We didn’t know wonder was enlivening our home until it died.
My oldest daughter Frances, so full of questions and curiosity, had ensured that we saw the world with fresh eyes and contagious awe. But after a military move across the country in the middle of her kindergarten year, we settled into base housing. The principal of the local Title I public school stated firmly that her goal was to break the cycle of poverty for some children and therefore she would not assign her best teachers or resources to “smart kids from intact families.” So we chose a local private school and then watched in horror as our vivacious thirsty learner stopped asking questions, stopped wondering about the world, and began focusing on Beanie Baby labels and social status.
Increasingly, she regarded me less as a mother than a chauffeur. The only thing I knew about education was that it was not happening, though I could not articulate or understand the problem. This early crisis awoke a million questions in me. What is education? How do you know if your child is getting a good one? What is the goal? Does it matter how you get there? My questions led me to consider every option, including the ridiculous notion of home education. My early inquiries into the world of homeschooling proceeded with a particular prayer running through my mind, “Please God, don’t ask me to do this.” And then the lights came on.
What began as dread at the very thought of myself as a teacher morphed quickly into the planning stage of a great adventure. Soon I rediscovered my own love for books, bugs, and beauty. And I thrilled to see curiosity and awe stir in my sweet daughter’s gaze.
One month into first grade, in the middle of our read-aloud, I caught her looking at me with awe and amazement. I paused to hear what had inspired her reverence. With luminous eyes she declared, “Mom, you can read really well!” In that moment, she moved me beyond “chauffeur status” and opened her mind and heart to whatever lessons I chose to teach. This journey was restoring not only her intellect, but our relationship as well. I began to understand that a good education concerns itself with right relationships: with God, self, others, the natural world, etc. During those first years of rapid discovery, I wandered to a ledge with a breathtaking view: the idea of classical education.
Classical education became my next frontier. I would wander this land of opportunity for years before I began to recognize its geographical features, its weather patterns, and its deep waters. What do I love the most about it? It is real and satisfying. It is worthy of my trust, for It has been tested by millennia rather than one or two generations of devoted fans. The particular enduring stories, the Great Books and the good books which train us for their coming, speak across the ages sharing the truth about ourselves and our journey in a way that requires us to climb, harvest, peel, and taste the truth which has the power to set us free should we choose to consume it.
I am a newcomer to this province, with most of the land untouched before me. Still, here I am in my nineteenth year of homeschooling, and my ninth year attempting to educate classically. Predictably, this wonder led me to share my joy by collaborating in founding and leading a classical tutorial for homeschoolers. However, wonder has a way of calling us to the unexpected as well.
I am now close to the end of my homeschooling season. Many changes have altered the educational landscape. I have seen three daughters through the college application process, and I have begun to appreciate the life cycle of pre-college education in the United States. What begins in wonder with a focus on goodness and good citizenship in kindergarten, ends with standardized college entrance exams whose selected texts would lead us to believe that we cannot know what is good, and that truth does not exist. Once students have accepted the idea that truth does not exist, they have been crippled in their ability to recognize and respond to the One who is Truth. The dawning of this provocative realization caused me to wonder about the nature and impact of standardized college entrance exams upon the entire educational system.
These high-stakes tests do more than measure. They drive curricula down into high schools, middle schools, and grammar schools. In steering curricula, they drastically alter what is taught. For example, AP U.S History courses across the nation were significantly rewritten over the summer of 2014 to align with the politically correct agenda of the new AP U.S. History exam. Test writers controlled what the most able history students of this nation would know of their own cultural inheritance. The tests are more powerful than I had imagined. The two college entrance testing behemoths in abandoning any claim to ethics, goodness, and truth have emptied our educational systems of teaching that might endow students with a working moral compass.
I arrived more slowly to this horrific understanding than other education minded peers. My friend Amy, in lamenting the situation, asked me, “Are all these colleges and educational associations who profess allegiance to true liberal arts education going to continue measuring our children by these degraded and degrading standardized tests?” I thought, “Yes, what are they going to do? Who will stop talking and start acting?” Shortly thereafter, Jeremy Tate, of Classic Learning Initiatives, invited me to work with his team in the audacious task of bringing a new standardized college entrance exam into being. I began to wonder anew. Can this be done? Could we do this? The great stories have taught me that those who stand against giants are not often wise by human standards, nor powerful, nor of noble birth. By these benchmarks, I find myself qualified to join the movement. Wonder has led me to my next great adventure: the Classic Learning Test.
The Classic Learning Test (CLT) invites students to wrestle with works of the greatest minds in the history of the Western tradition across literary and mathematical content. Rich material reflecting both theistic and secular perspectives challenges students to analyze and comprehend texts that are not just concerned with one small, narrow topic but rather represent the scope and complexity of life, including the moral implications and the far reaching consequences of ideas, passions, action, inaction, scientific inquiry, and love.
In joining the CLT team, I find myself, once again, standing at a new frontier with much to learn. A million fresh questions are born. Beautiful views appear as I discover brilliant initiatives gaining traction in American education. They begin with one or two people beholding great need, wondering at potential solutions, and setting to work.
And now, I have to ask: Where is wonder leading you?
