An Encouragement to the Classical Educator
One of the reasons my eye was drawn to this particular book is because it was written by a British teacher about our own schools. Despite the fact that our government annually spends around 100.3 billion pounds of taxpayers’ money on government schools, it is rare to find published books critiquing the school system nor even assessing the way teachers teach. Well, here is the book we have been waiting for!
Not only does this book expose some of the myths presented to us time and time again (even within the home education movement) but it affirms many points that classical educators believe at heart.
Seven Myths About Education
Daisy Christodoulou outlines seven widely held beliefs about education, demonstrates how they have affected ‘education policy and classroom practice,’ including the way that Ofsted grades schools. She then shows how they are flawed with the use of scientific evidence.
Have you ever been faced with these ideas about education?
- Facts prevent understanding
- Teacher-led instruction is passive
- The twenty-first century fundamentally changes everything
- You can always look it up
- We should teach transferable skills
- Projects and activities are the best way to learn
- Teaching knowledge is indoctrination.
One of the Highlights: Facts Prevent understanding
I have heard teachers argue that memorising times tables by rote are a waste of time, because the children do not UNDERSTAND what they are reciting. There is a similar argument that teaching small children a catechism is pointless since children do not fully understand their memorised answers.
Classical educators recognise that in the development of a child, memorisation comes first, understanding comes second. Christodoulou helps us to understand why.
Her explanation involves a little understanding of how the brain works. We have a working memory and a long-term memory, and both are used to solve problems. Our working memory is essentially our consciousness, the little bit of information that we are aware of. If we have a problem to solve, then we hold all the information we need to solve that problem in our working memory. The problem, however, is that our working memory has a limited capacity. It can only hold around three or four items at any given time.
Consider this given example:
If we had to solve the sum 46 x 7 mentally. We might solve it like this:
- 7 x 40 = 280
- 7 x 6 = 42
- 280 + 42 = 322
The reason we can probably work out this sum is that we can hold the answer to step 1 in our heads as we work out the answer to step 2. We can then add these two answers together. However, we would not be able to work out 28,322 x 42 in our heads since our working memory cannot hold all the component parts.
Christodoulou says that, ‘Although working memory is limited, it is possible to cheat its constraints’. For example, you were presented with 16 digits for five seconds and then asked to repeat them, you would probably fail:
4871947503858604
However, if you were shown these 16 letters for five seconds, you would probably remember them exactly:
The cat is on the mat.
The words are meaningful since your long-term memory contains the background knowledge of how letters form words, what each word means and how sentences are formed.
The book reasons, ‘when we commit facts to long-term memory, they actually become part of our thinking apparatus and have the ability to expand one of the biggest limits of human cognition.’
Real-life Evidence
After following the classical method for a number of years, however imperfectly, I am fascinated by how often my children make connections between seemingly remote events and subjects because they have so much already stored up in the long-term memories. Today my daughter was reading a book about King Tut. She asked me ‘Who was on the throne when Howard Carter was born?’ Once she had established it was Queen Victoria, she noted that Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s body in 1922 and decided to check who was on the throne at this point. Why was she able to do this? Because in her long-term memory she already held certain information:
- She already knew who Howard Carter and so rather than exerting herself to learn the name of a new character from history, she was free to start making connections with her other knowledge.
- She knew Britain had a monarchy.
- She knew Queen Victoria was on the throne in the 19th
- She knew Queen Victoria was no longer on the throne in 1922.
- She knew how to find the information that she wanted on the ‘Kings and Queens’ family tree we have pinned to our wall.
A child’s book about Egypt held far greater riches than a self-contained story since she was able to fit it into the sweep of history she already stored in her long-term memory.
When Books Become Friends
For some reason, this book has become a permanent part of me. It encourages to teach my children with confidence. The critics say that knowledge is dry and lifeless, but as a Christian I know that ‘in [Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Colossians 2:3). When I teach my children their times-tables or the date of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, I am filling their minds with life-giving, exquisite-tasting fruit, by which they will be able to enjoy all knowledge more deeply.
If you are tasting the delights of classical education, then this book is for you.
