TOUCHING THE HEM OF CHRIST'S GARMENT
Why Christians should consider classical charter schools as an option for their children
Jason Caros | February 21, 2023
“Christianity is at the heart of classical education. How can a school be called classical without Christ?” This was a question I was asked by a classical Christian school headmaster at a classical schools event just over a decade ago. He knew I was about to serve as the headmaster at a newly formed (public) classical charter school, and his tone was defensive, to say the least. Unbeknownst to me, I had stepped into an educational arena without knowing my opponent. Frankly, until then I didn’t know I had an adversary of this sort. Fortunately, I had received training prior to the contest.
As a child, I experienced what one might call a traditional education, especially when compared to the schooling most children receive today. I attended parochial schools at a time when the word “classical” was not in vogue, but my experience, especially as it pertained to humanities instruction, was much like that of today’s classical schools in that it consisted of great books and it had a humane and Christian telos, rather than one focused simply on career readiness. After high school, I went to university in order to earn a liberal arts degree, concentrating on history and religion, and I had planned to study at a seminary afterwards; however, God had other plans for me.
While in college, after instructing children at church and substitute teaching in schools, I discovered that my vocation was to teach. So, after finishing my coursework I landed a position in a public high school and I obtained an alternative teacher certification in the state of Florida. I taught history, including college-level courses for six and half years, during which time I earned a master’s degree in educational leadership—my graduate degree enabled me to later pursue an administrative position as a district-level curriculum specialist.
As a young teacher who had not been trained in college in the philosophy and methods of modern schools, I came into the classroom a little wide-eyed. I had solid knowledge of history, youthful energy and passion for the content and the young people in front of me, but I was green when it came to creating lessons and delivering them. I relied on my memory of the best teachers I had growing up, reading as much as possible about effective instruction, picking things up from experienced colleagues who I perceived to be using tried and true practices, and by my own trial and error I improved in the art of teaching. I worked harder than ever before, and the labor produced good first-year teacher fruit. I received recognition from the school for first-year teacher honors and I was assigned to teach my first advanced history class in my second year. Year two was better than year one. Year three was better than years one and two, and so on…
I loved teaching. I still do. But, one of the things I noticed about the students was that they seemed to lack fundamental knowledge, in multiple areas, as well as essential abilities in reading, writing and (logical) thinking. I wondered if they were indicative of students everywhere and I tried to compare what they had learned, and were learning in the high school where I served, to what students learned at the high school I attended as a teen. In case you are wondering, I taught in a middle-class suburban school, and by my third year my teaching load consisted of mostly Honors and Advanced Placement level classes. Don’t get me wrong, the students were a joy to teach and I could tell that they were naturally bright, but as a classroom teacher without much detailed knowledge of education philosophy and practice, I couldn’t pinpoint the root of the problems I had been observing.
It was while earning my graduate degree and especially while serving as a curriculum specialist, where I facilitated and led teaching training, coordinated the selection of curriculum resources for schools, and conducted research, among other responsibilities, that my knowledge about the development of education in America grew and the reasons for growing deficits in student knowledge and abilities became readily apparent. To make a long story short, changing cultural expectations and late 19th and 20th century Progressive Education reforms caused schools to deemphasize and even disparage knowledge and traditional approaches to learning in favor of learning process, child development and socialization, and pedagogical experiments and fads that seemed to cycle every so many years. Expectations about academic rigor and student behavior were lowered, and emphases on virtue, civic responsibility and meaning in life, or higher purpose, were erased or replaced with new values, subjective ideas about reality and even nihilism. To what end? Using the measures policy-makers demand such as test data, graduation rates, and statistics on misbehavior and violence in schools, the verdict is in. Academic data is sub-par, at best, school violence is ascending, and postmodern mores are driving many families across the country to homeschool or enroll their children in private or charter schools. Many parents who had hoped their students would at least be prepared for the next stage of their journeys found that their children were not college or work ready, as advertised by their schools.
As a teacher and administrator, I could see the results of bad education philosophy and practice in front of me, but the research I had conducted opened my eyes to the causes. My new perspective on American education, and what I knew was happening in many classrooms, led my wife and I to decide that we would not enroll our children in public school, even though the two of us served in a public school district. Instead, when our children were school-aged we enrolled them in a classical Christian school, and once I made my transition into the world of classical education they attended the school where I served and still serve as headmaster in Texas. Before I continue, I wish to note that I had worked with many good people at the public high school and around the school district, both instructors and administrators. My chief concern is not with the educators themselves, although I will note that one of the inherent problems with modern public schools is the inability of administrators to remove poor or mediocre teachers, but my main issue is with the overarching philosophy that steers the education ship. The philosophy is severely flawed and individual educators are limited when they have to teach children in a faulty system with a mission that is often singularly economic-vocational, that requires an inadequate Progressive curriculum and related practices, guided by an unstable worldview that has obviously underserved our children.
