Here we observe the seedlings of the classical Christian renewal movement: the distinction between training students how to think versus what to think. Sayers’ diagnosis is that schools in her day had prioritized learning subjects over skills. Her solution: train students to be independent learners through a return to the classical liberal arts, especially the language arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.

In this article, I want to suggest that Sayers’ prescription for liberal arts education, and more broadly, the classical notion of self-education, is precisely what society is in need of today. Many modern schools have shifted their focus to spoon-feeding students information, teaching to the test, and creating “safe spaces” for students to be protected from opposing ideas. A return to the liberal arts–training students to get into the driver’s seat of their learning–will prepare them to meet today’s challenges with resilience and approach questions with both confidence and charity.

Persons as Self-Educating

Charlotte Mason, a British educator living at the turn of the 20th century, became a major proponent of this notion of self-education. As Karen Glass has helpfully unpacked in her book In Vital Harmony, Mason’s philosophy can be summarized in two key ideas: 1) Children are born persons and 2) Education is the science of relations.

When Mason says children are born persons, she means that they are born with the capacities to grow in knowledge, skill, strength, and character from the very beginning. We should not wait until a person reaches adulthood to begin taking her thoughts seriously. Rather, from a young age, we can begin to help children build a flourishing life. They are not robots to be programmed, sponges to be soaked, blank slates to be written on, or cattle to be herded through the education industry. Children are capable and, therefore, responsible. Our job as parents and teachers is to help children steward their moral choices, helping them gain mastery over their wills, form productive habits, and pursue knowledge from a place of intrinsic motivation, not behaviorist manipulation. As Mason put it, “a child is not built up from without, but from within” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, 25).

The second idea integral to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is that education is the science of relations. Learning is about seeing how all the different bodies of knowledge in God’s creation connect and then going on to form a personal relationship with this knowledge. For Mason, there is no such thing as emotionless, rote learning or information processing. If a child is really learning, then he is connecting with knowledge at the heart level. In addition, these relations are to be discovered, not created, by the child. We are born into a world designed by God with order and connection. Lifelong learning is about discovering more and more about how these relationships work and forming a synthetic integrated conception of the world.

For these philosophical reasons, Charlotte Mason was insistent that children must do the work of education for themselves. We cannot force-feed knowledge for true learning to occur. She writes, “One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, 240). This emphasis on the active role students play in their education is key to preparing students to become strong, independent learners.

Tools, not Jigs 

So we want to set up children to be able to educate themselves, but how do we do this? Returning to Dorothy Sayers, the British medieval scholar uses the analogy of tools to help us understand what the classical liberal arts are all about.

In short, the liberal arts empower students to take on any intellectual challenge they face. She writes,

For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command.

This tools metaphor can helpful to hone in on, specifically Sayers’ distinction between a tool and a jig. A tool, such as a hammer, can be used for a variety of projects while a jig has one specific task. For example, I once purchased a very particular cabinet jig to drill new holes in my kitchen cabinets in a uniform manner. Given its specialized use, I have not had need of it sense. Meanwhile, tools like my hammer and drill, with their wide utility across a variety of projects, I use frequently.

Sayers underscores the point:

We have lost the tools of learning—the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the plane—that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work as a whole or looks to the end of the work.

To equip students for self-education is to give them tools, not jigs, the liberal arts, not disparate bodies of knowledge, “…for the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

Self-Education in a Coddling Culture 

With this idea of self-education in mind, I want to close with a brief connection to an epidemic in American culture today: the rise of fragile students who are easily perturbed, anxious, and intimidated. Jonathan Haidt, a sociologist at New York University whom I have written on before here, has identified specific falsehoods we have taught children that have contributed to the problem.

In order to raise up resilient students, we can employ the notion of self-education in the following ways:

1. Permit students to experience real moments of struggle. Don’t solve the problem right away, but rather give space for students to wrestle through the challenge.
2. Train students to think logically, using evidence and reasons to support their beliefs. To be sure, emotions are a gift from God to be celebrated and enjoyed. But when one’s feelings become the driver in argumentation and analysis, students struggle to approach challenges with fortitude.
3. Lead by example in seeking to understand the viewpoints of those with whom you disagree. Someone who holds an opposing view should not to be cast as the sworn enemy. Just because you hold a different view from someone else does not mean they are the sworn enemy. We need to be okay living in the tension of disagreement.

If teachers can implement these three ideas in their classrooms, they will help prepare their students for long-term success. In contrast, when students are shielded from struggle, trained to trust their feelings, and embrace the “us vs. them” mentality on complex issues, they will find it hard to adapt and persevere. Haidt writes, “When children are raised in a culture of safetyism, which teaches them to stay ‘emotionally safe’ while protecting them from every imaginable danger, it may set up a feedback loop: kids become more fragile and less resilient, which signals to adults that they need more protection, which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient” (The Coddling of the American Mind, 30).

May we as educators raise up a generation of resilient students who seek the truth with independence and resolve, preparing them to be lifelong learners who can tackle life’s problems and educate themselves with joyful fortitude.

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The sole true end of education is to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

As educators, we get excited when classrooms come alive: Hands shoot up. Eyes brighten. And body language across the room broadcasts that discovery is underway. 

The other day I stepped in to sub for our science teacher and experienced a fresh taste of these kinds of moments. The class had been studying insects all semester and the topic of the day was beetles. Now, my background is in the humanities, not science, and my teaching experience is not in science instruction. As I studied the lesson plan and scanned the text, the wheels in my mind began to turn. On the one hand, I felt inadequate. What did I know about beetles and the broader field of entomology? How could I step in with minimal prep and pull off an excellent lesson? But on the other hand, all was well. Despite my lack of expertise, I knew what I needed to do: lean on the teaching techniques I had accumulated over the years.

Teaching is a craft. It requires a set of complex skills that, when carefully honed over time, come together with mastery to create something new. These skills in turn can be broken down into techniques. 

For example, cultivating a strong classroom culture is a skill. It takes thought, sustained effort, and experience to lead a group of students to interact, collaborate, study, and speak a certain way. It takes practice to learn the secret to holding students to high expectations while letting them never doubt for a second that you support and care for their well-being. If you were to ask a master teacher how she does it, she may not be able to tell you at first. She may even attribute the culture to great students or just getting lucky. But if you press her on specifics, or better, take the time to observe, you will learn that the specific things she does and says to make the culture come alive. In other words, techniques.

Another example: supporting each student to reach his or her full potential as a learner. We probably all have memories growing up of certain teachers who were “easier” than others. Perhaps they would not grade very rigorously or they would let you just get away with napping in the back. In these classrooms, only a small percentage of students actually cared, and an even small percentage applied themselves fully. Most students were not called up to reach their full potential. Sadly, this sort of classroom is probably more often the norm than the exception. But it does not have to be that way. Again, when teachers are equipped with the right techniques, they can pretty quickly make small adjustments and transform students from passive spectators to engaged learners.

Going back to my science class on beetles, I committed right away to using two techniques. First, I committed to a technique from Teach Like a Champion 2.0 called Cold-Call. Instead of calling only on students who raised their hands, I called on students at random. No student could hide. No student could take a pass. All students were invited into the learning experience.

Second, I committed to asking questions more often than providing answers. To some extent, of course, I did not have much of a choice. Having studied entomology all semester, these students knew much more about insects than I did. If I entered the classroom with the intent to wax eloquent, I would not last long. However, even if I did happen to be an amateur beetle expert, I would not have shown it. My strategy to facilitate strong engagement would be to spark student conversation around the topic. To do this, I would resist sharing what I knew and instead ask good questions. For example: “How do you know?” “How does this relate to other insects you have studied?” “Help my understand why…” Through this question-asking exercise, the class quickly ignited into a firework show of ideas, thoughts, and new thought-provoking questions.

Expand Your Tool Belt

If you are a teacher in need of some fresh techniques for your tool belt, I invite you to register for my live webinar on the topic in a couple weeks. I plan to walk through five top techniques that you can implement in your classrooms or homeschools immediately. These techniques will enhance your teaching ability and will do so in a distinctively classical way: getting to great ideas, pondering time-tested values, and honing skills in the liberal arts.

While the end of the year is winding down, now is a great time to receive some fresh inspiration to make it this last stretch of the year. Our students are worth it!

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In addition, my five fold division of the arts is careful to situate various forms of artistry in time and place, their historical traditions, so that we can avoid modernism’s totalizing fallacy. 

Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship

1. Athletics, games and sports
2. Common and domestic arts
3. Professions and trades
4. Fine and performing arts
5. The liberal arts of language and number

The important takeaway here is the need to train students in embodied and culturally situated skills, rather than reducing the liberal arts, for instance, to general studies. Students should be able to produce something in the world because of their training in artistry, not just know random facts.

This led me to propose a pedagogy or training method for artistry, drawing primarily from John Amos Comenius, the famous Reformation educator. We distilled from Comenius a set of basic steps that all arts have in common:

1. Students are given a general acquaintance with the works produced, the end-products of the art.
2. Students respond with a natural desire to imitate through producing works of their own.
3. The master provides the students with the proper tools and models their use, showing them examples of the techniques.
4. The master corrects the students through both examples and advice, sharing the theories and precepts while correcting students.

These steps follow the classical principle of mimesis or imitation that the CiRCE Institute has popularized among classical educators. In many cases, however, the focus among CiRCE folk sometimes edges toward knowledge to be learned or understood rather than a complex skill to be mastered. Aristotle’s terminology helps us to make a crisper distinction between these two teaching tasks. Knowing a truth is different from know-how. Artistry, for Aristotle, is clearly know-how, while nous, or intuition, would correspond with the understanding of ideas or first principles. 

To be sure, the student must understand several things in order to develop in artistry: the purpose of the art he is learning, how to use the tools, how to avoid common mistakes, etc. So a student of an art does develop a certain intuition about quality artistry through an art, but that is not the primary goal. His understanding serves his practice and not the other way around. (Were the budding artist to shift gears and become a critic of the art, as retired football players sometimes become sportscasters or former politicians become political commentators, then the artist’s developed intuition would come to the fore as the intellectual virtue on which he would depend for his new rhetorical product.)

Developing a Lesson in Craft

The basic process outlined above can serve as the springboard for a more fully articulated lesson in artistry. In other contexts, I have advocated for a Narration-Trivium lesson structure aimed at training students in the Trivium arts, while teaching them the sciences, what we might call general content knowledge in various areas. In laying out an alternative lesson structure for training a student in the arts, I am not abandoning this earlier approach, but adding a very necessary complement to it. Let me explain.

