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What would you say if someone said you shouldn’t classically educate because it “has pagan roots” or because your kids will just grow up to be pretentious know-it-alls? How would you explain the difference between classical education and classical Christian education?

We tackle these topics and more with Michael Eatmon, as we respond to Sherry Hayes’ (Mom Delights) podcast episode, “Why I Reject Classical Education as a Homeschooling Mom of 15”

Episode Transcription

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

Marlin Detweiler:
Welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox. Today, we have with us one of our own, Michael Eatmon. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Eatmon:
Thank you. Good to be here.

Marlin Detweiler:
As you may remember or may know from other, from our prior episode or from general knowledge of our staff. Michael works as the director of curriculum development but has also been around classical education for quite a while. He was actually our first hire at the Geneva School in ‘92 or ‘93… And so we've worked with Michael for a long time. First at the school and then not anything for a while. And now again at Veritas. So, Michael, one of the reasons, folks, that I've invited Michael to join us today is because of his tremendous insight in classical education, from his reading, both of the history of classical education and general history.

Long before the book Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. To finish the introduction, Michael is here today to address with me. So we've never done this before, but we were forwarded a criticism of classical Christian education. And in a word, it was quite poorly articulated and had a substantial enough following to feel like it was a good thing for us to address.

Michael, what say you?

Michael Eatmon:
Thank you for that introduction to me and to the topic. What say I first? I say that I appreciate that Sherry Hayes has invested the time, energy and effort she did to offer a criticism of her understanding of classical Christian education. And I say that let me.

Marlin Detweiler:
Let me underscore that comment too because I want people to know that it's both of us. In fact, it's our organization that doesn't want to operate under the current mindset of tart expression of disagreement and difference. We are the copyright holders. Michael and I and others developed a book, a curriculum called A Rhetoric of Love.

And we believe that's a significant thing in how we relate to people with whom we disagree. Thanks.

Michael Eatmon:
Thank you for underscoring that point. So as I listened to Sherry and the first image that came to my mind was that of the Trojan horse. And I suspect that more than a few in our listening audience are familiar with that story. Trojan War, the Greeks go up with this big beautiful horse to the gates of Troy.

And there's at least one who says that might not be the gift that it appears to be. It could be that it is an attack in disguise. And as I listen to Sherry describe her experience, her understanding of Christian classical education, I envision that she might have been thinking that classical Christian education is much like that Trojan horse.

It may come packaged as a gift, but beware, as soon as no one's looking, it will open up and it will take the whole city. So as I was listening to her unpack the support behind that claim, what I heard primarily were three big concerns. Number one, I heard the concern that classical Christian education or any kind of classical education, Christian or not, at the end of the day, is really nothing more than good old fashioned paganism. And let me go ahead and address that one.

Well, it's notable too that in her 20 minute recording, which she might call a podcast, and I think if people search it, they'll be able to find it, no problem. But in that recording, she routinely uses the term, and I don't believe in any instance she used it otherwise. She calls classical education and not classical Christian education, which is a notable distinction.

Marlin Detweiler:
And I know you're going into that.

Michael Eatmon:
It is a notable distinction because where she begins is in what I might refer to as a false equivalence. And I say that's either because she misunderstands what classical Christian education is all about or its potential. It's possible that she knows what it's all about but misrepresented it. I'm not sure that that's the case. I think simply that she doesn't fully understand what classical Christian education is all about.

So if we talk about an equation of classical education on the one side or the equal sign and paganism on the other side of the equal sign, I would say it's important to remember that we as classical Christian educators do a little addition and subtraction to both sides of that equal sign. For one thing, we subtract the debauchery and misguided depraved worldview framework that she talked about from so much of her understanding of the classical world.

But then we also add to it the foundation of a biblical worldview, rooting our understanding of what is true and good and beautiful in the foundation of Scripture as God has revealed it. So the first thing to say is that from our perspective, while certain aspects of classical culture and civilization were not only pagan but also, as she suggested, debauched and depraved, that's not what we are advocating for.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, it's also notable that classical education and the culture in which classical education had some of its development is not a unique culture for which we say we want none of. There was immorality and as you phrased it, debauchery, and has been at every stage of life, at every stage of history. And it is probably no less this, no less the case today than it was some 22, 23, 20, 400 years ago.

Michael Eatmon:
Exactly. And it's no less the case today in our own culture and society than it was 23, 24, 100 years ago in ancient Greece and Rome. So the first thing that I would say is that there's a false equation going on here. But I think that's really super important to underscore because ancient Greece and its Hellenized impact. She talked about Hellenism.