With all of this in mind, I return to the question of how a charter school can be classical.
I have been traditionally educated, my own children have been educated in classical Christian and classical charter schools, and for more than ten years I have seen them and many others at our classical charter school learn, grow and matriculate to well-regarded classical liberal arts colleges and universities such as Hillsdale College and The University of Dallas, or at honors programs and great books colleges at institutions such as Baylor University, where they have continued to flourish. In fact, I recall some of our earlier graduates describing their experiences at one of these prominent colleges as Founders 2.0 (our school name is Founders Classical Academy). So, then what is the difference between a classical charter school like Founders and a classical Christian school?
We teach traditional orthography, grammar, logic, composition and rhetoric, mathematics (that includes Euclidean Geometry), classic literature, history, Latin, natural science, philosophy, moral philosophy, physical education, with heavy emphases on music and visual art. Students read great books, most of the same titles one would find at many classical Christian schools, we teach Socratically and lead seminar discussions in most of our humanities courses, and our students memorize and recite poems, speeches and other historical texts. There is more I could say about what we do, but the primary thing that makes our school similarly classical is that we promote a normative education rooted in universals—truth, goodness and beauty—as well as in the pursuit of the summum bonum, or highest good. At our school, we aim to educate students and help to form them in such a way that they understand their human nature, who they are and how to make their way in the world around them.
I suppose a skeptic could say: “All of that is good and relates to classical education, but where is Christ in it? Do you have prayer and worship in school?” My response to this and the original question is threefold:
First, classical education was born in a pre-Christian era, in ancient Greece, and it was developed over a long period of time in Greece and Rome, and was passed on through Western and into some Near Eastern and African civilizations. The thinkers who were responsible for it and who lived and passed it down in the early centuries were not Christian (or Jews) but they sought truth, desired goodness, and loved beauty in such ways that early church fathers like Basil the Great and Augustine of Hippo argued that most of their works were not only acceptable for Christians to read, but ought to be studied (I recall something in their writings about “gold out of Egypt”). To this day some of the greatest works of the Western Tradition were crafted by pre-Christian writers and scholars such as Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, Plato, Cicero, et al, and interestingly, if one were to visit some of the oldest standing places of worship in Greece and Italy, he might happen upon a church building that contains sacred art featuring ancient Greek philosophers on the back wall of the narthex (the foyer or entryway section of a church building). One such church exists in Athens and tourists often walk right by it not knowing they are walking by a truly old house of worship, over 1,100 years old. While icons of Jesus Christ, angels, apostles and others were displayed with halos prominently throughout this church, the philosophers’ images were placed in the back of the narthex without halos to illustrate that while they were not Christ-like, that they lived prior to and therefore outside the Body of Christ and before the time of Christian revelation, they were able to discern certain physical and metaphysical realities through natural revelation (including rational inquiry) that put them on a road towards ultimate Truth. My point here is to suggest that classical education and its emphasis on the highest good has roots in pre-Christian thinkers and a good part of what we emphasize in our school is the fruit of these classical era luminaries. Good[i] classical charter schools that hold this view are at least classical in this sense, but I submit they are classical in other ways.
Second, because classical education is rooted in the ideas of the Western Tradition, and most of this tradition was developed after the time of Christ, the majority of the literary works our students read were written by Christians or writers who were influenced by Christian culture—Paul of Tarsus, Augustine, Boethius, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, John Milton, Jane Austen, Frederick Douglass, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, to name a few. This means that the moral imagination of students is formed largely by Christian inspired texts, that they are exposed to many Christian references, allusions, and principles, and our students and teachers discuss these in class, not in an evangelistic or catechetical forum, but in the Socratic manner that classical educators often lead discussions. Additionally, students at good classical charter schools study history and do not shy away from one of the main dynamics of history, religion. Sadly, too many schools today whitewash history, and by extension, religious history, or downplay its significance. At classical charter schools, younger students can learn about the history of Christianity and its key tenets, figures and legacy and older students delve more deeply into Christian history in their Western Civilization classes. These experiences inform and form students in ways that Christian parents probably hope their children would be formed in school.
Third, Christian schools promote traditional virtues, aiming at moral goodness. Likewise, in our school and other classical charter schools that I know about, we promote the Cardinal, Intellectual and other virtues through a threefold process, sometimes described as Aristotelian, in that virtue is formed via habit, example and precept, but the understanding of moral goodness is ultimately influenced by Judeo-Christian principles (i.e. prudence, courage, moderation, justice, charity, integrity etc.). Our school mission statement at Founders prominently includes the phrase “promotes virtue,” and one of the words in our school motto is virtue: Scientia, Virtus et Libertas, or Knowledge, Virtue and Liberty. In fact, we believe that both knowledge and virtue are essential to living well and living a life of liberty in a free society. Moreover, liberty in this case does not refer to license. It also does not merely refer to political and economic liberty, but also infers liberty from our negative passions. Everything I have described here is part of the classical tradition and consonant with a Christian worldview.
