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Mount Olive Lutheran School
A Classical Education

Wisdom, eloquence, and virtue – these are the goals that a classical education cultivates within its students. The ancients knew that education should be about more than “basic skills” and mere competency. A good education transformed, elevated, and refined the mind and the soul. For thousands of years, the classical arts of learning were the standard for education. These arts were timeless and proven because they focused on the timeless and proven. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful were objects of this sort of education. Eloquent confessors and wise leaders were its results. Our communities badly need just these sort of men and women. In an endless pursuit of the latest educational dogma, most of our schools no longer have the capacity to judge what is Good, True, and Beautiful, much less teach it. In forsaking the soul for the mind, they have forgotten how to educate both. Classical Education is a return to excellence in teaching, curriculum and expectations.

(The Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education – www.ccle.org)

Mount Olive Lutheran School  

2336 St. Johns Ave. Billings, MT 59102 

406/656-6687      

A Classical Education

Theological Foundation
The Holy Scriptures are the only rule and source for Christian faith and life. Jesus Christ as the center and focus of the Holy Scriptures is the golden thread that permeates all areas of study in the classical Lutheran education.

Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism will be taught in all grades. The historic Christian liturgy and hymns will be an ongoing source of training the mind and the life of the teachers and the students.

The Curriculum
Classical education first of all is a matter of curriculum: the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; great books; the transmission of the Western heritage.  But the classical tradition also includes specific teaching techniques, which lend themselves well to the home school or the classroom.

Classical education had its beginnings in the dialogues of the Greek Academies, in which a teacher would lead a group of students (termed “disciples”) into knowledge through group and individual discussions.  In Rome, classical education was carried on largely with “pedagogues”’Greek  slaves who worked with the children of their masters one-on-one.  Later, classes developed, culminating in the invention of the medieval university, in which students did attend lectures, but also were put on the spot by having to perform in “disputations,” and were under the guidance of individual tutors.  For most of its history, classical education was carried on by teachers who had an informal, one-on-one relationship with their students and who made their students do lots of work on their own.  Much like homeschooling parents.

In the theory and practice worked out by classical educators, several models and approaches keep surfacing.  Since classical education embraces the whole range of human knowledge and since it is developmental, there can be no single classical teaching method, since the approach necessarily changes according to the subject matter and as the child moves from grammar to logic to rhetoric.

The Challenge
Classical Education involves dedicated effort by the teachers who guide the students through the Trivium. The students are encouraged and challenged to excel in learning. Reading a wide range of books is pursued.
Resources
Many and various resources are used such as Scholastic materials which handle a wide range of subjects; reading series such as the Laura Ingalls Wilder books; Aesop’s Fables; poetry, the Scriptures, etc.