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Today, we explore a global perspective on classical Christian education with David Elsing, founder of The Classical School in Perth, Australia – a unique hybrid homeschool model that's revolutionizing education Down Under.

David shares his fascinating journey from teaching in elite Australian schools to discovering the transformative power of classical Christian education through Veritas’ Omnibus materials. He also discusses how caring for his disabled daughter inspired him to create his innovative three-day-per-week classical school model.

Episode Transcription

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

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us from completely on the other side of the world, David Elsing. David, welcome.

David Elsing:

Hi, Marlin. Thank you. It's great to be here with you online.

Marlin Detweiler:

David, is in Perth, Australia, where he has started a classical school that we'll get into talking about. I have this funny recollection as a boy, my dad was the treasurer of Mennonite Central Committee growing up. And I lived on, sort of on the campus of it and our home. There were buildings around it. Anyway, the founder of MCC, who was World Travel, a world traveler, told me as a boy that Perth was on the exact opposite of the sphere that we live on, called Earth, of where we are currently in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Correct. I don't know if we can get any further apart.

David Elsing:

That's right. Yeah. We couldn't we couldn't get further apart if we tried. But, thank the Lord for for what we're using.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's amazing what we can do technologically. But before we get started, talk to us a little bit about who you are, your education, your family, your career.

David Elsing:

Thanks, Marlin. You know, first of all, I am a Christian. I became a Christian in 2001. In year 11, through friends at school who had a youth group, which I attended. And the school that I went to was Swann Christian College, and, Swann Christian College is one of many, Christian schools in our country.

We've had a Christian school in movement for, a long time since, our inception. But but really taking off in the in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And, it was a great place to meet Christian people and hear the gospel. Although we haven't had a classical Christian, influence that's really new. Despite the strength of our Christian schooling movement. So, I'm a Christian man.

Marlin Detweiler:

Causing it to happen.

David Elsing:

That's right. That's what. That's what we're working towards. I'm a a husband to Talia, who I met, through, uni church in in Perth at the University of Western Australia that had lots of young people meeting, in the lecture hall for Sunday night church. And I made the wise decision of putting myself on welcoming.

Because when you're on welcoming, you get to meet all the new people coming in. And, I got to meet Talia, and, we're married now. Nearly ten years. We have five children, and, ranging from ten down to three. So I've just packed some of those into bed, and, And here we are. So. Yeah. I grew up, I was born in, close to Sydney, in the Southern Highlands. That's an ancestral, place for us. Our people have been in Australia since 1788 on the first flight, Thomas ship.

Marlin Detweiler:

And is that the beginning of a Australia?

David Elsing:

That's the beginning of British, settlement in Australia. Thomas ship came as a red coat, a marine to, to look over and supervise the convicts. And he wanted to start his own new life in a new continent. But there weren't many, people, women around to, to pursue or to marry. And so, well, he fell in love with a convict woman. So, there you go. I'm a mix of.

Marlin Detweiler:

So you have a criminal past?

David Elsing:

I have a criminal past. I do, I'll admit it. And that's been the great stain of, Australia's, history and mindset that we have tried to shake this stain, this embarrassment of our criminal past. And it's really shaped us. And I think it sink informed, our education up until this day.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, there's a sense in which that's unfortunate, because we all have a criminal past as far as God is concerned.

David Elsing:

Correct? Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's that's how that gets cleaned up. And it's not our doing.

David Elsing:

100%. And that is the story of Australia. It really is a story of redemption. Governor Phillip, when he the first governor of New South Wales Sydney cause he said in this country, we won't have slavery. We've learned the lesson. And this is a place for people to be, to have redemption. And, convicts would have their serve, time of service, and then they could go and, after their time of service, get a ticket of leave, they could, be granted property.

And some and many of them rose to significant and important, positions of influence in, in the country. So it is a country of redemption. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:

Now, your career has led you to start a classical school. What kind of steps would you say caused you to say, this is what I need to do?

David Elsing:

Great question. I, is ambition a grievous fault? I don't know, but I was, young, ambitious teacher. And I thought to myself, I'd like to try and teach in, in one of the top schools of our country. And, I had a great experience being able to do that in a boys school in Sydney and very, very, very impressive in, in many ways, amazing opportunities and resourcing.

