For your convenience, a brief overview...
1) Classical-Christian vs Modern-Progressive Education
Classical-Christian education involves a timeless approach to learning. One comes to the seat of learning with an "attitude of humility towards the wisdom of the past" and endeavors to "transfer such humility to the next generation"1. It teaches that all things, both past and present, are woven into the same fabric and have their meaning relative to a universal, absolute Truth. It teaches us that we are not apart from, but live within history. History, being a "linear and meaningful sequence of events"2, serves a transcendant purpose, and will one day be fullfilled in the Logos. It gives man purpose and hope for the future, teaching him to reach, with courage, beyond himself and it reveals to him that he is responsible. It teaches that one can, indeed, know and that he should endeavor to know. It also reveals that knowledge alone, without the temperance of understanding and wisdom, is wholly inadequate for the affairs of man. It gives one the tools to learn on his own so that he may learn for life, freeing him from the restraint of learning solely within the walls of an institution. It teaches one how to live the good life, as a human being, created in the image of his Maker. It teaches that the final reality, the absolute Truth, the Logos is found in Jesus Christ alone, and that all good things come from Him. In fact, it points all things to Christ, man's only hope of salvation, and reveals that, solely in Him, we live and move and have our being. This, then, is life-giving education that nourishes the eternal soul while equipping him to live well, and with eternal purpose, on the earth.
Modern-Progressive education is focused on things secular and sensory. In practice, it is narrowly concerned with the contemporary and makes gestures to that "future" which never arrives. It carries with it an attitude of arrogance or, "automatic sense of superiority to the past"3 because, well, we came later. It is more concerned with teaching the student 'the answer' (whatever the textbook might say in this year's edition) rather than teaching him how to learn and get wisdom on his own. What it fails to recognize, or at the very least, what it fails to nourish is the soul of the student. "How can we teach what we cannot quantify?", the modern educator asks. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis in his book, The Abolition of Man, modern man has taken education from its lofty, transcendant perch (a place where unchanging Truth resides), and has reduced it to a material-like object where "Conditioners", pragmatically decide what "artificial Tao" (truth) they will "produce in the Human Race". Man no longer is Man with mortal body and eternal soul, but merely the stuff of nature to be manipulated. What do we modern educators make then? Lewis answers, "We make men without chests"4; men with specific skills and knowledge, but with no heart to guide them.
2) The Structure of TSA's Classical Forms and Levels
| Ages 6-8+ |
Ages 9-11+ |
Ages 12-14+ |
Ages 15-17+ |
Early Grammar Form
Level I
Level II
Level III |
Late Grammar Form
Level IV
Level V
Level VI |
Dialectic Form
Level I
Level II
Level III |
Rhetoric Form
Level I
Level II
Level III |
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The Summit Academy offers 4 distinct Forms of education coinciding with the natural way God designed children to learn as they grow and develop: Early Grammar, Late Grammar, Dialectic (also called Logic) and Rhetoric.
Within each Form we have three Levels of understanding so, if we 'do the math', we see that a 6 year old student will pass through 4 Forms, comprising 12 Levels, before he graduates with a Classical Diploma from The Summit Academy.
At this point, you may be asking, "Isn't this just another way of saying that TSA offers 12 grades like any other school?". "Absolutely not", is our reply. Although a student's journey through The Summit Academy might take 12 years (then, again, it might not), the fundamental difference lies in the Classical-Christian idea of what constitutes an education. Ideas, you see, have consequences and they shape what we do.
Although a student's age is not bound to a specific Form or Level, an example of his path of progress might look something like this:
• Mastering the Levels: Let's look in on a typical student who has just completed Levels I, II and III of the Early Grammar Form (approximate ages 6 through 8 or 9). He has now been accepted into the Late Grammar Form, is approximately 9 years old, and works the entire school year mastering the tools of learning in Level IV of the Late Grammar Form. The following year, having mastered the Level IV tools of learning, our student passes through to Level V of the Late Grammar Form. His ambition would be to master the tools of learning at Level V so that he might move on to finish Late Grammar, Level VI by age 11 or 12.
• Demonstrating a universal understanding of the Form: Even though the student in our example was able to pass through the 3 levels of Late Grammar in 3 year's time, he must still pass through the exit gate of the Late Grammar Form and enter the door of the Dialectic Form (approximate ages 12 through 14 or 15). The passage between the Grammar and Dialectic Form is comprised of an in-depth oratory examination given by faculty members of both Forms (Late Grammar and Dialectic). The purpose of such an exam is to ascertain whether the child has a broad and deep enough understanding of the three Late Grammar Levels, and whether he is equipped with the proper tools to proceed into the Dialectic stage of learning.
Footnotes:
1, 3 - Ritz, Greg, "Classical Education in the Home School", Indiana Association of Home Educators, 2001
2 - Sire, James W., The Universe Next Door, Intervarsity Press, USA, 2004
4 - Lewis, C.S., The Abolition Of Man, Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, USA, 1996
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