It was not everywhere and always in the same way debauched and depraved. It was that same culture and society and civilization that gave us not only Socrates and Plato, that gave us not so much what to think about important matters as gave us important tools for how to think about important topics. But that same ancient Greek civilization gave us the fathers of modern science in Aristotle and some of his successors gave us the fathers of modern history in Herodotus and Lucidity and their successors gave us the fathers of modern medicine in Hippocrates and Galen and their successors. So when we sweep away, creating a straw man and throwing that straw baby out with the bathwater and say, all of the classical Greek –

Marlin Detweiler:
That is an interesting thought. Straw babies and bathwater.

Michael Eatmon:
Just to mix our metaphors. If we throw all of that out, we have thrown out a lot. Not only have we thrown out a lot, we've thrown out a lot of the truth, the goodness and the beauty that were worked into the very foundation upon which Western civilization was built. So the first and quite important.

Marlin Detweiler:
And to note the river into which Christianity developed and has flourished.

Michael Eatmon:
100%. And in fact, that's where I was going next. And that is to say, no, no, no, no, that's okay. Interestingly, the first image that came to mind when I listened to Sherry was this of the Trojan Horse. But the second was a dialog that was begun by an early church thinker named Tertullian. And he asked this super important question when he looked at biblical revelation on the one hand, and the great Greek classical Hellenized tradition on the other.

And he says, what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? What does the Bible have to do with Greek learning? What does that temple have to do with the Academy in Athens? And the short answer to the question, and the answer that early church fathers and later church thinkers provided was, well, everything. And the reason why that's true is because God reveals truth to us, not only in special revelation of the scriptures, but also in general revelation outside it.

So we can think of the competent Buddhist cardiologist. He knows the heart as well as he does, and he can do all kinds of wonderful things to preserve its life and integrity. And he does so by recourse to the truth that God reveals and general revelation, not because he learned how to do that in the book of Matthew.

So I think it's super important for us to understand that God reveals truth, both in Scripture and in general revelation. We use Scripture to be sure to interpret our understanding of general revelation, but the truth comes from one and the selfsame source. Yeah, and that is God and I.

Marlin Detweiler:
It dawns on me, as you are saying, that to note some of the incredible thinkers who have endorsed and embraced classical education. Wholeheartedly – people like R.C. Sproul, who we both had the pleasure of working directly and extensively with regarding classical. Al Mohler comes to mind as a very much a pundit into contemporary culture and activities and a tremendous supporter of classical education.

I could go on with an extensive list, but I don't need to. I think that supports the point, and I don't want to take too much time there.

Michael Eatmon:
Right. And let's just add as a footnote, let's add to that list that these modern thinkers are building on the foundation of this confluence that you're talking about, Christian worldview, classical learning into which Augustine and Aquinas and Kalam and the founders of our country themselves say.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, they would be if the contemporaries that we mentioned are exhibit A, they would probably be exhibit A plus. As people who have survived and are people that I would expect our detractor would be supportive of and follow when in fact they're not. Their education comes out of the tradition that we're talking about.

Michael Eatmon:
Right, exactly. And I want to be careful to point out that simply because we are classical Christian educators, it does not mean that we embrace wholesale and willy-nilly anything that was done in the ancient world just because it was done or thought in the ancient world. And so she mentions, for example, what Antiochus Epiphanies did and his desecration of the temple.

We do not advocate for the desecration of holy things. Let's just say that and we don't because we are not only informed by but grounded in the scriptures. And so we believe that especially even with some of the tools that these classical educators, classical thinkers, handed down to us, we can weigh ideas, weigh propositions against the scriptures, against general revelation and say, what is it saying? And is it true? Is it something that we should embrace or issue?

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. And so we call that pillaging the Egyptians, taking those things that are good from people with whom we disagree. I suspect when we use the term pillaging the Egyptians, which happened immediately before the exodus immediately before going through the Red Sea. I suspect that the Israelites, when given opportunity to take things from the Egyptians because they wanted rid of them so quickly and so much that the Israelites didn't take the family gods or certain things that would have been wrong for them to have. They took so they discerningly took what they thought would benefit from.

Michael Eatmon:
Right. And yet it's important to emphasize they took the gold, right? So they took the gold of Egypt. And by the way.

Marlin Detweiler:
The good thing.

Michael Eatmon:
They took the good stuff. And this image by the way comes from Augustine in his own Christian doctrine.

Marlin Detweiler:
I knew you would know that.

Michael Eatmon:
Well, I'm sure you knew it too. You were just setting me up.

Marlin Detweiler:
I wish.

Michael Eatmon:
So Augustine is saying yes, we can embrace what is true and good and beautiful from the classical tradition as though we were plundering the gold from the Egyptians. We don't do it uncritically. We do it carefully but we plunder the gold nonetheless. Why? For a couple of reasons. Number one, because it's gold. Because it possesses value. Yeah. God created it and imbued it with value.

