Some years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Mount Rushmore. Standing on the viewing platform, looking out at that magnificent construct, I felt every ounce of the awe and patriotism you might expect. The four faces depicted on that massive structure have much in common. They were significant leaders of our country. They each faced down enormous political and social challenges that were absolutely unprecedented. And each of them confronted those challenges with courage, wisdom, and creativity.

Something else they had in common: All of them were educated in the same classical Christian tradition that our students experience at Augustine School. The same classical pedagogy, the same Great Books, the same exposure to classical languages that equipped these vital leaders to solve problems and address challenges no one had ever encountered before also shape and form our own students.

Take George Washington as an example. How did Washington prepare to lead an ill-funded, poorly-equipped, rag-tag militia against what was at the time the world’s greatest projected military power? And then, where did he go to learn how to found a country and establish a constitutional republic for which no prior example exists? Washington did not go to college and major in “Revolutionary Studies” or “Country Fathering.” Rather, he studied the same disciplines and texts that our Augustine students study. And he engaged in the same educational approach that we employ as a classical Christian school.

To be clear Classical Christian Education (CCE) is more than just a rigorous curriculum with some Latin thrown in. CCE is a full-orbed approach to education that takes each student as a uniquely gifted, God-created person whose ultimate purpose is to love the Lord, serve the Church, and help spread the Gospel. All parts of the child—mind, body, and soul—must be cultivated together to fulfill his or her particular purpose in God’s order.

CCE is less concerned about a student’s ACT score or the U.S. News ranking of the college they attend, though classically trained students tend to do quite well in these areas. Instead, we want to know how they will contribute to and even help lead the community around them. Will they serve their local church with energy and ability? How will they love and shape their future family? The answers to these questions cannot be known upon graduation. But as parents, we know that what our children are doing with their lives 20 years after graduation is more important than a standardized test score they received in high school.

People have written entire books about CCE. I can recommend some good ones if you want to read more. But briefly, the classic approach may be said to work “with the grain” of each student as God has created us. Augustine
of Hippo (our school’s namesake) identified the three natural educational stages to which CCE conforms as the Trivium—Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.

The disciplines of the Trivium enable us to properly comprehend and represent the fundamental principles of God’s Creation—the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. In the Grammar stage, corresponding roughly to our Lower School, children learn the mechanics of language and engage their natural acumen for memory and curiosity. In the Logic stage, corresponding to what we often call middle school, students learn the mechanics of thought, analysis, and sound argumentation. You might say they begin mastering the “why” of creation. Finally, in the Rhetoric stage, our high school students learn to express what they are learning with eloquence and winsomeness—to instruct and persuade others with effectiveness. And they begin to take the knowledge they have acquired previously (an internal possession) and turn it into wisdom, which is outward and active.

Where will our children be in 20 or 30 years? That is not something we can really know. I can’t imagine if you had asked Washington’s parents that question they would have said he’d be leading a successful revolution against the British or helping draft a Constitution that would unify the colonies and guide the nation for the next 250 years.

Likewise, we can’t know what challenges our children will face in God’s world, but we can equip them with the same tools and wisdom that we know have served the leaders of Christendom for the last 2000 years. And that, by the grace of God, is exactly what we do at Augustine School.