One way of viewing the nature of good teaching is to isolate the main goal that such an act of teaching has, as in its own way Bloom’s Taxonomy is careful to do. John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching highlights the act of teaching as one of conveying knowledge or some truth. This sees teaching as primarily focused on content that a student absorbs into herself and makes her own. On the other hand, Gregory is careful to note in his introduction that there is another branch of the educational art, which he calls training and describes as “the systematic development and cultivation of the powers of mind and body” (10). Gregory even goes so far as to say, 

These two great branches of educational art–training and teaching–though separable in thought, are not separable in practice. We can only train by teaching, and we teach best when we train best. Training implies the exercise of the powers to be trained; but the proper exercise of the intellectual powers is found in the acquisition, the elaboration, and the application of knowledge. (11)

Gregory’s insight here is profound, but it does not quite make up for the fact that he has neglected the art of training by centering his whole work on the act of teaching.

In my view, the problem with Gregory’s attempt to merge training and teaching is one and the same with the totalizing impulse of modernism (in which Gregory participated). At some times, we are focused on training students in a skill, while at others we are endeavoring to teach them content knowledge. To operate as teachers with only one type of lesson, despite the differences between the intellectual virtues we are aiming to cultivate, is to court disaster at worst, and to confuse the issue at best. 

Thoughtful teachers do, in fact, operate very differently when they are training vs teaching. Aristotle’s distinctions between the intellectual virtues of artistry and scientific knowledge, intuition or prudence would have kept us more in line with common sense, if we had retained them. In Gregory’s favor I do think that we can maximize our content-based lessons, by also affording our students with practice in the trivium arts (see Narration-Trivium Lesson). In the same way, I believe that the Apprenticeship Lesson that I am proposing now can and should help students gain general knowledge. But I believe it is more helpful to teachers to set a primary goal for a lesson, and then allow subsidiary goals to fall in line to support. The Apprenticeship Lesson recognizes the development of artistry or skill as the primary goal, thus avoiding the knowledge-transfer default of much modern education.

The Apprenticeship Movement (I-We-You)

In his book Teach Like a Champion 2.0 Doug Lemov coined the phrase I-We-You to convey the movement in a practice-based lesson from modeling a new skill or process, to involving students together in the process, before releasing students to work on their own. In his most recent update (3.0) he uses the terms Direct Instruction/Knowledge Assimilation, Guided Practice/Guided Questioning, and Independent Practice (241-245). We can see the dichotomy even here between a focus on content and skills. ‘Practice’ seems to accord better with training in skills, while ‘instruction,’ ‘knowledge’ and ‘questioning’ gesture toward teaching content.

(Wondering how Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion can be appropriated by classical Christian educators? Check out Kolby Atchison’s free eBook, “The Craft of Teaching for Classical Educators.”)

In any case, the movement from modeling with examples (I), to holding the hands of students as they work (We), to releasing them to accountable independent practice (You) provides a handy application of Comenius’ steps. Its flexibility for artistic skills as different as proper form when shooting a basket or solving an algebraic equation make it a promising foundation for our Apprenticeship Lesson format. 

Do Now is another valuable teaching technique for an Apprenticeship Lesson that is described by Doug Lemov in Teach Like a Champion (see 3.0 p. 187ff.). The reason for this is the importance of immediately engaging students in productive activity when we are training them in an art. A key danger for trainers is to hinder a student’s progress by over-explanation of rules and precepts, when action should be the name of the game. As Comenius says in his Analytical Didactic, 

Doing cannot be learned except by doing. Hence the saying, ‘We create by creating.’ One becomes a writer by writing, a painter by painting, a singer by singing, a speaker by speaking; and so it is with all external acts. (155)

Therefore he goes on to express it as a principle that “in every art there should be more practice than theory” (157). 

Lemov describes the cultural rationale that supports starting a lesson with a “quality task” that students can practice independently:

We want students to engage in productive and high-quality work that interests and challenges them right away, and over time we want to make a habit of this, so they expect to be actively and meaningfully engaged any time they enter our classrooms. We want them to know we are prepared and value their learning. They will not be passive; there will be very little downtime. (187)

We can imagine starting an Apprenticeship Lesson in a sport with a consistent drill that rehearses a set of core or fundamental skills; in a musical instrument, with scales or warm up exercises; in liberal art, with practice problems, exercises or a short writing task. The Do Now step of an Apprenticeship Lesson may not be strictly required, based on classical principles, but it remains a valuable default to be departed from only with good reason. 

Lastly, Lemov also articulates the value of checking for understanding (see ch. 3 of 3.0, pp. 75ff.; see also Kolby’s article on the topic). I have placed this as a step following guided practice (We) in the Apprenticeship Lesson, because of the danger of setting students’ free to independent practice too soon. Classical educators have long recognized the need to hasten slowly (festina lente) by ensuring the foundation is well laid, before building upon it. Comenius reflects on this fact for a pedagogy of artistry in The Great Didactic through the classical example of Timotheus the musician:

For this reason Timotheus the musician used to demand twice as large a fee from those pupils who had learned the rudiments of their art elsewhere, saying that his labour was twofold, as he had first to get them out of the bad habits that they had acquired, and then to teach them correctly. Those, therefore, who are learning any art should take care to make themselves masters of the rudiments by imitating their copies accurately. This difficulty once overcome, the rest follows of itself, just as a city lies at the mercy of foes when its gates are broken in. All haste should be avoided, lest we proceed to advanced work before the elementary stages have been mastered. He goes fast enough who never quits the road, and a delay which is caused by obtaining a thorough grip of first principles is really no delay, but an advance toward mastering what follows with ease, speed, and accuracy. (200)

Therefore it is prudent for the trainer of an art to check for students’ understanding before letting them practice independently, and then during independent practice, to circulate and actively correct students’ errors, as Comenius also states in his 9th canon, “Errors must be corrected by the master on the spot; but precepts, that is to say the rules, and the exceptions to the rules, must be given at the same time.” (200)

The Inspirational Coach

The various pieces of the puzzle for an Apprenticeship Lesson are almost interlocked. One final contribution comes from Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, which we have drawn from before to discuss the role of myelin (the white fatty substance that wraps around neural networks to increase speed and accuracy of firing) in the development of complex skill. Drawing from the research of Anders Ericsson, who coined the terms deliberate and purposeful practice, Coyle has painted a stunning picture of the “coaches” behind the training of world class athletes and performers. 

Aside from the core skill-set of providing the targeted feedback day in and day out, “like farmers: careful, deliberate cultivators of myelin” (Coyle, The Talent Code, 165), these Talent Whisperers, as Coyle calls them, are actually coaching their students to love the art. As he explains, 

They succeed because they are tapping into the second element of the talent code: ignition. They are creating and sustaining motivation; they are teaching love. As Bloom’s study [of world class performers’ first teachers] summed up, ‘The effect of this first phase of learning seemed to be to get the learner involved, captivated, hooked, and to get the learner to need and want more information and expertise.’ (175)

There must be a place for joy and inspiration, meaningfully conveyed from the coach to the artist-in-training. That is why I have placed an Inspirational Idea as a step in the Apprenticeship Lesson, even if this feature might not always be very long or strictly necessary. Speaking warmly about the beauty of the end product or the value of discipline, even for only 30 seconds, can help the average teacher pause long enough to consider the cultivation of her students’ motivation and love for the art, as opposed to just getting down to work and possibly losing them in drudgery.

The Apprenticeship Lesson

At this point I would invite you to visit a new webpage on Educational Renaissance that offers the Apprenticeship Lesson as a free downloadable resource. By sharing your email, you’ll receive our weekly blog in your inbox. If you haven’t already, I’d also encourage you to access my free resource on “Charlotte Mason and the Trivium” that details how to plan lessons with the Narration-Trivium Lesson structure. 

These two types of lessons complement one another by focusing either on training in artistry or skill (Apprenticeship) or on teaching new content knowledge (Narration-Trivium). In other words, the primary aim of the teacher is either for the student to acquire particular content knowledge in an inspirational subject area (Bible, history, literature, etc.), or the primary aim is for the student to acquire and hone particular skills in a discipline (writing, grammar, art, music, etc.). Actual lessons fall on a spectrum, with some focus placed on new knowledge and some focus placed on the students’ performance of a complex activity or creation of some product. The question of which lesson structure to use depends not on the subject, but the focus of this particular lesson within a broader unit plan. Is the main purpose of this lesson for students to assimilate content or develop and hone new skills?

When you download the Apprenticeship Lesson, you’ll be able to copy and paste a template with instructions that you can then use for planning lessons that train students in an art. Between the Apprenticeship Lesson and the Narration-Trivium Lesson, you should have all that you need to plan lessons that embody a classical pedagogy in any subject, with only minor modifications. I believe the process of lesson planning should be inspiring and enriching because of how it assists teachers in embodying classical principles in their teaching. In addition to preparing the teacher with the knowledge and materials necessary to help students learn most effectively, lesson planning should contribute to teachers’ long-term development.

Please reach out to me with questions as you try out the Apprenticeship Lesson, so that I can continue to refine and improve it for teachers!

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

9. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions

10. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

Later articles in this series:

12. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World

13. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry

14. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry

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If a person desires to cultivate their ability to sing or paint beautifully, they rarely do so by reading a book or attending lectures. Instead, they attach themselves to a teacher or coach, who has attained sufficient mastery of the skills to arrange a series of exercises for them, a practice regimen, and to give them regular feedback on their progress. This, in essence, is the pedagogy of apprenticeship that we will discuss more in this article. 

Avoiding the Totalizing Effect of Modernism on the Arts

But before we do, let’s remember that there are many different types of craftsmanship or artistry that have been developed by human beings throughout time. Arts may have an originator, as Jabal was the original keeper of livestock, Jubal the player on the lyre and pipe, or Tubal-cain bronze- and ironworking (see Gen 4:20-22), but they also have traditions that grow and change with new circumstances. The arts are not interchangeable, whether among each other or between different cultural circumstances. If one is trained in navigation, that hardly makes a person a qualified practitioner of medicine. A painter is not equipped to design buildings, nor a business owner to make furniture. In the same way, an ancient sailor cannot operate a nuclear submarine. The traditions of various arts are affected by the tools and technologies, the goals and circumstances of their application. Arts are not one size-fits all.

Perhaps these considerations are enough to counter the totalizing instinct of the modern era, which is well illustrated by Bloom’s Taxonomy. By abstracting six orders of educational objectives in the cognitive domain, Bloom and his colleagues assumed that the main thing in education was transferable intellectual skills. But a proper recognition of the arts (at least) as situated in time and place would help us to understand that a substantial amount of what we are seeking to pass on to our children consists in particular skills and abilities that were invented at a particular time and are judged to be of continuing relevance to life in the world.

Now I know very well that what I am saying now may sound like modern educational pragmatism, but allow me to counter this concern. When applied to the liberal ‘arts’, the traditional nature of the arts is another way of arguing for the Western tradition of grammar, logic and rhetoric; mathematics, science and music. These ‘disciplines’ were discovered in time and place, and mastery of them involves us necessarily in the tradition that each one birthed. So this supposed pragmatism or subjectivity ends up grounding us in the historical realities and the objectivity of an enlightened and practical tradition. It is modernism’s abstractions and pretensions to god-like knowledge that have left us moorless on a sea of preferential postmodernism, grasping about for anything that might be considered “useful”.

