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What makes classical education distinct from any other educational model? How did classical education begin its rise to prominence? How do we help our students transition into adulthood? We discuss these questions and more with Chris Schlect, director of the Classical Christian Studies Graduate Program at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho.

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 Detwiler, and you've joined us on Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us a longtime friend and one of the people that I first met when getting involved in classical Christian education. Chris Schlect. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Schlect:

Marlin, It's a privilege to be here. Thank you so much. And it's great to see you again, even if virtually.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, it's been a few years since we've had this kind of interaction. Chris is joining us, I believe, from his office at New St. Andrews in Moscow, Idaho. I am in my car because we're traveling and I wanted to get this tape. So here we are!

Chris Schlect:

That's right. And avoiding hurricanes. I understand.

Marlin Detweiler:

That was recent. That wasn't this week. But anyway, Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself personally, growing up family and that sort of thing. I have enjoyed, by the way, interactions with your folks, which I remember fondly when staying with you years ago. But tell us a little bit about your background in family and education.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Most of my growing up in Olympia, Washington, in a wonderful family, I'm privileged to be one of three boys. My poor mom had to suffer through that. Something that Laurie can no doubt relate to. Maybe that's the source of connection there. The mom dealing with a lot of testosterone in the family.

Marlin Detweiler:

It was really funny because Laurie was an only child and her mother was an only child. So, she was a great grandma. Great grandma sounds formal she was a wonderful grandma. So, yeah, we can relate to that.

Chris Schlect:

That's right. But I've now been married to Brenda for we're approaching 40 years, and we've got five kids. All five of our kids are graduates of Logos School, classical Christian educated. All of their spouses also have received a classical Christian education. And now we have 13 grandkids, and number 14 is on the way.

Marlin Detweiler:

Wow. So you grew up in Olympia, Washington, if I remember correctly. That makes you a Mariners fan?

Chris Schlect:

I am a Mariners fan, and we are- there is a pretty intense race in the old West right now.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's awesome. You went to school, started working and then went back to school. Give us a little sense of that.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, I got my undergraduate degree at Washington State University.

Marlin Detweiler:

That’s not far from where you live!

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, actually, ten miles. That's what actually brought me into this area is my undergraduate work. And so now I'm in Moscow, Idaho, which is just eight miles away from Washington State University. We're right on the Idaho-Washington border here. So I wound up changing the history from engineering and then started ultimately getting involved as a teacher at Logos School.

And then pursued graduate work. I got a master's degree at the University of Idaho, went back and completed doctoral work again at Washington State University, and wound up teaching some of the classes that I used to take.

Marlin Detweiler:

So that's great. That's great. Well, let me ask you as a question. Logos School, the subject school of the book Recovering Lost Tools of Learning was the school that you were teaching at when we first met back in 1996.

Chris Schlect:

That's about right. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:

You were teaching there, but when did you start teaching there? You were not there when it started, were you?

Chris Schlect:

You know, I was. I was not there when Logos started, although I do remember when Doug was writing the book. In fact, I have this memory of walking into his office. His office was there at the school, and he had just gotten off the phone with the administrator in New York. Parochial schools, Catholic Parochial schools.

Marlin Detweiler:

I remember the story in the book. I know where this is going. Yeah.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, the story’s in the book. And he had just gotten off the phone, and I remember him– so the story he relates is in the book, he had asked how many people work in administration, and this is the state of New York, a pretty large parochial system. And the person just stood up in the cubicle and started counting heads, which in terms of administrative bloat and scale, was a striking contrast to the comparable public school system.

So anyway, but that just dates me. You're just trying to date me as an old geezer!

Marlin Detweiler:

I've been married longer than you. I know I'm older than you, so I've got nothing on you on that!

Chris Schlect:

That's right. But, I am a historian, but I'm also the artifact. I'm getting used to that now.

Marlin Detweiler:

That’s funny. Logos started in ‘91?

