Why Classical Education

The study of the good books has been the backbone of excellent education for hundreds of years. If you check out the books read by the intellectual giants of our culture, you will discover that there are particular books that come up again and again. These books were required by most school boys until the increase of Dewey and therefore the democratization of education through the general public establishment. The public establishment saw these books as elitist and not easily comprehensible by the masses and thus not appropriate for public education.
Another influence contributing to the demise of the good books was the demoralization of the Christian intellectual community. Most of the institutions of learning during this country were founded by Christians who saw it as their duty to overcome the intellectual arena for Christ. However, since the increase of secularism and particularly since the humiliating defeat that biblical Christians saw at the Scope's Trial, the evangelical community has been fully retreat from the intellectual arena. Before the turn of the century, most institutions of learning were dominated by those that thought from a biblical worldview; however, this consensus quickly began to crumble and in 1925 at the Scope's Trial, through the general public humiliation of William Jennings Bryan's creationism, academia also because the general culture came to carry biblical Christianity as undeserving intellectual regard. Even though the trial was in no way a rigorous debate of the creation issue, its effect on the Christian intellectual community was nothing in need of disastrous. From that time on Christians felt as if the intellectual community had humiliated them and, to return the favour, they abandoned the intellectual community in droves. The intellectual pursuit came to be seen as not only of little value for Christians but also as simply antagonistic to the religion. At now in history the church saw an unravelling of the Christian intellectual tradition. No longer would Christians apply themselves to the study of the good thinkers; that might be a task left entirely to those with a non-Christian Weltanschauung .
Christian education has become something more important. Not only have Christians done little or no to organize their children to become godly intellects, but intellectual incompetence has been seen because the true helpmate of important spirituality. A soft mind has been seen as an important tool within the pursuit of a soft heart. In our day, mental rigor and an active intellectual pursuit have become equated with doctrinal rigidity and cold spirituality.

By: Saksham Gupta