Philosophy

• The Christian Gift to Culture
• Classical Education
• Christian Education
• The Importance of a Classical Christian Education
• Readings
• Links

The Christian Gift to Culture

Christians have been given the gift of faith in a loving God whose purposes we can contemplate and study in order to know Him better. Christians have also been given community in which to share their discoveries and to declare their praise as they discern and contemplate the great mysteries of God and His creation. Through the ages, their work has produced a brilliant cultural legacy which should be cherished in homes and in schools as a source of delight and inspiration.

When in the past the existence of this intellectual and artistic tradition has been threatened, communities of Christians recognized its value and took steps to transmit it to future generations. As our cultural inheritance is again being denied and forgotten in schools and in society, we believe that the broader Christian community, and in particular the family, is now called by God to retrieve and relearn what has been lost. We see this retrieval as a debt owed first to our children, our society and, pre-eminently, to our Lord. We must understand deeply our own cultural heritage in order to be leaders in forming, reforming, and renewing contemporary society.

Top of Page

Classical Education

At heart, classical education imparts to students a love for wisdom. Its foundational belief is that truth, goodness, and beauty are realities that profoundly influence and deeply satisfy. Classical schools believe that interacting with the heritage of Western civilization makes for rich learning that can effectively teach, warn, and inspire. In short, they believe in inviting students into the midst of what Mortimer Adler, a 20th century pioneer of classical education, called "the great conversation," that ongoing discussion to which the great thinkers, poets, artists, and musicians have been contributing throughout history.

But classical education is not merely an affirmation that truth is real and that learning from the past is valuable; it is also a fully developed method of teaching that equips students with the three essential tools of learning: grammar, logic, and rhetoric (also called the Trivium, or "triple way").

In her insightful overview of the Trivium, the late Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, outlines these three tools. As she puts it, students up to age eleven or so are "poll-parrots," having an innate ability to absorb and retain information. They derive great pleasure from chanting, reciting, and memorizing because it is their natural way of learning. This is called the grammar stage. By the time they reach about grade six, they enter the "pert" stage of argumentativeness and inquiry as they question most of what they are told. The teacher responds by showing them how to piece together the information they have learned and to argue properly with the tool of logic. And lastly, by about grade nine, having gained much knowledge already and having learned how to sort through it skillfully, the students learn in the "poetic" stage how to express their ideas with the tool of rhetoric. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are not subjects in themselves; they are the essential tools of learning that students bring to bear on a variety of disciplines (language, math, history, science, etc.).

Top of Page

Christian Education

Christian parents have a God-given responsibility to see that their children’s faith is fostered at all times (Deut. 11:18-23). A Christian school community collaborates with parents and families in training children to love the Lord with all their hearts, minds, and souls. It strives to integrate our faith into every course and to have faith govern our relationships.

With regard to doctrine, the Academy community adheres to the essential beliefs articulated in the Nicene Creed, without reservation. Recognizing that gifts abound in the church, we welcome families from all Christian denominational backgrounds—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox—who subscribe to this confession of faith and who strive to bring up their children in the fear of the Lord. Recognizing, however, the genuine differences among Christians, we leave catechesis about denominational teachings to families and churches.

In order to maintain a foundation that is both vibrantly orthodox and sensitive to denominational issues, the headmaster will consult an advisory group of academics, clergy, and parents on religious aspects of the school.

The common prayer life of the school will revolve around confession of the Nicene Creed; prayers, hymns and psalms, both said and sung; and a Bible class whose focus is on learning the stories, characters, and major themes of the Holy Scriptures, including memorization of important texts.

Top of Page

The Importance of a Classical Christian Education

The methods of classical education were developed by some of the greatest minds of our culture over thousands of years. While its use in formal education has waned in the past two centuries, classical Christian education has been enjoying a renaissance in the last two decades. This is because more and more parents and educators have come to recognize that while important new insights into pedagogical techniques have emerged in the twentieth century, the Christian foundations of education have been forgotten by some and actively dismissed by others. The most important of these foundational beliefs is the affirmation of a human soul that is capable of pursuing objective, transcendent Truth as the centre of life. This denial of the human soul and of objective truth leads to relativism and creates deep ethical and intellectual confusion. Rather than freeing students to be truly human, such relativism tends to trivialize education and to teach children in subtle ways that they are merely sophisticated animals whose highest goal should be the satisfaction of instinct.

Christians have historically believed that students should learn to reverence truth, desire goodness, and rejoice in beauty. Classical Christian education aims to enable students to discover these three realities using the best intellectual tools available: that is, the three liberal arts of the Trivium. Christians have developed and cherished these gifts of knowledge, discernment, and expression because they enable us to experience a life of true human freedom.

Top of Page

Readings

The following readings are helpful if you would like to learn more about the nature and importance of Classical Christian Education.

• "The Lost Tools of Learning," a speech by Dorothy Sayers that acted as a catalyst of renewed interest in classical education (Adobe PDF; get Acrobat Reader)
• "Classical Education: Towards the Revival of American Schooling", an excerpt from a book on Classical Education by Gene Edward Veith Jr. and Andrew Kern of the Capital Research Center.

Top of Page

Links

The following links have served as inspiration for the development of the curriculum at St. Timothy’s Classical Academy. Sources have been modified to complement the Canadian context and interdenominational character of the school.

• "The Lost Tools of Learning," a speech by Dorothy Sayers that acted as a catalyst of renewed interest in classical education (Adobe PDF; get Acrobat Reader)
• The National Paideia Centre (founded by Mortimer Adler)
• Logos School (Reformed, with Select Curriculum Guides)
• Classical homeschooling curriculum
• The Well-Trained Mind
• Angelicum Academy (Catholic)

Note: While we strive to monitor the relevance and quality of the links above, St. Timothy's Classical Academy does not necessarily endorse, nor can be held responsible for their content.