Chris Schlect:

That sounds about right. Yeah, I started there in 1991. I started there part-time. I actually did a short stint as a youth minister. I've done a number of things throughout my career and had a short stint as a youth minister, wound up teaching at Logos, and then ultimately stuck with it. And eventually, I moved from Logos to New St. Andrews.

I was, which is where my day job is now. I continue to be involved in Logos now as a granddad because my grandkids are there and I also help them out with some teacher training activities and such. And I've got good relationships there.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, as you know, and maybe many of our listeners, Tom Garfield was the I think the title was called Superintendent at that point, the term was Headmaster. And he, having retired after 30 some years there, now works for us in our online school. But I'm curious if you have a really good story about him.

Chris Schlect:

Tom is and continues to be a good friend. His daughters babysat my kids, and I remember being at sports events where, you know, the Logos basketball team, my son would be playing, and he and I would wind up talking about pedagogy. Tom and I have had so many rich conversations about teaching and pedagogy, and I admire him greatly.

I do remember one thing I did for 24 years at Logos is I coached a mock trial team, and our mock trial team was fairly successful. We won a number of state championships, and we were at a national tournament, and this was the one time that Tom actually joined the team so that he could observe the team at the national tournament. And so I remember this well.

It's a very intense tournament. We get our draw, and we're making our way into the courthouse. And there we are with the team, and Tom's with me. And then Tom just suddenly turns ashen white, and it's very awkward, and says, Chris, I got to go, and just leaves us hanging there. I mean, I was the coach. I shepherded the kids through.

But as the chaperon, I'm thinking, I lost a kid. It's Tom. And I didn't see what was going on. What was this, a bathroom emergency? What is like I've got a kid that's gone astray, Stray just bolted and came to find out later Tom was carrying a gun– concealed carrying. And we were going through court security, and he just put two and two together and bolted out of there before he would get caught because that would have created an incident.

So I'm grateful that he got out of there. There was no incident. He just wound up late. But that was funny.

Marlin Detweiler:

And I'm sure that's happened many times in many security places. But it doesn't happen often to us, does it?

Chris Schlect:

Yes, that's right. Yeah. When you're going through it, it's kind of like an airport security situation when you're going into a courthouse.

Marlin Detweiler:

So, was Logos school a dangerous place that he needed it?

Chris Schlect:

That's right. Well, a dangerous place. As we all know, there's been some tragedies and such. You know, security is more and more of an issue and concern for parents. And so one of the things that many schools do is train and equip some of their staff, be sure they're duly trained so they can kind of double as security guards. Superintendents are kind of everything. You know, they have to wash out, they need to repair the plumbing. And so he also has the gun-toting and we are after all, so.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's it is the Wild West. I've been there, and well, I grew up in the East. I have grown to appreciate the differences and understand the Wild West a little bit.

Chris Schlect:

That's right. And with Tom Garfield out here, it's a little bit wilder.

Marlin Detweiler:

But oh, that's funny. Tell us, though, seriously, Logos was really the flagship school and laid the groundwork for the book Recovering Lost Tools of Learning. We think of it as a seminal work in reestablishing classical Christian education. Tell us what your impressions were as you all were put in the place of not only teaching that way but also training and encouraging schools around the country and eventually around the world.

Chris Schlect:

Well, Doug wrote that book that came out, I think it was in ‘91. And I think in the aftermath of that, that's how you and I met. The book clearly touched a nerve. I think that it's a good book. I don't think that the book had a unique genius to it. There was also a ferment of dissatisfied parents around the country that the book really spoke to.

You can ask to explain Beatlemania. Was that the genius of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, or was it the cultural ferment at the time?

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, the answer is yes. And so there's that. The success of that book, I don't think can be reducible to the book itself, but to some of the things that were then current. So, the book really just met this need.

Marlin Detweiler:

Like good humor; timing is everything.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, there were culture wars, curriculum wars back in that era, we could talk about creation, evolution, health classes and the sex ed as it was presenting at that time. You know, those are in the those are in the Reagan and then the elder Bush years. So we can go into the memories of that time.

