Most people in the classical Christian school movement look upon Dorothy Sayer’s 1947 essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” as something of a founding document. However, the movement as it currently exists in North America stems from the implementation of that essay in the late 1980s, and is best represented in Douglas Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning (Crossway, 1991). Wilson had founded Logos School in Moscow, ID in 1981, a school that forms the backdrop to his book. Wilson would go on to help found the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) in 1993, which currently has over 300 member schools in all 50 states and 7 foreign countries. Even though the movement has developed beyond Wilson’s articulation of classical education in his 1991 book, it is instructive to see where it all began. We can also add that Wilson has written extensively outside the purview of classical education, contributing to the fields of history, theology and apologetics (he is perhaps best known for his 2007 debates with atheist Christopher Hitchens published in Is Christianity Good for the World and in the 2009 documentary Collision).
The basic problem Wilson is trying to solve is a crisis in national public education. He reflects on the state of the public schools in the 1980s as producing students who lack rudimentary skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. Even more concerning is the detrimental effect this has on American society through cultural illiteracy. The expectation that a democracy is founded upon an educated citizenry has been eroded through misguided reform movements. Wilson proposes an alternative form of education founded on a biblical worldview and utilizing the ancient liberal arts model.
Having identified the problem of public schools as not providing the intellectual and moral foundation to enable a civil society to succeed, he identifies numerous attempts to reform public schools that availed little positive results, especially for the Christian. The public schools are a wasteland for the Christian. “So in this battle for the public schools, it is folly for the Christians to continue to lose and inconsistent for them to win” (39). What would it look like to gain a win in the public schools, when it is committed to a worldview of secular humanism? But is it more likely that our children will be turned out doubting their faith, intellectually malnourished, and fairly well indoctrinated in an anti-Christian worldview. Sure, a parent can devote extensive resources to countering what the public school has to offer. But what, then, is the value of an education that must be questioned, qualified and contested at every turn?
Wilson hints at a further problem in the reactionary approach taken by Christian schools in the latter half of the 20th century. The solution to the educational crisis was not to build a Christian alternative to the secular public product on offer. The liability was essentially to Christen secular humanism. A more thorough reconsideration of an authentically Christian form of education needed to occur, which Wilson enters into in the heart of this work.
The first main section of Wilson’s book is to lay out a case for a distinctively Christian education. The biblical framework he provides rests on several biblical passages, including Deut. 6:4-9, Eph. 6:1-4 and Matt. 22:37. Taken together these passages speak to an education that is thoroughly imbued with scripture. Students should not simply have a Bible lesson once a day, or once a week. The entirety of the child’s instruction should be informed by a biblical worldview. Wilson also frames Christian education in such a way as to caution us against thinking that education cannot save man. He delves into the theological paradigm of Adam, created in the image of God yet fallen. Our students come to us as offspring of Adam. It would be foolish and sacrilege to think that our cleverly devised curriculum could save. Only the grace of God saves through the accomplished work of Christ. Wilson states that “educational reformation must begin with the Biblical view of man” (74). This is why the Christian parent will struggle with the public schools. This is why the Christian parent must be discerning about even the Christian schools.
“So it is not enough to have a Christian curriculum, and Christian teachers. It is not enough for the school to meet in a church. The Biblical educator must not only have a Christian understanding of the material, he must have a Biblical understanding of the student. If he does not, then the result will be a hybrid Christian methodology employed to achieve a humanistic goal.” (76).
The Christian parent must be discerning, then, about the nature of the Christian education they are looking for. The Christian school must be diligent about its methodology. We cannot assume all students will have been recipients of God’s grace, thus our teaching is “preparation for those who have not received the grace of God, and godly instruction for those who have” (76).
The second major section of Wilson’s book lays out a model of classical education based significantly on Dorothy Sayers 1947 article “The Lost Tools of Learning” echoed in the title of this book. (You can see my own take on Sayers and the recovery of educational values from the past). The salient features of Wilsonian classicism are the selection of great books from the Western canon (83-85), engaging students in the “great conversation.” Latin language studies are essential for laying a foundation for understanding the English language, foreign languages, the scientific method and a host of other benefits (87-88). Wilson then explores the trivium both in the mode expressed by Sayers as corresponding to the stages of childhood development (91-97), but also as structures for how different subjects are taught (100).
Wilson points to his aims to promote a love of learning and a strict standard of discipline. These aims, however, receive very little treatment (a paragraph each on pp. 100-101). The method proposed for promoting a love of learning is to employ teachers who are enthusiastic about their subjects. The low student-teacher ratios maximize the teacher’s influence so that students catch the enthusiasm themselves. Regarding loving discipline, Wilson emphasizes order, a lack of disruption and submission on the part of the student. Corporal punishment is used according the guidelines of his school’s discipline policy. I think that many readers will have wanted more educational theory here, rather than an exposition of Wilson’s Logos school handbook.
An unexpected turn was Wilson concluding his section on classical schooling with a review of his school’s growth and academic performance. He is able to point to impressive numbers, as his school grew rapidly and students at the Logos school achieved exceptional scores on standardized tests. True, standardized tests can be a solid measure of academic goals. However, the book’s claims to a Christian educational ideal surely requires some different modes of measurement. Has there been a measurable impact on the stated cultural crisis that frames the book? Are graduates retaining their faith at a greater rate than their public and private school peers? Are graduates contributing to church and society in ways Wilson has expected as a result of this educational paradigm?
Wilson concludes this section with several explorations of the challenges of modernity. He covers works by Neil Postman, Allan Bloom and others to question the use of video in education and the quality of music children are exposed to. He notes the challenge of Christian anti-intellectualism. He also considers the question of whether parents should choose homeschooling or a classical Christian school. Wilson concludes by reviewing the crisis of modern education and reiterating his proposal of classical Christian education as the means to train up children in a biblical worldview.
In the nearly twenty years since its publication, the classical Christian movement has grown significantly as a movement in the United States, indebted in no small part to Wilson’s efforts. The movement has developed in theoretical sophistication, with many schools no longer adhering to Sayers’s stages-of-development conception of the trivium. More schools are now exploring STEM subjects as an integrated quadrivium of sorts. The question as to whether the trivium ought to be taught as distinct subject has shaped several schools, with Jason offering a critique of this view in consideration of the meaning of the concept of “arts” as “the ability to make something.” The liberal arts are not merely bodies of knowledge but a set of “highly complex skills that students needed to be trained in over a course of years.” Alongside the ACCS, other organizations have been founded such as Circe Institute and Society for Classical Learning that broadened the theoretical and practical discussions within classical Christian education.
Looking back on what amounts to a foundational volume for the classical Christian movement, I was surprised to find that the book was far more practical than philosophical. I appreciate the emphasis on biblical worldview applied to education, but one comes away wanting a more robust exploration of what this looks like within the liberal arts tradition and as an educational method. I think in The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain (previously reviewed by Jason) one will find a more deliberate exploration of educational philosophy along these lines. Wilson rigidly positions the movement against progressivist educational reform. It is not that I don’t agree with his critique of modern education, but I wonder if there are insights that can be gained by studying developments in educational methodology stemming from such areas as neurology, cognition or psychology. All in all, I think Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning is a necessary read for those within classical education, but many will sense that the movement has developed in ways that make it less directly applicable today.