Meals are a regular part of the Biblical narrative, from the Israelite traditon of feasts to Jesus’ method of quality time with his disciples to the promise of what is to come in the new creation. In these contexts, eating is a means of relational investment, celebration, quality time, and education.

I have two goals in writing about meals. One: If you have not yet begun to regularly use a meal as context for family nurture, I am hoping you will reconsider. Two: If family meals are already a regular part of your home routine, I want to tempt you towards milking more out of them–no pun intended.

I believe a couple of lists would be appropriate here to avoid an all-too-lengthy post:

Reasons for regular family meals

• Families need time to ALL be together on a regular basis. It seems tragic to me if this time is only on weekends, at bedtime, or on vacations.
• I don’t know about you, but much of what I remember from my childhood, by way of family time, happened at the dinner table.
• Dinner might be one of the rare moments in the day when you have all your children still for an extended period of time at once.
• It’s a valuable Christian tradition that is worth keeping intact. If we do it, it is likely that our children will too when they are parents.
• Sharing meals teaches our children that we value family in a practical way.
• It’s a good accountability measure to get mom or dad home from work at a healthy hour.
• It’s an excellent context for family worship, nurture, education. See next list.

Ideas for regular family meal content

• Nothing formal, just be together, laugh, touch base, look each other in the face, regularly realize God’s goodness to your family.
• Disciple
  • Read through books of the Bible together.
  • Read from a family devotional.
  • Sing hymns before or after… maybe practice morning assembly material?
  • Let a different family member be the prayer focus each meal.
  • Use the meal as a context to learn about and pray for people who rarely have full meals… we eat all of our vegetables because we are grateful, not necessarily because we like them!
  • Ask probing age-appropriate heart questions (grammar school in mind here)
    • How do you know God was part of your day? What made you happy today? Did you have any struggles today? Did anything make you mad? Sad? What did you do about it? How were you obedient? How were you disobedient? Is there anything you need to make right? Did you honor your father/mother? Did mom or dad do anything we need to ask forgiveness for? Did you love your siblings well? What are you proud of? Are you giving all the credit to Jesus? Etc.
  • Ask thought-provoking questions about God and His world
    • Why do you think God made things this way or that way? Why do you think God does this or that to us? Did you know that Bible says x,y,z -amazing thing? What do you think Jesus thinks about this or that?
  • Share your life with your children. Answer their questions about what goes on during your day. Tell them when your days are hard or stressful. Tell them what mistakes you made that day and what you did about it. Tell them what you love about being a mom/dad. Tell them stories of what you were like when you were a kid.
• Educate
  • Ask what your child learned in school that day. You will find that you will have to be specific here, especially with most boys, which may require you to know ahead of time what they learned. In most cases Mom does most of the home teaching, so if Dad leads this time, this is a great opportunity to show your children that Dad values their education and is seeking to be a part. It is also a form of continued education since you are basically having your children informally narrate what they have learned. This is often more effective than formal narration.
    • I understand you are reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader at lunch. What is happening in the story? What did you learn about Napoleon today? Was he a good man? What did he do? Are fractions easy or hard? You need to eat at least one third of your broccoli.
  • Work through a great piece of literature during dessert. There are several great anthologies of short classic children stories that are good for this. Or read the Narnia series along with us. Rereading sections at home would be great for students as they are sometimes distracted during lunch.
  • Do some informal education through a fun facts or trivia book.
  • This may sound weird, but we often make our kids answer questions in order to get their dessert. We have fun with it, silly and serious questions, usually a mix from all different places in their curricula (Recite Romans 12:9-14. What is an adverb? How do you say “father” in Latin? Who is your favorite dad?). They still get dessert if they get it wrong.
  • Teach your children manners. If you don’t have meals together, it is hard for children to have any regular context for learning manners. Different families have varying amounts of expected formality at the home dinner table. Even if your expectations might be lower at home, children will need to know how to put more formal manners into play when it is expected. We have some day-to-day expectations (sitting properly, chewing with mouth closed, saying “please pass,” asking to be excused, etc). But we also have mock formal dinners every once in a while for fun. We break out the “fine china,” make sure everyone is properly clothed, and pretend like we are at a fancy restaurant. Our children get to learn some finer manners in this context. And Dad gets to remember his.

