Good . . .
I had a good education in public schools, East Texas in elementary and middle school, and high school in a Mississippi town about the size of Paris.
In my Texas elementary school we thoroughly mastered sentence diagramming and the multiplication tables by fifth (grade); proper spelling, accurate reading, and legible cursive were practically taken for granted. And we behaved.
In middle school we studied early American history as if its heroes and battles were barely beneath Joshua, Deborah, David, Jericho, Babylon, and Armageddon. We were taught that they were examples of bravery, integrity, and grit. By the way, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton – all were classically trained; that’s why they could read, think, write, speak, and act with such enlightened determination.
In high school I had good classes in biology, calculus, physics, art, and one of the most important classes I ever took – typing. In Miss Ruby Fairly’s English class I encountered George Gordon, Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty,” which arrested my attention and captured my imagination for eloquent language, as did the absurdist poetry of Bob Dylan.
Throughout public school, I had a good education that reinforced my family’s values, and a promise from my father that if I got in trouble at school I’d be in trouble at home.
Better . . .
I never really saw a better school until I was a teacher, privileged to teach at a highly selective, non-denominational “quietly classical” academy. That launched my career into classical, Christian education. Since then, I’ve had the privilege not only to teach but also to lead several better classical, Christian academies. What makes them better? Everything! Their curriculum, their methodology, their atmosphere, their faculty, and most of all their philosophy:
Western Culture is the byproduct of Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian influences; therefore it behooves us to study the Bible, the Greeks,
the Romans, and the thinkers, writers, artists, and musicians of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment because God was providentially shaping Western Culture to be His primary agent of revelation and evangelism in the establishment of His kingdom.
Please read the above sentence again.
Classical, Christian education is better than what is being taught in public schools, better than what is being taught at “Christian” schools in name only, even the so-called elite ones; and better than genuine, sincere Christian schools with inferior curricula.
Best . . .
Perhaps the best is yet to come.
Despite some of their anti-Christian biases now, at one time names like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge were synonymous with excellence. Why? Because they were founded as classical, Christian institutions. Just ask C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien or Jonathan Edwards or B. B. Warfield or the many great Christian thinkers and doers those institutions produced.
The nationwide revival in classical, Christian education, has come to Lamar County.
What do you want for your child? Good, better, or best?
Soli Deo Gloria!
Dr. Hal Brunson
Headmaster
Paris Classical Academy