When applied to the arts in general, this recognition of the arts’ traditional nature led me to propose a fivefold division of the arts as a help to classical Christian educators. 

Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship

1. Athletics, games and sports
2. Common and domestic arts
3. Professions and trades
4. Fine and performing arts
5. The liberal arts of language and number

While I argued for the inclusion of athletics, games and sports as well as the professions and trades, I sympathize with Chris Hall, Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s three-fold division of common, liberal and fine arts. Perhaps it is simply because I like fives rather than threes… but in all seriousness, this division represents a judgment call on the best way to indicate to educators the proper types of artistry or craftsmanship that they should aim at in their various programs. 

Perhaps it goes without saying that no educational institution can train its students in every possible area of artistry. And if, as I have said, mastery in particular arts does not transfer to others, then every educational institution must engage in some level of discernment as they plot the curricular sequence and develop offerings in extracurriculars. Those schools that aim, to a lesser or greater extent, at the Christian, classical ideal of a university (from the Latin ‘universitas’ meaning ‘totality’ or ‘wholeness’; see Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University) will want to develop some level of mastery in each of these five directions, alongside the other intellectual virtues. But the particulars will of course be culturally situated, as are the arts themselves. (This does not, I might add, argue against the revival of an ancient art that has been lost, which may from time to time be absolutely crucial.) We must make these decisions boldly in our cities and communities with an awareness of the context and the availability of masters in the crafts to apprentice our young students.

Toward a General Pedagogy of Apprenticeship

In addition to avoiding the totalizing instinct in our artistic divisions, we must also avoid the temptation to think of training in the arts as essentially the same in each area. It is absolutely a different thing to train a student in geometric proofs, than it is to train him as a soccer goalie. According to Aristotle’s definitions, both are intellectual virtues that are rightly called ‘artistry’, but that does not mean they are the same or that the training should look similar. However, types of ‘artistry’ are sufficiently similar in some core essentials, such that Aristotle and the tradition have rightly distinguished them from the other intellectual virtues. So, while it doesn’t look the same to coach a student to excellence in singing or painting, I can call both these activities ‘coaching’ and certain types of teaching activities immediately come to mind as being more appropriate than others. Training activities in different types of artistry have more in common with one another, than they do with cultivating practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, intuition or philosophic wisdom. 

The key point is that while each art is distinct, the intellectual virtues themselves are taught in fundamentally different ways, because of their radically different nature. So we can generalize some aspects of proper training in an art in a way that will help us develop a pedagogy of apprenticeship. Far from contributing to the problem of treating everything alike, developing a pedagogy for each intellectual virtue will contribute greatly toward our ability to make proper distinctions between different types of teaching as educators. 

Happily I am not the first person to follow the Aristotelian tradition by seeking to develop a pedagogy of techne, Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of ‘artistry’ or ‘craftsmanship’. The great Christian Reformation era educator John Amos Comenius developed a pedagogy of art in his Great Didactic, articulating many similar points to what I have addressed in attempting to revive the classical distinction between an art and a science. His recommendations also accord well with what we know of the value of deliberate and purposeful practice from modern research on elite performance, which I have discussed at some length before (as has Patrick Egan in this article). 

What Artistry Requires

Comenius begins his discussion of a pedagogy for art by identifying the core requirements of artistry or craftsmanship. As he says,

Art primarily requires three things: (1) A model or a conception, that is to say, an external form which the artist may examine and then try to imitate. (2) The material on which the new form is to be impressed. (3) The instruments by the aid of which the work is accomplished. (194)

The “model or conception” may look very different in the different arts: a model of a house you want to build is different than a map of where you want to sail or the imaginary ark of a penalty kick in soccer. But all arts require this mental image or plan upon which the artist operates. Art cannot be an accident, for then it would not be art, but chance in Aristotelian terminology. In the same way, the materials worked may be vastly different, from the wood, metal and straw used in building to the words, phrases and arguments used in logic and rhetoric. Finally, instruments are necessary for craftsmanship, from a voice box for singing to the gardener’s gloves and the astronomer’s telescope. 

While it may seem obvious to point out these different artistic requirements, they are of immense help to a pedagogy of craft. How often do art students work on projects without a clear model or conception to imitate? We can forget to help beginners learn the basic principles of handling tools and materials correctly, particularly in cases where the tools and materials are less obvious, like the meanings of words, grammar and syntax in the case of the language arts. This draws attention to the fact that these requirements point in the direction of three other things that are prerequisites of artistry:

But when the instruments, the materials, and the model have been provided, three more things are necessary before we can learn an art: (1) a proper use of the materials; (2) skilled guidance; (3) frequent practice. That is to say, the pupil should be taught when and how to use his materials; he should be given assistance when using them that he may not make mistakes, or that he may be corrected if he do; and he should not leave off making mistakes and being corrected until he can work correctly and quickly. (194)

Comenius’s comments illustrate the idea that one of the main problems in the teaching of arts comes from rushing the early stages of development. The teacher or coach too often assumes that the novice knows how to use the materials or will not make any more mistakes after being corrected once or twice. The training of the hands (whether literal or figurative) must be slower and more methodical than that. Bad habits can easily be acquired through insufficient attention to the basics.

We can also note positively that it is not without significance that cognitive psychologists have developed the terminology of ‘mental models’ for a student’s absorption of these models or conceptions into his intellect in order to perform some artistic activity. The writers of Make It Stick define a “mental model” as a “mental representation of some external reality”, noting that they are extending its use to “motor skills, referring to what are sometimes called motor schemas” (6; n.1 on 257). They go on to illustrate their definition through the example of artistry in a sport like baseball:

Think of a baseball batter waiting for a pitch. He has less than an instant to decipher whether it’s a curveball, a changeup, or something else. How does he do it? There are a few subtle signals that help: the way the pitcher winds up, the way he throws, the spin of the ball’s seams. A great batter winnows out all the extraneous perceptual distractions, seeing only these variations in pitches, and through practice he forms distinct mental models based on a different set of cues for each kind of pitch. (6-7)

We can notice from this example that a person does not necessarily need to be able to articulate a mental model in words to have it. In fact, in this case if the player’s conscious mind were to get involve trying to categorize and analyze the cues, the ball would have already flung past the plate. Often an artist’s mental models are like these motor skills, hard-wired in as almost an instinctual, bodily response. These models or conceptions are formed by “frequent practice” with the immediate feedback of whether he was right in his swing or wrong. It must be reality that the artist is modeling in his mind as he works with his materials according to the natural constraints of the art itself.

The Canons of Artistry

After establishing the requirements for artistry, Comenius lays out eleven canons for a pedagogy of artistry in his Great Didactic. Later in life he summarized this method of the arts more succinctly in his Analytical Didactic:

This method requires theory, prudence, and practice. Theory is necessary, so that a man, no matter what he does, will not do it like a brute, on blind impulse, but with an understanding of what he is doing. Such understanding inevitably brings with it caution and vigilance not to err in his work, and constant practice finally makes him incapable of error. (155)

The term “theory” explains the precepts and rules of his earlier discussion, and accords with Aristotle’s requirement that ‘art’ be according to reason. “Prudence” seems to draw attention to the artist’s sifting process, showing “caution” and “vigilance” to not make errors, but to act in such a way as to bring about the desired outcome. “Constant practice” completes the learning process by making him “incapable of error,” a state that we might call mastery. 

One of the main dangers, in Comenius’ mind, is that educators might overemphasize theories and precepts at the wrong stage of an artist’s development. As he notes in his first canon, “What has to be done must be learned by practice” (Great Didactic 194):

Artisans do not detain their apprentices with theories, but set them to do practical work at an early stage; thus they learn to forge by forging, to carve by carving, to paint by painting, and to dance by dancing. In schools, therefore, let the students learn to write by writing, to talk by talking, to sing by singing, and to reason by reasoning. In this way schools will become workshops humming with work, and students whose efforts prove successful will experience the truth of the proverb: ‘We give form to ourselves and to our materials at the same time.’ (195)

We can see that Comenius lends his support to the classical understanding of the liberal arts as forms of verbal craftsmanship. When we linger over the theories and rules, without giving our beginning students practice in talking, writing, singing and reasoning, we are breaking the cardinal rule of training in artistry. Comenius’ vision of schools as “workshops humming with work” sets an inspiring standard for us to judge our teaching by. It well accords with Dorothy Sayers’ interpretation of the trivium as the lost tools of learning. The upshot of her clarion call in the 1940s was that we were too focused on teaching ‘subjects’ rather that giving our students the opportunity to handle the materials of knowledge through productive and (we might add) artistic activities. 

Comenius thinks that the formation of students’ mental models for this practice should occur, not primarily through precepts or rules, abstract theories, but instead through examples (195). He cites Quintilian for classical support of his method: “It is many years since Quintilian said: ‘Through precepts the way is long and difficult, while through examples it is short and practicable.’ But alas, how little heed the ordinary schools pay to this advice” (195).

Comenius continues to look to the mechanical or common arts for fruitful analogies of how to best train students in grammar or logic:

The very beginners in grammar are so overwhelmed by precepts, rules, exceptions to the rules, and exceptions to the exceptions, that for the most part they do not know what they are doing, and are quite stupefied before they begin to understand anything. Mechanics do not begin by drumming rules into their apprentices. They take them into the workshop and bid them look at the work that has been produced, and then, when they wish to imitate this (for man is an imitative animal), they place tools in their hands and show them how they should be held and used. Then, if they make mistakes, they give them advice and correct them, often more by example than by mere words, and, as the facts show, the novices easily succeed in their imitation. (195-196)

Comenius’ description of the apprenticeship model of “mechanics” lays out a few key steps: 

1. Students are given a general acquaintance with the works produced, the end-products of the art.
2. Students respond with a natural desire to imitate through producing works of their own.
3. The master provides the students with the proper tools and models their use, showing them examples of the techniques.
4. The master corrects the students through both examples and advice, sharing the theories and precepts while correcting students.

This last point, the proper use of theory and precepts at the end rather than the beginning is detailed in his eleventh canon, where Comenius is focused on the swift correction of errors during practice:

(ix.) Errors must be corrected by the master on the spot; but precepts, that is to say the rules, and the exceptions to the rules, must be given at the same time.

