Why I Reject Classical Education as a Homeschooling Mom of 15

Classical Education has become the all-encompassing answer for conservatives who want to heal the gaping wound of education.  

Some of the most notable people in conservatism are using this method with their own children, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.  

According to current conservative voices, Classical Education is not only considered the only way to rescue our educational system, but the only way to save Western Civilization in totality. 

Sorry, but I don’t agree.  

In case you didn’t know, I am the mother of 15 and I have been homeschooling for over 36 years.

Homeschooling has been more to me than simply raising my own children, it has been a past time and a passion. 

I am passionate because I know just how hard it is for mommies like us to kick away from the safe harbor of public education.  

That’s why I don’t do fluff in my posts.  I strive to give you something you can take and put into practice. I want to give you something that will actually add to your life.  

In this post we are going to be talking about why I do not advocate for the Classical Education model, and why I think there are better alternatives.  

Of course, along the way I will be bolstering my opinions with proofs. This way you can check them out for yourself. 

This will go right along with the series we are enjoying on my podcast on YouTube which is supposed to prepare us for the coming year of homeschooling. 

(So that we don’t make decisions we will loathe later!) 

Some of the other influences we have been exploring in this series have been: 

The Charlotte Mason Method via Karen Andreola 

Ruth Beechick and her Biblical model 

Dr. Raymond Moore and his Moore Formula 

John Holt and Unschooling 

John Taylor Gatto and his Guerilla Curriculum 

It was a number of years ago when I first heard homeschoolers were turning to Classically-styled education, and I wasn’t impressed. I had had to endure the lauding of the ancients way back when I was being prepared for and Ivy League education, and I wasn’t impressed then, either.  

I was a believer, and I was having to contend for the faith in courses where classicism was being served steaming hot on a platter.  

To my mind, classicism = humanism, and I think every secular scholar on the subject would agree. 

But, somehow, Christians have taken the whole idea and disinfected it so that it comes out as the only way to virtue and stability of government.  

The technical term for the influence of ancient Greece on the Western world is Hellenization. It was Alexander the Great, pupil of Aristotle and conqueror of the known world before the age of 21, who forcefully Hellenized the countries he overran.

The book of Maccabees, in-between the Old and New Testaments, is the story of how the Greeks were foisting their paganism on the Jews. Here is a passage that is quite revealing: 

Not long after this the king sent an Athenian senator to force the Jews to abandon the laws of their ancestors and live no longer by the laws of God, also to profane the temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus…The Gentiles filled the temple with debauchery and revelry; they amused themselves with prostitutes and had intercourse with women even in the sacred courts. They also brought forbidden things into the temple…No one could keep the sabbath or celebrate the traditional feasts…and putting to death those who would not consent to adopt the customs of the Greeks [“Hellenika”]….two women who were arrested for having circumcised their children were publicly paraded about the city with their babies hanging at their breasts and then thrown down from the top of the city wall.     – 2 Macc 6:1-10 

While the Greek culture had its merits, it was not without flaws and pitfalls.

Here are some of the obvious stereotypes we have come to believe about Greek culture: 

1. Everyone in Athens sat around thinking and talking about thinking. While this was true for some at the top, it wouldn’t have been possible without a host of people who didn’t have time to sit and think because they were doing all the work. 

2. Democracy was practiced by all Greeks. Actually, it was in Athens that this was tried and it didn’t work out too well, the other city states didn’t think it was such a great idea and each was ruled differently. Their political systems included tyranny and oligarchy. Interesting to note that only 10-15 percent of the population of Athens was eligible to vote. 

3. The philosophers, such as Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, were wise, moral, just and even found God in their thinking (some even suggest Jesus used the Socratic method). There is ample evidence that the opposite is true, but we can touch on that later. 

Let’s face it; the Greeks were pagan, as was the rest of the world. In their paganism, they worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, and they failed to be thankful to Him.  

So, they only had whatever virtue they could conjure up out of their futile minds.  

Paul wrote about this very thing in Romans 1: 

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;  

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.  

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:  

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,  

And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:  

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:  

And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;  

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,  

Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,  

Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:  

Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. 

Paul felt obligated to preach to Greeks because they were lost and needed Jesus, not because he felt they could add to his understanding of scripture or increase his holiness.  

And, as the light of the Gospel spread throughout the Western world, the influence of the Greeks was replaced by better things. People were more influenced by Jesus than by Hellas. 