But even there, even in the top tier schools, there is a, there was a sense that I had where I was really disappointed with the humanities, curriculum and, and the approach, I studied visual arts and humanities as a secondary teacher. And, and I really was longing for more. And it wasn't really until I bumped into a colleague of mine, Stephen Herbert, who I call the father of classical Christian education in Perth.

And he, he showed me, the Veritas Omnibus books. And I just thought, this is what I've been looking for. This is what I'm after. Because unfortunately, our humanities curriculum, in Australia is basically, climate change, recycling. There's passion that goes by without the children learning about recycling. There's, Aboriginal, Australian Aboriginal culture, which is fine in its proper place.

But this is an overarching curriculum point where every subject needs to bring it in. And, and it just it sort of becomes a tick box exercise and very shallow. So, the disappointment of the humanities, even in the top tier schools where you might expect to find some better material, led me on a question. And my daughter, Laura, when she was born, the first thing the midwife said was, so what school will she go to?

Straight. You know, this is five minutes after birth, and that's the Sydney code. It's really important to get into a good school in Sydney. And, and I sort of thought, well, look, I don't know, I'm considering homeschooling. I'm considering, this classical, approach. And, you know, the nurse sort of had no midwife, had no categories for that.

But, that's true. When you have your own children, suddenly, you know, the pressure's on to, make good decisions.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. I remember when our firstborn was born within a week or so after that, my wife had registered him for a school that required that level of advanced registration for five years later, because it filled up, he never attended that school. Our our world changed very much in how we looked at education as we got involved in classical education.

Shortly after, he would have started kindergarten, but, I understand the, the, overwhelming. What am I going to do? I don't have any training in this. So what precipitated the start of a classical school in Perth?

David Elsing:

Yes. Yeah. Good. So, so my parents moved us from the east coast, Sydney to Western Australia, to a little town called Lavington, which is, a few hours east of Kalgoorlie, which you may never have heard of, but Kalgoorlie had a big gold rush, in the late 1800s, and a lot of people came to the state to find gold similar to your own history.

And it grew in many ways. Western Australia is one big mine site. We, probably the world's largest, exporter of iron ore, and among other things. And so my father, he was working in mining, and he moved us to, this little town. Things didn't work out so far from home. So my mother and father, my mum took us to Perth, which is the capital of Western Australia.

So, I've moved from luscious green, rolling hills in Sydney to red dirt, wood scrub and, and then into, into Perth and mum sort of thought, well, I want David to have a good education and, I don't have a lot of money. This Christian school down the road, looks like a good option.

And so that's where she sent me in 93, in grade three. And, as I mentioned at the start, that's where I found faith in a Christian school. Yeah. So that's how we came to Perth, is that dad moved us. I tried to teacher in Perth. I was considering the call to ministry, so I spent a year in the UK working for a church.

And then from there I went back to Sydney to teaching, in the boys school that I mentioned, when I married Talia and we had our first baby, we realized we needed to be back in Perth to be with family. And that was, I suppose I probably about an eight year journey from, returning to Perth to starting the classical school.

It didn't really, materialize. It was brewing in the background for a long time. What really in God's kindness happened was our fourth child, Georgia. I was a deputy principal at that stage of, of, school in the Perth Hills, Georgia was born. And very quickly we realized something was wrong with Georgia. She'd lost, over 20% of her body weight, in the first few days of birth.

So the visiting midwife, told us we needed to go back to hospital. And it was a few months of testing to work out, what was happening with Georgia. But eventually, she was diagnosed with a very rare condition, which I'll which, I'll tell you, is a cardigan syndrome named after the Frenchman who discovered it.

It it presents like cerebral palsy. And she essentially had, problems with her brain development in the womb. And, so she's severely, significantly disabled. And, during that time of, going to, specialist appointments and, dog diagnosis appointments, the pressure was on for me at school. I had 500 families to care for as a deputy, and I couldn't really even care for my own very well.

So I toddler, you know, I decided that I would step back and take a season to home school and rally around the family. And, well, I sort of thought if I'm going to homeschool, I might as well homeschool other people's kids.

And, offer, also something in, in that space because my, my sense was, homeschooling, a great thing to do, but it comes with its own challenges, and it's a potential here for me to serve that community. And what can I serve them with? I can serve them with some really good curriculum, through the classical question.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, how did you become familiar with the idea of classical Christian education?

