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Does science belong in the category of “classical education”? Do students who receive a classical education excel in STEM studies and careers? Science teacher Travis Southern is here to discuss these questions and more. Stay to the end to hear beautiful insight into how learning science in a Christian environment ultimately drives people to worship God as their Creator!

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again. I'm Marlin Detweiler. And you've come to listen to Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have one of our online teachers in our online school, Veritas Scholars Academy, Travis Southern. Travis, welcome.

Travis Southern:

Marlin, it is an honor to join you. I've enjoyed the podcast since it began!

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, I'm glad to hear somebody is listening to them. Thank you. Now you get to be somebody speaking to them. Tell us about yourself personally. Your personal circumstances, family, that sort of thing.

Travis Southern:

Sure. Yeah. I'm married to the beautiful Mrs. Southern. Mandy Southern. And she's also a teacher here at Veritas. She teaches in the grammar program and teaches grammar, writing and also geography at Veritas. We've been married for 23 years. Just celebrated 23 years.

We have three children. Our oldest is a nurse at the local hospital, about to graduate with her RN. Then my middle son. He's about to go off to college at the University of Oklahoma in the fall. And then my youngest is a student at Veritas. So he is finishing up his eighth-grade year right now.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's wonderful. Yeah. The school year is closing down now. How did you come to teach at Veritas? Tell us the story of how you got here.

Travis Southern:

It actually coincided with our children, finding– with us both finding– Veritas. Both as an educator and then also as a dad. So I have both of those hats going on at the same time. So I find the school not only a place to work at, but a place that I trust with my own children.

So it actually happened when my children were young. And so we began homeschooling really, when my oldest was a kindergartner and we didn't know anything about homeschooling. We didn't know any homeschoolers. Our family thought we were weird, because I grew up in a public school, and so did my wife. And so, you know, they were like, “What are you doing? You're messing them up,” things like that. You know, there's some people who hear that.

But we looked at different curricula. We tried a few curricula for a few years and they worked. And then we actually first came into contact with classical education through CC. So many people probably know what CC is– Classical Conversations. And as we got into that organization, we noticed they had this set of cards at the time and they were Veritas press cards that they would memorize and go through. And we started looking at those and studying those like, This is really good, who are these people?

After that, we looked you guys up on the Internet and we started taking your online classes to supplement and then were like, “This is phenomenal. The self-paced classes.” And then over time I saw that Veritas had an ad for a chemistry teacher and I applied for it and got a call. I think from you or Bob, I can't remember who called me first, but it was several years ago and it all worked out from there. And we are we have been really blessed.

Marlin Detweiler:

In the timeframe, in the years that you've taught for us, you've taught a couple of different things. Most of it's been in science, I believe. But tell us what else you've taught.

Travis Southern:

Yeah, I've taught quite a few science classes, but also rhetoric. I teach earth science, I teach physical science and biology, chemistry. I have taught organic chemistry before and also rhetoric. And this summer I'm teaching an Omnibus class.

Marlin Detweiler:

Really good for you. Which one are you teaching?

Travis Southern:

Actually, I'm teaching two. Omnibus Five and six Secondary. So yeah, so this is like my wheelhouse.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's really great. Now, during college you had a really special opportunity. Most people listening, at least those that have been involved in homeschooling, will know the name John Saxon or Saxon Math. John, of course, is the founder of Saxon. Tell us what you did in college with Saxon.

Travis Southern:

When I was in college, I remember I was a sophomore and they put an ad in the college newspaper looking for somebody to come in and proofread their textbooks and draw figures for math problems. And I said, “Well, I think I could probably do that.” And I applied and got rejected at first, and then they called me back. I guess they couldn't find anybody better. And then I got hired by John Saxon and Saxon Publishers, and I got to work there for several years all the way through college, and then eventually as a team lead in their pre-press department and loved it. Worked there primarily with John Saxon, Stephen Hake and also Frank Wong, and I knew them all well.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, we've got three of the main people in the history of the company when it first started. Tell us about John Saxon. I had the opportunity to speak to him once before he passed many years ago, at least two decades, and I was fascinated by him. But you knew him better than I did, better than almost anybody that might be listening. Tell us about him. What was he like?

Travis Southern:

Yeah. Oh, he was he was very intense. He was mission-driven. I think he was really the evangelist for the company. And so if you could get him started talking about mathematics, education in the United States, he would give you an earful. There's a really good YouTube video out there that you can find. It's a 60-Minutes segment that features John Saxon. It is very informative on his history and his ideas and how he did a rotational model of an incremental model really, of teaching mathematics.