Hitherto, we have urged that the arts be taught rather by example than by precept: we now add that precepts and rules must be given as well, that they may guide the operations and prevent error. That is to say, the less obvious points of the model should be clearly explained, and it should be made evident how the operation should begin, what it should aim at, and how that aim can be realised. Reasons should also be given for each rule. In this way a thorough knowledge of the art, and confidence and exactness in imitating will be attained. (200)

Comenius’ description of mistake-focused practice coheres well with what Daniel Coyle calls “deep practice” in his book The Talent Code. Practice must be purposeful or deliberate, to the extent possible, and take advantage of all the resources, in terms of rules and precepts developed by the masters in that tradition of artistry. The correction of errors and constant practice, based on examples and informed by theory, constitute the core essentials of the apprenticeship model of teaching an art. 

In the next article we’ll develop this pedagogy of artistry further by laying out an apprenticeship lesson structure to guide teachers of the arts, as we draw further insights from Comenius and modern research.

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

9. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions

Later articles in this series:

11. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry

12. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World

13. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry

14. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry

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Telling better stories requires a mastery of language, one of the keystone benefits of a liberal arts education. Language is perhaps the most under-appreciated gift that God has given His creatures. We often do not grasp language’s necessity until we are in need of it: when we are stranded in a foreign country or trying to communicate with a one-year old. Language is important because it unites us like no other medium. It serves as the vehicle for communicating how we feel, what we think, and why we are acting the way we are. Additionally, language has the rare ability of integrating the disparate strands of life, indeed of lives, into a unified whole. Language is the precondition for story, and story-telling is the foundation of culture.

In this blog, I will make the case that the liberal arts, especially the mastery of language, are crucial for preserving and transmitting a culture. Without language, formative stories are lost, and cultures fall into decline. Of course, not all cultures are worth preserving. For example, it is a good thing that the culture of the late Roman Empire passed out of existence. The hunger for world domination, degradation of human life, and lust for pleasure became propagations of Rome that made our world worse, not better. On the contrary, our mission as Christian, classical schools is to cultivate future culture makers, moored in biblical values, and heralds of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Training in the liberal arts will equip our students to tell better stories, and in turn, cultivate more attractive cultures, superior to the ones contemporary secular society can possibly offer.

Studying Latin: An Act of Resistance 

Let me begin with the study of Latin, a well-known curricular emphasis in classical liberal arts education. One of the most frequent questions I receive as an administrator at a classical, Christian school is “Why Latin?” After all, our modern world has been highly successful in passing on the metaphor that Latin is a “dead language.” Moreover, using a modern rubric of utility and innovation, it is difficult to discern any clear benefit of studying a language that is no longer spoken in the public square.

Amongst classical schools, it has become fashionable of late to please the modern demand for utility by citing the correlation between Latin and high SAT scores or to remind prospective parents that derivatives of Latin are present in 60% of English words. The usefulness of Latin relieves us moderns temporarily from the fear that all the time invested in an ancient language may not pay off in the real world. 

Of course, this perspective assumes a particular definition of “the real world,” namely, the world of professional advancement, wealth accumulation, and personal success, all measured against the performance metrics of the 21st century. But what if “the real world” encompasses more than our present century? What if the surest way to educate students who will shape future cultures is to ensure they have an acute grasp of the histories and ideas of the past? What if the key to a treasure-trove of wisdom accumulated over millennia is available only through the long-lost language of Latin?

If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the study of Latin should be recovered as an act of resistance. At the risk of overstating my point, this can be illustrated in the stunning image (and example) of Tank Man. Tank Man, the moniker for the courageous unnamed citizen who protested the totalitarian regime in communist China, boldly stood his ground the day after the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators on June 5, 1989.

While studying Latin may not threaten one’s life (some students may disagree), it remains an act of sacrificial resistance in its own way. With the growing skepticism regarding the value of reading old books, coupled with the excellent English translations that are easily accessible today, doubt remains whether the study of Latin is worth it.

What we must remember is that Latin is a portal to “the real world” properly conceived. Contra popular opinion, the universe did not simply pop into existence one hundred years ago. Human civilizations across the globe have existed for millenia. Latin is one entry point into one prominent civilization that has served as the seed ground for the modern conception of human rights, modern science, and the development of the western church.

By studying Latin, students receive a rare gift: the ability to directly access the geniuses of this tradition: Virgil, Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, and John Calvin, to name a few. We read these authors as faithful trustees of the Great Conversation, listening carefully to these voices that we might preserve the insights of what is good and true for future generations, while also correcting them in places where they were wrong or misguided. This process of preservation and correction is crucial for the project of creating future cultures.

The Privilege of Studying the Arts

Lately, I have been reading and writing on the life of John Adams, a Founding Father of the United States. Adams kept up a faithful correspondence with his wife Abigail, despite years of living overseas in Europe. In one particular letter to Abigail, Adams shares his multi-generational vision for education and the development of culture. He looked forward to the day when his children and grandchildren would not be preoccupied with war, but instead, would have the freedom to build a culture of goodness, beauty, and order.

Adams writes,

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Here we gain a rare glimpse of how one cultural architect envisions building and transmitting a culture. Adams adopted a long-term mindset with regards to his role in the development of American society. He understood the pathway to freedom and order in society and that it runs through war and governance. Once a free and orderly society is established, the next phase of study, composed of STEM subjects like navigation and agriculture, is used to build on the foundation. Finally, it becomes the responsibility of those trained in the arts to create a beautiful and good culture, leading to a better world.

Unfortunately, many schools today have lost sight of this long-term vision by focusing exclusively on the urgent: career-readiness. We forget that careers only exist in the first place in a free, orderly, and cultivated society. The best way to prepare students for their future career, is ironically, to help them gain mastery in more rare and valuable skills: the liberal arts.

A Babylonian, Classical Education

Oddly enough, the ancients seemed to grasp the power of the liberal arts for culture building better than us moderns. In the book of Daniel, we see that the powerful Babylonian Empire followed a process for their territorial expansion: invade, capture and assimilate. 

After laying siege and destroying Jerusalem in 586 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar captured members of the Jewish elite to assimilate them into Babylonian culture. These members of Jewish nobility were “…youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace…” (Daniel 1:4). The chief servant of the king was instructed to train these men in the language and literature of the Chaldeans. They were to be educated for three years, eating the food of the city and, more importantly, imbibing the Babylonian culture. 

Why were the Babylonians so set on educating a group of captive youth? They understood that the key to transmitting a culture was forming the mind through the liberal arts. By introducing Daniel and his friends to the gods, stories, myths, and values of Babylon, they would assimilate these young Jewish men into the culture. In fact, these young Jewish men were even given new names, with theological significance, branding them as citizens of the Babylonian Empire.

As we know, however, Daniel and his friends refused to be assimilated. They continued to use their original Jewish names and refused to eat the king’s food. Instead, they ate only vegetables, being careful to live within the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law. In return, God blessed them both intellectually and physically. God granted them “learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams…. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Dan 1:20). 

The story of Daniel is a sober reminder, both of the perceived power of the liberal arts and the blessing of obedience to God’s Word. While the Babylonians sought to promote their mighty culture through the liberal arts, only God’s plan for this world would endure.

Telling the Greatest Story

Ultimately, for Christians, the most powerful, culture-shaping story we pass on to future generations is not about western civilization, the founding of a particular nation, or Babylonian mythology (I would surely hope not!). The most transformative story is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that our loving Creator sent his Son to offer forgiveness of sin and life through the Spirit, and ultimately to usher in the kingdom of God. The culture we seek to build and transmit must be rooted in this great story.

Our learning communities, whether at school or at home, need to gather each day and remind one another of the story of the gospel. We can do this in a few ways.

First, we can begin each day in worship, singing songs that promote an understanding of the glory of God, the fallenness of humanity, and the need for a savior.

Second, when we teach classes on the Bible, we can lead students into deep dives in biblical studies, while also helping students see the grand narrative of the gospel that unites all of scripture. We can also leverage insights from other domains, for example, reading the Bible as literature, in order to engage the imaginations and hearts of students.

Finally, we can integrate the gospel in our approach to student discipline. The gospel is not a self-help manual to equip students to fix their problems on their own. Nor is it a legalistic tome, denoting each and every expectation God has for human behavior. Rather, it is the grand story of God’s grace in our lives and His restorative plan for creation. The gospel allows us to guide students in moments of discipline to utter the words, “I cannot do this on my own. Lord, please help me,” and restore them into the classroom.

Conclusion

The stories we tell are powerful for transmitting a culture, and the surest way to tell stories infused with meaning and persuasion is through training in the liberal arts. In the post-Christian western world in which we live, our society needs to hear the good news of Christ anew. By training our students in mastery of language and the arts, we are equipping students to not only have careers, but to be leaders of the future cultures of society. May God grant us much wisdom as we continue in this important work.

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Amusement is a passive state of entertainment. At its core, it is a form of distraction. People seek amusement when they are bored, when they seek to delay or avoid more difficult tasks, or when they have simply grown habituated to use their time unproductively. At times, amusement can serve as a form of escapism. When the pressure-points of life become exceedingly great, people seek to distract themselves temporarily from the present. Finally, and oddly enough, amusement can serve as a classroom management tool. Teachers implement techniques of amusement when they feel the attention of their students slipping and need to maintain control until the bell rings.

In this blog, I want to put forward an alternative to amusement: the discipline of study. Study is the act of intellectual reflection on something of substance–a person, an event, an idea, a book, and so forth. It entails getting to the real nature of something through sustained contemplation. Study takes work–deep work–as habits of attention and careful thinking are cultivated over the long-term. Educators, whether at school or at home, would do well to pursue the discipline of study in both their personal lives and in their instruction.

What is Study?

Unfortunately, we tend to think of study in modernistic terms as merely a form of academic production. For example, we instruct students to study the previous chapter for an upcoming test. Why? So they will be prepared to perform well on the evaluation, to produce high-quality results. Study in this context is less concerned with cultivating an integrated inner life as it with maximizing academic output.

In Leisure: The Basis of Culture (Ignatius Press, 1952), Josef Pieper puts words to the feeling of uneasiness we experience about this view of study. Following thinkers in the Middle Ages, Pieper differentiates between ratio and intellectus as definitions of understanding. 

Ratio is the active process of the mind to actively and discursively pursue understanding. It entails logical thinking and argumentation in order to reach some final conclusion. Ratio has very much consumed the modern way we think of study in which the mind is bent on some final result. Intellectus, on the other hand, is the receptive state of the mind to contemplate, similarly to the way the human eye beholds a landscape (28). It is not active, but passive, insofar as it awaits with anticipation to be moved by Truth.

The discipline of study, as I am thinking of it here, should be understood as a way of cultivating intellectus. It is the sustained act of contemplation, but in a restful and expectant sort of way. It is not weighed down by a future evaluation or the burden of production. Rather, when one engages in study, she peacefully wades into the intellectual deep, allowing her mind to contemplate what is true, good, and beautiful.