I am sure many of you have great ideas from your experience- please share! We do not have dinner together every night. I wish that were the case. But we do as much as possible. Saturday breakfast and Sunday lunch with extended family have been significant in our family as well.  We do different things from the list above in different seasons of life as the Lord leads.

At our recent “TCS Dads and Donuts” gathering, I was at a table discussing application questions from Bill Streger’s encouraging message.  One of the TCS fathers at the table happened to have an older and younger set of children. The older ones had already left home. His comments renewed my passion for the dinner table. He said he would pay any amount of money to have one more meal with one of his older ones as a child again. I know we will all feel the same. Let’s treasure these times and glorify God at our meals.

Neil Anderson / Head of School

For many, the introduction to Trinity Classical School came in the context of an Information Meeting. I love Information Meetings. I love them because they give me a platform to speak about some of my greatest passions (Christ, worship, family, education, etc.) and to try to convert families in Houston towards a Christ-centered, classical vision of education.

Information Meetings are also quite dangerous. The reality is, classical education sells. When it is articulated well it typically scratches people where they are itching, whether they are grieving their own education or frustrated with what they are experiencing in a progressive school. While I am happy to scratch, I am nervous about the short sell. Many of us are the type who are easily excited by new and challenging ventures without fully considering the cost. Show me a documentary of a marathon runner and I’ll have my shoes laced up by time the credits roll, forgetting that I have a wife, a bunch of kids, a job, a church, and need to be willing to beat the sun out of bed. Or, if I’m struggling to get back into running, I may feel I just need a new pair of running shoes, as if the shoes will run for me.

“A classical and Christian education is not a package-deal. No one supplier or textbook publisher will provide you everything you need in a 50 pound box, delivered by UPS. Western culture weighs more than this…” (Callihan, Jones, Wilson; Classical Education and the Homeschool). I would also add that no one classical school, administration, or set of teachers, can supply this either. The danger, to be more explicit, is that we get sold on university-style, classical education as a great option for our children, but forget what it is asking of us as administrators, teachers, and most importantly… parents.

Of the many things classical education is asking of us, there are two that reign supreme: reading and teaching.

Reading
We cannot be involved in education without reading. For one, students learn much through imitation. If we want our children to read, which we do, it is crucial for them to see us read. This is true of the school staff, although harder to model, but even more important for parents. Teachers can allude to what they are reading at home or even converse openly (in older grades) about what is being read in leisure time. For parents, it’s simple: do your children ever see you read? Christian parents should know the value of being seen reading their Bibles. In other contexts this could be interpreted as pharisaical publicized spirituality. But we know that in the home, we want our children to “catch us” reading our Bibles so they are shaped by what we value. This is actually one reason I am not a huge fan of digital reading. You might by digging into 1 John on your iPad, but for all your kids know, you are emotionally involved in an intense game of Angry Birds. When we don’t read, we are in danger of being hypocritical with our children as we attempt to train them to value and enjoy reading in their education. A child’s love for reading will be shaped much more from a parent’s model than a teacher’s.

Also, as we try to consistently drill in, the quality of books read is most important. Modeling Bible-reading is essential, but then to spend the rest of your leisure reading People Magazine would be counterproductive. Nor is the idea to read Moby Dick as a good model reader, all the while despising what you are reading. As adults we should value spending time in literature that is rich, thought provoking, creativity stimulating, theologically challenging, historically informative, intelligently humorous, etc. If you did not read the Great Books in your own education, and you want to be involved in a classical and university-style school, you will want to get a head start if you have any intentions of conversing with your student in the classics, let alone teaching them. You must be a reader to be a teacher.

