The St. Augustine Classical Lutheran Homeschool Co-Op started operating in September 2011. We meet Monday to Thursday, from 8:30am to 2:00pm, at Messiah Lutheran Church in Waterloo, Ontario. This initiative was recommended by the Classical Education Exploratory Committee, a task force who had a mandate to investigate the potential of starting a Lutheran Classical School in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. The committee's work ended in June 2011. See our presentation titled Truth, Goodness, Beauty for more information.
Why are we interested in Classical Lutheran education?
The Canadian Council on Learning, in its recent publication "Post-Secondary Education in Canada 2008-2009," reports that 20 per cent of university graduates in 2006 were below Level 3 on the prose literary scale [1]. (Level 3 is the internationally accepted minimum literacy level required for coping in a modern society.) That's 20 percent of university graduates!
The CCL also reports that even though Canadians are more educated than ever before, numerous surveys of business leaders indicate that employers are dissatisfied not only with their employees' soft skills (including teamwork, communication skills and self motivation), but also with some of the skills essential to their jobs (including the management of information, use of numbers and problem solving).
So where exactly is the problem? If Canadians are more educated yet are less competent, there must be something wrong with this so-called "education."
The Canadian public education system, as well as most private education in Canada, is based on a pedagogical model called "progressive education." Progressivism places a large emphasis on the students' experiences in the classroom, rather than on the material that is being taught. Progressive methods de-emphasize memorization and learning by rote. The core skills of reading, writing and arithmetic are not valued as foundational building blocks, necessary for all other learning. Instead of learning grammar rules, memorizing multiplication tables, and learning to appreciate and write good literature, students often learn whatever they can passively absorb from the latest "educational video" or classroom discussion. Add to this the secular paradigm that truth is relative and conditional and that life has no inherent meaning, and you have modern education in Canada.
What should we do?
Classical education is currently being rediscovered across Canada and the United States as a solution to revitalize schools and intellectual tradition. Classical education is the framework for mastering the entire range of objective knowledge [2]. For more, go to What is Classical Education?
Reading some of Luther's writings on education gives great insight into the problems with education, not just in Luther's day, but also today. Luther pushed for important reforms in education as he did in the church and laid out his vision for a classical education in his day, rooted firmly in the pedagogical tradition that had been received through a thousand years of Christian adaptation from the Greeks and Romans.
Lutheran education promotes a Christ-centered worldview, and it is evangelical and Biblical.
The committee is seeking families who are interested in being part of starting a Lutheran classical school.
Notes
[1] http://www.ccl-cca.ca/pdfs/PSE/2009/PSE2008_English_Exec.pdf
[2] Veith, Gene Edward Jr., Kern, Andrew, Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America,