And because we can use these tools to fashion better tools for service of God and our neighbor in his kingdom. Yeah, we're not going to be using the gold of family idols to be sure but we might use that gold instead that we plundered from the Egyptian to help adorn the tabernacle in the wilderness and then later the Temple in Jerusalem.

So it was Augustine who pointed that out. So on the one hand, I would say being a classical Christian educator does not mean that we embrace things uncritically simply because it's classical, whatever that means. On the other end of the spectrum. It also means that we are not so skittish as to completely avoid that which comes out of the Christian tradition.

So good example of this algebra, which probably most of certainly all of our students if they come up through our system are going to be studying algebra and I suspect probably the overwhelming majority of those who follow Sherry Hayes's podcast or her recommendations of advice, I suspect they take algebra. So here's a newsflash. And that is, algebra was not born in the Christian West.

Marlin Detweiler:
Algebra wasn't born in classical Greece.

Michael Eatmon:
It was not born in classical Greece. It was born in Persia. It was born in the flourishing of the confluence of Persian culture and civilization and Muslim culture and civilization. And yet we can say as Christian and classical educators, we believe that algebra is a powerful tool and we can use it in a way both to glorify God and bring good to others.

Not uncritically. Carefully. Always assessing the tool and asking, is this tool good and can we use it better, but nonetheless not fearing it simply because its point of origin is outside the Scripture or the Christian community.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah.

Michael Eatmon:
So two other major concerns that I heard from Sherry is that classical education of any variety, classical Christian, presumably the saying equates to paganism, which I viewed as problematic for all the reasons that I just mentioned. Two other concerns she had were. Oh, and by the way, it's also overly complex. It can't convoluted. Learning. Learning is a simple thing and effortless thing apparently and classical education simply makes it harder than it needs to be.

And from my perspective, I have two comments to say to that. One of them is that learning is challenging at times. It doesn't matter where you are in the process, what you're learning, how old you are. There's always some aspect of intellectual work that's involved in learning anything. Would that it were the case that we could just sit around and someone could, I don't know, plug it into the matrix and like, download a program into our heads.

But it doesn't work that way. So there is intellectual ardor work that's needed in order to grow. Yeah. But then I would say on the other side, I think she has this sense that all classical Christian education everywhere simply makes learning as hard as it can be and that somehow that translates into a better education simply because it's difficult.

I don't believe that. And I know you don't believe that and Veritas doesn't believe that. Instead, I think one of the things that I value about there tell us about so many other classical Christian educators is that we say, look, we are providing to you a treasure house of teaching materials, resources, tools and resources for you to take up and use as you believe best in the education of your children.

For some parents and other educators, they're going to be taking up just a couple of those tools and using them for just a couple of hours a day. And then there are others who are using all of them for many hours a day. And the flexibility, the adaptability to the individual students need to the families situation and needs and to the overall goals and objectives of the school or the husband and wife or whatever it happens to be.

All of these things are adaptable. In classical Christian education, no one size fits all. Yeah. And then maybe the third concern that I heard was that classical Christian education is not only paganism. It is not only overly laborious but it's also frankly a kind of education that makes little elitist brats. Now, she didn't say that inference, that's that's my word.

But this sense that all of those who go through this kind of education get off. I mean, as Paul warns us in Corinthians when he's talking about love and contrasting, the knowledge can have a tendency to puff up. And I think for his assessment of classical Christian learning too often is that those who go through it and or those who administrators who operate those of teaching allow knowledge, understanding, wisdom to puff up their heads while shrinking their hearts that it produces little elitists who look down on everyone else.

You know, now I'm not going to challenge the claim that some people who go through classical Christian education come out the other end with a chip on their shoulder and look down their noses at other people.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, I'm going to I'm just interject here for a moment. That was the one thing that I thought she said that I could find fairly agreeable in the sense that anything that we do will always have an element of it going wrong. That's the way the world is. So if I succeed at something, I might be inclined to think that my success was completely my doing, that I'm self-made.

That happens. That's the temptation. That's the way the world works between the righteous and holy God of the Bible. And I won't call him the antithesis because it's really not that it's not equal and opposite by any means, which I think antithesis sort of assumes. But evil is real. Sin is real. Satan is real. Temptation is real.

And that's where the temptation hits. So I have seen it. I have experienced it personally. I fight it. You do too. I get it and I accept some level of leveling that and the classical educators as a way of saying that's the thing we need to be ready for dealing with.

Michael Eatmon:
I couldn't agree more and I would I would add to that. It is something that we need to be always mindful about, always looking at ourselves, examining ourselves in the mirror over and where necessary even repenting and making restoration with others if called for. But all of that said, even if all of that is true, I'm suggesting that that's not the fault of classical Christian education, that that's the fault of the little hearts that are going through that classical Christian education.

