What is Classical Christian Education? Series with Dr. Michael Adkins

0:00What is classical Christian education? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is often more complex than people expect. In this ongoing Base Camp Live series, we're sitting down with key leaders in the movement to help them frame up the best answers and why it matters so much today. In this episode, Dr. Michael Adkins joins us to offer a fresh perspective on how this time-tested approach to education helps cultivate order and wisdom and clarity in a very fragmented world-shaping the next generation in both our schools and our homes. All this and more on this episode of Base Camp Live. Mountains, we all face them as we seek to influence the next generation. Get equipped to conquer the challenges, some at the peak, and shape exceptionally thoughtful compassionate and flourishing human beings. We call it ancient future education for raising the next generation. Welcome to Base Camp Live. Now your host, Davies Owens. Welcome to another episode, Davies Owens, your host here on the journey of raising the

1:02next generation. I was looking recently at the calendar thinking, oh my goodness, it's actually going to be 10-year anniversary of the Base Camp Live podcast. Later this fall, we'll have to do some special programming. It's hard to believe we've been on this journey for 10 years, and we couldn't do it without you guys listening and being a part of this each week, you know, podcasting. When I started, I still find it somewhat humorous because 10 years ago, podcasting was still very new, and I remember people curious about, well, what is this thing, even one particular question I received, which was, this must be a gardening term because you're casting pods out there of something. That was early on. You know when people ask you that, it was early on, but I'm so thankful for each of you taking time to listen each week. I don't take it for granted. It is a very one-way conversation, though, because I seem to do more of the talking over here, but I love to hear from all of you. Info at Base Camp Live, drop me an email, let me know what is on your mind. Big shout-out in this episode to a couple of folks that are in the Base Camp Live and Zipcast community, Victoria Harris, head of school at Providence School of Tifton in Tifton,

2:05Georgia, as well as Alyssa Maldon, head of school at the Providence Academy in Rockwall, Texas. Thank you for being a part of our listening community each week and for being on the journey of raising up the next generation at your classical Christian schools. Also want to just mention one of the things that we do, of course, is part of the extended work of Base Camp Live and really my full-time job is running Zipcast. We now have over 100 schools, about 10,000 listeners on a typical week. It's a very highly valued resource from school leaders and parents through this really fairly simple process, fairly simple process of having a weekly short form audio message from your school leaders to parents, along with access to our growing content library on topics ranging from parenting to Christian education. I want to encourage you, if you're not an Zipcast school, to consider signing up this spring and getting familiar with this simple process, it's also very affordable. And on top of all that, we're launching this summer a Zipcast for teachers so that schools have a way to connect internally each week with even more efficiency to their teaching

3:10staff and team. Email me directly with any questions or check out our new website at zipcast.media. We so thank you for your partnership, as we're all part of this growing work of raising up the next generation and connecting together each week at Basecamp Live, where we have that image of sitting around the fire warming up and encouraging one another and with Zipcast, giving you the microphone to speak into your own community and bring encouragement. In this conversation this week, I sit down with Dr. Michael Adkins. He's a director of academics and faculty member at St. Agnes School in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has taught English and history and theology and Latin in elementary, middle and high school for over two decades, and he currently works on curriculum and professional development and institutional advancement. He is an educational consultant, a public speaker and a retreat leader. He has also worked extensively in curriculum development, school improvement, pedagogy and classical liberal arts education. In other words, he is more than qualified to answer the question, what is classical

4:11Christian education? You know, both serve as well on the Board of Academic Advisors for the Classical Learning Test. He is married to Cynthia, with whom he leads the online book club community for Word on the Fire Institute, and together they have nine children. Before we jump into the conversation, a special thank you to several folks who have sponsored this episode. Our friends at The Wise Phone, a great alternative to a smart phone. Dr. Robert Little John and Chuck Evans, and their wonderful book and resource wisdom and eloquence, as well as the team at Wilson Hill Academy and the Herzog Foundation and Life Architects Coaching. All of these partners, you can learn more in our partner page, great resources, but without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Michael Adkins. Michael, welcome to Base Camp Live. Thank you so much for having me, Dave. He's a really appreciate it's an honor to be here. Well, I appreciate you being here. We've had the chance to get to know each other a little bit, but I'd love for the listeners to

