The word "classical" or "classic" is used in many contexts and often without specific meaning: classical music, classic rock, etc. However, classical usually means something that through time has proven worthy of our respect and interest. In music, the work of certain composers has been recognized as worth saving, while that of others, though popular in their day, has been tossed aside into the dust-bin of history. The same is true of books. Some books are more worthy of study than others because of the profundity and clarity with which they express the ideas they contain.

The study of the great books has been the backbone of good education for centuries. If you look at the books read by the intellectual giants in our culture, you find that particular books come up again and again. These books were required of most school-children until the rise of Dewey and the institutionalization of education through the public school system in the first half of the 20th century.

But with increasing interest in classical education in recent years there has been a revival of the Christian intellectual tradition. Classical education differs from most educational philosophies in that it attempts to step back from the parade of pedagogical theories and ask: "What was education like in the past? What books were used? What goals were thought important?"
 

Dorothy Sayers, in her well-known essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," answers these questions, giving us some very sage advice for education in our own day. She began by investigating the medieval model of education and found that it was composed of two parts. The first was called the Trivium and the second, the Quadrivium (which was generally "post-secondary").

This certainly well-summarizes the pedagogical goal of classical education; however, once equipped with the ability to learn, where does a student go from there? To be able to learn for yourself does not mean that you no longer need a teacher, but rather that you are capable of making books your teachers without the aid of an instructor to explain them to you. In our day and age we are quite impressed by the number of years one has to spend in the academic institutions obtaining degrees. The ancients, however, would probably have thought our institutions poor since they are not producing graduates who are capable of easily learning independently. As Sayers states in the conclusion of her essay, "The sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain."

If we ask, "Which books are worthy teachers?" the answer usually depends on who we are or what we are attempting to learn. If, however, the question is, "Which are the truly great books?" there is actually fairly broad agreement. There are books that through history have shown enduring value (Greek and Roman literature, the Bible, various literary authors, etc.). Through time certain books have generally come to be viewed as central to the development of western culture and have had an unusually large impact due to the profundity and eloquence with which they have expressed their ideas. These books form the core of the western intellectual tradition; it is the ideas contained in them that have formed the saga known as western history.

Anyone who desires to understand the cultural milieu in which they have been raised should read these books. In order to come to a self-conscious understanding of the ideas that have shaped the culture around us, we need to face the ideas at the source from which they came. Francis Schaeffer had an excellent sense for the top-down flow of ideas. He explained how ideas began with the philosophers, worked down through the universities, into the popular media and finally into the general culture. Because ideas progress in this manner, it is necessary to become acquainted with ideas at their fount, so that we may understand their manifestations in our present culture. Thus, the reading of the great books serves an important apologetic function for Christians, and in education, the forming of future Catholic leaders.

We live in the continuum of western history. In order to evaluate this stream of which we are a part, we must step back from it and discern the ideas that have shaped it. To attempt to ignore the ideas that have shaped our cultural history is to guarantee ourselves not only cultural irrelevance but also entrenchment in the Christian ghetto. Not only do we want our children to avoid intellectual impoverishment, but we also want to honour the God who needs his children to be courageous, and grateful by embracing their potential.