Until…the official church became so corrupt that it was oppressive. A dogmatic, hypocritical religion was practiced that was enslaving instead of liberating.  

(And this could actually be traced back to Hellanism via Thomas Aquinas, see Francis Schaeffer’s film series, How Should We Then Live for free on YouTube.) 

I believe this is when God stepped in with persons such as Jan Hus and John Wycliff, through whom He planted the seeds of the reformation. This was the true movement towards the Light at that time.  

Of course, the devil could not be out-done, so He copied God and planted his own seeds of darkness. 

This is when Hellenization, now labeled Classicism, was resurrected and brought back into the culture.  

Which led to humanism. 

Which led to Rationalism and Higher Criticism. 

The fruits of this movement were, to a smaller extent, our own American revolution, the French Revolution, even the Bolshevik Revolution as materialized from the musings of Marx and Engels who were greatly influenced by the rationalism brought about via neoclassicism. 

(Our revolution was different because it was tempered by the influence of devout Christian men such as Patrick Henry and Benjamin Rush and so we didn’t fall into the bloody extremes of other revolutions based purely on rationalism.) 

In America, as I have stated in previous posts, we enjoyed a high rate of literacy, and our population was highly educated during our formative years. This was made possible, not due to Classicism (although it was still influential in America at the time via the Neoclassicism Movement), but due to the belief that people should be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. 

Because of this emphasis we were much more literate and educated than any other country in the Western world at that time. 

But all that changed when men such as Horace Mann traveled overseas to imbibe in the European fruit of humanistic thought, which resulted in mass, compulsory education. The spark resulting from the Christian desire to know more of God was replaced by the desire to make humans good in and of themselves, which of course always leads to destruction. 

History makes it clear that Classicism is no more evil than any other human-based school of thought, but in its raw form it is definitely destructive. And, as the medium in which Western culture has formed, it must be treated with respect, but also with caution.  

I know that I have been influenced by Classicism, but I do not believe it is necessary to resurrect the particulars in order to educate my children.  

For one thing, we have forgotten that classical Greece was fraught with paganism, injustice and immorality.  

The great philosophers of the time were part of a culture which allowed, and sometimes celebrated, amorous relationships between older and younger men (from the age of 13-up). Consider this: 

[these liaisons] may have developed in the late 7th century BC as an aspect of Greek homosocial culture, which was characterized also by athletic and artistic nudity, delayed marriage for aristocrats, symposia, and the social seclusion of women. Pederasty was both idealized and criticized in ancient literature and philosophy. 

Wikipedia 

This practice was so common that numerous representations, often pornographic, have been discovered on pottery samples discovered from that time. It was so prevalent that it was written into poetry and plays. There is even prose which describes the lurid “ethics” of such relationships.  

Some have even suggested that pedagogues were slaves who accompanied young students to keep them from becoming the prey of their teachers. 

And this is not all that we forget.  

While our current classically-styled schooling includes quaint stories of pagan gods and their dealings with human beings, the lifestyle of the people who lived under these ideals were anything but “quaint.” As Paul the Apostle, Peter, and John the Beloved outlined in various passages of his letters in the New Testament, these people suffered in darkness. The ancient world was full of oppression and slavery. Brutality was common—consider the beatings and the crucifixion of Jesus. Human beings were considered “property” to be done with as one wanted—even to be murdered if one wished with no consequences.  

My point? 

It wasn’t the classicism of Greece that brought hope into the world and changed things for the better.  

It was Jesus.  

So why would I want to go backwards? It may well be that the Gospel spread sometimes through the medium of Classicism, but I don’t worship the medium, I worship the God of all things.  

And I don’t need Aristotle to teach me to appreciate and utilize what God has created. I have something better; I have the mind of Christ. 

Now for the practical application of all of this: 

For one thing, it just isn’t practically necessary.  In the experiences I have had raising our 15 children, I have discovered a profound truth; 

Learning is simple.  

Adults overcomplicate it. 

And, with the influence of Aristotle, Classical Education makes everything so layered and complicated that it uses up all the space so that real learning is pushed into the back storage closet.  

To my mind, Classical Education is not far removed from factory education.

In fact, it relies on the conventions of mass, compulsory education, such as age-segregation and the removal of the student from the processes of real life.  

Wouldn’t you like to know more? I hope you will come back when I present a better way in my next post or two. Until then, you can listen to this podcast by clicking below: 

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