By Mr. Shawn Barnett, ILS Upper School Teacher
Classical education is often described from its ends. Many proponents of classical education discuss these goals in terms of the "transcendentals": truth, goodness, and beauty. While these discussions, because they are often attended by certain Aristolelian notions about existence and knowledge, are frequently problematic from the point of view of Lutheran theology, I would like to set these aside for now (although this is a subject worthy of future discussion) and discuss classical education from another perspective: its means. For all of the West's recorded history, the means of education in the liberal arts, with the exception of music and gymnastics which require the practice of non-discursive skills, has been orality and literacy. That is to say that students have learned via talking, listening, reading, and writing; not all that different from our three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic. What makes education "classical" is its relationship to the Classics, those written works deemed worthy of handing over from generation to generation. Reading, therefore, is a most indispensable means, a sine qua non, for a classical education. A classical education is by definition a literary education.
In terms of language acquisition, especially the acquisition of a high level of literacy, we have one advantage that the ancients did not have: empirical method. Researchers can, and have, designed studies to investigate how students gain in their ability to comprehend written texts. (E.D. Hirsch is the person to read on this subject.) However, what research has revealed shouldn't be a surprise: students learn to understand what they read by reading. That is to say, once a student learns to decode phonemes, a student constructs meaning from background experience, from associations with the words, obtained through reading and conversation. The more associations students have developed, the more they can make. What this means in practice is that those students who converse often and listen to conversation which employs a wide vocabulary hit the ground running when they first begin to read. What's more, those who read voraciously--whatever it may be: adventure novels, biographies, science fiction, etc.--are able to understand more when they read. Researchers have dubbed this the "Matthew Effect" after Christ's words in Matthew 13:12 , "For whoever has, to him more will be given." In other words, reading comprehension has a cumulative effect, a positive feedback loop. Note, however, that students only gain vocabulary by reading works which they can for the most part understand. Reading something too difficult prevents them from making inferences.
In practical terms for students at ILS, this means that students won't excel at reading Charles Dickens or at writing essays by looking up endless words in a dictionary or drilling advanced vocabulary, but by reading for leisure daily and for extended periods of time. To him who reads much will be given.