Education

What is education?

If I was asked this question at the start of our homeschool journey (or before), or even just a few years ago, I'd given you a much different answer than today. At the start of our homeschool journey I would have limited it to reading, writing, and arithmetic with the end goal being going to college for a job. While this is definitely a piece of it, I'm seeing it is just a small piece. 

As I slowly became more familiar with a classical education, my understanding slowly changed, though still focused on the end goal being a college degree and a set career (and my own pride being affirmed if I'm being honest). Now, we just had better tools to get there. The classical model showed me natural methods we are hard wired to use in gathering, understanding, and communicating information. And so, we practiced those tools, still with the end goal primarily limited to college and a specific career path. But, what happens when your kids aren't set on the trajectory you had initially planned? What happens when your educational ideas are met with struggle and unexpected hurdles, leaving you questioning your decisions? 

The mission of Classical Conversations is "To Know God, and Make Him Known." I was on board with this mission from the get go, when I walked through our community doors with a 4 year old, 3 year old, and 1 year old. But, I didn't really get it. I didn't really get it until the past few years.  When Hannah was in 9th grade, I was unraveling with the work load of her Challenge class (let me dispel the myth that homeschoolers don't do anything. Come see a Classical Conversations Challenge class.) and some of the learning struggles she was facing. I was on the precipice of choosing something different, in hopes it would better prepare her for life after high school. I'm so thankful I didn't. Because that's when my understanding of education began to dramatically shift. Education was so much more than getting into a college and finding a solid career. 

Those classical tools we'd been practicing began to be useful in everyday life. Those classical tools were used to approach the reading of Scripture. Those classical tools helped my daughter ask a non believer at work who struggled with her identity and other cultural hot topics good questions, while listening well and still remaining friends even when they disagreed. In their Challenge classes the kids are given differing worldviews and opportunities to discuss them while be equipped to disagree in love and kindness. These classical tools helped my kids define important words that the world has redefined based on the cultural flow. These classical tools provided them with multiple opportunities to stand in front of their class to defend their thoughts, recite memorized speeches, or debate a current event, while also handling differing opinions. The result? A confidence that has steadied them in the "real world" when surrounded by people who think and act very differently than they do. 

A classical education goes beyond the classical tools of learning and moves into using those tools to identify truth, goodness, and beauty, words increasingly unfamiliar in our culture today. They discuss books, looking for the heroes, defining a hero, and debating those ideas. What is virtue? They wrestle with this, they define it, they look for it. What makes something beautiful? How do we see the Creator in all He has created, even math? These are the conversations my kids get to be immersed in (and  I do too) as we think about the world and how we operate in it as the image bearers of the One who created it all. I am fortunate enough to have a front row seat to these discussions as a Challenge tutor. It has been rewarding and it has reshaped my answer to my initial question, what is education?

When Hannah was preparing to graduate last year, the main question she got was, "where are you going to college?" With my role as both a Local Representative and a Challenge tutor with Classical Conversations, a popular question I'm asked is, "will this prepare my kids for college?" or "How do they do on the SATs?" These are well meaning questions, questions I also asked, but, they fall short of the bigger picture. Perhaps we should be asking (this from a Christian perspective), "will this prepare my child for the WORLD?" Will this equip my child to actively engage our world in a way that honors the Lord and promotes goodness, truth, and beauty wherever they go?" It's an odd question, but I think more of the right question. I don't care so heavily anymore on what job my kids take, as long as they engage fully and wholeheartedly with the same mission they've always heard, "to know God and make Him known," because, that is education...to run hard after the Creator of ALL knowledge, wisdom, and understanding and to walk that out in whatever path the Lord puts them on, whether it's 4 year college, technical college, or the mission field (I'd debate everywhere is the mission field, but that's another topic for another day). Education doesn't stop after graduation, it's a lifelong endeavor that informs the whole person: spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional, and all for the glory of Him who made us to know Him more deeply. 

This, I believe, is a more robust understanding of education.