So he was an old engineer that hated the way math was taught. And said, “This is not teaching anybody how to do this.” He taught a college class where he threw out the textbook, wrote his own textbook that became Algebra I, and then he would just go on from there.

Marlin Detweiler:

He's definitely a leader in his field and somebody who just wasn't going to take the status quo for granted.

Travis Southern:

Oh, absolutely. And take a lot of kickback. At first, people didn't receive his methods, didn't receive his approach in the beginning. But as he began to prove it, he gave away textbooks at the beginning, saying just try it and see if it works. And it worked in some of the most difficult schools, and then it just spread from there.

Marlin Detweiler:

Now, you worked for the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration also. Is that right after college?

Travis Southern:

It was. In fact, that's where I left Saxon Publishers and went to work for the FAA. I finished my degree in biochemistry and business, actually.

Marlin Detweiler:

FAA hired a biochemist?

Travis Southern:

They did. Of all things, It seems kind of odd, but I worked for an organization in Oklahoma City called the Civil Aero Medical Institute, or like all government entities, CAMI for short. So Civil Air Medical Institute. And their goal was to basically investigate aircraft accidents. And so my job, I worked in the toxicology lab.

So something similar to like a CSI kind of thing. It was pretty basic. We would do both with the human factors lab. We would look at different medicines, different drugs and see how it might affect pilots at high altitudes and what might need to be restricted. We also looked at in terms of fatal aviation accidents, were there any substances involved in those accidents that could impair their judgment?

Marlin Detweiler:

You would look at or judge pilots under the influence, that kind of thing?

Travis Southern:

Right, exactly. And not just alcohol or illegal drugs, but any substance that might impact judgment.

Marlin Detweiler:

I'm a pilot and people don't realize how altitude affects you in and of itself with thinner oxygen. And nighttime can be a factor as well. And then you add to that something as simple as a medicine or something like that. I was fascinated.

I don't know what the legal alcohol limit is and it varies by state what makes somebody a drunk behind the wheel of a car but with flying it's .02 and that is I think one-fifth or so of what is typical of driving a car. That's like one beer or one glass of wine. It's very little and you take it very seriously. You don't want to do that. You're in some interesting areas there.

You are also a pastor. So you start going down this path and now you become a pastor. What happened?

Travis Southern:

Yeah, I think the whole time I was growing up, really, I felt to call the ministry, I knew that was the direction that the Lord would have made ahead. But I resisted it as much as I possibly could, you know? Spurgeon, I think once said, “If you could do anything else, then go do that.

But if you can't, then if that is your call in your life, it's unmistakable.” I tried. I tried to do the other things. And I kept coming back to the pulpit. I kept coming back to teaching the word of God, kept coming back to preaching God's truth, regardless of whether we lived in Oklahoma City or Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

And I remember one day I came home from work and said to my wife, I said, “You know, I think the Lord is calling me into full-time ministry and I'm calling our family into this.” And she said, “Well, I know I've just been waiting for you to say.”

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh, my, that's such a welcoming answer!

Travis Southern:

Oh, absolutely. Not everybody hears that. Sometimes it takes time. But she had already heard that. She already knew that and already seen that in me and the Lord blessed that. So I left my job, went to seminary and took the long road because we had kids. Had to pay my way through, work my way through. But the Lord blessed that.

Marlin Detweiler:

That was before you were teaching for us, too, wasn't it?

Travis Southern:

That's right. Yeah. That was in 2005 when I left the secular workforce and then went to seminary. And I have been a pastor ever since.

Marlin Detweiler:

And that's great. So would you consider yourself now bi-vocational?

Travis Southern:

Yeah, absolutely. I would even call it co-vocational because bi-vocational is more like a pastor that would like to be full-time. I mean, I really like doing both worlds, so I find myself as a pastor/teacher, both of those roles kind of meshed together.

I love what I do in both worlds. I couldn't imagine not preaching regularly. I'm part of a team, so it's not alone. We have a team of co-vocational pastors that work together because nobody could do that by themselves. And we're seeking to plant a church in eastern Washington where there's not as much gospel witnesses as there are in other parts of the country.

Marlin Detweiler:

And you are in Eastern or are you in central Washington?

Travis Southern:

We're in eastern Washington. So in Richland, the Tri-Cities or Richland area.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, let's go back to what you teach. Most of what you've taught is science, you mentioned rhetoric. You mentioned even teaching Omnibus. And I'm thrilled to hear some of the things that you've taught. But with science in particular, which is what you've taught most for us, as I understand the things that you've taught, you've taught a broad number of science courses and many people tend to see science as outside the whole realm of classical education.

