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Wisdom and Eloquence: Worldview and Formation

By Christina Walker

In this series of blog posts that explore the book Wisdom and Eloquence by Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans, we have discussed why Christian classical education is an effective model to educate and equip students to be culture shapers, especially after graduating from Geneva. In a previous post, we discussed how Geneva uses reliable and time-tested methods of teaching that build a foundation for wisdom and help lead to eloquent graduates.

Worldview and Formation

The word worldview is, like many words, sometimes misunderstood. As we discuss chapter three of the book, worldview means more than “holding ‘biblical’ positions” on issues that we face in our lives and culture. Quoting Littlejohn and Evans, worldview is “that inner honing device that colors everything we think, feel, and do . . . [it] is central to our sense of being and is a function of our culture and upbringing” (p. 44).

For better or worse, a child’s worldview is mostly shaped and developed by the way his or her parents live their lives, what we would call enculturation. Enculturation happens because parents, teachers, coaches, club leaders, youth group leaders, and many others influence children day to day. Purposeful and active enculturation is formation, and teachers as well as many other individuals join parents in this critical endeavor. This purposeful and active effort on the part of teachers is the “work of spiritual, cultural, and intellectual formation” (p.44). Paideia (or formal instruction) and nouthesia (modeling godly wisdom when opportunities arise) are both crucial elements as teachers at Geneva strive to help students understand that our beliefs about God, his Word, and the Christian life matter for everything we do, think, and say. These beliefs become “that inner honing device.”

There is no part of creation that lies outside of God’s control and sovereign possession. Sometimes, we don’t appreciate this truth. But the reality of God’s sovereignty is comforting.

God is the one

who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever (Psalm 146:6).

who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people on it
and spirit to those who walk in it (Isaiah 42:5).

And because these things are true, we can be confident:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38, 39).

When we all—parents, teachers, staff, and students—acknowledge and internalize these truths, Christ-centered formation begins to happen.

Knowing that each student is made in the image of God also helps teachers to see and value each student as one of his children, which leads to rich opportunities for discipleship as well as teaching. What a gift and responsibility to draw out and help refine the creative nature of each student and to know that each one is “worthy of respect and is deserving of the challenge to manifest his God-given talents to the Creator’s glory,” as Littlejohn and Evans beautifully put it (p. 45).

As believers, we want to take the things that we believe, especially the fundamental, foundational things, and use and apply those beliefs as we (try to!) live consistent and faithful lives aided by the Holy Spirit. A biblical worldview can be very helpful, but we must constantly bring our worldview humbly before Christ and strive to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

We do well to remember that “the line between good and evil more often runs through things, ideas, and people (including ourselves) instead of running between them” (p. 50). We must remain humble, knowing and acknowledging that even our best efforts are affected by the Fall and the brokenness of the world and our own selves. Reading and praying, discussing and being in community help us to be receptive and open as the Holy Spirit works in us and through us.

Along with day-to-day enculturation and formation, Geneva also offers formal classes for upper school students to fine tune, discuss, and develop a cohesive and thoughtful worldview. Eleventh graders take Worldview Analysis, which gives students an opportunity to discern how various worldviews show up in their lives through media and how other worldviews and faiths compare and contrast with Christianity. In twelfth grade, students “revisit biblical themes and explore how Christianity need not take a back seat in the marketplace of ideas.” These classes help students realize that all ideas “have consequences for how we live our lives and how we understand human flourishing; students are also able to articulate a statement of faith.”

Wisdom and Eloquence: Integration and Inspiration

By Christina Walker

It’s been a minute since we visited Wisdom and Eloquence, but now we’re going to start the series back up.

From its beginning, The Geneva School has implemented the classical model of education, which focuses on the mastery of the liberal arts during the course of a student’s K4–12th grade Geneva career. During the medieval period, the liberal arts consisted of seven disciplines—grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—which were taught and learned as interconnected rather than isolated or separate disciplines. For the better part of the last 2,500 years, great thinkers have understood that the different arts are interrelated and that a keen grasp of this concept will help students as they study and learn (i.e., it makes learning easier).

If you have read about classical education, you have probably heard the words trivium and quadrivium. Historically speaking, the trivium is made up of the three language arts (the subjects of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric), and the quadrivium is made up of the mathematical arts (the subjects of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). There is great beauty in the meaning of the words trivium and quadrivium—the three-way crossroad and the four-way crossroad. Hugo of St. Victor, a twelfth-century ecclesiastical scholar, wrote about the seven liberal arts, calling them “‘the best tools, the fittest entrance through which the way to philosophic truth is opened to our intellect. Hence the names trivium and quadrivium, because here the robust mind progresses as if upon roads or paths to the secrets of wisdom.’” (from Didascalicum, quoted in Wisdom and Eloquence, p. 31)

Although minor changes have occurred over time, the fundamental paradigm has remained the same: building on foundational knowledge in all of the disciplines, working towards mastery of language and mathematical arts. Through this mastery, and, even more importantly, viewing these studies through a Christian lens as they grow in knowledge in their biblical studies, students grow in wisdom and hone their communication skills so that they are able to be heavenly minded and do great earthly good.