David Elsing:

Well, as a humanities teacher, you are already, within that stream of thinking.

Marlin Detweiler:

Predisposed to the thinking.

David Elsing:

Predisposed. Yeah. Enjoying history and and in human affairs and theology. I studied as an art teacher as well. Visual art is a great subject because it's completely integrated. You know, you you you study a painting. You look at the historical context, the philosophy, the philosophical context. You're looking at the materials. There's a there's a scientific element, the chemistry, the physics.

You're having to write essays and, make arguments and look at art history. So there's a sense of composition in writing, and you've got an audience that you need when you're making your own art. There's an audience you need to appeal to. Yeah, there's a rhetorical skill that's required in your artwork. So an art as an art teacher, classical education, seem to me, to just sort of be really rich and full, and to provide a great, depth of knowledge and content and understanding which I enjoyed in the visual arts.

But now to take it into every other, domain of human endeavor. So when my friend Stephen Hurwitz said, check out this Veritas Omnibus, it was like Christmas, you know, that.

Marlin Detweiler:

Was your first introduction to classical and.

David Elsing:

As as a movement. Yeah. As a, as a, as the modern movement. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's a modern movement, right?

David Elsing:

Yeah. That was.

Marlin Detweiler:

Damo. You said in context. Sure.

David Elsing:

Yeah, that was it. But, and I think also Australians are skeptical of elitism. We our country began, post-enlightenment, you know, with the egalitarianism and equality, so, you know, a long time after, nobility in the, in the aristocracy, and so some of that classical stuff, sniffs of a late ism in this country.

And so there's a lot of, skepticism towards it. And so there's not a lot of access as a young person to connect with these texts or these ideas. And even I thought, oh, that's for the posh people. But really, when I got a hold of, omnibus and started reading, I thought, these ideas is so important.

Why haven't I taken the time to get to read this stuff? How do I get it? And I think I went out to, a second hand book dealer in the middle of Sydney. And I paid him $500 for the, the Great Books series, all of them. And I stuck them in my car and took them home to our one bedroom apartment entirely. I said, where are we going to put these?

Marlin Detweiler:

What was that? Murderer Adler's series?

David Elsing:

That was Apple a series.

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh my goodness.

David Elsing:

So it all sort of snowballed from there.

Marlin Detweiler:

I'm sure glad that you didn't go to use Book Dealer and pay $500 for a used omnibus text.

David Elsing:

Yeah. That's right. Well, well, well, who knows? But the yeah, the shipping is pretty extraordinary. So the, the, I think I've got to say, though, my favorite, classical author is Xenophon. He's on a basis, and these are a two year old, Cyrus. Somewhat. I read the introduction that he is, he writes for an English audience because he's very practical.

He's a military man, but he's a philosopher. He thinks. And I think that's that's what I like. I like the practical lady ship stuff, and I like the the high tales with adventure. And, yeah, I think I've really landed. I don't know why Xenophon isn't in, in, in his canon, Mortimer Adler's canon, but, but he's in my canon.

Yeah. So I think that's right, you know. And where's Callahan said this? You've got to have your own canon. And that's been on just finding signing old texts to think. Yeah, this is an important one to pass on.

Marlin Detweiler:

Tell us where you're located for people who might find it practical to come see you and maybe consider your school. I know it's a very long city along the western coast of Australia.

David Elsing:

Yeah, correct. And it's a big city. I mean, with we're 2 million people. I love to tell people that it's Perth was an American city. It would be the fifth largest city. It's a big city. Perth doesn't have many cities. It has about 6 or 7 all on the coast.

Marlin Detweiler:

You in Australia?

David Elsing:

In Australia? Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:

You said Perth. And I mean, just to be clear. Yeah.

David Elsing:

Yeah. We don't have many cities. You've got hundreds of cities and they're all the, some are big, but most are mid-size. We have, our biggest city on the west coast is Perth, 2 million people, and we mate at, Saint Patrick's Anglican Church, which, is in Mount Lawley, which is an older, established inner city suburb of Perth.

And, we we are blessed to mate in a heritage building. It's a beautiful Romanesque style interwar building. And it's very fitting for a classical education because it's a beautiful site.

Marlin Detweiler:

And now what are the, grades that you're addressing currently? And what's the style of the education?