I think Latin logic, rhetoric, reading the great books, those kinds of things. But science and sometimes math kind of get thought of as non-classical subjects. Let's dispel that rumor today. Why is science an important part of classical education?

Travis Southern:

Oh, good question. Good question. I think really you can just begin from a historical perspective. You really can't understand the history of the world without understanding the technological and scientific advancements and developments in society. Really even going all the way back to Aristotle and his influence on the scientific world, the thinking on things like spontaneous generation or his even theories of the universe, cosmology, those kinds of things, and then even moving on from there, looking through the Middle Ages, through the Enlightenment, even through today. Understanding the history of science is really understanding the history of the world. And so I think that classical education actually lends itself very well to the study of science.

Marlin Detweiler:

And I think it does too. Let's unpack that a little bit more. Say a family from your church came to you and said, “My son's really interested in science. Why should they get a classical education? Why shouldn’t they just study science?”

Travis Southern:

That's a really good question. I think one is that you're taught how to read and be curious. My best students are the best readers and are those who are the most curious individuals.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, I believe that.

Travis Southern:

And when they learn how to read well, especially in their early, early grades, when they're learning how to read, pick apart sentences, understand sentence structure, understand how the language is communicated, even, understand how other languages are communicated. In Latin they have this ability to interpret, understand, and then grow in curiosity to ask the question “Why?”

That's what I'm looking for. The students who come into my early classes and to earth science and to physical science and general science who are asking the why questions. How does this work? Why does this happen? I think classical education ignites within them a curiosity, because we're not hiding history from them. We spoon feed it to them.

We're giving them the nuts and bolts. Yes, we're giving them the grammar. But then when they get to the logic stage, they wonder, how does this all fit together? That's where science can come in as to say, this is how the world fits together. This is how this works with this.

Marlin Detweiler:

Let me ask you a question. I assume you've thought some about this. And if you haven't, that's okay. You can say, “Well, I'm not exactly sure,” but I think you will be.

I've heard it said that students who are classically educated in K-12 world who go into the sciences in college and beyond, medicine and physics and electrical sciences and that sort of thing. Students who are classically educated may start slightly behind somebody that came out of a science-driven magnet school that was focused on teaching science in the high school years.

So they may start behind them, but very quickly they will catch up and even surpass, never to be caught up with again, in terms of what they're able to learn, and what they accomplished in their education. Why do you think that is?

Travis Southern:

Oh, I totally agree. I've seen that myself in my students that have gone on from my classes. In fact, I was reading through some of the bios of students who are graduating this year at Veritas, and I'm stunned about the number that are going into science. I'm like, “Yes!”

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, it’s fun, isn’t it?

Travis Southern:

Yeah, it is. But I think that students who are classically trained in a classical setting are able really to diagnose problems better.

Marlin Detweiler:

Better problem solving skills.

Travis Southern:

Yeah, yeah. They know how to think and so they know how to look at a text. They know how to analyze a situation. They know how to look at a situation. They know how to learn. So rather than just learning how to take a test, they know how to teach themselves, they know how to learn, and they can approach a subject, even if it might be vague and they know how to organize it in their minds, put it together in a faster way than their peers who might not be classically educated can do.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, well, as we look at the sciences, as we think in terms of biblical worldview, thinking and teaching and learning, obviously one of the aspects of science that distinguishes biblical worldview from a secular approach to science is a belief in a creator and creation. But let's take a look, what are some other aspects of science that make it distinctively Christian that you wouldn't find in secular education in the same way?

Travis Southern:

Oh yeah, yeah. One of the things I teach in all my classes is at all levels, whether it be in Earth, science or biology. At some point we ought to be led to awe. And I think that's a distinctive characteristic of classical Christian science versus secular science is awe that it should lead us to worship.

Marlin Detweiler:

Awe meaning A-W-E, not “aww”

Travis Southern:

Yeah, right. Exactly. So for example, like Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God. The sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day after day they put forth speech.” A few weeks ago we were dissecting frogs in biology. And yes, we do that online and we do it right. We do it all together.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's wild.

Travis Southern:

Yeah, right. And so in the middle of that, I had a student that said, “This is so intricate that there is no way this happened by random mutation over long periods of time. This is the design of God!” and at that moment we just paused to praise the Lord for his handiwork and the intricacies of chemistry. Another example, when they're in the middle of stoichiometry or they're in the middle of electrochemistry, there's no way that could actually happen by random chance over time.

