Dr. Stanley Fish is one of America’s great educators and thinkers. Professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr. Fish points to his high school education as having the greatest influence on his education.
Despite having two degrees from two Ivy League schools and having taught at U.C. Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Duke, Dr. Fish counts his education at Classical High School in Providence, RI, as the best and most demanding educational institution he has ever been associated with. The challenge of a classical high school curriculum taught him how to think and helped him to become one of the preeminent intellectuals of our day.
The primacy of developing one’s ability to think in the high school years is echoed in Leigh A. Bortins’ recent book, “The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education.” Bortins believes that learning is “a continuing conversation that humankind has been engaged in for centuries” and that knowing intimately the “collective wisdom of the ages” helps students, particularly high school students, make much better decisions in the challenges they face.
Notably absent from Bortins’ vision of education is any mention of assessment outcomes, testing, job training or the wonders of technology. Her emphasis is solely on excellent educational content and the creative means by which it is delivered. She warns against the narrowing distractions of “industrialization and technologies” and shockingly declares that, “students would be better educated if they weren’t allowed to use computers . . . until they were proficient readers and writers.”
Modern education, with its fixation on the future marketability and career potential of the student, is increasingly producing utilitarian cogs which are slotted into our churning economy but who have little ability to actually think or reason well. It neglects teaching those abilities that are vital to an employee or entrepreneur, and the hallmark of classical education: the ability to think critically, to probe analytically, to evaluate evidence, to write well-structured arguments, and to analyze arguments presented by others. In other words – to think. Studies are showing that companies are even beginning to grasp this concept that employees who can execute tasks, but cannot think and problem solve, are of little value in the work world of today.
Is it any wonder that classical schools are popping up all over the country? They are teaching students how to think, which in the end will prove to be the best ‘job-training’ ever.
For more information about Classical, Christian education, contact Trinity Classical Academy at 661-296-2601 or visit www.TrinityClassicalAcademy.com.