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Title: A classical curriculum.
Source: Policy Review; Nov/Dec96 Issue 80, p60, 4/9p
Document Type: Article
Subject(s): CLASSICAL education
Abstract: Focuses on the Wisconsin-based Concordia University arts and sciences dean Gene Edward Veith's philosophy of education. Need for a return to the classical conception of education; Classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
Full Text Word Count: 400
ISSN: 0146-5945
Accession Number: 9611125758
Persistent Link to this Article: http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=9611125758&db=afh
Database: Academic Search Elite
* * *
Section: Town Square: What Works
A CLASSICAL CURRICULUM

Gene Edward Veith, dean of arts and sciences at Concordia University, in Wisconsin, writes that too many proposals to reform America's schools focus on means--vouchers, technology, teacher certification--rather than on ends. Although he does not disparage these means, what American education most urgently requires, Veith contends, is a new philosophy of education--a return to the classical conception of education as the knowledge a person requires to be truly free, and to the classical "trivium" of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. "To be educated in any discipline," he writes, "one must know its basic facts (grammar); be able to think deeply about the subject (logic); and be able to act on that knowledge in a personal, original and independent way (rhetoric)."

Veith cites three examples of how the classical approach to education is being used in primary and secondary schools. The Association of Classical and Christian Schools (ACCS), which currently has 26 member schools, was founded in 1993 by the Reverend Douglas Wilson, a Protestant minister from Idaho, to promote the idea of a Christian education organized around the trivium. In the prototype ACCS school, the Logos School (founded by Wilson in 1980), the primary grades are devoted to acquiring basic know-ledge--reading, arithmetic, patriotic and biblical stories. Middle school and junior high are devoted to "the questioning and probing of reality that is logic."

Finally, the high-school years, ages 15 to 18, are devoted to self-expression, and beginning rhetoric classes use textbooks by Aristotle and Cicero. According to Veith, "The level of discourse, the depth of thinking, and what can only be described as a richness of character set the Logos seniors apart. Such are the benefits of a classical education."

Other attempts to construct an educational philosophy around the classical trivium are the Paideia Project--used today in some 30 school districts nationwide--and the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago. These schools help broaden the horizons of thousands of children, including poor children often written off as ineducable.

The classical approach to education is valuable, Veith contends, because it offers a "comprehensive, universal paradigm for learning." In his view, the classical education movement holds the key not only to educational reform but to an educational renaissance in America.

Renaissance, Not Reform: The Classical Schools Movement" by Gene Edward Veith, in Philanthropy, Culture & Society, August 1996, Capital Research Center.

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Source: Policy Review, Nov/Dec96 Issue 80, p60, 1p
Item: 9611125758

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