The Latin-Centered Curriculum

I remember the moment in which I realized one of the great perks of signing on to a particular educational philosophy: I didn't need to worry about curriculum that was clearly not in line with that philosophy. I don't have to look at products that promote "critical thinking skills" for second graders; we do Latin now and will do traditional logic later. I can pass by English grammar and literature comprehension guides for picture books; we do our Latin and read Good Books for pleasure and discovery. I don't need to bother with "creative writing" programs; we have the progymnasmata.

But parents standing overwhelmed in the middle of the vendor hall at their local homeschool convention are not the only ones to benefit when we say "yes" to some things and, as a consequence, "no" to others. Our children are freed from the confines of too much choice.

How's that again? Too much choice? Our consumer-driven society sees that phrase as oxymoronic, but a few voices here and there ask us to question the marketplace and all its glamours. I would add to their critique the notion that, in the marketplace of ideas, we would also do well to limit our choices - for our own sakes and for our children's.

The great philosophers, writers, scientists, artists, and theologians of the past were not set free with a blank piece of paper and told to express themselves. They were not expected to reinvent mathematics, grammar, painting, or faith in the classroom. When they innovated, they did so with a sure knowledge of their field and a masterful control of their tools that assured that the new ground they cleared would be fruitful and not just a mass of rock over which later generations would stumble. Where they plowed and sowed, we now reap.

Sometimes I hear homeschoolers opine that the classical curriculum is too rigid, too prescriptive. I can only shake my head and direct them to Wordsworth:

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 't was pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for which there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.