5:11hear a little bit of your journey into education, classical education. Share with folks kind of how all this came about for you. Yeah, I'll try to be brief here, but I was a public school kid, and I was really excited about what we called in public school social studies, because in my high school, a really special teacher created a double period class. It was a mix of social studies in English, and he created this interdisciplinary course in which we intermingled the study of history and literature and art and all kinds of things, and that really got me really excited about the possibility of teaching. I mentioned to you this before when we first met, but another huge influence on me as a kid was, honestly, Indiana Jones, and watching Indiana Jones movies. Dr. Jones, he was pretty cool, and I remember one of his students in the class scenes is winking at him, this attractive young girl, and then he's going off and hunting treasure and

6:16archaeology and all that, and so I was really attracted to study because I wanted to be like my teacher in school, and I also wanted the opportunity to go on on archaeological digs and do things around the world. So that was the beginning of it, and then I had a major conversion or reversion, I should say, to my Catholic faith after my mom passed away, and I was on the way with the classics and really interested in getting a PhD in classical studies. I was looking at the University of Minnesota, and after my mom died, I kind of re-aligned my priorities in life and really got into classical Christian education, basically, and so I ended up teaching at an ecumenical classical Christian school for seven years, and in the process of my reversion, I then entered a master's program in Catholic studies at the University of St. Thomas, and I was teaching Latin,

7:20I was teaching English, and so when I had my reversion to the faith, all of a sudden I realized two things that I really loved could come together, and that's a love of history, a love of art, and then combined with my sort of re-found faith after my mom's passing, and so for me, the Catholic world and Catholic studies was this foray into integrating the wonderful, fascinating things of the ancient world, and I was a classics major in college, and intermingling those two and bringing them together, so I was really excited about forming young disciples, and then drawing them into this life of the mind, and getting them to be engaged young people, and really getting an education, a really solid education in the classics that I never got in public school, while also coupling that with formation in their faith. I love the fact that Indiana Jones plays such a significant role. It's easy to laugh at that, but you can see where

8:26so often we probably don't market ourselves as well as we could as classical folks that come join us and you can spend your adult years living in a library or something, and I was opposed to this life of adventure and discovery that's such a part of it. We're doing this series on just trying to explain what is classical Christians. I wanted to ask you, if somebody came up to you on the sidewalk and said, hey, you're Mr. Classical guy, what is classical Christian education? Do you have just sort of a go-to answer to that? Yeah, my quick pithy elevator is, you know, we talk about in your progressive standard model of education, we talk about college and career readiness, right? But classical education is not about, that's about doing, right? Credentials and doing. College and career is very much, I accomplish certain tasks, I do certain things, skills. Whereas I really believe that classical education, especially classical Christian or Catholic education, is about being. And so in my quick differences, it's about being rather than doing,

9:32it's about the type of person that you're cultivating and forming and educating, rather than simply credentialing them to progress through the world of work. And we're going to obviously get into that in a moment here in our topic, but you know, typical American education, Americans are very much pull themselves up by their bootstraps, very much. We think of that the self-made man, we accomplish these tasks and we earn these credentials and we move on to the next level. And the point of it all, at least when I was in public school, whenever I asked, why are we doing this? It was always something like, so you can pass to get to the next grade or you can get to the next level so that you can then go to college, so that you can then get a job, so that you can make money, and then you can buy stuff. And really, classical education is more about cultivating a type of person. And so it's about being, not about doing. And what ends up happening is when you cultivate

10:33a person who loves, loves things worth loving, loves things that are true, good and beautiful, and they read the rich, you know, rich texts from our culture, they have cultural literacy, they know things, they're engaged, they end up being the most useful person for society. And the most unuseful person is just somebody who's a self-made man who's really interested in credentials and doesn't value anything beyond what's useful. And so we don't want a society full of utilitarians, we want a society full of people who care about what is actually true, good and beautiful, and they themselves challenge themselves each day to be the best version of themselves. That's what we want. Well, and again, I'm glad you put the point in there that it's, it is true, good and beautiful, but those underlying principles of education, then ultimately form, if you're going to play, you know, if you want to go head to head in the utilitarian battle,

