The Tools of Learning

From a very early age we want to establish a standard of excellence and promote the command and love of language. We want to nurture the ability to think about and discuss stories. We want to foster a capacity to remember and sustain attention and cultivate a love for what is noble and high. A good deal of instruction in the early grades will therefore consist in teachers reading great works of literature (e.g., children’s versions of Homer) to students over the course of a number of days. Often ‘age appropriate’ texts are less challenging (and inspiring) than great works which seem slightly out of reach. But when these texts are read slowly, with the teacher pausing to explain or discuss difficult phrases and ideas, children begin to discover the wonders of language, the power of big ideas, and to improve their own vocabulary. And they acquire a foundation for understanding most of the great Western art and literature they will encounter later in their studies and in life.

Education develops what is most human in students: the capacity for wisdom and love which requires insightful reading, depth of thought, and the autonomy that comes from virtuous self-command.

Premature or excessive use of computer technologies undermines the very qualities and skills education seeks to cultivate: it inhibits the development of reading comprehension, alters the very processes of composition and calculation, and creates dependence on the technologies themselves. It also hampers the transmission of tradition by isolating students from previous generations and instilling the prejudice that new equals better. Furthermore, it isolates students from one another.

The truly liberating answer to the problem of children's immersion in technology is not just a more responsible use of technology; it is to give them something better to love.

The study of music seeks to cultivate the same power of attention and understanding with the sense of hearing as observation does with the sense of sight.

In this way, the qualities and habits needed to read beyond the surface level of a story, to notice mathematical patterns in nature, to distinguish one bird from another, to hear parts of a harmony in music, or to recognize how shadows are effected in a painting.

‘Socratic’ discussions should begin in the earliest grades and teach students to begin questioning and discussing stories, pictures, fables or proverbs according to four rules:

1. Read the text carefully.

2. Listen to what others say and don’t interrupt.

3. Speak clearly.

4. Give others your respect.

The curriculum emphasizes observation and rendering in subjects as varied as art, music, and nature studies. The purpose of this emphasis is also to cultivate within the students habits and powers of looking, seeing, and noticing, the development of which makes us most human and most alive. These, in turn, imply a capacity for concentration, whole-hearted attention, silence, and stillness of both body and soul.

To cultivate memory, confidence, and good speaking, heavy and regular emphasis should be placed on memorization and recitation of phonics rules, math facts, and the narration and dictation of short poems, stories, and even history lessons. These skills and facts are the foundation for later work.

As students advance in their ability, they should be encouraged to place themselves imaginatively within the historical period they are discussing in order to understand how that culture thought about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, and the nature of God and man.