Educated people in the 21st century shares common intellectual standards and abilities. An educated person values and seeks to achieve clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, and significance in thinking. Conversely, no person can be said to be educated whose thinking is characteristically unclear, imprecise, inaccurate, irrelevant, superficial, narrow-minded, illogical, or insignificant. Similarly, an educated person masters the elements that underlie and define the structure of all thought:
- An educated person routinely seeks to identify key purposes and goals and explicitly formulates questions, problems, and issues necessary to accomplishing those purposes and goals.
- An educated person gathers relevant information and makes reasonable inferences from that information (in tackling questions, problems and issues they are seeking to answer, solve, or resolve).
- An educated person effectively analyzes key concepts and recognizes points of view and is able to shift either or both when necessary (in attempting to solve a problem or resolve an issue).
An educated person demonstrates intellectual humility, intellectual honesty, intellectual autonomy, intellectual integrity, intellectual perseverance, intellectual empathy, and fair-mindedness in thought, work, and in every part of life. These characteristics are the essential foundations for the right use of the mind. Lacking these characteristics, humans think and act egocentrically, do not respect reason and evidence (except when it is in their selfish interest to do so), and are indifferent to the welfare of others (with whom they do not egocentrically identify). These intellectual standards, abilities, traits, and values when integrated define the educated person. Without these standards, one is unable to internalize the logic of academic content or reason effectively.
Instructional Methods
Nampa Classical Academy is distinguished by its classical education instruction. Some of these are highlighted in the sections that follow. Nampa Classical Academy uses classical methods to achieve 21st century goals. As a foundation, we believe there are three things we learn and we learn them three ways. All three ways of how we learn apply in varying degrees to each of the three kinds of things we learn.
Three things we learn:
- Knowledge of content,
- Understanding/appreciation of ideas,
- Mastery of skills.
Three ways we learn:
- Deductive
- Reason
- Inductive
- Experience
- By authority
- Subject Matter Experts
When we learn inductively, we begin with particular experiences, and then the mind goes to work comparing them. As it does so, it is identifying 1) common features; and 2) unique features of the individual experiences and drawing conclusions (abstracting ideas) from them. Thus, we learn what red is when we are very little by seeing multiple objects that have red in them, and we learn to differentiate redness from other colors. At some point we hear the name "red" applied to those red things, so we call them red. This is also how we learn and understand the meaning of justice, freedom, beauty, etc. This is best described as learning through examples or models. The implications are extensive.
When we learn deductively, we begin with an idea (that we have already learned something about inductively) and draw logical implications out. This is the learning taught by Euclids Geometry, for example. If justice is treating things as they ought to be treated, then I cannot treat a child like a stimulus/response mechanism. Note, first the principle, then the deduction or application. Socratic instruction equips people to learn this way.
When we learn by authority we learn through the experiences and reasoning of others. I learn that Washington crossed the Delaware because historians (authorities on history) tell me so. I learn that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet because authorities tell me so. I learn that it is wrong to lie because authorities tell me so (and my conscience agrees
Natural Law). This is the strength of the classical program and it is also the foundation for the idea of western "tradition" that we want to pass on to our children.
Each of these modes of learning mature with the age of the child. In teaching, the goal is to arouse and train the faculties of a child's perception
the senses, the intellect, and the soul. Thus learning best occurs in an environment that embodies the ideas to be taught, through people who authoritatively embody the ideas to be taught in their actions, words, and productions, in a prudently blended mixture of modeling, lecturing, discussing, and discovering. This will be accomplished though the Trivium and Quadrivium.
Rooting our instruction methods in this idea, we believe all students are and will be capable of fulfilling their individual potential. Nampa Classical Academy utilizes the specific methods mentioned earlier and the following instructional methods:
- Core Knowledge Sequence is content guide lines that are based on the idea that students learn best when they are offered challenging and interesting content, carefully sequenced from year to year. Core Knowledge provides a framework for teaching the core subjects of language arts, literature, math, science, history, geography, music, and the visual arts. The principles underlying Core Knowledge suggest that a diverse democratic society such as ours needs a common knowledge base that both draws together its people and acknowledges their differing contributions. Our society does not need a two-tiered system in which elites have access to a superior education, while non-elites are subjected to an uninspiring and fragmented educational experience.
- The Dialectic Method (Socratic Method) encourages learning through sharing of information and concepts within a group, with the thinking process playing an important role. A teacher would think of it as the relentless pursuit of truth through unceasing questions. To engage in this method, the teacher would establish their goal to clearly understand truth and move on. Once he has grown comfortable with questioning his students, they will refine his dialectic instruction. This form of questioning falls into two stages, the ironic and the maieutic.
In the ironic stage, the teacher uses questions to probe her student's understanding-to find the inadequacies in the student's thoughts. These inadequacies might include contradictions, insufficient definitions of terms, faulty logic (especially things like hasty generalizations and reversal of cause and effect), and other common mistakes that people make all too frequently. The purpose of the ironic stage is to weaken the individual's confidence in an inadequate understanding of reality.
After the student recognizes the inadequacy of his original idea and wants a clearer apprehension of the truth, he is ready for the maieutic stage. In this second stage, the teacher will make more suggestions than he did in the ironic stage, but questions still drive the student. In the end, the student and the teacher both better understand an idea. The purpose of the maieutic stage is to give birth ("maieutic" is Greek for "having to do with a midwife") to this more accurate understanding of reality.
It is important to notice that both the didactic and dialectic methods of teaching are engaged in thinking about ideas by asking questions. There is no more effective method for training the mind. - The Didactic Method presents models to the students for mutual contemplation. For example, if a teacher wants her students to understand Renaissance art, then she will place some Renaissance works of art in front of both the class and herself, and they contemplate them together. If the teacher wants her students to learn a proof in geometry, she will place some examples of that proof before them and contemplate them together. If the teacher wants her students to understand a poetic device, a noble soul, or a musical idea, she will place before the class examples of the poetic device, the noble soul, or the musical idea.
In this approach to didactic instruction the teacher and the student are engaged in a mutual contemplation. Both are actively thinking about the models placed before them. As a result, both move toward a more accurate understanding of the ideas contained in the object.
Didactic instruction begin with an idea a teacher wants her student to understand. Then she will find models of the idea and, together, analyze each model individually for its properties and qualities. She will then compare the models with each other to find common properties. Finally, she will compare the models with other models of different types. This enables the teacher and the students to establish what is unique to the idea they are contemplating.
This method is very effective when the teacher wants her students to understand an idea or interpret an artifact (e.g. a painting, musical composition, text, etc.). Teachers can use it effectively in science, art, music, math, and languages. It is also a wonderful way to approach children's reading.
- The Direct Instruction Method (DI) is a model for teaching that emphasizes well-developed and carefully planned lessons designed around small learning increments and clearly defined and prescribed teaching tasks. It is based on the theory that clear instruction eliminating misinterpretations can greatly improve and accelerate learning.
- Additionally, classical education addresses character development throughout the curriculum.