Teaching
As we move into the second semester of this school year, it is a good time to remember that co-teachers (parents) need to pursue professional development just as teachers do. Just because the school teacher is taking the lead in curriculum does not mean the co-teacher should abdicate all of the “real” teaching to the teacher. Teaching is hard work and requires preparation to be done well. Novels should be read prior to teaching them and then reread along with the student. Lessons should be studied ahead of time and taught in a planned manner to students. Even if a student is progressing well and increasing in ability to complete lessons alone, the co-teacher should still be involved 80% of the time, teaching and correcting as the student works.

In the early grammar years it is fairly simple to “wing it”. In the upper grammar years it is tempting to allow your student to complete their work without much of your help so you can tend to other things. But students will tend to not take it seriously if you do not. They will also begin to pick up on the fact that you do not feel like working, so neither do they. We all remember having hypocritical teachers who asked much of us but put little effort in themselves. It is difficult to want to do good work for these teachers. Conversely, we were motivated to work for teachers who were by our side until we grasped concepts or who we could tell read our papers thoroughly and provided substantial feedback.

This process requires time and effort, but ultimately, it is far more enjoyable and incredibly more fruitful. You will enjoy home days that are planned and that you have prepared for. Your children will enjoy them too. On a practical note, go back and carefully read the introductions to all of your curricula and also the resources we have put out as a school. These documents will serve as philosophical refreshers. You may be surprised to find things you are neglecting that you didn’t realize.

Typically, one of two things can happen at the mid-year point. Things that you have been negligent of will slip further and further away. Or you will gain some resolve to conduct more dynamic homeschool days through reading, studying, preparing, and taking your students deeper into their academic disciplines. I would encourage you toward the latter.

I do not say this to scare you, but within the university-style school, your student’s academic “success” is largely contingent upon you. You are at TCS because you have felt the conviction to educate your children and I pray that your passion and energy for this will be renewed. If you are tempted to roll your eyes at this as you consider it in light of multiple children, housework, and the grueling homeday trenches… consider unrolling your eyes, commit to re-evaluating your home days, and start with some simple changes in your teaching commitments. All of us can aim a little higher.

For more stimulation in this area, consider starting with two short reads: The Seven Laws of Teaching, by John Milton Gregory, and Classical Education and the Homeschool, by Wes Callihan, Douglas Jones, and Douglas Wilson.

Envison a large jigsaw puzzle featuring a photo of King Ludwig’s majestic castle Neuschwanstein, complete with blue sky, soaring castle walls, and Bavarian foliage. How can this puzzle help us understand the Trivium? The process of learning with the Trivium is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

The third phase of the Trivium phase, Rhetoric (9th through 12th), is like describing the completed puzzle and explaining the story behind it. There is meaning and application that can be extracted from the completed puzzle, beyond the cardboard pieces and the assembled image. What can we say about the image depicted? What does it represent? Why is it important? How did a castle like Neuschwanstein come to be built? What motivated Ludwig to build this? What were the consequences? What lessons can we apply to our life?

The Trivium applied to learning history
We can trace the direct effect of the Trivium on how TCS students learn history. TCS students memorize a Grammar of History timeline spanning from Creation to the present. Learning the 79 timeline “pegs” (which consist of dates and events) allows students to mentally hang subsequent learning on or near a peg, developing a mastery of key events in world history. In the Logic phase students begin to inquire about the “why” of the events. Not just when was World War I fought, but what motivated the alliances? What was each country’s objective? What affect did this war have on World War II? In the Rhetoric phase, students are expected to clearly express an opinion, develop a thesis, and support it with facts and logic from the prior Trivium phases.