Applying the ideas in chapter two of Wisdom and Eloquence to a Christian classical education leads to these goals:

• Creating independent, lifelong learners by teaching students how to think, not just what to think
• Integrating the disciplines
• Teaching the liberal arts and sciences to children of all ages with age-appropriate curricula
• Inspiring students to explore, discover, and continue to learn beyond the classroom

Geneva strives to reach these goals in the following ways:

• Teachers develop fluent readers who are able to read with automaticity, which lays the groundwork for deeper comprehension and understanding; readers also develop a strong sense of right and wrong.
• Students in every grade learn how subjects and disciplines are interrelated: math and music are intricately and intrinsically intertwined; literature can be better understood by studying the historical context in which it was written, and the two are inherently connected; the same can be said of history and scientific discovery.
• All subjects are taught to each student, using age-appropriate methods and language, from K4 through senior year.
• Students experience what they are learning inside and outside of the classroom through special feast days, culminating events, and field trips that bring classroom lessons to life in hands-on ways.

Here are just some of the special days and field trips that students experience during their years at The Geneva School:

• Seafood tasting in K4
• Kindergarten store
• Florida Native Festival in first grade
• Velveteen Rabbit sewing day in second grade
• Greek Olympics in third grade
• Viking Day in fourth grade
• George Washington’s birthday ball in fifth grade
• Hobbit Day in sixth grade
• The North Florida trip in seventh grade
• The Everglades trip in ninth grade
• Math and science classes that have students outside testing and proving theories
• Reading Macbeth aloud in English class and going to see a Shakespeare play annually at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater
• Senior thesis presentations

Wisdom and Eloquence: Our “Hope-Filled” Goal

By Christina Walker

Society is constantly changing; in the midst of that constant change, we are confident that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, ESV). Rooted in his constancy, Christian educators are able to respond to the ever-changing needs around them and in their students’ lives so that they will also be able to impact society and the world for the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom. St. Augustine and C. S. Lewis spoke of this kind of focus in terms of being heavenly minded in order to do great earthly good.

Reflecting this focus, Christian education has two “hope-filled” goals:

• helping students grow in their faith, knowledge, and relationships
• preparing them to promote this same kind of growth in their lives after graduation

In Wisdom and Eloquence, Robert Littlejohn and Charles Evans remind us that we (in the Christian tradition) receive wisdom in order to impart it, and the wisdom we pass on to the next generation is dependable—from an authority that we can trust because this authority is transcendent (p. 18). They refer us to St. Augustine of Hippo and his instructions for acquiring wisdom and becoming eloquent.

Augustine, writing in times very similar to ours (especially as Americans), offers reliable guidance for us because the methods he advocates have been tested and proven effective over many hundreds of years and, more importantly, because his driving belief is that “the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright” (Proverbs 2:6–7). In his book On Christian Doctrine, he argues (as Littlejohn and Evans also maintain) that any learning, knowledge, or wisdom is for the sake of edifying (or loving) others and will lead to the benefit of neighbor, society, culture, and the world.

In Augustine’s writings, he asserts that the foundation for gaining wisdom is reading the Bible thoroughly and knowing what it says. Students at Geneva begin reading Bible stories in K4, and as students get older, teachers introduce them to larger portions of Scripture and go deeper into the themes that we discover in the Bible. Students memorize Bible verses and passages throughout each year from K4 through 6th grade.

• K4, K, 1st: daily Bible lessons and devotions
• 2nd: study of Genesis and Exodus (creation through the Exodus from Egypt)
• 3rd: historical and poetical books of the Old Testament (from Joshua’s leadership before entering the Promised Land to the judges of Israel to the reign of David and then Solomon)
• 4th: study of the prophets and the fall of Israel and Judah
• 5th: study of the Gospels and the life of Christ
• 6th: study of The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles
• 7th: Old Testament survey
• 8th: New Testament survey
• 9th–12th: study of Christian thinkers, worldview, and the Bible in order to learn how to think according to the truths, traditions, and telos of the Christian faith, culminating in the class Bible in Perspective senior year

It is not only very important to everyone at Geneva that students study the Bible from K4 through senior year: it is a distinctive feature of the school.

After a thorough study of Scripture, Augustine encourages pursuing knowledge about “everything else”—studying broadly and learning about subjects that are “investigated and discovered”—building on the foundation of biblical studies. I love how Littlejohn and Evans claim that “the transcendent aim of such pursuits is to discover and to acknowledge the glory of God’s creative genius” and increase “ability to understand, function in, and positively affect the world around us” (p.19).

Never fear: Augustine does not leave us with a huge task and no direction.

As Littlejohn and Evans explain in Wisdom and Eloquence, classical education is an exceptional method for passing wisdom from one generation to another while developing eloquence because students receive “practical culture-shaping skills” through the core curriculum, and these skills equip them to learn about anything they might like to study in their present or future (p. 22). The integrated core curriculum is another distinctive feature of The Geneva School.

