Why Classical Education?
Since […] God’s creative and redemptive work is about […] the making of persons in his own image–it follows that an education that helps make us more fully persons is especially important to Christians. – Arthur Holmes
Education for a Full Life Well-Lived
It is an immensely practical thing to have an education that is suited for whatever may come, but possessing an education like that is no easy feat. For such an education to exist, it must engage the whole person. It must focus primarily on living life well. It must be an education promoting shalom, a “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight.”
Classical, Christian education is a training in the liberal arts intended to engage the full personhood of each student. It aims to produce a people with wise, well-tempered, and discerning hearts and minds—a people ready and equipped for every good work.
Practically, classical, Christian education creates competent learners by educating students to know, understand, and wisely engage a broad array of disciplines. Though its aims are not pointed at job preparation, it assumes that students will eventually labor in various vocations to earn wages. A classical education is a help and not a hindrance to such trades. It is a broad education producing multifaceted individuals with an excellent foundation on which to build a skilled craft—whether that craft is medicine, industry, management, law, ministry, education, or something else.
In short, a classical education is an education that students can carry with them as they go through life. It enables them to approach the vocation of living with a strongly focused depth perception and a wide peripheral vision. It enables them to ask sound questions and examine information critically. It enables them to communicate clearly and express themselves with confidence.
At Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy, we believe that what we build defines us. As such, an education at our school is meant to take the most excellent bits of things to know—the acknowledgment that we serve a God who is both sovereign and good and a school culture that emphasizes the noble, meek, excellent, and praiseworthy—and bind them together to produce students who eagerly long for the best sorts of things, who can face the unknown world without fear.