The Trivium applied to learning science
We also need to remember that the Trivium principles can apply equally well to math, science, and technology. Let’s look at chemistry as an example. In third grade chemistry (Grammar phase) TCS students get the puzzle pieces. The pieces include electrons, atoms, molecules, compounds, mixtures, acids, and bases. Students learn the difference between each of these. Student learn about pH, electron orbits, atomic weights, and types of reactions. When TCS students revisit chemistry in the seventh grade (Logic phase) they will assemble the pieces. The assembly process involves asking a lot of questions: What is the logic behind the order of the periodic table? What’s so “noble” about the noble gases? Why is copper such a good conductor of electricity? What’s the difference between organic and inorganic chemistry? In eleventh grade chemistry (Rhetoric phase), TCS students will combine their knowledge from the Grammar phase and their understanding from the Logic phase to observe phenomena, make calcuations, and articulate outcomes. How can we use our understanding to balance an equation? Can we predict what will happen when we mix two compounds? How does the Arrhenius concept apply to this problem?

So if trivium education is a jigsaw puzzle, Grammar school is about giving the students puzzle pieces, Logic school is about students learning to put those pieces together, and the main agenda of Rhetoric school is standing over the picture, viewing it, thinking about it, articulating what they see, and creating new applications and insights.

HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE OF READING IN THE HOME

During our campus days at Trinity Classical School, we work hard to foster a culture of reading. Likewise, we encourage parents to be intentional in creating an atmosphere in their home that values high quality books and reading. Reading is a door into another world, but children can be hindered from discovering that door and fully engaging in the world of excellent books if image-based media (television, videos, computer, ipad, video games, etc) dominates their waking hours.

Unplug. Until children are reading fluently and love to read, TCS encourages you to exclude any type of flickering screen from your child’s daily routine. Once a child is a flourishing reader, still exercise caution and use image-based media very sparingly, preferably as a whole-family activity such as a family movie night rather than as a parenting tool. For more discussion on children and media, we recommend reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman and other books such as The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn and Endangered Minds by Jane Healy.

Add quality literature. Once you have removed screen time from your child’s daily routine, replace that time with books. Not just any books, but high quality children’s literature. Become an expert in excellent children’s literature. Start with the TCS Reading List. You can learn as you go. There are also many other books and resources to help you, including Books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson, For the Childrens’ Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay and Educating the Wholehearted Child by the Clarksons. Print out the 1000 Good Books List from www.classical-homeschooling.org. Use the list to track books you have read to your children or that they have read or to get ideas for your home library. It is especially helpful for younger children, when you can go through picture books five or ten a day.

Read daily. Aim to read to your children every day. Of course there will be days missed due to illness, travel or other circumstances. But if you aim for every day, the cumulative effect of 18 years of reading together and shared experiences will be a rich heritage for your children. Many fathers have rediscovered reading by having a book they read aloud to their children each night before bed. Mothers or whoever is home during the day should also keep a read aloud going if possible, separate from the evening readaloud. If you need inspiration, take a few minutes to read this article.

HOW TO BUILD A HOME LIBRARY

Show your children that you love books and they will love books, too. You can build a home library and also use your local library to choose quality books and feed your children’s minds with beautifully written books that will nourish their souls.

Books as gifts. Rather than buying toys as gifts, buy books for your children. Ask for books for gifts from grandparents or other relatives who would like gift ideas.

Books as souvenirs. When you travel on vacation or business, bring your children books instead of souvenir t-shirts. Seek out used book shops when you travel–many times they will have out of print treasures that are hard to find, especially at a reasonable price.

Library book sales. One of the best resources for building a home library inexpensively is library book sales. It takes some time to comb through the offerings, but many high quality and classic childrens’ books are being discarded and sold for a fraction of the cost of a new book. Familiarize yourself with quality childrens’ books before going or go with a friend who can help you select books.

• Houston Public Library Book Sale. Two sales each year: one in September and one in the Spring http://www.friendsofhpl.org/

Used books. Other good options are used book shops, used online book sellers, e-bay, and even thrift shops.

• Half Price Books. 9 Houston-area locations. http://www.hpb.com/stores/
• http://www.abebooks.com/

Out-of-print books. Some of the best books are not being re-printed, though with the popularity of homeschooling and classical schooling, many previously out of print books are being reprinted. It is worth the time and effort to find out-of-print books for your children. When in doubt, buy older books. They tend to be well-written and with strong Christian moral grounding.

