A Christian Perspective of a Liberal Arts Education - Book Review of Wisdom and Eloquence

Wisdom and Eloquence, by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans, describes a classical Christian education, which is to say a liberal arts education by a pre-twentieth century definition. The authors write of the importance of the trivium – grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, with their emphasis on rhetoric, and the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. The authors expand the quadrivium a little more widely than the classical definition, as they include geography and visual arts. They do not ignore math and science, and write of the Christian student’s need for these subjects. Science is not opposed to Christianity: “The overarching paradigm for a Christian education in the sciences is the understanding that our worldview embraces the reality that our study of the natural sciences is our window into God’s revelation of himself to his image-bearers through his creation” (124-25). The culmination of science is theology and philosophy, “toward which all our studies in the liberal arts has been building” (127).

While the book is largely the philosophy of education of the authors, they discuss practical methods of the classical education. These include:

1. In early and middle years reading should be a large portion of students’ studies, taught by three ways: students reading aloud, students reading silently, and teachers reading aloud from works that exceed the students’ reading level by at least two grades.
2. Schools should provide resources and opportunities for parents to teach their children ‘socializing subjects,’ like sex education.
3. Disciplines that rely on cumulative knowledge, like math or foreign languages, should be reviewed regularly, (weekly or monthly). Other subjects may be covered in a three-year cycle.
4. Every level of curricular planning should have objectives that are measureable, to which the school’s programs are answerable.

What are some the principles of the authors’ philosophy of education? They suggest the whole education of K-12 to have an objective, and with that end in mind to plan from the top – graduation – down. “We must look first to the desired end of the educational process, to the skills, knowledge, and virtues we want to be universally inherent in our graduates and determine how to get them there” (166). The Christian perspective must be kept in mind by educators: “We don’t produce these leaders (that is the work of the Holy Spirit), but we can encourage this potential by reminding ourselves and each other that all our students, whether they profess faith or not, are fashioned in God’s own image” (45). The authors go so far as to say the Christian school should have a Christian faculty:

A non-Christian teacher’s presuppositions, no matter how sympathetic toward or accepting he may be of Christian ethics, places him at odds with the Christian worldview, especially in metaphysics (one’s understanding of why and how things exist) and epistemology (one’s understanding of how we can know what we know). This is an unacceptable conflict that renders the Christian school’s mission ineffective and hypocritical. So, Christ must be the central reference point of the teacher’s life in a way that recognizes him as the active and irresistible Creator, Ruler, and Redeemer of the universe. The Christian teacher must also be committed to placing the welfare of others ahead of his own.  (157)