11:33we're still going to win in that game as well. And that's, I mean, that's, I'm kind of the punchline of the whole story here. And I think that's, you know, a lot of parents listening by into this classical thing, probably for grammar school and, you know, it's good character development, it's publicly and sound and all of that, but then it becomes this, the pragmatism utilitarian poll starts coming along and the fear is, I'm handicapping my child in somebody because they're not going to be able to get into the stem thing that we want them in or whatever that may be. Absolutely not. It's so funny. We, we had our freshman registration night for all our new freshmen coming in, students coming from our eighth grade and new students coming in. And I tell them a little bit about what we do as a, as a classical liberal arts school. And one of the, I always find funny is, is, is so many schools that, again, they're high schools. They're, they're, they're talking about what they do with, with teenagers. And we have this common expression of critical thinking. And I always get the audience and stitches when I go, the people who came

12:36up with us, have they ever met a teenager before. Ninjas are just about the most critical human beings on earth, like everything's dumb, everything's stupid, nothing is good enough, everything's flooring. And I said, we don't want more critical thinking. What we want is logical thinking, thinking that is grounded in the traditions, thinking that gives them a foundation to build off from. But if, but really critical thinking is, is not just, well, that's just a fancy expression for, for being able to analyze things well. Well, kind of. The, the critical thinking also has an implication of skepticism and picking things apart. I mean, critical theory is, most, most high school English students learn to read literature through some sort of lens, which is critical theory. So at any rate, we need logical thinkers in our team among our teams, not more critical thinking cultivate. It is such, yeah, I often when I talk with student groups, I'll actually,

13:41kind of, it's a little silly maybe a bit, we've already talked about Indian agents, but I'll just talk about how, you know, so the, I think a fascination in our culture with a lot of superheroes and marvel or whatever else it's because we want to think there is some, would that be amazing if you had this ability that no one else had? And I, and I like to say, well, in fact, that is what you are getting. You are getting a superpower where you will be able to walk into the marketplace and be able to discern wisely and to think critically and to not just be at the mercy of sort of group think like the rest of the world around you. So talk. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a, it's definitely a different way to see the world. Well, but I want to, you know, again, just trying to, for a lot of folks listening, they arrived at the classical Christian school because the uniforms were cute and it was a little bit better character development in this school, school down the street. And we don't often realize the, the, the flow of history that we're walking into where there were a part of, especially as it relates to the formation of civil society. And I think this is again like to take it up if you not just not just what's in it for my kid

14:44and getting him to a better college, but literally the hope of our, of our nations, I believe, rest largely in this important project of forming the next generation. I mean, I, I'll often begin talks when I speak at schools by making the audacious claim, which I'd love your thoughts on, I'm saying basically classical education, classical Christian education is the last best hope for our civilization. Is that an unreasonable statement? Is that a, how do you react when you hear that? Yeah, I, I think you're absolutely right. And I'm not just saying that because you're the host of the show, but it's really, I agree with me too, but yeah, that's exactly it. There's a saying, I don't know if this is Marshall McLuhan, but the nature of a thing is what it does. And you look at public education, it's extremely successful. It's extremely successful. We've, we've got, you know, a couple generations of kids who don't really believe that our country is anything special. They don't believe in free speech. They don't understand what the Second Amendment is all about.

