The core families in this project are primarily from Good Shepherd including Anne and me. Classical schools have been wildly successful at producing highly educated, well read, articulate, courteous, godly and thoroughly equipped young adults. If you are unhappy with your children’s educational options you might check around to see if there is a classical school near you.
While she genuinely enjoys home schooling her 9-year-old daughter, Samantha Kubik hopes to send her to school in the fall.
But it wouldn’t be a public school or even Ross Corners Christian Academy, which Nori’s elder siblings attend. Rather, the Kubiks are among a group of core families that intend to open the Southern Tier’s first classical Christian school this fall.
“We desire a classical education for our children,” Kubik said.
Classical education, inspired by Dorothy Sayers’ essay “The Lost Tools of Learning,” gears pedagogy to three learning stages, called the Trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric.
The grammar stage, which is roughly equivalent to elementary school age, capitalizes on students’ aptitude for memorization and has them memorize a wide range of facts — in math, geography, English, the Bible and Latin.
Young teens, who often like to argue with adults, are trained in formal logic, while older students are taught to communicate persuasively through instruction in rhetoric.
To get the basics down, students need to start the classical system fairly young; after the sixth grade, it’s difficult because the grammar stage establishes the foundation for the other stages.
Classical Christian schools are also based on scripture and promote a Biblical worldview. There are only two such schools in the state: one in Manhattan and the other in the Albany area, according to the Association of Classical & Christian Schools.
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