But it really struck a nerve. And here I was teaching at Logos school, which was just the local Christian school and kind of the way that it's done, and then this sort of happens, right? And so it attracts attention. And I'm just this yokel guy. People are saying, “Hey, what do you do and why?” Which actually contributed a lot toward my understanding of classical Christian education.

If people are saying, “Hey, why do you do what you do and why?” I have to formulate it, too. I'd say I learned just as much about classical education from people who were interested in asking about it as from any other source. You know, from people like you who say, “Why? What? Explain. Give an account.”

Marlin Detweiler:

Today we see, you know, classical Christian education became a popular idea, just like evangelical in the seventies. And people wanted to embrace that term and now this term, but many times want to define it differently. And, of course, it's not a term that you or I or anyone owns the rights to, and can say this is what it is without exception. But what do you think makes the brand of classical Christian education that comes out of Recovering the Lost Rools of Learning? That is what you embrace substantially. It is what I embrace substantially. What are the distinctives that you've seen that you all were able to transmit to others through the influence that the book gave you at Logos?

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, I would say that as I reflected on this and then first react to the framing of the question, you're absolutely right, Marlin, that there are different definitions that are put forward out there. I've I've tried to study and reflect upon those. And then as an infrastructure develops around classical education and in the form of publishing houses, organizations, and now there are, you know, there's Roman Catholic classical school organizations.

There are there are classical, non-Christian organizations. There are the classical charter schools. So the word is out there. And I think you're right to characterize it as branding as well. I like your question. I do think in classical Christian education, if you put all of those definitions together, you see differences in emphases and such. And each institution or organization does need to define the term for themselves.

I think you see three elements. The first element is that it's historically rooted. Classical educators are convinced down to their bones that the educators of the past had something to say that we need to pay attention to. We're not re-enactors, we're not birthing.

Marlin Detweiler:

We’re emulating.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, exactly. We're not trying to recreate monastic schools here. We're called to 2023. That's where God's placed us. Yet, you know, Chesterton's Democracy of the Dead, you know, they get a vote, and there's a due deference here. So which in that historical impulse then turns us against some of the progressive models of education that are much more utilitarian and functional, that came into vogue 100 years ago.

So that would be first is a historic rootedness. The second is the end or goal or purpose, which is not to create technicians and functionaries, but to create free people who are virtuous and a solidly and distinctively Christian understanding of virtue, you know, so loving love of God, love neighbor, you know, the classical virtues of prudence and fortitude and justice and temperance that are understood in a Christian way, not just in a vanilla sort of way.

So, the formation of the whole person of the child, rather than just harnessing their labor for skill. And then the then the third impulse has to do with certain intellectual skills that classical education seeks to inculcate with critical thinking, with a facility with language, the capacity to express language. And so I would say those are those would be the three, the historical rootedness, the teaching for Christian virtue, and then the intellectual skills. And they're the kind of intellectual skills that are not tailored to any particular job, but rather to the formation of the human to love God and love neighbor.

Marlin Detweiler:

As I hear you say those three, I can't think of a significant I can't think of any exception, quite honestly. But I'm couching my words a little bit, but I can't think of a real exception to that in any of the versions that I see. Even the secular version would seek out the good true and the beautiful. They just may not call God the author.

Right. And so that, you know, Judeo-Christian values sometimes take on a life of their own without God, as if that could be. But they do in some sense. And so I think that includes everyone. Can you easily then, sounds to me like you're used to doing this. So I hope this question comes off your tongue pretty quickly, too.

Can you easily articulate then how we would be distinctive, how you would be distinctive in your further inculcation of classical Christian education with the institutions you've been a part of?

Chris Schlect:

Yeah. I work here at New St. Andrews with a wonderful faculty.