15:49They want to get rid of the electoral college. You know, they want to stack this Supreme Court. There's, there is, you know, the nature of a thing is what it does. And our public schools have succeeded. And, you know, we could say that in a, in a sort of critical sense from looking at what's happening on the ground is obviously problematic. Schools that are, that are, you know, basically forming students and ideologies about the human person and human sexuality. And then not telling their parents about it. I mean, that's all that's just crazy, but the reality is, and I've studied this, is that the, the architects of, of American modern progressive education back in the 1920s and 30s, folks like John Dewey, this is absolutely, I'm absolutely convinced that this is what they wanted. Now, they understood they were smart enough to understand that this had to be a boil of a frog sort of situation. But if you look at Dewey's philosophy, where we are at is

16:50absolutely the product of what his belief system entailed. You know, this is the logical conclusion. It's not as though, gosh, if we would have just passed some laws in 1983 or 84 after the, after Reagan's, you know, Secretary of Education, who is it at the time, Bill Bennett, when he, you know, a nation at risk, if we would have just passed some laws, then it would have really fixed this. It would have just slowed down the rot, I think. And I hate to say that because there's a lot of great folks out there doing work in public schools and they're, they're trying their best, but I really do believe that the progressive philosophy by the pragmatists and John Dewey, this is what they intended. And it, it's a very, it's a very important point of understanding that, I think a lot of us that grew up, I was like you grew up in public school and then private school later, but no idea of the larger story that we were kind of in this flow of history with. And so,

17:53if you had to, let me just ask this, I mean, if you had to go back and say another, another statement I like to make as a classical Christian education was the way basically everyone was educated into the, in the West until 100 or so years ago or 150 when, you know, John Dewey and others started to come along, the progressives, is that a reasonable statement to make that, that this is not the new, some new thing that we've come up with, this is lower the way people were educated. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, the sort of scales at which, you know, your average child was educated is very different now. We have compulsory education, every single child must K through 12 to 10 school. But really, that's absolutely true. And when you look at, we could do a whole podcast on American education. Yeah. And people would be absolutely astonished at how Biblically based, the first two centuries or more actually, gosh, probably three plus centuries of American education were Biblically based, almost exclusively Biblically based

18:57and then based in the classics and learning Latin, which is absolutely astonishing. It's astonishing and it's, you know, it's a story you don't ever hear and that's why, and then, you know, you catch one of some classical Christian school down the street and you're like, well, is this some, you know, some new trendy thing or it's a bunch of people who'd rather be Amish, but there were no Amish rounds, they started this classical, like, hold on a minute, you guys, you're literally walking into a story that's so big and so important. So let's take a break. I want to come back and explore this a little bit more and then kind of walk us from those, you know, that transition point of what happened in early American history and then up to current day, understanding what is classical Christian because knowing its history is a very key part of knowing what is it, you know, how to answer that. So we'll be right back after the break. Today's episode of Base Camp Live is brought to you by my friend Chris Casper, who you heard on a recent episode. His invention, the wise phone, is a much needed third way, providing a solution from the dangers of a smartphone on the one hand and the limited capacities of an old school flip

20:02phone on the other. His simple distraction-free phone design for families who want technology to serve their real lives and give us and our older children a way to do basic essentials like calling or texting or maps without the web browser and the social media and the endless apps that can pull them and us into the addictive time wasting aspects of a smartphone. I personally have a wise phone and I can vouch that it is an excellent solution and an appropriate way to use technology that supports virtue and focus and healthy habits. Check out the link in our show notes and on our Base Camp Live website partners page where Chris is offering Base Camp Live listeners a discount. By their classical Christian parents, students and teachers, this is Robert Little John, co-author with Charles Evans of Wisdom and Elequence, a Christian paradigm for classical learning, published by Crossway Books. We want you to know about our new book with well-known family counselor Keith McCurdy published by classical academic press. The book is titled Wisdom and Elequence

21:04for Parents. How classical Christian education can transform your children, your family, and the world. We have written this shorter parent-focused book specifically as it admissions and parent education resource for schools and families. We are excited to be proud sponsors of SIPCAST and Base Camp Live and we hope you are enjoying these two great resources for classical learning as much as we are and we would invite you to visit our website WisdomandElequence.org to explore the various services offered by the authors of Wisdom and Elequence for Parents and to let us know how we can best serve you. We look forward to hearing from you soon. Like before the break, we were talking, we can introduce this idea of just this flow of history that most of us are not familiar with. So you mentioned before John Dewey, the progressive. So the point is for centuries education was effectively biblical. It was classical by many definitions and then