As we go through the book, we’ll discuss these characteristics of the Christian classical education that Geneva provides.

Certain commitments and beliefs go along with the pursuit and implementation of the liberal arts tradition:

• Being a human being means being a person of faith (what one has faith in varies wildly these days).
• To understand oneself, one must (seek to) understand the divinely ordered universe.
• People are fallen creatures, but redemption is possible.
• Truth, goodness, and beauty can be investigated and known because they are characteristics of God; pursuing these is not only valuable but achievable (even though we know our pursuit will not be perfect) (pp.25–26).

These things may seem like no-brainers to many in our community, but in today’s cultural climate, these are not things that we can take for granted. Teaching our children in this tradition cultivates in the next generation wisdom and eloquence so they can, indeed, be heavenly minded and do great earthly good. In future posts, we will explore and discuss what it means to “do great earthly good” and the many different ways Christians can embody this.

Pursuing Wisdom and Exercising Eloquence

By Christina Walker

When we think about the reasons we send our children to a Christian classical school like The Geneva School, we often think of how good it will be for our children: how the school environment, the curriculum and programming, faculty and staff, and other students will affect them. These things are important and certainly worthy of our consideration; we want our children to thrive and flourish. And students do thrive in a supportive, loving environment under the instruction and guidance of adults who care for their pupils as well as for the material they teach, and it does matter what kind of friends and peers our children have. Along with these meaningful aspects, a significant and key facet of the educational experience at The Geneva School—one we’d like to focus on and explore this year with our families—is the effect or impact that our students will have on the world and culture once they leave these walls: during their years here, Geneva students pursue wisdom and exercise eloquence so that they are able to be difference-makers in the world for the building up of Christ’s kingdom.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2, ESV). Transformation takes place when we study Scripture and the world in which we live. These means of transformation (renewal) provide the wisdom and the tools to transform (renew) culture. In the book Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning, Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans demonstrate how a Christian classical education is not only an exceptional educational enterprise but also a highly effective way to equip and prepare young people for future roles that bring God’s goodness, truth, and beauty to peers, colleagues, and society.

During this school year, we are going to be sharing insights from Wisdom and Eloquence—informing and edifying our community, growing in our understanding of Christian classical education, and expanding on the mission of the school: to inspire students to love beauty, think deeply, and pursue Christ’s calling.

Magic in Our Hands

By Christina Walker, Advancement Office

Do you ever think back on your favorite book from your childhood (or books … it may be impossible to narrow it down to just one)? Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer took me into another world from the first words on the first page, a magical, mysterious journey that I remember to this day. For many years, my book was lost: it had disappeared at my parents’ house sometime between when I was a young girl and when I got married and moved out. I tried finding it online and discovered much to my dismay that I could get a copy for $200 or $500 (depending on if I wanted hardback or paperback)! One day, over a decade later during one of my visits back home, my mom brought down a box she had uncovered in their attic for me to look through. As I sorted through the contents, laughing hysterically at some of the papers and notebooks that had transformed this old cardboard box into a treasure chest, I came upon a book. I screamed with joy and amazement and tears sprang to my eyes as I realized that my Magic Elizabeth was not gone forever after all!

Even though pages turn yellow and covers fall to pieces, the power of good stories does not fade with time.

I was able to share this magical story with my youngest daughter, along with many other books that I had loved as a child or that I had discovered as a parent who read to my children. Reading with Michaela (‘19), Christian (‘21), and Eliana (‘26) is now one of my treasured memories (every now and then, Eliana and I will read something together still). The time spent opening up our imaginations and making our way into and through someone else’s world was (and still is) a multifaceted gift.

My oldest, Michaela, wrote her senior thesis for Geneva about the importance of reading for Christians. The title of her paper, “Make America Read Again: The Christian Need for Literature in a Consumer Society,” reflects her astute observation (and honest self-reflection) about the world we live in, especially as Americans. She notes that reading well helps us “combat this society’s cultural attacks on our ability to know and glorify God.” From shaping minds to developing thought processes, from recognizing the ways that human beings reflect the image of God to becoming more virtuous, reading—and especially reading well—helps us to know ourselves and our Creator better and to bring glory to him as we learn from and embody virtues we encounter in the stories we read.

Remember those magical moments, exciting journeys, painful circumstances, and winding roads found within the pages you have turned. Sit with your little ones, and sit with your older children too! Enter into a wardrobe that leads to “the middle of a wood at night-time with … snowflakes falling through the air,” or warily welcome Mrs. Whatsit into your kitchen in the middle of the night during a hurricane. Watch happily from a log as “seven Trumpeters all in a line, five of them just out of the egg,” glide toward you and then “Beep” joyfully for you, except for a quiet one who does something no one would expect a baby swan to do. Or watch your mama, a teacher in your school—”one of the largest black schools in the county”—as she deliberately trims paper in order to cover the chart inside of the school book you are going to receive, “somebody’s old throwaways,” … knowing “She understood.”

Read to understand. Read to grow. And read because there are, as Michaela reminds us in her thesis, “books out there that you will enjoy.”

Books referenced or quoted:

Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor