What makes The Cambridge School so different?  What educational philosophy and pedagogy can we offer to address the educational decline in the past century?  Our answer is found in a Classical and Christian education.

Classical and Christian Education

In the middle of the Twentieth Century, Dorothy Sayers (a contemporary and friend of both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien) wrote an essay entitled “The Lost Tools of Learning.” In her writing, she identified what she saw was missing in education over the last century.

Sayers summarized the problem in education by proposing that students were now spoon-fed information and knowledge versus being trained to think. Because children were lacking in the necessary “tools of learning,” they could not go into the world as “lifetime learners.” They were unable to discern valid logic from propaganda, and unable to think through and communicate ideas.

As an institution, The Cambridge School seeks to recover, amplify and expand these ideas by researching and implementing the tradition of classical education that had been used for over 1500 years.  As a result of seeking to develop a Christian and Classical view of education, The Cambridge School has developed the following as its main distinctives:

1. In Loco Parentis (i.e. parents, mothers). The Cambridge School believes that parents ultimately bear responsibility for the education of their children (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Ephesians 6:4).  Therefore, The Cambridge School operates as an extension of the family to cooperatively assist parents in carrying out their God-given educational duty (in loco parentis—in the place of the parent) by providing the particular type of Christian education offered by this School.
2. Christian Worldview. The Cambridge School is committed to the belief that God is a personal God who is present and interacts through all aspects of creation.  Because of this relationship, we can see the person of God in every area of life.  As a result, all subjects from literature, to science, to math are taught from a distinctively Christian perspective and, in this respect, all subjects are integrated.  Because our teachers are trained to communicate these truths, our students are trained to seek unity, life, and meaning in all aspects of reality, academic and nonacademic and, in turn, reflect God’s character in their lives.
3. Wisdom and Virtue. Recognizing that the ultimate goal of education is more than knowledge alone, we seek to go beyond that by fostering an environment that cultivates both wisdom and virtue.  Our goal is to produce in our students academic excellence and personal virtue.  In other words, we seek to cultivate “virtuous scholars”—students who are transformed as opposed to merely informed.
4. Meaning and Purpose. The immediate product of wisdom and virtue is the recovery of meaning and purpose in all of life.  The focus of The Cambridge School’s teaching is not just analysis and critique, but connecting all the particular elements of life in a meaningful way, as parts of a divinely ordered whole.  Knowledge and information are not ends in and of themselves but must be catalyzed for a higher purpose.  Education is only complete if it ends in a purposeful existence that finds satisfaction and enjoyment culminating in the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty defined by the Person of Christ.
5. Emphasis on the Classical Liberal Arts. A Classical Christian education is essentially a Christian Liberal Arts Education—an education that prepares students to be principled and creative thinkers and doers in intelligent and purposeful service of God and man [as opposed to mere vocational training.]  The “liberal arts,” used in Western Civilization for nearly 2000 years from the Ancients on, have two broad categories: (1) the verbal arts (the trivium, or “three ways”) and (2) the mathematical arts (the quadrivium, or “four ways”).  In this way, classical education differentiates between the “art” (the skill) of study and the “science” (or formal study) of a subject.  The focus of classical education at the primary and secondary levels is the trivium, which develops the arts of language and thought.  While students at The Cambridge School do study a full range of what we would traditionally consider “subjects,” the emphasis throughout is on the “tools of learning,” the skills needed to make lifetime learning in any and every subject possible.  The goal in these formative years is the development of those skills that aid in formulating and expressing meaningful thought. These skills are grammar (gathering basic facts and definitions), dialectic (understanding, analyzing and ordering relationships amongst facts), and rhetoric (communicating conclusions eloquently and persuasively). After training in these skills, the student applies these arts to all subjects, such as science, math, and history in the pursuit of true understanding and purposeful knowledge.

Conclusion

This tried-and-true philosophy of education results in a curriculum that is rigorous and demanding and yet encourages joyful discovery while pursuing academic and personal excellence.  Our emphasis on mastering the verbal arts across all disciplines combined with small class sizes requires students of all ages and in all subjects to continuously interact verbally with faculty and peers.  Teachers require that students work toward answers rather than providing answers for them. This develops in students the ability to ask good questions and to know how to find the answers on their own.  Such methods avoid busy work and culminate during required formal rhetorical presentations in the upper school years.  The capstone of this education is the senior thesis, which is to be presented and defended before faculty, parents and peers.