22:05something happened. So kind of pick up where the train came off the track and kind of help us again understand where we are now. Yeah, it's probably different in every country, but in the United States in particular, what started happening originally was higher ed as where I began to erode first. And there's a great book James Tonson-Bertchell, his book called The Dying of the Light. And there's a short summary of this in first things. And he talks about how religious colleges and universities started to water down their identities in the mid to late 19th century. So the 1800s. And so you saw constitutions that in the industrial revolution, a lot of these things were a lot of things in society were challenging these colleges and universities to prepare people for the world of work. And they ended up taking their very classical curriculum and sort of industrializing it. And in doing so at the same time, they watered down their mission commitments and their commitments to their founding churches. And you know, for example, an obvious one you

23:11can look at Harvard and the seal of Harvard. And you know, it's something like looks at Veritas, light and truth or something and religious symbolism. And all of that is completely washed away now. And so it began with the erosion of higher ed in the United States. And then that slowly trickled down to our public school system, but it took a lot of time. It really started exploding in our grade schools and secondary schools, our primary and secondary schools at the advent of progressive education with John Dewey and those folks in the early 20th century when they actually started developing now that these colleges and universities had eroded their religious commitments and and began offering more sort of quote unquote practical majors. They developed education schools and education schools that were very purposely to undermine what we now call the classical model, a sort of classic approach to learning,

24:13you know, learning Latin and Greek was out reading the great books, studying philosophy. That was replaced by the study of psychology and the science, the hard sciences. And so and a very purposeful effort by John Dewey to remove God from the equation. And so, you know, by the mid 20th century, American education was almost night and day difference from 50, 60 years prior. And there's a lot of laws in our country, too. You'd be surprised. The Supreme Court actually plays an important and not so great role. I took a school law course and I learned how the Supreme Court, even though they decide a case a certain way, the various opinions supporting it, the majority opinion, what they write in there will actually stack the deck for precedence, for changes to be made in the field of education. And I know that sounds really weird and strange, but it's true. And so, you know, one particular example is the pinker case where a couple of

25:19kids were protesting the Vietnam War and their administrators came in and targeted them and wrote up a ad hoc policy to target them. They were actually Christian kids protesting the Vietnam War. The administration of the school wrote up an ad hoc policy to directly target them saying, if you wore wear a black arm band, imagine this is a protest in a public school now. All they were doing is wearing black arm bands. So what happened is the Supreme Court supported the pinker kids enrolled against their administration, which was correct, but in the opinion, the ruling opinion stated that children under the age of 18 in public schools have free speech rights. And that, you know, that previously was in-local parenthesis and educators are, they have charge in-local parenthesis in the charge of parents, like they have a sort of total authority over these kids. But the court said, no, no, they have free speech rights.

26:21Right. Now they can come to school with t-shirts, with all kind of garbage all over them. You know, crazy hair. You can't enforce against their right of free expression in speech. So, Emile, that's just an example of how you wrote them. Yeah, it's a great example of the erosion, but one thing I hear you saying that I want to make sure it's clear to folks is that they took out traditional, you know, Judeo-Christian theology and anchor points. They took out the authority of the family, but they didn't just leave it in a neutral frame. I mean, part of what makes education such a critical element in the ability to even have a free and ordered society is that you are forming something deep, the paidea is being formed in a child. So, in a sense, I always say, every school teaches religion. You just changed religions. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. And so, we've now got this progressive agenda, which is about the individual. It's about my rights to do whatever I want. I mean, look fast forward from the black armband

27:25decision to where we are today. Hence, again, sort of this very audacious claim, but, you know, I think the last best hope for a civilization is classical Christian education, because if we can reinstate that sense of, I am humbling myself before the authority of God and I'm falling under the world of, you know, the rule and jurisdiction of the church and my family now the sudden society becomes rightly ordered. So, I'm saying this because it seems like, again, we so often just relegate school to this reading, writing, arithmetic thing over here in the corner. It's like, this is a powerhouse. And we, if we can regain our foothold, we take back over this kind of nuclear weapon for forming a civilization. So, it's a big deal. No, you mentioned the word paide. It's all about worldview formation, right? Yeah. And public school forms young people in a worldview that they are a master unto themselves or really that they are a master unto themselves. Really, what it is is you're just part of the of the machine to purchase products in a capital