Yeah. It may be that the classical Christian educational model provides certain temptations or lures to a certain kind of sin that other models don't. Okay, fine. That may be true. On the other hand, the indictment where the misformed character comes out on the other end, I would argue, is a matter of the individual's heart and not of the curriculum of the pedagogy of exposing the students to frankly, some of the greatest ideas that the world has ever known in the broadly larger Western classical tradition.

So point well taken. But the corrective, I would say, and this gets back to a point that I want to underscore, that I think could serve as a sort of response to all I heard in Sherry's podcast is it's a classical expression.

No surprise there. And that is that the abuse of a good thing does not take away its proper use. And that's a point that you made just a moment ago. Think of any good thing you want. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be abused. But simply because it can be abused doesn't mean that there isn't a proper use for it.

And that's how we view classical education. That's how in our hands that knife is not a murderous weapon. But it's a scalpel for exorcising power and falsehood and vanity in the shaping of children.

Marlin Detweiler:
Absolutely. As I think about, you know, here we are responding to a criticism. But the question that I always want to fall back on is I understand the argument. Here's our counter argument. But, as always said by a wise business consultant at one time, we can't manage what we don't measure. And there's an application here.

Marlin Detweiler:
And that is how do we make the evaluation. Well we look at the product. That's the students. Now we look at how the students turn out. How do we do that. Well we have tens of thousands of examples within Veritas alone that will support wonderful Christian character development, wonderful moving into adulthood and pursuing godly passions and in godly ways and wonderful things.

Marlin Detweiler:
Now that's a bit more anecdotal. We don't collect data on that. But there is something out there right now available to the listener called the Good Soil Report, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, working with a survey that was already underway, I think funded and authorized or funded and created by Notre Dame, put a collection of classically Christian educated kids into that.

And if somebody reads that report and doesn't come away with classical Christian education is producing an excellent, in fact, superior product to alternative solutions. I don't know how to convince them because the data is inescapably, overwhelmingly making that point.

Michael Eatmon:
I love that point. And just in case someone says, talking about good soil. Yes, but I know some weeds that are growing. Well, show me a garden in which there are no weeds growing right. That is the way, as you pointed out earlier, that's the way of the human condition. But when we look at the model overall and we compare that model to other models, I would suggest that I myself cannot think of a better model for a well-educated mind and a well-formed heart.

I can't think of one. It's not to say that there isn't one out there, but it hasn't made itself known yet to me. And I also want to say that I'm thrilled that this project is out there, that this survey has come about, that the results have been shared. And we can think of these results as the product of a process.

Now, let me get back to another comment that she made. It was somewhat of a secondary, I think, criticism of classical Christian education. But since you went there, let's go there. She said, you know, in classical Christian education, it seems and feel pretty much just like the factory or assembly line model of education that presumably it stands against.

You just sort of put kids on the conveyor belt, do all of this classical stuff to them, and then on the other end pop out these are amazing but arrogant, young scholars. And I would say to that. Okay. So talking about things like processes and products when referring to children can be helpful language to describe what it is that we are assessing or evaluating, but we do not believe that our kids are a little products.

And if we put them on an assembly line and always do the same thing to each one of them, that won't be the same. They'll all turn out. This is not Henry Ford's assembly line. No.

Marlin Detweiler:
So if anything has been that it has been American education since the 19th century, something that we're rebelling against in what we do with classical education.

Michael Eatmon:
Right. And if someone wants to say, now, she didn't go here in her argument, but let me just go ahead and go there. If someone wants to say, “Yes. But isn't it the case that sometimes some classical Christian schools and or particular instances of classical Christian education look a whole lot like sort of the formulaic assembly line approach to learning that the general model of American education looks like it's just they tack on a Bible verse and learn Latin?”

Well, in fact, that does happen. Of course. But again, that's not an indictment of the model. That's an indictment of how the model is being used.

Marlin Detweiler:
Absolutely. Michael, thank you so much. As you know. And I'll tell our audience as we looked at preparing, as we prepared for this episode, we realized that it would be a really good thing for us to address criticisms of classical Christian education. And so this is the first of what will be at least more than one, at least two, episodes on addressing criticism.

So, folks, thank you for joining us today. And look for a separate second episode addressing other criticisms of classical Christian education, because we think it's important to do that because the thing that was so exciting to me as we got into this some, well, decades ago was that if it's right and good, there need not be anything to hide it from.

Michael Eatmon:
So thank you.

Marlin Detweiler:
Thank you for joining us on Veritas Vox. We hope to see you next time.