This act of reception, paradoxically, is easier said than done. Study, as Richard Foster observes in Celebration of Discipline (Harper and Row, 1978), can be difficult. It is is a skill developed through sustained effort until it becomes habit. But both the content of what we study and the very act of studying have the potential to form us. Foster writes, “What we study determines what kinds of habits are to be formed. That is why Paul urged us to center on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious” (55).

The Conditions for Study

Study is a discipline of the inner life. It allows us to get closer to knowledge of reality itself: more intimate understanding of ideas, events, relationships, ourselves, and most importantly, God. But there are a couple conditions for study. A slower pace is one of them. Time for quietness and stillness is another. These conditions are not common in the modern world, especially in modern schools.

Educators today try to cram as much as they can in a given day. Whether the pressure comes from administration, state objectives, accreditation standards, or from within, educators have become masters of efficiency. They map out the schedule with the detail of an engineer, ensuring that no minute be wasted or block be deemed futile.

Unfortunately, this approach to scheduling leaves little room to cultivate the discipline of study. Study requires quiet time for reflection. It calls for silence, simplicity, and at times, solitude. These conditions are rare in the modern world, much less in the classroom. But, then again, a deep inner level is rare. If we are going to cultivate it, we must be willing to go against the grain.

Study as Christian Formation

One specific benefit of the discipline of study is that it strengthens the integrity of one’s intellectual and spiritual lives as one unified whole. In Romans 12:2, the apostle Paul calls believers to “…be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (English Standard Version). Likewise, in Philippians 4:8, Paul calls Christians to contemplate whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable and excellent. In short, Paul calls Christians to cultivate one’s intellectual life through study with the assumption that this practice brings spiritual growth.

And yet, study does not seem to be a common practice in Christian educational circles today. Christian schools offer Bible courses, organize chapels, hire Christian teachers, and lead morning prayers, but the cultivation of intellectus in their students is noticeably absent. For true Christian formation to occur, Christian educators should make time for the discipline of study. Study, when led by the Holy Spirit and accompanied with other disciplines, helps transform the whole person.

Towards an Education in Rest

At a plenary session at the Society for Classical Learning’s annual conference, Christopher Perrin argued convincingly that we need to recover an education in rest. Schools are busy and anxious, he observes, and students need relief from the chaos. In conclusion of this article, I suggest that cultivating the discipline of study is a natural first step in offering the sort of education Perrin has in mind.

While it is all too common today to blame technology as the reason for our fragmented lives and hurried schedules, the reality is that the problem is much deeper. It is moral and spiritual in nature. In this way, the problem is ultimately ourselves. We have embraced amusement as a primary approach for how to spend our time both at home and in the classroom. We have allowed the fast-paced nature of the modern world to infiltrate our lives, classrooms, and schools.

But, like all things, there is hope. God remains faithful to His people and strives to help them grow through the aid of the Holy Spirit. If we can lead our communities to cultivate the discipline of study, by God’s grace, we will see more young people become receptive to divine truth as they contemplate the deeper meanings in the world God created. Ultimately, we pray, they will come to center their minds on God himself, the Maker and Perfecter of all that is good, true, and beautiful.

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Mason’s revival of narration therefore stands as a signpost of her larger project. And it is a project that we find inspiration from here at Educational Renaissance. The renaissance had a healthy respect for and appreciation of the classical past, while at the same time being quite innovative in a number of areas. In a way narration is simply one piece of this broader puzzle: all the pieces will help create a more accurate picture of Charlotte Mason as an educator within the liberal arts tradition of education.

In this article we come to Charlotte Mason herself to see how her recommendations for narration square with those of the classical and renaissance educators we have surveyed. We will see that Mason’s use of narration was at least as innovative as any other educator in its history, even if the steps she took make perfect sense as natural developments. In the process we will discern some new possibilities for narration, including how we could revive the narration practices of earlier educators to supplement Charlotte Mason’s recommendations, or even reach out into new and uncharted territory with narration to attain new pedagogical goals. 

We will begin by looking at three issues raised by Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration: 1) the focus on rich texts, 2) the main goal of knowing content, and 3) the methods of narration.

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 1: Focusing on Rich Texts

Readers who are familiar with Charlotte Mason will be aware of some of the ways that Mason’s narration differs from that of the educators we have surveyed so far.

The first and most obvious difference, perhaps, is that the focus of Mason’s narration is upon a rich text, and not an informative lecture, as in Erasmus or Comenius, or else the telling of any story that the child knows, as in John Locke. In this way Mason sides with Aelius Theon, Quintilian and the secondary steps detailed by Locke. 

Charlotte Mason has a very practical and down-to-earth set of considerations for her decided preference for what she calls “living books” over “oral teaching” (not to mention the “dry-as-dust” textbooks of her era). Her thoughts in her third volume School Education are worth reproducing in full:

“Reason for Oral Teaching.––Intelligent teachers are well aware of the dry-as-dust character of school books, so they fall back upon the ‘oral’ lesson, one of whose qualities must be that it is not bookish. Living ideas can be derived only from living minds, and so it occasionally happens that a vital spark is flashed from teacher to pupil. But this occurs only when the subject is one to which the teacher has given original thought. In most cases the oral lesson, or the more advanced lecture, consists of information got up by the teacher from various books, and imparted in language, a little pedantic, or a little commonplace, or a little reading-made-easy in style. At the best, the teacher is not likely to have vital interest in, and, consequently, original thought upon, a wide range of subjects.

“Limitations of Teachers.––We wish to place before the child open doors to many avenues of instruction and delight, in each one of which he should find quickening thoughts. We cannot expect a school to be manned by a dozen master-minds, and even if it were, and the scholar were taught by each in turn, it would be much to his disadvantage. What he wants of his teacher is moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction; and it is better, on the whole, that the training of the pupil should be undertaken by one wise teacher than that he should be passed from hand to hand for this subject and that.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, vol 3 pg 170

For Mason an inspirational lecture requires a master-mind, in a way the type of teacher that Erasmus called for in his work on education, who could interpret to his students the best of a whole host of great classical works of literature on all topics. But in Mason’s day and age, the master-mind teacher approach would require experts on a variety of subjects, like science and literature, history and math, art and Bible—a feat that was becoming less and less attainable as scholarship proliferated in the modern era. At the same time schooling was spreading to more and more children of the British empire, making this ideal less and less viable, or even desirable for teachers specifically. Teachers were no longer scholars. Specialization had virtually ruled that out. 

And for Mason the practice of narrating from rich texts allows the teacher to focus more, not less, on the “moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction” that students really need. As she says at the end of her 1st chapter on “self-education” in her final volume Toward a Philosophy of Education:

“In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily. The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.” (vol 6 pg 32)

Narration focuses on living books or rich texts as a means of providing the most vibrant and vital source of thought, while relieving the average teacher of the burden of inspiration. She can be a philosopher-guide even in territory she has not mastered to the point of being able to speak on it with power and conviction. 

Exceptions to Focusing on Rich Texts Only

There is an exception clause to Charlotte Mason’s nixing of oral teaching, and that is foreign languages. In her 6th volume Toward a Philosophy of Education, Mason reports on a development in foreign language instruction at her House of Education (the training school for future teachers and governesses) and the Parents Union School at Fairfield where they were apprentice-teachers:

“The French mistress gives, let us suppose, a lecture in history or literature lasting, say, for half an hour. At the end the students will narrate the substance of the lecture with few omissions and few errors.” (vol. 6, p. 212)

It should be noted that this occurred with the senior students, and was a less frequent exercise than narrating from a text. Early training in French, German, Italian or Latin consisted of narrating from texts after they had been translated or “thoroughly studied in grammar, syntax and style” (vol. 6. p. 213). 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Mason’s concession to the value of oral teaching. As she herself admitted:

“We cannot do without the oral lesson—to introduce, to illustrate, to amplify, to sum up. My stipulation is that oral lessons should be like visits of angels, and that the child who has to walk through life, and has to find his intellectual food in books or go without, shall not be first taught to go upon crutches.” (Parents Review, Vol. 14, 1903, “Manifesto Discussion with Charlotte Mason”, pp. 907-913)

We have to wonder if Mason’s concerns would have been quite the same, if podcasts had been available in her day… or equally, if books had not been so cheap and readily available. Mason seems to base her advice to focus on narrating from books upon the practical realities of lifelong learning that were available in her day. Books would be the chief source of intellectual nourishment for her students, and so they should learn to walk on their own two feet in reading books from the start. 

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 2: The Main Goal of Using Narration

The second area in which Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration differs from the other educators of the classical era or renaissance is in the main pedagogical goal. For Quintilian, Aelius Theon and John Locke the main goal had been rhetorical training: the development of style through imitation. Students were learning, through narrating texts or stories, to speak fluently and to the point, with concise and clear expression. They might very well remember many of the exact details of things they narrated, and certainly stocking the memory with words, phrases, ideas, and common topics was necessary. But the point of all that memory-stocking and practice was the students’ own rhetorical style and fluency. 

As you’ll recall, this changed with Erasmus and Comenius in the renaissance. Now the focus was on the content of the teacher’s lecture or explanation. And they even made a point of emphasizing that the substance of the things, rather than the style of the teacher’s expression, was the important thing to be narrated in the child’s own way. For them, the main goal of narration is the students’ knowledge or memory of content, a scientific rather than rhetorical pedagogy, if you will. Students were learning, through narrating their teacher’s lecture or explanation, certain truths either as background to a text or as pictures of the way the world works. The emphasis is entirely upon narration as a sealing up of new knowledge, and not upon the development of style. 

Well, Charlotte Mason made an innovative leap. Familiar with John Locke’s narration from texts to develop style and fluency in speech and writing, and perhaps also with Comenius (given her quotations from him), she fuses the approach of the two to focus narration upon rich texts, with the main goal of memory of content or the development of knowledge. If you take a moment to glance at the table I have made below, “Narration in Historical Perspective Table,” you can see that she has pulled from the left and top right sections down into the bottom right.