28:29society. And therefore, you need a job to do that. And you need to be a productive member of society. Whereas before it was, it was a loftier vision of, we have certain ideals in our society that are rooted in transcendental realities, being God, of course. And that even the founding of our own country rests in the reality that there is a, there is a divinity that endows upon us all the rights that we have. Whereas in progressive schooling, it's no, we the system and the government give you those rights. Right. And it's a completely different worldview of utilitarianism and the total control of the state versus one in which you're, our education is here to liberate you to think for yourself, to think logically, to think within the tradition. And these are the most important values that we hold. And that these important things come from something higher than us. And it's worth keeping the flame alive. That's a completely different vision. Totally

29:31different. Yeah, it's a completely different. Yeah. And that's, this is the, I think helpful for parents to realize that because it's easy, especially when you get into the high school years and school down the street has the bigger stadium lights and the bigger offerings. And you know, let's go down there. There's more, you know, big and kind of consumer mindset, more offerings, more opportunities, missing the entire DNA of school and into the point you're making. I've heard you quote debos before on the idea of, yeah, share a little bit of that because I think it really hits on this point. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we're riffing on here is utilitarianism and credentialing for the world of work. And so WDB DuVois, he has a very famous quote and he had he was in a actually, and just as a sidebar, African Americans actually have a lot to do with classical education and other peoples of diverse backgrounds that is really also a sort of suppressed and lost story. But on this point of utilitarianism, WBB DuVois had a debate with Booker T. Washington

30:34about the direction of American schooling. Booker T. Washington wanted to go into the pragmatic direction like John Dewey and he believed that African Americans would benefit most from an education that gave them practical work and skills so that they could first begin to get a foothold in American society and have jobs. You know, we just got to start with jobs. You know, they have to have an economic value. And DuVois said absolutely not. It's really about liberating them and liberating the life of the mind or else there'll be a different kind of survival state. So DuVois famously wrote and said quote, I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, but to make carpenters men. And that's about forming a virtuous person, forming, taking a young boy and adolescent and making them into a man is a lot of formation is happening there. It's not just, hey, young immature boy who is obsessed

31:39with youth culture and you know, whatever music you're listening to in your movie obsessions and your gaming. Let's just take that person and you just stay the same wonderful person you are today. But now we're going to get you a job. Yeah, you know, that's absolutely not what we're about. But public school education has no problem with that. And where are we today in the world? And I talked to business owners all the time that that gaming adolescent now with a degree in his hand tries to go get a job and the work ethic and the sense of entitlement. All of these things that have been formed in the pie day of that child now impacts our country and impacts our world. I mean, there's so much that's, I mean, I look at these statistics all the time on just the number of young men that in women in particular, they don't even want to get married or have children like that is so out of step with the modern narrative. And these things are integral. I mean, just our birth rates alone are going to be kind of a cosmic to our civilization and to even try

32:44housing enrollment and looking schools in 20 years when no one's had kids. I mean, so these are things that are really affecting our civilization. And they're, you know, they're downstream of the type of educational environment that they're in. So yeah, I think we underestimate the cultural capital that is now burned out. And what I mean by that is that that the cultural capital of Christianity and the American polis of a traditional American polis has been burned out a while now. And what that meant is that is that parents were very purposeful and how they parented their children. Schools really saw more than what they were doing as credentialing. It was about education and formation. And even when even in the 1950s and 60s, you know, after the progressive school movement, there was, again, a lot of that cultural capital was still there, but it's gone now in a way that I think is really quite alarming such that, you know, basic, basic sort of response,