The local library. For some families, fostering a culture of reading in their home will mean weekly or even twice weekly trips to the library, checking out the quality books libraries still carry. Do not let your children bring “twaddle” home. Tell them they can choose from anything on a high quality reading list and they will have abundant choices. This will often involve requesting online to be transferred as many Houston libraries have a small selection of the best children’s literature.

• Harris county Public Library. 26 branches. Books can be requested online and delivered to any branch that you request. They will notify you by email that your book has arrived. Books may be renewed online for up to six weeks. www.hcpl.net
• Houston Public Library www.hpl.lib.tx.us

APPLICABLE LINKS

• http://www.welltrainedmind.com/reactive-and-reflective-thinking-multimedia-books-and-phonics/
• http://www.home-school.com/Articles/WilsonLiterature.html
• http://www.memoriapress.com/articles/Spring%2008/great-books.html
• www.classical-homeschooling.org
• http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/fashion/21GenB.html?pagewanted=all

1. The wall is closer than you think - For any of you runners out there, you know about the “wall.” Whether you are running 3 miles or 25, there is always an extended point of discomfort before you hit your groove–the difference between running as joy and as pain. You have to press through the discomfort to experience the reward of rhythm. For those of you struggling with home days, I can’t tell you precisely where your wall is. It’s different for everyone. I can just tell you that it exists. It may seem like I am that annoying coach that is hollering, “You can do it,” while you say bad things about me in your head. That’s fine. You can do it.
2. Your children are with you - It’s a good practice on home days to occasionally pause and do something to celebrate the fact that you are together in the middle of the day. I would suggest a tickle war.
3. Your children are learning from you – God has given your children to you because there are specific things God has worked into you that your children need. They are not just learning academic subjects from you, they are learning about life.
4. God is honored by your choice – This is not to imply that God is not honored through other models of schooling. This is to say you have made a choice based on a conviction to take Biblical parenting seriously. I believe God is honored in this.
5. FRIDAYS – Aren’t Fridays amazing? I’ve heard of many TCS fathers who have been able to capitalize on Fridays for extra family time. That’s music to my ears.
6. Your child is getting individual attention – There is no way around it, your child is getting individualized attention. Even if you feel like a home day is academically unsuccessful, you have to realize that you were there, one on one, working through it with them, observing any problem spots in real-time. And on the flip side, if it was a highly successful day, you are there ready to make the real-time adjustments to supplement their learning.
7. God is working on YOU through this – Please remember that your choice to put your child in a program like TCS is not just about your child. God is working on you as a parent, teacher, mentor, disciplinarian, etc. Let alone filling the holes in your own education.
8. 40% Lunches and Laundry – I doubt making lunches and doing laundry is what you would choose to do with your free time. Keep in mind you are only having to crank out 40% of the 5-day-per-week load!
9. It’s education for the whole family  - We might have to start charging tuition for the little ones who are learning from big brother or big sister on “accident.” Here is clip I received from a TCS family this week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e55O8H-elg
10. Your children are being loved on campus too - The TCS staff loves your children. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t feel the weight of the responsibility to love your children well. They are prayed for, cared for, and respected as image bearers. They keep us laughing and remind us why we got into the “business” of education. They are precious.

The world is littered with intelligent people who are not brilliant. Smart people who are arrogant. Skilled people who are selfish. Experts who are morally corrupt.

Sometime in the 1700′s the word “bright” began to be used to describe intelligence. Before that it was only used to refer to something that has a shiny quality. Both meanings are important for our purposes at TCS. We are hopeful that our students would be shiny, intelligent people–those who radiate with the brilliance of God.

The people in education who have had the most dramatic impact on me are the ones whose intelligence is brilliant. They have a way of bringing the most mundane subjects to life. They don’t just relay knowledge–they function as vessels of the infinite brilliance of God. They recognize that life is a series of steady miraculous moments in which we should be steadily wowed were we not so indifferent.