Marlin Detweiler:

A college. Hopefully, we'll have time to talk about that a little bit, but we're going on a good run here. We may not get there.

Chris Schlect:

Yes, that's right. That's right. We can maybe you just need to go back and talk about Tom Garfield running a study that we've got that in common, right? No, I would I would say a distinctive understanding of what the arts are and a distinctive understanding of what the humanities are. These are terms of art. I've written on this. In fact, I've got a paper that I've published. I think you're aware of it in what is a liberal art. These are terms that are sloppily thrown around, and I'm happy with some flexibility and play in the joints with everyday conversation. Right? But if we're practitioners of education and we call ourselves “liberal arts,” and if we devote ourselves to the humanities, then we need to drill down into what actually we mean by that.

You know, the terms of art that define or are constitutive of what we are. So here at New St. Andrews College, we have a degree in liberal arts and culture. Is liberal arts to us the same thing that the University of Texas means when they have a College of Liberal Arts? So when you're asking what distinctions there are, I would point to liberal arts and humanities, but then I would move that those are terms that are in regular education vocabulary, but we've sought to really define what we do and don't mean by those terms. I can go further into that if you'd like.

Marlin Detweiler:

I think we would benefit from that. Maybe a brief take on the distinctive that would be typical of the classical education that we embrace and espouse.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, well, liberal arts instruction, first of all, the liberal arts are arts, which is a term that I think not many people understand or reflect upon. What's an art? An art is – and this goes back to Aristotle, and it's carried through the tradition. It's reason that's ordered to production different than a science, which is a body of knowledge. It's reasoned.

Marlin Detweiler:

Wonderful distinction. That's really well put. That resonates.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah. So a mechanic applies human reason, he's got techniques and rules that's ordered to the repair of a car, or a baker is an artist who there's precepts principles you can you can apply reason to actually improve your recipes. It's reason but it's ordered to the production of bread or something. So that's what an art is.It's reason ordered to production.

And there are different kinds of arts, there are fine arts, there are mechanical arts, then the liberal arts are a category of arts within that. And so if it's an art, it's reason that's ordered to the production of something, and the something that sets apart liberal arts over against other types of arts is that what it's productive of is further knowledge. If you've mastered the liberal arts, then you can go anywhere in the domain of knowledge in a sort of self-directed way.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, Yeah, right.

Chris Schlect:

So that's what makes a liberal art different than a mechanical art, different than a fine art or something like that.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's really good. I don't want to miss the opportunity. So, I'm going to jump to where you went. At some point. You transitioned from Logos School to NSA. New Saint Andrews College, and that's where you are today. What do you do there? How long have you been in, and what are you producing there?

Chris Schlect:

Right. Well at New Saint Andrews, first of all, I kind of wound up straddling– I never fully left Logos until just a couple of years ago. It just Logos continued to be a side hustle for me for many years, and good relationships there. But at New Saint Andrews, I am the head of the Humanities department. I'm the director of a graduate program in Classical Christian Studies, and then my mainstay, bread and butter, is I teach history, I teach rhetoric, and I also teach education there.

Marlin Detweiler:

You've been at NSA how long?

Chris Schlect:

I've been there since the since the mid-nineties. Pretty close to the founding.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. So a very long enough to see a progression. What progression have you seen in students coming in and students going out today as opposed to 20-some years ago?

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, Marlin, I think this is something that you and I can relate to, just given our age. It's fascinating to see students who are indigenous to social media and technology who were not in the 1990s. Think about the internet being nascent in the 1990s, and it didn't order or organize life back in the 1990s in the way it was starting to.

Marlin Detweiler:

Very different.

Chris Schlect:

Very different, yeah. And so that would be one important thing. I would say another interesting, meaningful development, and this goes back just a couple of years ago with COVID, with the disruptions surrounding race and critical theory, Black Lives Matter, and all of that. Donald Trump. It's created a serious Balkanization in our culture.

