements for real spiritual transformation. For those new to the topic, let me clarify that Foster and Willard do not necessarily recommend implementing a spiritual regimen of all these disciplines at once. Rather, they are providing a menu of strategies that encompass a fully-orbed view of a person, and how every facet of what it means to be human can be placed under the transformative lordship of Christ.

The Discipline of Study

It is worth exploring the different ways a Christian school can implement these disciplines for the spiritual growth of their students, but I do not want to be misinterpreted to suggest that all these disciplines should be implemented. Again, we need to draw distinctions between the discipleship approaches of the church and school, and the home as well.

But I do want to suggest that schools are uniquely able to facilitate the spiritual discipline of study. In education today, the act of study is associated with the preparation for an upcoming examination, usually with high-stakes consequences. Thus, study is a word infused with connotations of labor, stress, and deadlines.

But Foster encourages us to step back and think of study as a broader approach to engaging the objective world and, in doing so, to be transformed. It is a discipline that facilitates a state of rest and peacefulness as one contemplates truths that are unchanging, good, and often beautiful. This is quite the opposite of our modern view of study!

Foster frames his chapter on study with Paul’s words to the Philippian church: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). In the Book of Romans, we see Paul’s vision for this discipline, namely, that believers will be “transformed by the renewal of their minds” (Rom. 12:2).

How does this happen? The idea is that as we focus on truth, we align our beliefs and belief processes to the objective structures of knowledge. The things we focus on conform our habits and thinking to the order of the thing studied. The more we fill our minds with God’s goodness, truth, and beauty, the more oriented toward him we become in our intellectual and cognitive disposition. Conversely, the more we saturate ourselves with the opposite, the more oriented we will be toward the cares of the world.

This is one reason why gaining control over one’s consumption of shows and social media is so important. It is temping to think that we can watch whatever we want to and it will have no effect on us. Or that endless scrolling of social media is a harmless activity. But the reality is that these behaviors can and will change us, literally rewiring our brains, as the science has shown, and changing us over time.

What to Study

So what should we study in order to experience spiritual formation for ourselves and for our students? Here are five suggestions:

The Bible: I am sure you saw this coming. The study of God’s Word should be the primary source we engage in this discipline. We want to teach students to study scriptural passages, not merely as a scholarly pursuit, but as an endeavor to connect personally with God. On this note, Willard writes, “Our prayer as we study meditatively is always that God would meet with us and speak specifically to us, for ultimately the Word of God is God speaking (177).

Experiential Classics: In our individualistic culture, we often assume that growing spiritually is a solo journey. We view spiritual growth as a single path that a traveler journeys down alone. But the better metaphor is not a path, but a pilgrimage. Pilgrims travel together. The reality is that there is a nearly endless list of Christ followers who have been transformed spiritually and have written about their experience. From Augustine’s Confessions to Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, we can select texts to add to the curriculum that form our students spiritually as they study these works.

Nature: The intentional study of God’s creation is one of the most life-giving and peaceful experiences I have come across. In a world that champions the conquering of nature for pragmatic ends, we can help students reconnect the natural world with the spiritual through slowing down and observing the beauty and order of nature. The addition of Nature Study as a scheduled part of the school week is a strategic way to help students grow spiritually as they respond with wonder and worship.

Relationships: While the first three suggestions for study are rather conventional, Foster suggests we can grow spiritually by learning to study the relational interactions around us. How do we speak to one another? How do we use our words and interactions? Are we participating in healthy friendships or discouraging ones? By training students to study and reflect on their relationships, they can grow in their understanding of how these relationships are influencing their spiritual walks.

Culture: While it is true that the heart of the spiritual discipline of study is to align our beliefs and belief processes with objective reality, it is important to be reflective about one’s surrounding culture. We often inhabit our world like fish who are fully submersed in water, yet, if asked, haven’t the slightest clue what H20 is. As with worldview thinking, we can facilitate moments for our students to study the culture they live in and thereby grow in discernment of various cultural elements, from moral values to entertainment.

To conclude this article, Christian schools can contribute to the growth of their students as disciples of Christ by encouraging and, in some occasions, facilitating spiritual disciplines. A central component of being a disciple of Christ is being spiritually formed over time. But this sort of transformation does not happen by accident, even if it ultimately a gracious gift of God. As Paul writes, “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). May we help our students reap eternal life through providing daily opportunities for them to practice the sort of disciplines that are the pathways to real and lasting spiritual transformation.

The post Discipleship in the School, Part 2: Spiritual Formation appeared first on .