It is fairly simple to distinguish between the intelligent and the brilliant in this sense. The intelligent are happy they know what they know and happy for you to hear about it. The brilliant are happy to know some of what God knows and happy to help you access that yourself. Listening to a brilliant person makes you want to learn/worship. Listening to an intelligent person makes you want to sleep. The British seem to have a more effective use of this word. When they say “that’s brilliant,” they tend to mean it is both genius and stimulating.

Brilliance is a great word for the classical Christian education agenda. We are certainly investing towards intelligence, but praying desperately that God would grow a brilliance in our students. Our Latin motto this year is “Dominus illuminatio mea,” the Lord is my light. This is a phrase we have put forth hoping students will own it more and more through the years. Not only that the Lord would be their source of truth, but also their source of the brilliance.

One of our teachers recently relayed some information she thought I would enjoy about a student who was having trouble staying on topic. Apparently this student, who is in one of our younger grades, would raise his hand in the middle of math lessons to announce things like “God is the light of the world,” or “God loves you and you and you and you,” pointing around the room. I did enjoy this. I enjoyed it because little scenarios like this force the issue. In a public school it’s an awkward situation, in our school these comments are every bit relevant to any subject being studied. These comments could never really be considered off topic at TSC.

We pray that TCS students will be bright, knowing the Lord is our light, our Truth, our only hope of brilliance.

Classical education is not seeking simply to expose children to old literature, but rather good literature. As we choose modern literature for our children to read, we are looking for books that defined by truth, goodness, and beauty–books that could become classics themselves based on their quality.

I’d like to provide a few modern recommendations from time to time that I feel fit into this category.  Here are three which our family has enjoyed. All of these also happen to have a strong Biblical motif as well.

Wise Words: After struggling to find good self-contained, Biblically inspired bedtime stories, Peter Leithart began to write his own. Dr. Leithart has taught theology and literature at New Saint Andrews College and is currently a pastor.

Wise Words contains 18 stories written in the tradition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Each story can be read in about 10 minutes which makes it wonderful for a quick read aloud before bedtime. Similar to Aesop’s Fables, each story ends with a succinct moral, but in this case, directly from the Book of Proverbs.

Also similar to the great fables, these stories do not always have a warm and cozy ending. They are written eloquently and imaginatively but with the intention of cultivating Biblical wisdom, incorporating some of the hard lessons from Proverbs.

The Wilderking Trilogy: This series contains an imaginative fantasy rendition of the life of King David. Jonathan Rogers is a skilled writer who is very much interested in providing today’s children with great literature in the vein of Lewis, MacDonald, Tolkien, etc.

Our children were completely captivated through the entire  series. These books contain a tribe of people called “feechies” who are human in nature, but animal-like in the ways they live. For the few months following the completion of these books, our boys had one goal in life… to live like a feechie.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane: You may be familiar with Kate Dicamillo if you have heard of the book The Tale of Despereaux, which was later adapted into a movie. Although Dicamillo does not have  a reputation as a Christian author, Edward Tulane can hardly be read as anything other than an allegory of the life of Christ. For those with eyes to see, the Biblical imagery is powerful and beautifully crafted. I highly recommend all of Dicamillo’s novels. If you have not read The Tale of Despereaux, you really should as well. The movie does no justice.

We have enjoyed plenty of great modern literature through the years and I plan to continue to share more great finds along the way.

Let’s zoom out before we zoom in. There is no Biblical precedent for what your first grader needs to know before entering the second grade. I could not comfortably say that our conviction that your second grader should be reading about 90 words per minute is one that God is too concerned with. Grade levels are man made and so are all the objectives that come along with them. Before we take a report card too seriously, for better or worse, we must keep in perspective that it is God who develops our children. His timeline is usually not the same as ours.

