What is Classical Education?

I said it once before, and I’ll say it again. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

As I continue life’s journey and understand all the dynamics that make up its existence, Joseph Campbell’s explanation is insightful and a great description of birth, death, and everything in between.

Think about it; we have all been late to a movie and missed the start of it. It can be frustrating because we are missing a significant thread to understand what transpires in the movie as it moves forward. We can’t ask the person sitting next to us “without bothering” them with questions and noise. We also distract them from viewing and comprehending the movie independently because we desire to know what is happening.

I have realized we have contemporaries we can talk to who are also trying to figure life out and asking deep questions. We are lucky to find contemporaries who can mentor us by sitting with us in the theatre, telling us what the beginning is all about, and allowing both the teacher and learner to communicate with one another through asking questions and actively listening to one another as they help share and experience and create the third mind. This allows them to be present in the moment.

“The third mind” is when two people or individual minds come together for a discussion, creating a third intelligence that would not have otherwise occurred without the two parties’ open presence. For example, Person A and Person B each have thoughts on a subject.¹

These mentors come in many forms, from parents, family, friends, strangers, co-workers, and other human beings. It is a multifaceted approach to life, as we never know who our mentors will be in life, as they can come and go unexpectedly in and out of our lives at the drop of a hat. They can be positive and enlightening and even negative and toxic. Everyone can teach us something.

Another great way to learn about the movie’s beginning, along with the actual meaning and purpose of life, is to understand how the movie will end by reading old books from great philosophers or history books to get a better perspective. The Bible is another great book to gain perspective from the beginning to the end and everything in between.

I listened to the radio, and one of my favorite shows was Bryan Hyde. I remember one concept he drove deep into my heart and mind that changed my paradigm. I was in my late 30s when he spoke about the Great Books of the Western World, essentially the Great Conversation. ²

He opened up a new layer of life, like unlocking a new level on a video game. It was the doorway leading into Classical Education.

I was learning this new concept, and my world was opened to see the world with fresh eyes.

“Everything that you experience leaves its mark on your brain. When you learn something new, the neurons involved in the learning episode grow new projections and form new connections. Your brain may even produce new neurons. Physical exercise can induce similar changes, as can taking antidepressants.” (³)

Whenever I learn something new and enlightening, I want to share it with people I care about. I want to share with family, friends, and humanity. When the door started to open into a new world of education, I wanted to find a way to get my children involved and get them to be better than myself by being educated in the art of the Great Conversations.

“By sharing what we learn, we experience personal growth and build a network of like-minded individuals who share a passion for learning and discovery, sharing what we learn is a powerful and rewarding endeavor. It not only helps us solidify our understanding but also contributes to the growth and development of others.” (4)

(²)

Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler and others were detecting how the Great Books of the Western World was disappearing from the minds of Americans. The Great Conversation was the “ongoing process of writers and thinkers referencing, building on, and refining the work of their predecessors,” and wasn’t being taught in colleges and in our culture anymore. The project received funding to collect a selective list, but they knew they could add other, but had to prioritize the list due to space. This project was in 1952.

In essence, it was a thread of truth that to be built on as the movie progressed through time and generation. Each generation had the opportunity to filter their writings and philosophy sieve to follow the steps, phases, and principles of the Scientific Method to add or take away from the Great Conversation. It was an honest evaluation through observation and experience using the laws of nature as the press.

“What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only harken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.” (²)

“The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day.” (²)

The Great Conversation is a critical part of Classical Education.

We all should be asking why Classical Education, The Great Conversation, and Western Philosophy are not being taught to Americans anymore.

Does America have a two-tier educational system? (⁵)

In the video below, Brett Pike talks about it.

“What if I told you the rich and powerful had been educated in the same way for 1000s of years.”

@cubstobears

#homeschool #homeschooling #homeschooled #homeschooldad #homeschooldads #homeschoolmom #homeschoolmoms #homeschoollife #homeschooledandscared

♬ Violin – Grooving Gecko

As Brett explained in the video:

The grammar stage is grades one through four, where students focus on phonics, grammar, spelling, languages, and stories. In grades five through eight, students focus on reading comprehension, identifying logical fallacies, and writing logically. In high school, it is all about rhetorical communication and the ability to make arguments in writing and spoken words.

We aren’t going to go deep on these subjects at this time, but we would encourage the reader to read and drink from the cup of learning, and hopefully, the water will taste sweet to create the love to want more understanding of the topics touched upon.

Grammer:

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Dialectic

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Rhetoric:

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Logic:

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We combine those principles with apprenticeship to the founding generation to see why they were so wise in all subjects of life.

Brett Pike describes Benjamin Franklin’s classical education.

@cubstobears

#homeschooldad #homeschoolday #homeschoolingdad #homeschoolpreschool #homeschoolparents #homeschoolproblems #homeschoolmama #homeschoolingmoms

♬ Violin – Grooving Gecko

Suppose the rich and powerful have been educating their children under this system for thousands of years. Wouldn’t it show a privilege, an advantage, edge, and supremacy over the rest of humanity? It creates a two-tier educational system.

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The second tier seems to be dumbing down our kids.

As we have pointed out in World War 3 Isn’t What You Think; It is the Globalists vs the Rest of Us and The Global Financier’s Agenda to Gradually Takeover Government and Industry: The World, there is an insidious and immoral agenda to enslave humanity to the 1%.

A great way to enslave the masses in this class warfare is by taking over education and dumbing Americans down. By doing this, we become illiterate and unable to reason and have common sense. This is the opposite of Classical Education—no wonder the two-tier system was created.

“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, –that whenever my condition was improved, instead of it increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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@southern_celtic83

#oregon #liberalpolicies #dumbingdownofamerica #southerncelt83 #wakeup

♬ original sound – Southern Celtic

Let’s look at the second-tier system and how it has dumbed down Americans to be ruled over.

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Parents need to take back their power to educate their children. Classical education is key, and at the core of doing this is helping our children become critical thinkers and be part of the solution to take back American values.

Citizens For Constitutional Government, an organization from St. George, is helping facilitate a course to discuss The Great Conversation. Please look into the information below and sign up as a family to create a learning and growing atmosphere with your family and to help become a solution to the growing problem.

(1) How to Use the Third Mind at Work

(2) The Great Conversation

(3) How experience shapes the brain

(4) Sharing knowledge and the joy of learning with others

(5) The Two-Tiered Education System

(6) Grammer

(7) Dialectic

(8) Rhetoric

(9) Logic:

(*) Oregon again says students don’t need to prove mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate, citing harm to students of color

(**) What is the Difference Between Indentured Servants and Slaves