Everyone recognizes that. And so colleges like New Saint Andrews that are fairly distinctive have been around a while but seem much more of an attractive option to people than it used to. I think because of the environment, there's a lot of the changes we experience are, I would suggest, are environmental and cultural as we do our thing amidst these forces that are swirling around us.

Marlin Detweiler:

Has the – I hesitate to use this term, but I will the quality of the student – changed as a result of more classical education in a K-12 world? How has the typical student evolved over tha 20 some years?

Chris Schlect:

I would say that it's mixed. I think that there's definitely an increased awareness of classical Christian education; respect for it. You don't have to sort of explain what classical education is as much, and so that's that's very good. I would say, though, on the flip side of that, I think this is a parenting challenge within the church broadly, I think a lot of young people are less equipped to handle life because I think parents have been intervening in too much without letting the kids actually fend for themselves a little bit.

Like, I can give you an illustration. You know, when we get a lot more calls from parents with questions about an application, why isn’t the applicant calling us?

So if the dean gives me some kind of task and I've got a question about it, should my mother, who you referred to earlier, call the dean and say, “Hey, I'm trying to figure this out.”

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, duly noted. I was a little bit afraid that I was going to be insulting some level of students. So let me just say I endured that insult at one point in my life. Just parenthetically, my college golf coach, I played golf at NC State and my college golf coach was also my son's college golf coach.

And I remember him telling me one time that I asked him what the difference was. He says, referring to the time when my son was playing, which is years ago now. But “Today I get better athletes,” and how to take that? Anyway, I'm not insulting anybody. I'm just trying to really understand that. That's really helpful.

So, maybe in closing, I'd like to hear you say some words about parenting as it relates to preparing kids for college and adult life because there's no doubt in my mind that college serves as a transition place for many students from complete or substantial dependence to substantial independence is the walking ground in between there, the transition period where many parents pay for their kid's education.

Many parents influence that process. Many parents, at least their freshman year, come and help them move in. There are lots of dependent activities that are the first steps of transition, but you have some interesting thoughts, I'm sure, on what we might do better as parents.

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, I think that that really– it starts as the kids approach their teenage years. College kids, of course, need parents. I need parents, too. I mean, the Fifth Commandment is attached to promises that it would go well with us, you know, So we all need our parents. But the choreography of parenting needs to start shifting as kids enter their teenage years where the kids are doing more, and then the parents actually need to be coming alongside them and coaching them.

So, I'll try to illustrate it this way. Like my daughters in high school, they worked at Qdoba.

Marlin Detweiler:

Good Mexican food!

Chris Schlect:

Yeah, good Mexican food. That was that was so important to parenting them they would, you know home is this oasis, this place where you get your moorings but send them out from home on these little sorties, like, okay, you're slapping together burritos. And they would encounter the 22-year-old college girl who has got an abusive boyfriend and the guy on drug rehab who's 40, who's still working in the Qdoba kitchen, dealing with these life issues and some of the challenges and problems and coming back, we would coach them up.

You know, the home and open parenting is really good. But if and here's here's a litmus test: if the adults your teenagers are dealing with are preeminently you, then that's kind of a problem. You want the teenagers out there dealing with other things and then you as the parent are with them, standing with them, coaching them as they’re outward facing.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, that's really that's really good. We boy, we could go a long time. I would love to hear more about mock trial, a wonderful activity for classically educated kids, and maybe some other time. But for now, Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

Chris Schlect:

Marlin, it's a delight to take a car ride with you. One car ride I remember taking with you was that you got me late to the airport, and I missed my flight.

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh boy, don't remind me of that. I still feel bad about that. You didn't tell me until months later so as to preserve a little dignity for me. But I am so sorry about that. But thank you for reminding me.

Chris Schlect:

Oh, yeah, that was probably 15 years ago. But it's great to be in your car, Marlin, and I'd love to do it again.

Marlin Detweiler:

Folks, you've been with us with Chris Schlect, on Veritas, Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Thank you for joining us.