Hallmarks of a Chesterton Academy Education: Rediscovering The Lost Tools of Learning (#4 of 6)
By Peter Ohotnicky, Headmaster
This is the fourth article in a series of six which will describe the Hallmarks of a Chesterton Academy Education.
“Becoming a more fluent reader, a more eloquent writer, a better communicator should be the goal of education. Our curriculum is centered on skills seemingly forgotten in our modern society - reading, writing, oral presentations, and the development of critical reasoning skills through the study of logic and philosophy. Through the transfer of these vital skills, we prepare young men and women to lead and to succeed, preparing them to transform the culture, to lead the nation, and to make all things new in Christ.” (The Chesterton Schools Network Course Catalog)
Critical thinking or critical reasoning skills—practically every school claims to teach them, but few schools have a clear understanding of what these skills are, how to develop them, and how to recognize if students have them. At Chesterton Academy, we believe students can critically reason if they are able to judge the latest fads, fancies, and political slogans of the world against the ideas which have stood the test of time, especially those of the Catholic Faith. As G. K. Chesterton says, “Teach, to the young, men’s enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.” The Chesterton Academy curriculum does this beautifully by first spending three full years studying our rich Catholic intellectual tradition which comes to us through theology, literature, philosophy, history, music, science, math and art—the full flowering of how faith and reason come together. Students also study formal logic and logical fallacies. (Watch out, Mom and Dad: students who study logic tend to be really good at calling you out if you try to employ one of those fallacies.) Then, in their senior year, students study those passing errors: the Protestant Reformation and fracturing of Christianity, modern philosophies, Marxism, and the Sexual Revolution, among others. Like our patron, students come to be clear-thinking about those who are teachers of error. Chesterton recognized that: “Each of them [teachers of error] took not so much as a half-truth as a hundredth part of a truth, and then offered it not merely as something, but as everything. Having never done anything except split hairs, it hangs the whole world on a single hair.”
“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.”
It is certainly important to be clear-thinking—it is the essence of freedom. This is what is meant by a classical, “liberal arts” education. Without clear-thinking and a firm grasp of eternal truth, a student will be a slave to the trends of the world. Chesterton says, “The free man is not he who thinks all opinions equally true or false; that is not freedom but feeble-mindedness. The free man is he who sees the errors as clearly as he sees the truth.” The robust course of study at Chesterton Academy, which includes formal logic and four years of philosophy allows students to learn and discuss the most important ideas about what it means to live as a human being.
But clear-thinking only gets the human being part of the way there: because we are embodied souls, we must learn to communicate well so we are sharing truth, goodness, and beauty with others! The writing curriculum at Chesterton Academy is deliberate, proven, and integrated across the courses. We use the Structure and Style program from the Institute for Excellence in Writing, or IEW. Structure and Style starts with the most basic skills and techniques for writing good sentences and paragraphs, then builds up to writing standard 5-paragraph essays and longer term and research papers. Each new skill is introduced in a deliberate manner, and consistent standards are used in every class. Because writing assignments are coordinated and systematic, this saves the student the frustration of being inundated with writing assignments from multiple classes, each of whom has a different expectation and set of standards. After two years of working with Structure and Style-based writing assignments in multiple classes, students are very capable writers. The use of formal written lab reports also develops the skills of presenting scientific results and conclusions.
Besides writing skills, developing speaking skills is also a deliberate focus of Chesterton Academy. Through the Socratic discussion format, students learn to engage in respectful intellectual conversations with their peers and teachers—something we definitely need in today’s world! This includes being challenged to support one’s assertions based on evidence, rather than simply using Facebook memes, trendy buzzwords, or personal attacks. Students give verbal presentations across the curriculum: propositions from Euclid’s geometry, recitations of poetry, a team presentation about a planet in the solar system, and a description of a historic battle are examples. But perhaps speaking skills are most deeply developed through the drama program—a required class for all students during the last three years. In drama, students learn to overcome the fear of speaking in front of an audience, to project their voice, to speak without saying “um” and “like”, to memorize and deliver lines, to act with appropriate gestures, and to connect with their audience. Many students find drama at Chesterton Academy to be life-changing—and a whole lot of fun!
The end result is of a Chesterton Academy education is a young adult who is an articulate, clear-thinking, well-rounded, and joyful human being. He or she has grown to know and love truth, goodness, and beauty, and is well read and well versed in the whole truth of things. Most importantly, Chesterton graduates are ready to go out into the world and share the truth with hearts full of joy, leading and serving their families, their Church, their communities, and their country.
“The Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”