33:44sense of duties and responsibilities, basic etiquette about how you operate, opening a door for somebody to writing a thank you note after getting in a job interview to I've had situations where there are students who are in graduate school. And I call them up to offer them a teaching job. And the response is, hey, so hey, can you come in for an interview this week? You know, let's say it's this really happened. It's a true story. I called up a young candidate, a phenomenal young person. And it was Tuesday and I was offering them to come in and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday for an interview, or maybe it was Wednesday. And the person on the phone said, yeah, actually, I was planning to leave with my friends for a concert up north in Duluth tomorrow. And could we wait until Monday to do the interview? And I just thought, you're a kid. I'm offering you your first

34:44job. This is like the last thing that you should say to me. And in fact, I don't know that I, but this is just kind of, you know, I don't want to rag on the young people too much, but it's, it's a thing. But they're young people who they are because of the education system and the general culture system that said, you do you. And you're, you know, and everybody's there to wait on you or it's child centered and all. So again, these are, these are seismic level investments in a Christian classical school that are downstream of everything. I want to take a final break and we come back. I want to just get as specific as we can because how you live this out in the classroom and in our homes is, is really the challenge. I mean, we, I think the agreement is, yes, this is what we want to be doing. But what does it look like, especially when you've not had a classical upbringing yourself, which is still the norm for the vast number of parents and educators that are leading this movement. We've not really experienced it, although there is a second generation starting to come through, but we'll be right back after the break.

35:46Graduating can be intimidating. Life architects brings peace to the process by guiding your student through proven pathways to discover who God made them to be and how they can reflect that identity in meaningful work. We call it vocational discipleship and it's a practice we offer one-on-one in school-wide workshops and as a consulting service to transform campus culture. Learn more at lifearchitectscoaching.com today. If you're seeking an education that helps your child thrive academically and spiritually, Wilson Hill Academy has spent years developing a model that I want you to know about. In their free guide, you'll see how their thoughtfully sequenced curriculum prepares students for college and how a biblical worldview helps them understand the world around them with clarity and how their discussion-based classes teach them to think critically. Not just what to think. You'll also discover how their teachers equip students to live purposefully for Christ. With accredited live online classes, your child can learn from master teachers anywhere

36:50with an internet connection, all within a community that has transformed families like yours. Download their free guide today at WilsonHillAcademy.com slash guide or in the link in our show notes. Michael earlier, you were sharing with us that great quote from Du Bois on really raising up men, not just the carpenters and so talk a bit more about that because I think that really helps us set the stage for what is classical Christian education and how is it lived out today in this modern and demanding world. Yeah, absolutely. So to to restate his quote, he says quote, I insist the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, but to make carpenters men and so he's implying that there are there are different visions of education out there and some are valid and some are our counterfeit visions of education. And so he says the expression true education, he implies that there's an alternative to what's being pushed. And so for Du Bois, the counterfeit

37:53notion of education does no such thing to force, it doesn't allow students to be liberated, right? It allows them to stay in this world of youth culture with their blinders on and it doesn't give them the hooks to understand really important things in our society that older generations take for granted like freedom of speech, the second amendment, the bill of rights and they can take for granted the importance of these things. And so really for Du Bois, if education is all about the practical and getting young people to enter the world of work and be a productive member of society to purchase things, what it means is we're sacrificing an education that gives them the knowledge of our history so that they can really understand what is most important and most valued that they should pass on to their own children. Yeah, I think about the title of Leonard Sox's book, Boys of Drift, you know, it's just that there's very much a culture of

38:54young people that are drifted, depression rates, anxiety, I mean so much of it is they don't know who they are, they don't know where they fit in, they're not choosing things like marriage we talked about before. So this is again, I think a word that is very encouraging to parents that they this weird education that they've, you know, subscribed to is not so weird. It's actually what's built the society around you and it's it's very very much worth leaning into. So other it just in a few minutes we have left, just other words of encouragement to to school leaders to parents. Yeah, yeah, and I'll just try and a couple different things here. I was point of utilitarianism. There's another a Catholic thinker named Joseph Peaper and he argues that the modern world is marked by total labor and that the original meaning behind leisure and liberal arts has really been lost. And what we're doing is when we give kids a progressive education oftentimes in our public schools, they're subjugated by what we would call the survival arts. And so,