Having said all that I have said, charter schools, like conventional public schools, do have to remain within specific parameters when it comes to promoting a particular faith or practicing religious observations in school. Our students do not participate in teacher-lead prayer at school. There is no chapel service, nor do we hold activities that promote a specific religious confession, although we do perform a traditional Christmas pageant each year. Worship and creedal activities are left to the discretion of parents and their children; however, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that students can and do pray at school of their own volition, they sometimes discuss theological topics of their own interest before school, during lunch or after school, and teachers often do the same, by themselves or with fellow teachers. I recognize that each classical charter school’s culture may differ in this regard, depending on the make-up of the students and teacher populations, but in a state like Texas, where the majority of people ascribe to one Christian confession or another, these unofficial religious practices are more likely to happen.
One benefit to Christians who choose a classical charter school option, a school rooted in the elements of the Western Tradition I described earlier but that does not include school-led prayer or religious services, is that the parents whose specific Christian confessions do not align with the those of the local classical Christian school, and who may be uncomfortable with the theological emphases of the private school, may have a good classical charter school option available to them. In this case, this means the parents may rely less on the school to support their specific beliefs and practices, placing more of the onus on them for the formation of their own children in the particulars of their faith. Considering that classical Christian schools are small in number across the United States, it is often unlikely that parents will find multiple classical Christian campuses near them. A classical charter school may be a better fit in these circumstances.
Here is an example of a dilemma faced by some Christian parents I have known—Baptist parents may have some reservations about sending their children to the local classical school operated by a Roman Catholic Church or Presbyterian Church of America, and vice versa. If there is a classical charter school nearby, and these are growing in number by leaps and bounds, the parent may have a good alternative. As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and a parent of children who are also cradle Eastern Orthodox Christians, I have enjoyed having them in a classical charter school where they have been formed in and have feasted in a classical liberal arts setting, while my wife and I have directed them in the specifics of our faith, and in cultivating them in the liturgical life of our church. While I would have cherished an opportunity for my children to attend an Orthodox classical Christian school, that was not an option for our family, as these schools are few and far between.
To be clear, I am not opposed to classical Christian schools. In fact, I strongly support them and I am glad that my children were able to begin their schooling in one of them in Florida before we moved and that they continued their classical education at our charter school in Texas. Furthermore, I hope that classical Christian education blossoms, and that these campuses continue to grow in influence and spread across the country. Likewise, I hope that good classical charter schools continue to grow because they provide a viable alternative for some Christian families who prefer a more non-sectarian experience for their children, as well as for those families who cannot afford to pay tuition at classical Christian schools, which it seems, make up a lion share of families.
Regarding paying for school, one of the great benefits of classical charter schools is that they are tuition-free, opening up the beauty of classical education to so many more children of all kinds of backgrounds—in this sense, classical charter schools help to democratize classical education. In Texas, and in other states, charter schools cannot handpick their students, as spots are determined via a lottery process. As a result, for many families the child’s spot in a classical charter school is a jackpot.
To conclude, Christ is the way, the truth and the life. All truth, all goodness, all beauty, comes from Him. These are Divine attributes. So, while classical charter schools are public, non-religious schools, Christ is in them. He is in them in the good, true and beautiful content. He is in them in the Christian educators whose lives serve as examples to others. He is in them in the believing students who attend these schools and share their lights. Christ’s image is reflected in many ways. While I agree that good classical Christian schools could provide an experience that includes the best of the liberal arts and sciences as well as the richness of the Christian faith in more explicit ways, I do believe there is a significant and essential place for classical charter schools in this country. Like the woman in Matthew’s gospel who merely touched the hem of Christ’s garment and was healed, students who attend classical charter schools can also be made well. Considering that education and spiritual formation doesn’t end when students walk across the stage to receive their diplomas, and that the Holy Spirit works throughout the lives of each person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, the education students receive in the type of classical school I described, can nourish them and engender a receptivity to God’s graces.
Jason Caros is a husband, father and classical school headmaster.
Endnote:
[i] I use the word “good” multiple times to refer to classical charter schools rooted in the Western Tradition and our civilization’s Greco-Roman heritage and Judeo-Christian principles. Secondarily, but importantly, good also refers to good, as in well done. I recognize that all classical schools, private or charter, are not all worthy of praise when it comes to overall excellence. I do not categorically recommend every classical charter school, nor do I think every classical Christian school is worthy of recommendation. Parents should prayerfully research each school and choose accordingly.