Classical education for modern students
Students learn about mountains using markers and erasable folders to trace mountain ranges and by repeating mountain names.
Photo by Melissa Rollins
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Education comes in all shapes and sizes. This week Americans celebrate National School Choice Week, a time dedicated to understanding all of the educational opportunities available including public schools, magnet schools and private schools. Across the Pee Dee there is a group of a families dedicated to homeschooling their children. Some of those families, such as the small but energetic group that meets weekly at Kelleytown Baptist Church, choose to use the Classical Conversations curriculum.
Group Director Jennifer Nesseth said that part of her family’s decision to homeschool came from a desire to incude God in their studies.
“We have twins and before they were even born my husband and I decided that we were going to homeschool,” Nesseth said. “The school systems, where we were, were not very good and we thought we were going to be there forever. We moved down to South Carolina when they were two…The focus on God was really important to us, having that at the center was the most important thing and public schools don’t have that as their center. It wasn’t a cost thing or anything like that it was just a desire of mine.”
She first heard about Classical Conversations during a convention when she was exploring the idea of homeschooling.
“I went to a conference when the girls were two because I knew I wanted to homeschool,” Nesseth said. “I went to a Homeschooling 101 class and the speaker went through and talked about what type of person I am and what would fit me best (as a teacher). She talked about five different styles, classical, traditional, unschooling, Charlotte Mason and then unit studies. I went to a Classical meeting after that and it was just great. It talked about how it was during the Middle Ages, how prevalent it was before the Middle Ages; that’s how people learned back then. The memorization part was important to me because I knew that they when they are young they are sponges. Classical Conversations came to the Pee Dee when the girls were three and I went to their practicum and I really liked it.”
Nesseth said that Classical Conversations at its core is based on three parts.
“Classical education is different from any other education because they believe in three forms of learning,” Nesseth said. “There is the Grammar stage of learning, which we all start in. If you wanted to make a recipe but you didn’t know how to make it the first thing you are going to do is read the recipe. That is the Grammar stage; you read, you memorize what you need to know for the recipe. Once you have that information, you can start mixing it all together. That is the Dialectic stage. Right now, our 4-year-olds sing their multiplications facts all the way up through the cubes and they have no idea why, they just have to sing the numbers. But when they get to fourth grade and they start getting in to that Dialectic stage area, the nine to 14-year-old range, they are going to start doing four times four is sixteen in their math work. They start to connect those pegs. Once you get into the Rhetoric stage, you have a pretty good grasp of the world and then we can start teaching how to do things.”
Once children are in the Rhetoric stage, Nesseth said, there is a lot of back and forth conversations about what they are learning.
“There are a lot of presentations and a lot of conversations,” Nesseth said. “I like that way of learning; it is very interesting to me. I never grew up that way because I grew up in a traditional public school. This way, you are learning how to learn. That is our main goal: we teach kids how to learn.”
God is also an integral part of their learning.
“God is the center and we integrate all of the subjects in to him,” Nesseth said. “If we go to math, we bring math back to him. If we go to history, we bring history back to him.”
Rachel Ragan said that she wanted to homeschool because it allowed her to spend more time with her two children and she was able to see all of those valuable learning experiences, not a teacher.
“We had decided to homeschool mainly because I wanted to be with them,” Ragan said. “I want to be the one seeing them learning to read and spending my day with them. It makes me happy to know that I am with them most of the time.”
Ragan said that she had a traditional school experience and wanted something more for her kids.
“My husband and I both went to public school,” Ragan said. “We learned how to cram for tests and then regurgitate information for tests so even before we had kids we talked about liking the idea of homeschooling. We wanted to instill a love for learning that we didn’t necessary learn when we were in school. Right now, I am learning a lot with them. It is cool for us as adults because we are reclaiming our education, sort of re-learning or learning for the first time.”
Knowing that Classical Conversations has been around for a long time and that it is a solid learning system helped Ragan make the decision to use that curriculum, though it is not the only system her family uses.
“We like Classical Conversations because you know that someone has thought everything all the way through; you know it is a solid curriculum and it is really well planned,” Ragan said. “My family also adds in stuff at home, our math and phonics and other things, but Classical Conversations is a good foundation. I wasn’t sure what my kids would think because it is a lot of memorization so we visited a group and when we were in the car they were asking when we could come back; they loved it. Even the little songs that they do, my daughter was singing in Latin when she was four; it was crazy.”
When the Kelleytown Baptist Church group started, there were around eight children. That number has grown to 13 and is expected to blossom even more next school year.
The Pee Dee area Classical Conversations has four communities and seven programs throughout Darlington, Florence, Hartsville, and Effingham. These programs are for kids ages 4 through 12th grade. The four communities combined have around 150 students. This is our seventh year in the Pee Dee Region. There are Information Meetings regularly and open houses through out the spring. Anyone interested in knowing more can visit www.classicalconversations.com or contact Jennifer Wibe at jwibe@classicalconversations.com.