David Elsing:

Thank you. So we, reached kindergarten, which is you have to be for before. Before June, kindergarten all the way through to year ten. I'll explain why we end the year ten. But the style of, our approach, is a hybrid model. Home education is the basis. All of our students are home educators, except they come for us, for three to us for three days a week.

So what we can do is we take the pressure off mum, who's usually the home schooler. We provide some formal curriculum through most, subjects in, in the mandated range. And of course, kids have opportunity to build friendships, lasting friendships, through the classical school can be difficult in co-ops where you meet sort of haphazardly, not that regulate to maintain friendships.

So it's an opportunity for good learning and good friendship. Plus, we develop a scale of economy. My one of my visions is to try and, bring the best of school world to the educating the home educating community. Yeah. For example, we have two debate teams that mate in the West Australian Debate League who go and debate against public schools, private schools, and, this is their second year.

And they've held their own. They've done very well. So, you know, without the classical school, home, school kids wouldn't really have that opportunity. We need to be home educators, too, for the regulators. You can't just start your own school in Western Australia. You need to have, government, approval to be registered. And, that's, a big, a big job.

And, but we, we believe, I suppose, that, parents ought to be the primary educators under God. And we have a three day model. So we meet Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and on Monday and Friday, children are home, home schooling. And I think it's really good for them because they can attach to their parents and parental attachment.

Seems to me, in my time as an educator to solve a lot of problems. Parental attachment solves a lot of behavior problems, a lot of wellbeing problems. And so it means that our kids are really well put together and we can crack on with some, efficient learning in the time we together, we can really go for in an intense way.

Marlin Detweiler:

And you said that the school ends at year ten, which is what we would call 10th grade in America. And you said, but tell me why that is.

David Elsing:

We've decided to end at year ten because, home educators in our state can't sit their matriculation exams. That is the exams to go to university. They need to go back into a mainstream school to do that. There's a lot of, testing, and inter-school moderation and, rules to make sure that things are aligned and there's no cheating in our system.

So you can't have mum sort of supervising your final exams. So the that would mean that if students want to go to university that need to go back to a mainstream school, and the other the other side of that is, there are other pathways to university. So we, we partner with the Daniel Project who are out of Eastern College in Melbourne, and they, they run a certificate for program.

In Australia, certificate programs is similar to probably community college level, but a certificate for can get you into first year uni. And that certificate for is a certificate in tertiary preparation where they continue their classical Christian education. They continue through the omnibus curriculum, the higher books and a range of other opportunities and essays.

And so far, that's, that's been well received. But my hope is that we can, partner with Veritas and build out, some sort of online offering. And so.

Marlin Detweiler:

We would be very open to that. So talk to you lead in nicely to my next question. Where do you see, your school in five years or ten years? And by the way, I don't think we've mentioned the name of it. It's officially called the Classical School or the classical School in Perth.

David Elsing:

Yeah. That's right. I think it's, it's called the classical school. And, the reason it's called that is, is because, there's not many classical schools in Australia, so you can sort of get away with calling it the classical school. I wanted it to be clear to parents that we were running the classical Christian curriculum. For those parents who knew a little bit about the movement, that they would say straight away, if you called yourself like Saint So-and-so, Saint Brennan, Saint Cecilia, people might think you're Roman Catholic.

Yeah. There's there's not a lot of Latin speaking in this country, so even some Latin words wouldn't really. But so I just wanted to, you know what it does what it says on the packet. Let's go. And, yeah. So where are we going? Well, we're we're basically. So we started with 16 students, in 2022, our, youngest daughter, Edith, was born on the same day, of our official launch.

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh my word.

David Elsing:

So we had two babies on one day. We had the school baby and the real baby, and, I taught for a few hours and then said goodbye and went and had a sleep because we'd been up since three. Yeah, my staff had, who I had, appointed were, very good and did a great job on, on day one.

So we started with 16 kids and we've grown. This year we're up to 62. So we've basically, almost doubled, every year in that time. And we're really because it was a church site, you know, some a meeting in the Sunday school room and some are pushing pews out of the way and bringing desks out, and others are meeting in the, in the hall.

