Conservation of Truth — The True

Classical education is by nature conservative -- it seeks to conserve, develop within its deep tradition, and pass on the inheritance of the ages. We have 13 years to pass on the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of 3,000 years of the Western Cultural tradition. This is reflected even in the name of the school -- Regents. A Regent is one who rules in place of the king. They are not the king and cannot make new rules but are there to enforce and hold fast the order set forth by the king. Every classical educator must be committed to knowing their subject and passing it on to their students.

Another reason classical education is inherently traditional is because of its belief in and commitment to Truth. Eternal and unchangeable, Truth is something we discover and then live in light of it. While certain things are true in the sense of being accurate (2+2=4, the Battle of Waterloo occurred in 1815, etc.), and these things are taught, these basic factual truths point towards greater Truth in terms of Justice, Courage, Love, etc. The Truths, by virtue of their eternality, are also infinitely deep -- we are always, like in Narnia, pushing “further up and further in” to them. Then from the depths of our knowledge, which we have achieved through our own efforts and guides who have led us there, we turn and guide our students deeper into their own understanding of the Truth under consideration.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues

• Like with the lost transcendent sense of morality, the idea of Truth has been significantly watered down in the last decades. For many people, truth-claims are seen as manifestations of cultural power being wielded to keep the oppressed down. While originally a criticism levied against religious institutions, with the rise of postmodernism, all claims about objective truth are seen as representations of cultural or racial supremacy. This means that the very idea of there being objective knowledge that transcends culture is oppressive. This fits perfectly with the rejection of any view of transcendent truth that is the overarching cultural air we breathe.

• With the above, the rise of the “psychological self” as the center of knowledge makes Truth inherently relative — we each have our own ‘truth’, and it is not connected with any external sense of meaning or reality. This places a massive burden on the shoulders of every individual to not only determine their own sense of self (who am I?) but also their own understanding of reality — they can get no help from anything outside of themselves because there is nothing that can be fully trusted to not give way when relied upon (the failure of institutions is really important here as well).

• Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and that the greatest of all commandments is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). The mind is designed for finding Truth, and when we find Truth we find Jesus, who is the Word of Truth because He is the eternal Word of the Father who is Truth Itself (John 1:1). In an age of confusion and lies, telling the truth is not only revolutionary, it brings light into dark places and exposes falsehood for what it is. It is vital that our students know what is True, can articulate it well, and have the courage to speak it and live in light of it in a rapidly darkening world. Matthew 5:13 (“You are the salt of the earth”) is also important here, because it speaks to the role Christians must play as preservers of that which is True and Good in a particular culture.

Method — The Beautiful

What we believe about art and beauty shapes the way we build the world around us, which then shapes our souls and what we imagine the world to be like. Beauty should be the merging of the true and the good in physical and/or verbal expression (ideas take on flesh), but when the transcendent vision of the former is lost, beauty becomes personal and influenced by preference rather than universal forms. When we say we teach by and through the Trivium, we mean that every subject has a Grammar (basic knowledge), Logic (proper interconnections between discrete pieces of knowledge), and Rhetoric (properly applied knowledge) AND that we teach the specific subjects of Grammar (basics of language structure), Logic (connection of ideas based upon properly used Grammar), and Rhetoric (the art of persuasion or the means of making the ideas most beautiful and attractive to a particular audience). Lessons and units in each division frequently progress from Grammar to Rhetoric as students take ownership of their learning and improve their ability to articulate in their own words the ideas and connections they are making.

Furthermore, classical education is not just of the head, but also of the heart. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Augustine, Confessions) and “the human heart is a perpetual idol maker” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion). Classical education lives in the tension of these two quotes. Our hearts are restless and seeking after that which will truly satisfy it, but in our search for that, we create idols that we think will satisfy but never ultimately do. The classical model guides us towards rightly ordering our desires so that our hearts orient towards True North. It does this by giving students tools to know, love, and practice that which is True, Good, and Beautiful and recognizing that all those things come ultimately from God.

The Trivium guides us to recognize distinctive patterns of human learning which are applicable to all subjects. Classical education is not simply about giving students a set of ideas or confidence from having read hard, old books, but it is about giving students tools to actually learn on their own. Aristotle said that “all men by nature desire to know’’ and it is through the application of the Trivium that all learners guide their natural curiosity towards actual knowledge. Classical education through the Trivium gives students the ‘teeth’ they need to bite into something solid and fill their desire for knowledge, while through its emphasis on prioritizing truth, goodness, and beauty guides students towards those things that can actually fill (real food as opposed to junk food). We believe that the classical model finds its fulfillment in the Christian worldview. To paraphrase Paul, what they sought after but never quite discovered, has now been made known through the revelation of Christ (Acts 17:2331 and 1 Corinthians 13:12). And because God is a God of community, both within Himself as well as in His desire to have a people to share His blessings with, we find that learning occurs best in a community of disciples all seeking to fulfill the two great commands of Christ: love of God and love of neighbor using our whole being: heart, mind, and will.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues

• Like with morality and truth, the idea that beauty has standards external to “me” is anathema, or in our modern context, denounced. Cultural elites today use their cultural power to destroy the sacred things of those who believe in transcendent order and beauty. A famous example of this is Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, where he displayed a crucifix submerged in his own urine as a work of art. These “deathworks” (Philip Rieff’s term) represent “an attack on established cultural art forms in a manner designed to undo the deeper moral structure of society . . . Deathworks make the old values look ridiculous” (Trueman 2020, 96-97). Pornography is another example of a “deathwork” because it “repudiates any notion that sex has significance beyond the act itself, and therefore it rejects any notion that it is emblematic of a sacred order” (Trueman 2020, 99).

• In education, the method through which students learn is an important aspect of developing beauty, one of its features being order. Classical education should be orderly, clearly guided, and moving towards further understanding of and application of truth, goodness, and beauty — any one of which can serve as the entrance point towards moving a student towards God, who is both the source and the destination of each of these. We might even say that Grammar appeals to Truth, Logic to Goodness, and Rhetoric to Beauty.