March in the Park 2009

Right now, Providence Classical Christian Academy's 2009 March in the Park walk-a-thon is currently underway. On Friday, students, parents and faculty will be marching across Forest Park. With the current state of the economy such as it is, fewer people are able to give charitably, and so if you are a friend of classical Christian education, please pray on behalf of the Providence community that those who are able would do so. Those interested in learning more about PCCA and classical Christian education can visit our website. Those with a desire to help financially support our efforts to help parents train up their children in the fear and admonishion of the Lord can find out how to do so here.

Thank you for your prayers on behalf of Providence!

Who Cares About Beauty?

In our enlightened age of digital self-actualization, it is customary, if not outright obligatory for a young man, whom we shall call “Bob,” to offer up, solicited or not, whole lists of his favorite books, music, and movies on MyFace or Spacebook. Being an adventurous soul, perhaps Bob has undertaken to transmit such a list via Flitter. Inevitably, some mean-spirited fellow who will doubtlessly grow up to be just as disagreeable as this blogger, writes a slandering comment against elements of Bob’s list, which prompts the victimized Bob to respond with an incendiary defense. The exchange between Bob the aesthete and his close-minded critic will continue for some time before one or the other gives the ritual up after making reference to the other's maternal figure. Having witnessed several of these exchanges in various corners of the Interweb in my younger days, I was struck by the injurious tone with which many people respond to assaults on their taste. I thought this wholly strange until it occurred to me that when Bob lists his favorite films and books, he is really saying, “these are my standards,” and thus, an attack on any particular entry on Bob’s list is nothing less than an outright assault on Bob himself. What we value and admire tells much about ourselves to others, and so any attack on the object of one’s appreciation is a personal insult. In light of this, clearly we can all agree that beauty is something that we all care about and think about. We may not be consciously aware of them, but we have all developed standards for what art, or rather, what beauty is, for art expresses beauty.

Disabled Marine vs. Socialist Healthcare

The Trivium: Stages or Skills?

There is, in classical education circles, a discussion over the nature of the Trivium (Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric). Popularized by Dorothy Sayers' essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning," the Trivium forms a key part of what makes a school "classical." Sayers herself understood the Trivium to refer primarily to developmental stages of children: elementary-age children are in the Grammar stage in which teachers capitalize on their memorization abilities. Junior high-age children, Sayers opined, were at the cusp of logical thinking, and thus the Dialectic stage would be geared toward taking advantage of that. Finally, the senior high-age students are in the Rhetoric stage at which they are finally able to express themselves eloquently.

Since Sayers' essay is responsible for much of the revival of classical education, many early proponents of it were advocating this view of the Trivium. However, as the movement has picked up steam, some educators are beginning to think that Sayers' understanding of the Trivium might be slightly off. Rather than seeing it as concerned with playing to developmental stages, this new view considers the three parts of the Trivium to be skills themselves that are utilized all throughout the K-12 educational process. Under this view, Grammar is the skill associated with acquiring facts (rules of English grammar, Latin paradigms, geography, historical events), and the Dialectic stage with the relation of facts (logic, algebra, philosophy, critical thinking). Finally, Rhetoric is the skill of communicating excellently, and thus students study disciplines like speaking, theatre, or music to practice this skill.

The obvious point in this debate is that one can accommodate both views. Sayers' vision of the Trivium as stages does have weight, and can easily be coupled with the Trivium-as-skills view in that in the Grammar stage, a student would not only be encouraged to memorize, study relations (logic) and express himself well (rhetoric), the greater emphasis will be on memorization and the building of the related Grammar skills.

What He Said: Schaeffer on Art

"We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn or ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, his is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world-view."
- Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible

The Hiatus Update

Friends, it has been too shamefully long.

Many of you know that I finished the school year at PCA in mid-May, hosted some old friends from WVA for a few days, experienced car troubles shortly thereafter, took in Shakespeare Festival St. Louis' "Merry Wives of Windsor" utilized my newly repaired vehicle to help out a foot-surgery victim for a few weeks, began teaching in the City School District (mostly inner-city schools) for a private company contracted to do science enrichment, went to the wedding of some coworkers, explored the Soulard Farmer's Market and Forest Park (bigger than NYC's Central Park), saw "Annie" and "The Music Man" at The Muny, as well as Broadway on the Driveway's "Sound of Music," taking a few trips to Columbia to meet my family for meals (as my mother has made note of ), and more recently, moved from the house in Lemay to an apartment right next to PCA.

Right now, I am one week out from the start of classes, and only two days away from the start of teacher meetings. God is gracious and I now have a full-time teaching load: Ancient Humanities, Latin I & II, Grammar School Latin II, and (surprise!) General Science. Despite the down-turn in the economy, we not only retained most of our families, but have gained several new ones! Please be praying for us as we begin our new school year and for me as I will have the honor of giving the main address at our Upper School Retreat in a few weeks on the topic of "the beautiful."

Jesus Was Into Organized Religion

Justin Taylor posted a blurb from today's Newsweek/Washington Post religion section, written by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, who wrote a book called Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion. These gentlemen have the audacity to suggest that the problem may lie more so with those leaving the church than with the church itself.

The article they wrote reminds us well that to speak poorly of the church is to speak poorly of Christ's bride, who was worth the shedding of blood to redeem:

We love the church because Christ loved the church. She is his bride--a harlot at times, but his bride nonetheless, being washed clean by the word of God (Eph. 5:25-26). If you are into Jesus, don't rail on his bride. Jesus died for the church, so don't be bothered by a little dying to self for the church's sake. If you keep in mind that everyone there is a sinner (including yourself) and that Jesus Christ is the point and not you, your dreams, or your kids, your church experience might not be as lame as you fear.

Christians would do well to reconsider why they leave traditional, organized religion. While DeYoung and Kluck do not shy from admitting that the church is full of imperfect and hypocritical people, it still deserves our respect and love.

Read the whole thing here: "Church: Love It, Don't Leave It"