I asked the price for his office, but he wouldn't have it. God bless, Father Steve, who's a great host in the parish there, who, they say the value of of of of a true, rich Christian education and, they're great hosts. So we're full and we're wondering what to do next. So we're praying about, a second site.

We're praying about, we just need, you know, $200,000. It's not much, for a new classroom. You know, a small loan of $1 million, you know, not much.

Marlin Detweiler:

David, one of the things that, our listeners may not know. So I'll just make sure it's mentioned is we're recording this in June of 2025, and your school year just started a couple months ago. Ours just ended shortly. Yeah. I'm here is started because you're in the southern hemisphere. You're keeping summers, our winters available for outdoors.

And so there's a, a a cycle that's countercyclical to what we're doing. So if somebody is worried about you having just a few months to find a new space, want them to know that you've got a year, almost a year.

David Elsing:

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. We've got a bit of time. That's correct. And, I think I said one of the issues with, us doing Veritas online is you're not going to have any contact from any of us during January. It's game over. So, so I you have a few light assignments you might have to just, you know, wave through

Marlin Detweiler:

We've had to do that before. That's not that's not new. And we are thrilled with the idea of of partnering with you and helping to support your vision and your mission of developing classical Christian education in Perth and maybe throughout, Australia. What? What advice do you have maybe in the last couple minutes here for the American audience?

That's most of the audience that will be listening to you. What do you observe about classical Christian education that you might say to an American audience who might be inclined by lack of exposure and default to think, very narrowly in just an American context.

David Elsing:

Thank smile and good, good question. I think I have the privilege of being an outsider in some ways and, and and seeing things, from abroad. Two things I might say. One is, I know there's a lot of discussion about, what is a classical education and neo classical and contemporary classical in the Charlotte Mason classical and and all of that.

Not so I don't worry about it, guys. Just get on with it and, love each other and, love your kids. If you love children and if you love the content you're teaching, you're going to be successful. I think you've said that to me before. You got to, you got to be okay. So don't worry about the arguments.

And and I'd say, you know, liberate yourselves. Americans liberate yourselves from the idea that the world is America. Because when I hear about the World Series baseball, and I think they just. All North American teams, lift your eyes to the horizon and see a whole world out there. I know that, maybe on on our side, there's a little bit of protectionism, and we all like that.

But you've got cousins and brothers and friends in Australia in, in the UK. And, you know, your problems are our problems, in the Anglosphere, where America goes, where you go, so if you're kicking goals, don't forget to get us down here. We're still a few years behind. And, pray for us. Pray for our movement.

Pray pray for God to be at work and, Australia really needs classical education. I'll give you three reasons why. Quickly. Modern one is the elite schools. Well, they they they're very academic and they're, they're doing well, but they cater for the rich, for the elite. And, it's it's extraordinary the wealth that they have. The the second issue is that the Roman Catholic schools will enroll a whole bunch of students, and they'll think that they're categorizing them and converting them and baptizing them.

But the children have no idea. And they're so disconnected from the reality of the faith. It's just really, shallow and a tick box. And many Catholic teachers aren't Catholic themselves. And then you've got the Christian school movement who do a pretty good job at discipling people. And that's my background. But they're, they're probably not academically punching, or making a lot of influence in the culture.

So, my read is that classical Christian education can probably thread the needle. It can be accessible to many people. It can help, to disciple children deeply and richly in the size. And it's rigorous, and we call people through the trivium to make a difference and make an impact. So my heart is really to say, classical Christian education grow for the Christian school movement in this country to say it because when I when I try to talk to people, my bosses from theology as.

Marlin Detweiler:

A classical Christian church.

David Elsing:

Cuts and its eyes glaze over and I've got no idea. So just pray that, our school leaders will will say the vision Marlin.

Marlin Detweiler:

But that sounds like a really good place to live. Things. We, you know, we got into offering live online classical Christian education nearly 20 years ago now, we knew it could be quite good. We knew the technology would advance. We knew that all those things, would benefit us. But the thing that I never saw happening, I never saw coming was the tremendous richness that's added by having an international population in a classroom and in discussions.

And so we welcome the opportunity to work together and really appreciate what you're doing in Perth for the sake of the Kingdom. Thank you David.

David Elsing:

Amen, Amen. Thanks for having me model and God bless.

Marlin Detweiler:

Folks, and thank you for joining us for another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian Education. We hope to see you next time.