Now here we must note one or two exceptions that seem to indicate that Charlotte Mason had rhetorical training in mind, even if she preferred for various reasons not to emphasize it as the main goal of narration. For instance, when discussing composition of the youngest students (Form I) in her 6th volume, she mentions the style of students’ narrations, as well as the accuracy of the content, saying, “The facts are sure to be accurate and the expression surprisingly vigorous, striking and unhesitating” (vol. 6, p. 190). However, she is still adamant against Locke’s method of coaching students to correct their narrations, whether written or oral, in the younger years: 

“Corrections must not be made during the act of narration, nor must any interruption be allowed.” (vol. 6, p. 191)

“Children must not be teased or instructed about the use of stops or capital letters. These things too come by nature to the child who reads, and the teacher’s instructions are apt to issue in the use of a pepper box for commas.” (vol. 6, p. 191)

“But let me again say there must be no attempt to teach composition.” (vol. 6, p. 192)

Even for the oldest students (Forms V and VI), Mason’s emphasis is against too much active focus on matters of style and rhetoric, preferring a natural imitative process that comes passively through a focus on content:

“Forms V and VI. In these Forms some definite teaching in the art of composition is advisable, but not too much, lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style which may encumber them for life. Perhaps the method of a University tutor is the best that can be adopted; that is, a point or two might be taken up in a given composition and suggestions or corrections made with little talk. Having been brought up so far upon stylists the pupils are almost certain to have formed a good style; because they have been thrown into the society of many great minds, they will not make a servile copy of any one but will shape an individual style out of the wealth of material they possess; and because they have matter in abundance and of the best they will not write mere verbiage.” (vol. 6, pp. 193-194)

In essence, Mason’s approach to the development of style was as an afterthought that will take care of itself by narrating rich texts if the teacher doesn’t get in the way. This approach will fall short of what many modern classical Christian educators desire, who value the revitalization of active teaching of the art of rhetoric as a major goal of the movement. We might situate Charlotte Mason in this conversation by imagining the dangers of a “stilted style” or overly programmatic formalist structure, that might result from certain types of prescriptive rhetorical training. The long, natural process of narration that Mason envisioned might, in and of itself, subvert the dangers of formalism in our students’ writing and speaking, even if our schools do engage in somewhat more active coaching in grammar, punctuation, style and rhetorical forms than she envisioned. 

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 3: The Method of Narration

We leave to the last the method of narration, whether oral or written. As we saw, classical educators often emphasized one or the other, or else both in sequence. Aelius Theon seemed to envision older pupils, trained in writing previously, coming into his rhetorical school ready to write their narrations immediately. Quintilian, and John Locke after him, envisioned a process that started earlier with oral narration, moving to written narration and composition exercises as students grew in facility with the skill of putting pen to paper. From reading in between the lines of their comments, Erasmus seemed to envision written narrations to be turned in to the teacher, while Comenius implied students becoming teachers explaining truths aloud to the rest of the class after the teacher had first done so. 

Charlotte Mason provides the fullest vision for narration as a consistent pedagogical practice, where both oral and written narration play a consistent role in students’ education. Students gently progress to writing their own narrations as they are able. Examinations at the end of the term utilize written “narration” of any amount of knowledge previously stored in students’ memories by initial narration. Given how central narration became in Charlotte Mason’s schools, it is not surprising to find her and her schools after her innovating other creative ways to narrate through the fine and performing arts. Karen Glass quotes from an article in the Parents’ Review long after Mason’s death about the practice of artistic narrations:

“But is narration…always merely ‘telling back’? It must be, we know, the child’s answer to ‘What comes next?’ It can be acted, with good speaking parts and plenty of criticism from actors and onlookers; nothing may be added or left out. Map drawing can be an excellent narration, or, maybe, clay modelling will supply the means to answer that question, or paper and poster paints, or chalks, even a paper model with scissors and paste pot. Always, however, there should be talk as well, the answer expressed in words; that is, the picture painted, the clay model, etc., will be described and fully described, because, with few exceptions, only words are really satisfying.” (Know and Tell, pp. 46, 48)

It may be a matter of debate how much these dramatic and artistic forms of “narration” began during Charlotte Mason’s lifetime, and to what extent they would fall under her definition of narration. Interestingly, Helen Wix, the author of this article, emphasizes the need for words. Acted narrations require words necessarily and are attested nearer Miss Mason’s time (see the second block quote on Know and Tell, p. 48 from The Parents’ Review of 1924, the year after Mason’s death). We also know that illustrations of particular moments from a literature or history book were a common practice in PNEU schools that Mason supported. So I have included drawn and acted narrations as innovations of Charlotte Mason. But it seems clear that oral and written narration were always the core and regular daily methods of narration, while other artistic “narrations” featured as occasional experiences that kept things fresh. 

The Practice of Narration for Charlotte Mason and Classical Christian Educators Today

What can we learn from this history of narration to guide our practices today? I will conclude this series with a list of propositions and suggestions for the future of narration in our movements today. These twelve points summarize what we’ve learned and point forward to exciting possibilities for using narration as classical Christian and Charlotte Mason educators.

1. Narration began in the rhetorical tradition with the main goal of developing students’ style in rhetorical training.
2. Renaissance educators shifted the focus of narration from books to lectures and the goal of narration from style to knowledge of content. 
3. Charlotte Mason adapted narration from the tradition for her context in accordance with her philosophy of education and mind. 
4. Her innovations in narration included taking the focus on rich texts from the classical era and joining it with the main goal of knowledge of content from the Renaissance educators. 
5. She also elevated it to the core status of the primary teaching and learning tool of the PNEU, a development that has support from modern research on retrieval practice.
6. Therefore, classical Christian educators who adopt narration may want to revive some of the rhetorical training pedagogy from John Locke, Quintilian and Aelius Theon.
7. Educators who follow Charlotte Mason may also want to consider more carefully her concerns about training in style or composition and whether or not the concerns she had about creating a “stilted style” were responding to specific trends in composition or rhetoric instruction during her day. 
8. Perhaps some Masonites will opt for more explicit rhetorical training than she might have envisioned, even while avoiding the errors she was warning against.
9. Given the technological developments of our modern world in audio and video recording and the free accessibility of high quality material from “living” voices and scholars, both Masonites and classical Christian educators might want to expand the role of inspirational lectures and oral teaching in education, with narration as the learning tool for either content or style. 
10. Classical Christian educators may feel that many of their teachers (or video instructors) reach the level of “master-minds” (in Charlotte Mason’s terms) and therefore inspirational lectures should play a larger role in their schools, or online courses. 
11. If the power of the spoken word is gaining new prominence through video recording and sharing technologies, then perhaps the next important innovation in narration would be to employ video recordings of great modern orators for students to narrate with the goal of developing their own rhetorical style, while also learning content.
12. At the same time, the use of lectures/speeches as a focus of narration should not crowd out the central importance of rich texts (either for Charlotte Mason or the classical tradition). In our day and age, a facility with the thoughts of the best minds of earlier eras has never been more crucial for students’ development of moral wisdom and historical judgment. 

Hope you have enjoyed this series! Share your thoughts in the comments on why you think the history of narration matters.

Earlier articles in this series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

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(See Jason’s article on CSI “7 Steps to Narrating the Bible”!)

In biblical studies we seek to cultivate the habits of reverence, humility, submission to the text, and other qualities of faithful scholarship. But I propose another goal should rise to the top: enjoyment. The enjoyment that students have in reading a novel, or an eerie poem, or an adventure epic. 

When students are engaging with the Bible, we should hear laughter and gasps. We should see quizzical eyebrows and wide-eyed shock. I love to see students jumping out of their seats to be picked to identify a ‘hidden’ motif of Joshua. To see awkward blushes and grins, in unfolding the romance of Ruth and Boaz. To see shock and dismay over the violence of Genesis. And I had to laugh at my student’s obvious frustration, annotating her way through the book of Judges, with its noted cycle of idolatry: “Oh no… This is so wrong… Oh why? … That was cruel… This is just sad… Be smart and think!… Not again!”

My students read through the entire biblical canon in community, and their literary enjoyment of it is a memory that will last. Whether visually depicting the imagery of a Psalm or orally narrating the downward spiral of Genesis, students will remember Scripture as profound, holy, and artistically compelling. St. Augustine quipped, 

“Perhaps someone inquires whether the authors whose divinely-inspired writings constitute the canon, which carries with it a most wholesome authority, are to be considered wise only, or eloquent as well. A question which to me… is very easily settled. For where I understand these writers, it seems to me not only that nothing can be wiser, but also that nothing can be more eloquent.” 

 On Christian Doctrine, section 9

Why have we often missed the literary beauty of the Scriptures? Why do we move so quickly to “personal application,” while failing to linger in the episodes and the larger, sweeping narrative? Many a theologian has noted that we throw out good reading skills when it comes to the Bible—cutting the text into bite-size daily chunks, reading without context in mind, failing to find the author’s key themes and motifs. 

We have our modernity to blame. Theologian Peter Leithart depicts the Enlightenment and subsequent theological disputes as having moved evangelicals toward only half of the equation: unfolding the literal meaning and the moral application. But in Rehabilitating the Quadriga, Leithart explains that modern readers have missed out on the riches of Scripture by overlooking the medieval fourfold approach. We have ignored allegorical (or typological) reading and anagogical (or forward-looking reading, in light of final things). He urges us to recover more ancient ways of reading Scripture. 

Many modern advocates of theological interpretation of scripture are seeking to revive the more ancient, literary and typological approach to Scripture, and the good news is that we can implement this in K-12 Bible classes, even without personal training in the field. We can apply best-practices from teaching other literature as we study the canon. Here are 5 practical tactics to cultivate an enjoyment of scripture through a literary approach:

1. Annotating a Reader Bible 

This methodology revolves around close-reading and annotating of the text, so it is crucial that students have their own copy of a simple pew Bible or reader Bible to serve as their consumable textbook. Most reader Bibles are published in 4-6 volumes to complete the canon, and they are available in most translations. Students will build a personal library of the whole biblical canon. The embossed hardcover on these reader Bibles simply say “Pentateuch” or “Poetry,” but inside, the Bible looks like a novel or set of poems. 

Students are taught to treat this book as the valuable resource it is—to mark it, underline, and annotate neatly in pencil. A black-and-white composition book completes the required resources. Students will add quotes to this commonplace book over the six years that they read through the canon. It is a solid setup for a literary approach: a hardcover “novel” plus a growing journal of quotations. 

2. Seeking Simplicity: Multum non Multa

In keeping with the classical principle of “much, not many things,” we should cultivate long-term focus on a text rather than jumping between many resources. Students can sustain attention through a whole book or whole canonical section.  

To strip away distractions, students are asked to read with a pencil on the text, annotating their way through a full book. But there are two ways to practice sustained attention: 

1) Close reading of dense chapters, full of meaning. (Read at least twice.) Or

2) Longer periods of reading through several chapters in one sitting. 

“Long form reading teaches the students to follow a plot, poem, or letter from start to finish,” noted Zach. “It also sharpens the students’ attention span by requiring them to work and remain focused. Long form reading isn’t done every class period, because we take time to dive-deep at key moments, but either way, students should interact with the text first-hand prior to the teachers dispensing information.”

It is best to read in a good translation, to follow-along on a hard-copy as a skilled reader reads relatively swiftly, and then stop and do a close reading at key moments. Since they wouldn’t stop after every paragraph of the Iliad (because it’s lengthy), they keep up a similar pace with much of the Bible’s historical narratives. Otherwise, it can be hard to finish! 

