Practical Paideia

Lindsey Ralls (Summit Christian Academy)

Last week I was writing an article that included some background information about John Milton Gregory, who wrote The Seven Laws of Teaching. I’ve heard it mentioned several times over the years that Gregory was a principal at a classical school. Every time I hear that, I can’t help but think, “is that really true?” There’s never any additional information about what the school was called or where it was located, and if I’m being honest, it seems like one of those things that’s pretty coincidental – since the classical movement today has been so influenced by his book. The cynic in me didn’t quite trust this bit of information and so I decided to see if I could verify it. At first, I just kept reading articles like the one I was writing; people today writing about Gregory and his work. Each of them had one or two sentences about his career and several of them mentioned that he was a principal at a classical school. And yet, I still didn’t feel like I could fully trust what they were saying. But then I stumbled across Gregory’s obituary. There it was, in The Champaign County News on October 22, 1898. It said that he was the principal of a classical school in Detroit. Finally, I was convinced.

What was it about the obituary that convinced me when the other more recent articles, blogs, and podcasts did not? The obituary was a primary source. A primary source is a first-hand account of a topic, from someone who had a direct connection with it. This past week, our homegroup studied 1 Corinthians chapter 9. Paul opens the chapter by making the argument that he was in fact an apostle. One of the ‘qualifications’ for being an apostle was that you had seen Jesus. Paul is arguing that he had done just that during his road to Damascus conversion. Essentially, Paul was claiming that he could be trusted because he was a primary source.

This weekend I had someone ask me “why Latin”? As I was thinking through Gregory’s obituary and Paul’s argument I realized that this is true for Latin as well. Yes, Latin is the basis for all romantic languages and therefore a great starting point into learning a foreign language. Yes, knowing Latin is shown to improve SAT scores and can help prepare you for fields like medicine and IT. Yet, I don’t think this is the primary reason why Summit (or any classical school) teaches Latin. Latin is a primary source. Our Grammar School students learn about ancient Greece and Rome and then our Upper School students build upon this knowledge when they study classic texts like Virgil’s The Aeneid and Augustine’s Confessions. How much deeper will their understanding of these texts be if they understand the language they were written in? The same is true with scripture. The New Testament was translated into the languages we know today hundreds of years after it was first translated into Greek and Latin. Having access to the primary source is incredibly valuable. 

Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that I am spending quality time in the Word when in reality I’m spending quality time reading about the Word. The Bible is the primary source, not the devotionals, or the podcasts, or the blogs. 

How are we using primary sources in our classrooms this year?