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Why A Classic Education Is The Best Type Of Education

As educational systems go, classic education is among the most rigorous and traditional. In general, education is considered classical when it emphasizes learning language (usually Latin). Language serves as the foundation for liberal arts.

By Kayley Kenzie

As educational systems go, classic education is among the most rigorous and traditional. In general, education is considered classical when it emphasizes learning language (usually Latin). Language serves as the foundation for liberal arts.

There is also a concentration on the classical heritage of intellectual and artistic brilliance.  Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are taught to develop sophistication in thought and word.  There is also demanding training in mathematics and scientific reasoning.

Learning can usually be broken down into two different types:  learning to acquire a skill and learning to achieve meaning.  Learning to acquire a new skill is knowledge-based, and its end goal is performance.  This type of learning is great for those who want to learn how to perform surgery or how to invest in the stock market.

It’s much more difficult to describing learning to achieve meaning, since it transcends performance. Classic education gives learners the tools to enhance their intellectualism. Learning how to critically think and reason are evergreen skills that will always be needed.

It’s important to adopt both types of learning, but we must understand the important difference between the two. Someone once said that while knowledge-based learning can help us make bridges and roads, it can’t tell us where we want the roads or bridges to lead us.

To learn with meaning helps us decide where we want to go. It would be unwise to depend on a road to take us to our destination without having a goal, or determining what we need to meet that goal.

Classic education has been used an instrument for over two thousand years to teach meaning to generations of students. It was this education that instructed medieval philosophers and even the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.

If you are only taught with knowledge-based learning, you aren’t equipped with all the skills you need to remain applicable in a world that’s constantly changing with increasing speed. But students who benefit from a classic education learn how to think and reason, which are skills that can be applied to all changes in life.

This educational system was started over two thousand years ago, yet it’s still a relevant learning model in this day and age. New skills and needs will keep outdating knowledge-based learning, but learning for meaning will never be obsolete.

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