Both reading methods seem . . . basic. Does this reduce the role of the teacher or eliminate direct instruction? By no means. But it does mean that the teacher’s role switches from lecture to hands-on coaching in skills. “Students benefit from habits and routines,” Zach explained. “Learning to read Scripture is like apprenticeship. The teacher is the lead learner and should model habits that the students will acquire over time, after much repetition. Good biblical reading should be seen as training.” 

3. Embracing Literary Skills 

Students at Veritas Christian Academy (the school where I teach Pentateuch and OT historical books) quickly learn that they will utilize literary skills daily in Bible class. There is no way to follow a complex text without using tools of genre, structure, precise vocabulary and synonyms. 

Precise attention to language is also how biblical theologians do their work. Many insights found by scholars are missed by average readers only because one’s literary understanding has to be increased to see the connections. Bible study tools that have been discussed for decades (“Listen for repetition”) only work when students understand the range of synonyms for a given word. 

4. Connecting with Ancient History

Since the canon is a collection of texts written in ancient Hebrew and Greek, we need to spend more time entering into the world of ancient history. Zach notes,

“Those who authored the biblical text had many similarities to us, but they also saw the world differently and we should learn from their worldview. It requires the reader to take on an ancient imagination.”

But discussing ancient history doesn’t have to be a dry, scholarly affair. In fact, since Veritas’ reader Bibles don’t contain scholarly footnotes or commentary, students have to use class discussion to work out their existing knowledge of ancient cultures and enter into “what this probably meant.” 

And don’t underestimate how much ancient knowledge is gained simply through broad reading of the Old Testament. The importance of land, agriculture, fertility, offspring, local gods, and differing gender-social roles is evident directly in Genesis.

Unleash your students’ creativity in wondering what life was like before the modern era! How did the ancients pass on writing, produce needed goods, utilize power, or reason about natural and supernatural forces? Even a bit of ancient background and ancient imagination goes a long way. 

5. Unleashing a Hunt for Imagery

Recurring words and images create through-lines across the Bible. Teach students to listen for repeated ideas, even if they don’t use the exact same word, and even if they seem like a minor concrete detail. These details will add up to a richer, more beautiful story when we keep track of them. But because motifs lie under the surface, we have to act like detectives. Have you heard repetition and wondered, “Is this a whole-Bible motif?” Check a scholarly work like the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Then do some thinking: What would this image mean to ancient people? Where did we see this motif earlier? Does it run all the way from Genesis to Revelation?

“We can be a lead learner, training students as apprentices,” Zach encourages. “Equip them with skills they need to be those with ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear’ God’s words, and then let them experience their own journey. My students often see aspects of the biblical text that I haven’t even noticed. I appreciate how we get to journey toward truth together.” 

A literary approach to the Bible lays a rich feast of manifold, complex meaning. What better could we spread before our students? Yes, they will have the choice as they grow, whether to go on believing. But I don’t think people want to walk away from a feast of meaning that is so very rich. When you start to see everything in existence illuminated by the light of Christianity, with all these layers of meaning—every concrete thing having a deeper, poetic, symbolic meaning. That is very hard to walk away from. It would constitute a loss to move from sacred, poetic living into non-meaning. Bare atoms. Nothingness. The richer the theology, the more lasting the faith. The imagery of the Bible can fuel new imagination for a kingdom way of living.

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The notable weakness of the supervisor-driven approach is that it is…supervisor-driven. Growing as a professional entails two crucial components: increasing in one’s knowledge of the particular field and increasing in self-awareness of one’s performance in that field. As long as the principal is setting the goals, observing teachers in their classrooms, and giving feedback, the teacher remains a largely passive rather than active participant in her professional development. 

In this blog series, I am exploring insights from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0 for the classical classroom. Lemov is a field expert in the charter school movement and has worked tirelessly over the years to bridge the achievement gap in inner-city schools. While he may not be operating with a classical education framework in mind, at EdRen we have found many of his techniques to be beneficial for the classical classroom all the same. In this blog, I will examine Lemov’s insights on professional development, especially the importance of a teacher and data-driven approach that allows teachers to own their own development.

The Desire to Grow

In Part 1: An Introduction of this blog series, I began by clarifying some key concepts. I explained that classical education is intent on making better humans; it is, therefore, a humanizing education, one that views students as persons and not merely economic producers. Humans have minds, hearts, souls, and bodies, and each of these components need educating. As important as job training is, it does not sufficiently prepare someone to live a deep and meaningful life. Students need significant servings of truth, goodness, and beauty to feed their hungry minds, nourish their souls, and guide their decision-making. Kevin Clark, a thought leader in the movement, goes so far as to say that he views his chief job as “to lead souls with words.”

If classical schools are going to strive for such a laudable aim, then professional development is crucial. The heartbeat of any school is its faculty and, in particular, the ability of the faculty to teach. By “teach,” of course, I don’t mean merely the dissemination of information. I mean the conscious act of leading students to pursue wisdom through cultivating virtue and engaging in disciplined mental and physical training. This is no easy task; it requires a unique combination of tact, resolve, confidence, empathy, and, perhaps most importantly, a desire to grow personally. 

You see, a teacher won’t get very far in leading his students to pursue wisdom if he himself hasn’t set off on the journey. Like Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring, students need a mentor to imitate. Someone older and wiser. For Frodo, of course, it was his Uncle Bilbo. When Frodo was twelve-years old, he went to live in Bag End with his uncle, following an unexpected family tragedy. During those formative years, Bilbo taught Frodo the Elvish language and much of the lore of the Middle-Earth. But most importantly, Bilbo and Frodo lived together, giving Frodo the rare opportunity, especially for a hobbit, of doing life with someone who had been on an adventure. When the time came for Frodo to set out on an adventure of his own, Frodo already had an image in his mind of the way forward. Although neither Bilbo nor Frodo realized it at the time, their many years together forged the very path on which Frodo would one day tread. 

Like Frodo, students need to experience life with older and wiser men and women who are on the pathway of virtue. These mentors, called teachers in school parlance, embody the growth mindset and desire to grow personally even as they help their pupils grow.

Field Experts and Master Craftsmen

But in order for teachers to embody this growth mindset and truly desire to grow personally, they need to be supported to drive their own development. The supervisor-approach is insufficient for this aim. I am not suggesting, of course, that teachers should operate autonomously. They need mentors themselves to lend support, provide feedback, and formally evaluate progress gained. But the administrator-teacher dynamic should always be oriented toward empowering the teacher to drive her own development.

When it comes to developing classroom instruction in particular, Doug Lemov demonstrates in Teach Like a Champion 2.0 that the data-driven approach, culled by the teacher, is superior. He argues that this approach, “…considers teachers not just as recipients and implementers of the field knowledge, but as creators of it–problem-solvers, entrepreneurs, generators of the professional insight. It makes teachers intellectuals” (8). Imagine with Lemov if teachers viewed themselves as field experts in the craft of teaching. This self-understanding would lead to all sorts of exciting possibilities for driving one’s personal growth.

Another analogy that is helpful here is that of craftsmanship. In Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Newport argues that in a knowledge economy, a successful professional must adopt the mindset of a craftsman. Rather than subscribing to the modern myth of “follow your passion,” knowledge workers should focus their time and attention on cultivating rare and valuable skills. They should obsess over how they can add value in a particular industry. Imagine again if teachers took on this mindset. They wouldn’t feel comfortable passively waiting for the next classroom observation. They would constantly be on the hunt, looking for the next best resource or technique that will enhance their effectiveness as teachers.

Ideology-Driven Guidance

As I mentioned in my first article, Lemov suggests that there are generally three drivers of advice that administrators give to teachers. The first form is ideology-driven. This advice tends to focus on some predetermined vision of what a classroom should look like and is often manifested by a checklist for teachers to follow. While this approach to coaching teachers can be helpful, ultimately, we must acknowledge that it is supervisor-driven. Too quickly, the teacher can become overly focused on teaching to please an administrator, rather than teaching for the growth of her students.

In the classical school movement, we can too easily settle for this kind of advice. We articulate our vision for a classical education, distill it into a checklist, and visit different classrooms to cross the items off. “Teaches Latin for forty minutes. Check. Leads a discussion on C.S. Lewis. Check. Asks questions rather than dominates through lecture. Check.”

The problem with this approach to teacher guidance, Lemov points out, is twofold. First, it puts the supervisor in the driver seat. The checklist is a thought product created and implemented by administration with no meaningful contribution offered by the teacher. Second, it unnecessarily privileges ideology over outcomes. To be clear, both our necessary, and ideology-driven guidance unduly neglects the latter.

Research-Driven Guidance

The second driver of advice tends to be research. Lemov ranks this approach higher than ideology-driven, but acknowledges that it, too, is not without its problems. He provides a litany of concerns about blindly following research:

“If research supports a particular action, does that mean you should always perform that action, to the exclusion of everything else, or should you combine it with other things? How often, in what settings, and with what other actions? And how do you meld them?…There’s a lot of research out there of varying quality, and even useful parts are interpreted with a mix of good sense, cautious fidelity, outright distortion, and blind orthodoxy. This can result in ‘research’ justifying poor teaching as easily as good.” (7)

Research is helpful, but only when it is analyzed and adapted by professionals to achieve a specific goal. All too often we hear “Research states…” and we are expected to blindly assent, especially in light of the scientistic world we live in. The reality is that research is conducted in a particular time and place, and therefore any principles gleaned must be implemented and studied in its future applied context. Like ideology, research can be disconnected from outcomes, and lead to ineffective results.

Data-Driven Guidance

The third driver of advice for teachers and the one Lemov ultimately endorses is data-driven guidance. This approach is based “…not on what should happen but on what did happen when success was achieved” (7). For Lemov, success is determined by state test scores controlled for poverty (14). After identifying the schools who performed exceptionally well on these exams, Lemov and his team visited these schools to study how those teachers approached teaching, relationships, lesson-planning, and so on.

Now, as classical educators, we are right to bristle at this notion of success. We understand that success isn’t reducible to a state test score. To a certain extent, even Lemov agrees with this, which is partially why I find his writing so refreshing. Lemov’s point isn’t state test scores. It is data. Lemov writes,

“Even if you disagree with my conclusions, whether you are a teacher or a leader in charge of a school, a school district, a state, or a nation, you can use a data-driven approach to take your best shot at measuring the outcome you think is most valuable, finding its best practitioners, and inferring guidance from their work” (8). 

As classical educators, we need to hone in on the outcomes we think are most valuable and then follow Lemov’s advice to identify and study the master craftsmen in achieving those outcomes. We did this a few years ago at the school I work at. We noticed that year after year one particular teacher helped her class perform excellent poetry and scripture recitations, regardless of the perceived strength or weakness of a particular class. We studied her technique and asked her to catalogue what she believed contributed most towards the excellent result.

The final product was a training document full of techniques that we now use year after year. And as a side benefit, the process of analyzing and discussing what made for a strong recitation coaching lesson led to a unique spirit of camaraderie amongst the faculty. Lemov himself confirms this benefit, writing, “Teaching, as it turns out, is a team sport, where teachers make each other better fastest by building robust cultures where they study and share insights about their work” (14).