39:56you know, what ends up happening is is people's lives are dominated by this vision where really being a worker is their entire identity, a worker and a consumer. And that's not we want for our young people. And it also doesn't help preserve American society. There's a great line that I'll quote here from Michael Rose in his new book, The Subversive Art of Classical Education. And I think this really hits home at our point. So again, contrast this with a with a vision of education that's purely utilitarian and practical and job training. Michael Rose says quote, when a 15-year-old learns the progression from Greek philosophy to Roman law, from medieval synthesis to Renaissance humanism, from Reformation theology to Enlightenment political theory, he gains more than cultural literacy. He gains a map. And with that map, he can navigate claims about rights, justice, equality, authority and freedom. And quote, I think that's really powerful. And it helps show how

41:03young people need to understand where all of these concepts in our society and government come from, the things that we value. And a lot of that capital has been lost because of progressive education. Yeah, I just find it ironic all these folks throughout protesting. Do you not realize you have the right to protest because of the system that is that you're, well, I'm, I'm, you know, tearing down. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the soda. And I don't want to necessarily wait into the political debate out of it. But what is so, what's so lost on these folks is again, what Michael Rose was just talking about. For example, this, this I find hilarious. It's, it's the theory of non-contradiction, right? I mean, it's, it's sort of like you have no logic. We have a group of people in Minneapolis currently protesting enforcement of borders. But what they do is they harass fellow citizens by

42:04putting up artificial borders that they've built themselves in stopping people's cars in the middle of the road and asking them to show ID ID. I'd have seen a video on this. It's the craziest thing in the world. And so again, we don't need more critical thinking. We need more logical thinking and classical Christian education is the way to do this. Yeah. Well, and I, yeah, we could go on and we need to point our time down. But it's, there's a term of seen recently called meta-modernism, which is this idea that it's, it's beyond postmodernism. Now we're allowing absolute and complete contradictory realities into our life. It's 2 plus 2 is 5. And that's perfectly fine. We're not going to even bother to try to sort all those, you know, oppressive, you know, absolute things out. And it's just, that's the scary point at which the civilization falls apart. So, you know, I think the bigger thesis here is what is classical Christian? And in fact, what it is is not just getting a job. It's not just forming who you're going to become. It's literally saving our civilization. It's a pretty audacious statement that you've helped us see, I think, very well

43:07and very convincingly. So any final thoughts to our listeners? I just encourage everyone to, to really consider what options they have around them. There's, there's homeschooling. There's hybrid schools. There's brick and mortar classical schools. There's charter. There's a religious affiliated classical. It's really transforming lives. I did my, I did my doctoral dissertation on a study of classical education and what it is. And I am so astonished at the results that I see, the fruit that is born for, for all kinds of communities, socioeconomically and, and ethnically diverse communities coming together as a community united around a, a mode of education. And having a lofty vision for what a human person is capable of, like, like, W.E.B. Du Bois had. And that when you, when you hold vast that vision, it transforms people's lives, you know, and, and, in the Catholic

44:09world, St. Elizabeth Anne Seaton and, and others who, who brought education to the masses and, and particularly to underserved communities, minorities, the poor, they did not give them a different education than what the elite received. So St. Elizabeth Anne Seaton, she's, she's, she's part of the founders generation. And, um, and that, uh, she brought them the best education possible from her school, such that wealthy Americans were sending their children to her school. It's amazing. For anyone. And so, um, it's amazing what this model of education, which is, as Jeremy Tate famously says, classical education just used to be called education. That's really the, that's a great ending point. And we're, this is not about some new trendy thing. This is literally, I think Lewis talks about that when you get lost, maybe the best path, home is just a turnaround to go back from the way from which you came. And so we're really

45:12re-intrinching. And, and that, which is formed most of the world around us that we love and appreciate. So, Michael, thanks for giving us that walk through our history, through the story, love here in your story. Um, thank you for helping us continue to gain such an understanding and love for classical education. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to this episode of Base Camp Live. Be sure to check out our website basecamplive.com for more than eight years of timeless episodes that you'll find helpful and encouraging, as well as the helpful resources offered on our partners page. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of our partners like the Herzog Foundation. See you back next week.