This has all the hallmarks of design, and being classically educated, it ought to once again lift our hearts towards heaven and cause us to worship our creator. That I think is a unique hallmark of a classical Christian education. It gives us that language of worship to bring to the table when it comes to our scientific enterprise.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's really a good word. Thank you. So you've taught rhetoric. What drove you to go from science to rhetoric? I don't know the answer to this, so it's not a rhetorical question. I'm curious, what was it about rhetoric that caused you to want to teach it and do it?

Travis Southern:

I think it's really living in both worlds as both a science teacher and a pastor. I see the importance of being able to communicate effectively regardless of what it is that you study, whether you're, you know, whether you're an engineer or whether you're a teacher or whether you're an accountant. You want to be able to communicate effectively.

And so I got my doctorate. So I did my Ph.D. in applied theology and preaching. So I studied a lot of rhetoric in that program and just said, “Well, let's apply it.” At first I thought, “I think I want to teach seminary, teach higher level courses.” But as I looked at my own heart and I looked at how can I really influence the world for Christ, I thought, I want to go teach the younger generation. I want to teach high school.

I want to teach people who are being formed in their understanding. And see God work in their lives and build in their hearts a fire for bringing the truth of God to this world that desperately needs it.

Marlin Detweiler:

Now, same question about teaching Omnibus five and six Secondary. Going from science to rhetoric. Okay, you're a pastor. You're thinking in terms of preaching and exposition of God's word and the whole aspect of communication. Now Omnibus?

Travis Southern:

Yeah, you know, I just I'm just one of those people that loves to read and learn. And so anything I get my hands on to read. My granddaddy taught me that when I was growing up. And so I just have this insatiable desire to keep learning and to keep growing. And so that's part of it. But I think part of it, too, is I want to demonstrate to students today that to be educated in today's world oftentimes means – and will mean more and more and more – that you need to have a broad base of understanding.

And we all have one major area that you'll focus on, but you're going to need a broad base of understanding to be able to function in the society today that constantly is changing.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's great. Do you get bored teaching the same thing regularly? Is that part of it as well?

Travis Southern:

Some of it, you know. I do like to change things up sometimes quite a bit, but I like to have one thing that I'm changing up every year and, you know, modifying the approach, how we're doing it. But it's out also about having the same students year after year. I find I have the same names in my classes year after year and I love to see them grow up and invest in them over the years.

Marlin Detweiler:

We find when teachers change courses that they teach and students follow them and take those courses, we know why. It's because they're a great teacher. So thank you for that.

All right, let's change the subject here for just a moment. What are you preaching on right now?

Travis Southern:

We're preaching through the gospel of Luke at our church. So we we practice expositional preaching. And so this coming Sunday is going to be in Luke 19 with Zacchaeus.

Marlin Detweiler:

Did you time Luke 2 for Christmas?

Travis Southern:

You know, we didn't. We've been in Luke for a long time.

Marlin Detweiler:

So Luke 2 is before Christmas?

Travis Southern:

It was like Christmas a couple of years ago. Two Christmases ago we were in Luke 2. So we've been there a long time. We've taken a few breaks here and there, but we've just been walking slowly through the Gospel of Luke, and I've really been blessed by it.

Marlin Detweiler:

Tell us what we should take from what you're going to tell your congregation and what we could take from teaching on Zacchaeus.

Travis Southern:

You know, I think really for Zacchaeus, it really all goes back to the glory of Christ. You know what we see there is Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. That's the point of the story. Verse 10. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost.

And as the lost are saved, it says that the cross brings glory to God. And I think God is glorified in the salvation of sinners. And we ought to have a heart for people who are far from Christ to bring them near, even the outcasts of society– like Zacchaeus was the tax collector.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's wonderful. You've taught for us now, I know you took a break as you started with this new call at the church a few years ago and came back. You've taught for us for about ten years. Is that right?

Travis Southern:

I think actually it's just five at this point.

Marlin Detweiler:

So prior to that, wasn't there more prior to that?

Travis Southern:

There were two before.

Marlin Detweiler:

So seven total. I thought it was more than five. We are very blessed to have you. Travis, I thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We have been really thrilled with what we get from the students and their parents. And I know that what you're doing is making a difference. So thank you for doing that.

Travis Southern:

You're very welcome. It is my privilege and my joy.

Marlin Detweiler:

Thank you. Today we have had Travis Southern, teacher at Veritas Scholars Academy in Science and Rhetoric and now Omnibus. Who knows what will be next? You're not going to teach French or anything, are you?

Travis Southern:

No, probably not. Probably no.

Marlin Detweiler:

Folks, thank you for joining us on here today at Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education.