The curriculum is designed to bring students along with a certain amount of expected progress. Sometimes it works out like we planned it, sometimes it doesn’t. Each student is developing academically through a combination of classroom cultivation, home cultivation, and Holy Spirit cultivation. To speak metaphorically; teacher and co-teacher can plant seeds, water, and tend to growth, but there will always be core growth that is contingent upon God’s sovereign cultivation.

So if your child is advanced, rejoice, but do so in humility because no matter how excellent your homeschool sessions are, it is God who does the growing. If your child is struggling, take a deep breath and relax. Be faithful with your part and know that God’s timing is more important than our professional assessments of where your child “should” be at a given age. We are hopeful that TCS families will keep the big picture in view as we walk our children through their education.

Zooming in closer, the standards we have set are more or less on par with the norms that have been set by schools aiming to hold students accountable to their full potential. The bar is raised a little higher than normal at TCS. This is due to the rigorous vision of classical education and the focused educational attention each student receives within the University-Model. We use the E-G-N grading system in the lower grammar school in order to trigger a different evaluation standard during the first years of education. We use a standard ABCF scale for upper grammar, eliminating plus and minus nuancing until logic school.

The grammar years are developmental and the learning curve is steep. We feel it is most appropriate to provide three simple categories for assessing each student’s progress in early grammar. In relation to a student’s abilities in each discipline, students are either progressing: much faster than the norm (E), at or around the average rate (G), or significantly slower than the norm (N).

Part of the reason we assign these values is because we want you to think differently about grades at the grammar stage. There is no real point in giving your third grader an 86 because that value cannot mean very much at such an age. It is fun for a student to get a “100” on an assignment. We want this for them. But at the grammar stage, we don’t want them necessarily to feel differently about a 100 versus a 96. After all, we are working towards the value of knowledge as it relates to understanding as it relates wisdom. A 100 on an assignment can have everything or nothing to do with the ultimate goal of wisdom.

Also, we want avoid the mentality that our students “just aren’t” something academically or behaviorally. Not only is it way to early to determine what our students will be good at down the road, we want to avoid them resolving to pursue math over literature or history over science. The classical vision is that they would have equal value for all subjects even if they end up being more gifted for one.

In summary, teacher and co-teacher should work together to track and assess the progress of a student. We should be mindful of objective grade level norms, and intentional in our attempts to pursue excellence in relation to these. We should also be reverent. Education is a lifelong calling. It is a context for worship, not an annual race to an imaginary finish line.

At the end of these meetings we have an open forum for questions. Many of the same questions are asked each month. There is one question in particular that gets asked often, but usually is reserved for private discussion after the meeting.

This happened again recently. A parent approached me at the close of the meeting, fumbling for the most inoffensive way to ask the question. “How do you know… I mean… what proof is there… have you seen compared to other schools… um?” What this parent wanted to know is… how do we know this Christ-centered, classical, University-Model education is going to produce excellent students according to state standards?

It’s a fair question, and it is a question I would expect parents to ask. It’s not offensive. For parents who are being exposed to the model for the first time, it might feel like the door-to-door salesman technique used often these days. The salesman throws you the line that neighbors Smith, Jones, and Wilson down the street just purchased Miracle Grout Cleaner, as if the fact that your neighbors got suckered will compel you to purchase something that you have zero confidence will benefit you in any way.

There are many ways to answer the question head-on. Both classical and University-Model schools are constantly outtesting public and private progressive model schools on standardized tests and the SAT. When you combine the two (classical and University-Model), the results tend to become even more potent.

The proof is also in the pudding right here at TCS. We will administer standardized tests in late spring, but even before this, it is easy to see the fruit of the model in the capabilities of our current students. I usually encourage parents who ask this question to participate in a Class Tour.

I have to admit, though, that this question and these answers make me wonder if the heart of the conversation is off base. When the chief concern in education is “what is your school capable of producing,” and the product we are evaluating is purely academic as associated with state standards, it seems we have drifted from the point.