Conclusion

In my next installment in this series, I’ll begin to examine the various techniques revealed through Lemov’s data-driven approach. Interestingly, one of the fascinating observations about many of the techniques is how simple they are to implement. To this point, Lemov offers this caution:

“Many of the techniques you will read about in this book may at first seem mundane, unremarkable, and even disappointing. They are not always especially innovative. They are not always intellectually startling. They sometimes fail to march in step with educational theory. But they work. As a result, they yield an outcome that more than compensates for their occasionally humble appearance.” (10)

By “educational theory,” of course, he means modern educational theory. He has in mind the sorts of theories dependent on the premise that education practices must be hip, innovative, quantifiable, or techy for them to be effective. But as Lemov himself pointed out, that’s not the direction the data points. Instead, often the data pointed toward practices of simplicity, ones that simply call on students to do the work of learning. These practices include forms of retrieval practice, akin to narration, as well as instilling finely tuned classroom routines, akin to elements of habit training.

At the end of the day, as teachers set out on the path of owning their own growth, may they be driven, not by test scores, hip techniques, or even simplicity, but Lady Wisdom herself.

Questions for Classical Educators 

Doug Lemov has given us a lot to think about. I would love to hear responses from readers and even invite you to brainstorm with me some answers to the following questions:

• How should classical educators measure success and successful teaching?
• What practices are consistently present in successful teaching?
• How do we equip teachers to be field experts, the generators of knowledge and professional insight on successful teaching?

Thanks for reading! Please respond in the comment section below! 

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Some, no doubt, will respond to this critique with raised eyebrows. After all, the movement has unlocked a rich treasure chest full of wisdom and insight from master teachers throughout the centuries. These riches include Hebrew wisdom literature, Plato’s dialogues, catechesis practices of the church fathers, the rhetoric schools of Rome, and all sorts of reflections on education throughout the Middle Ages and Enlightenment era. So what’s the problem? 

One core challenge is that many teachers aren’t equipped to go out into the fields of old to glean. It is difficult to pick up a book from several centuries ago and comprehend it, much less know how to apply it in the 21st century. Even if a teacher develops a sense for how things were done once upon a time, it can be difficult to implement those practices in a modern day classroom.

Recovering these lost tools of learning, of course, is one of the challenges and joys of being a classical educator. Those of us who have wandered into this small but growing corner of the educational universe often feel both inspired and humbled by this old-but-new reality for how we ought to think about and practice education. Reading Aristotle on virtue formation, for example, can be both rewarding and perplexing. Sometimes the philosopher uses language that is unfamiliar or draws upon antiquated analogies. Nevertheless, reading Aristotle within a community of curious educators can lead to fresh insights and inspiring dialogue on the craft of teaching. The challenge is worth it. 

An Educational Renaissance

The aim of Educational Renaissance is to help promote a rebirth of ancient wisdom for the modern era. We seek to achieve this through engaging in rigorous exegesis of both ancient texts and modern research. If modern education made the error of jettisoning the insights of education before, say, 1900, an equal but opposite error exists: dismissing all the insights about education that come after 1900. In order to avoid both extremes, we need to view the history of educational philosophy as it truly exists, as one extended conversation across time and space in search of what is true, good and beautiful. This is what scholars call the Great Conversation. 

One primary way we have sought to join and contribute to the conversation here at EdRen is through retrieving the educational writings of Charlotte Mason. Mason lived one hundred years ago, at the turn of the 20th century. Her years of teaching experience in Britain equipped her with striking insight regarding what education is and what it could be. 

[If you haven’t already, I encourage you to download Jason’s and Patrick’s free eBooks on Charlotte Mason, one on the practice of narration and the other on habit training.]

The foundational premise of Mason’s philosophy is that children are persons made in God’s image, created with a unique capacity to think, relate, and ultimately, live. For her, the notion that children are persons serves as the ultimate litmus test for what educational methods are and are not permitted. Methods which take seriously the eternal value of the minds, hearts, bodies, and souls of students should be embraced. Methods that view students as clay to be formed or cattle to be herded should be shunned. 

Educating Persons, not Economic Producers

Fortunately, we inhabitants of the 21st century are situated comfortably away from those dehumanizing methods of a bygone era. Through modern educational theory and public policy reform, children, at least in the United States, have been rescued from working brutal hours in unsafe conditions and given a proper education.

Or have they?

Certainly children today have it significantly better than children ever did in the history of the world. This claim can be verified both quantitatively (the overall percentage of students enrolled in schools today) and qualitatively (the knowledge and skills students learn). And yet, it remains to be seen whether “a proper education” is, in fact, provided. Proper for whom?

In today’s technocratic, scientistic, and pragmatic society, the vision for modern education is clear: a cohort of college-educated, high-earning, tech-savvy, numbers-driven careerists. To achieve this vision, one must simply follow the steps of the celebrated recipe: Train students in college-prep skills. Make STEM the central component of the curriculum. Focus on what is most expedient. Take college entrance exams over and over. What you bake is what you make: students stepping into high-earning careers. 

Now don’t get me wrong: this vision does have its merits. College is important. STEM skills are as valuable now as they ever have been. Earning a living wage to support one’s family is admirable. We ought to glean the good contained in this vision for all that it is worth. But at the same time, we must recognize its shortfalls. This vision fails to take seriously the full-orbed humanity and personhood of its students. People are worth more than the sum of their W2’s and careers are not the only things that count as callings. 

In other words, today’s educators aren’t simply teaching tomorrow’s economic producers. They are educating future fathers and mothers, neighborhood volunteers, city council members, and church congregants. Potential for these roles can’t be summarized in a GPA, but preparation for them can occur during the school day all the same. This is a humanizing education with a humanizing goal: to make good humans. Not “good” in the moralistic, pharisaical, compliant sense. Actually good: honorable, virtuous, noble.

Good Bankers or Good Humans: The Goal of Classical Education

In his own way, C.S. Lewis makes precisely this point. He writes that a proper education transforms a student from “an unregenerate little bundle of appetites” into “the good man and the good citizen” (Image and Education: Essays and Reviews, ed. Walter Hooper, 24). Lewis goes on to differentiate between this sort of humanizing education and mere training. Such training, he writes, “aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician, . . . or a good surgeon” (22).

Now certainly we cannot do without good bankers, electricians, and surgeons. Nor could we get very far without scientists, engineers, and computer programmers. But we must not mistake the preparation for these disciplines with education. True education frees (Latin: liber) a person from appetitive instincts and equips her for self-rule. This is another way to talk about the goal of a humanizing education: liberating humans for a life of seeking the good. Along this road to virtue, humans can pick up all sorts of different skills and training, in consonance with their God-given abilities, careers, and vocations, including banking. But this sort of training should always come second to a greater purpose.

Interestingly, psychologist Jordan Peterson touches on a similar point in his bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. After refuting Rousseau’s doctrine that children are born innocent and only become evil through the corrupting influence of society, Peterson goes on to argue that children must be morally shaped and informed in order to thrive (122). It is the parent’s responsibility to discipline a child, indeed, parent rather than befriend, and provide the structure for a self-regulated life. Job preparation is not enough, nor are temporary states of happiness. Children need to be called to pursue a certain standard, a standard of goodness, and they need support from a loving adult to help them along the way. This is equally true both in the home and at school. 

Insights from “Teach Like a Champion”

Recall what I wrote earlier: there are two pitfalls when examining the history of educational philosophy. One is to ignore all the insights that came before 1900 and the other is to ignore all that came after. In this spirit, I want to conclude this article by introducing a handbook on teaching practices that was published in 2015: Teach Like a Champion 2.0 by Doug Lemov. In articles to follow, I intend to distill helpful practices and principles from this book for the classical classroom.

Admittedly, the subtitle of this book is reminiscent of the pragmatic vision of modern education I decried above; it reads: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. One may judge based on this messaging that the content of this book would have little that is beneficial for the moral purpose of education for which I am advocating. However, beyond a cursory reading, it becomes clear rather quickly that there is, in fact, much gold to be mined.

But first, a word about the book’s background. Teach Like a Champion 2.0 is a product of the broader charter school movement. Charter schools are private schools that receive public funding for the purpose of introducing school choice to families in typically low-income areas. Since they operate semi-autonomously from the state, charter schools don’t have to follow the same curricular policies as public schools. Doug Lemov, the author of the book and former director of Uncommon Schools, is a seasoned teacher and administrator in this movement.

Lemov begins the introduction to Teach Like a Champion 2.0 with the fundamental insight that great teaching is an art and that great art relies on “the mastery and application of foundational skills, learned through diligent study” (1). In other words, a four-year degree in education isn’t enough to produce great teachers. It can be a great foundation, to be sure, but great teaching requires what all great art demands: practice, experience, and careful study of the discipline. 

But how do you coach great teaching? This is Lemov’s fundamental question and it connects back to the introduction of this article. In the classical education renewal movement, the true purpose of education has been highlighted, but not the practice. It is one thing to laud the merits of classical education; it is quite another to implement it in the classroom.

Ideology-Driven Advice

Lemov suggests three general drivers for the typical advice offered for coaching teachers: ideology, research, and data (6). For now, I will focus solely on the first driver: ideology.

Ideology-driven advice tends to focus on some predetermined vision of what a classroom should look like and is usually followed up by a checklist for teachers to follow. In classical classrooms, much of the advice is ideology-driven. Schools espouse their convictions about a morally formative education and a liberal arts curriculum and teachers are instructed to follow suit.

Somewhat predictably, Lemov critiques this approach. He writes, “Ideology-based guidance contributes to the development of schools where teachers are always trying to do lots of things that people are telling them to do, instead of using their insight, problem-solving abilities, and a wide array of tools to achieve specific goals. The result, often, is an administrator with a checklist” (7). In short, this method prioritizes the adherence to principles over tangible outcomes. 

We need to tread carefully here. On the one hand, Lemov’s critique is a reflection of modern education’s obsession with technicism and its notion of success. Jason and Patrick have both written articles on this obsession and provide wisdom for avoiding its pitfalls. It is all too easy for educators today to be lulled into a false sense of confidence regarding their educational efforts through examining “the data.” 

But on the other hand, Lemov has a point. Even if we agree with the ideological driver in question (e.g. classical education), we can fail to take outcomes seriously. Noble intentions are to be praised, but we must not be afraid to look behind the curtain and determine to what extent actual learning is occurring. How we measure this determination, of course, requires wisdom and prudence. But it is important nonetheless.

Sorry to end on a cliff-hanger, but my time is up. In my next article, I plan to continue this discussion on optimal coaching advice for teachers and then move into teaching techniques presented by Doug Lemov that are amenable for the classical classroom.

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