There is only one ultimate product we are hoping for from the education we offer. We want to produce worshippers, students who come out on the other end understanding that the true end of education is a more informed worship. The invitation to enroll at TCS is not primarily about superior academics as the gateway to superior job as the gateway to superior income as the gateway to superior person.

The invitation to enroll at TCS is extended to families who view education in the context of the Kingdom of God. By this I mean families who are seeking a Christ-centered school because Christ must be exalted in the center of education as the One from whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). They are seeking a classical school because they want their children to be immersed in what is good, true, and beautiful, not just efficient. And they want a University-Model school because they want it to be themselves, the PARENTS, owning this process and seeing it through.

The degree to which we gain a reputation for having superior academics, must be simply as a “product” of being committed wholeheartedly to these things, not out of a desire for academic prestige or to beat the progressives at the education game.

I would be lying if I said I do not think about how we measure up to other schools. I would also be lying if I said I am not concerned with being excellent academically. But Christ-centered education means we are committed to being centered in Him and re-centered in Him over and over through the years. I’m interested in TCS families challenging each other to strive for an eduction for our children that is fueled by Christ, filled with Christ, and sustained by Christ. I have faith that our commitment to this will result in a product that is eternal.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

Neil Anderson
Head of School
Trinity Classical School

I don’t know if you realize it, but your children are singing about blood and wrath and nakedness and death every morning at TCS, the very things we normally try to keep from their eyes and ears at this age. It’s really very strange when you think about it objectively. We’re used to it, but make no mistake, it’s strange.

I have a vivid memory of reading through the Old Testament with my first child for the first time. My initial excitement for beginning our journey through the Scriptures was quickly met with dilemma. Blood, nakedness, wrath, death. I remember pausing to think and her prompting me, “Keep going, Dad. Why did you stop?” I was having an argument with myself in my head while she was waiting for me to continue. Does she really need to know that Cain actually killed Abel? Maybe I’ll just say he called him a really mean word. Yeah, that’s it, a really mean word.

While children’s versions of the Bible certainly “childrenize” the content, the good ones keep enough in to still present a dilemma and the bad ones leave enough out to misconstrue the whole story. On top of that, they have pictures and pictures make it worse. The one I had at the time was filled with images of God’s people crying throughout the entire Old Testament.

The dilemma continued once she was out of diapers and then worsened when she began to read for herself and wanted her own Bible. I had anticipated parental anxiety about my daughter’s exposure to a lot of different things, but never the Bible. She received her own “big girl” Bible soon after she began to read on her own. By “big girl” I mean the one with the full story in it. We gave it to her, prayed for her, and gave her some guidance on how to read it. And then we prayed for ourselves that God would secure her in His Word and look after her. I felt better. I went to bed, closed my eyes, remembered the story of Lot, snuck back into her room, tore out a few pages, and then went back to bed.

As we continued to have children and continued to read the Bible to them, we continued to evolve in our attitude towards the dilemma. Our children will be exposed to the hard realities of life at an early age through various means; a conversation you wish they wouldn’t have had, a movie you wish you wouldn’t have let them watch, a scene with the neighbors you wish they would not have witnessed. I didn’t really tear pages out of my daughter’s Bible. While I still don’t believe you should be completely uninhibited with your Scripture reading to a 3-year-old, I do believe that the Scriptures are a wonderful place for first encounters with the hard realities of life. They are a wonderful place because they are the life-giving truth of God. And they are a wonderful place because you are right there with them in these encounters; talking to them, explaining to them, easing them slowly into a world that is in desperate need of redemption.

Monday morning, our 5-year-olds will sing about blood and wrath and nakedness and death. Here is why.

Rock of Ages summed up by stanza:

Stanza 1

The blood of Jesus not only protects us from the wrath of a holy God, but endears us to Him as His own. (the double-cure)

Stanza 2

There is not a single thing we can do to make everything wrong in us right. God makes it right by grace alone.

Stanza 3

We are like infants in God’s hands, depending on him for survival.

Stanza 4

Christ when I’m born, Christ when I die, Christ forever more.