It also concentrates heavily on the brilliance of the intellectual and artistic classical heritage. Sophisticated speaking and writing is developed through logic, grammar, and rhetoric. It also calls for demanding training in scientific reasoning and mathematics.



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.

Learning to achieve meaning is a little more difficult to describe, and it is much more than just performance-based. Classic education provides students with the means to develop their intellectual nature. Learning how to reason and think critically are skills that will never age.

Both learning styles are important, but it's important to understand the difference between the two. Knowledge-based learning, as someone said, can help us build new roads or bridges, but it can't tell us where we want to go.

Learning for meaning helps us determine "where we want to go." We can't just rely on a road to get us to our end destination without learning how to determine what we need to meet our goal.

For over two thousand years, classic education has been the instrument for conveying meaning from generation to generation. It was the education that was taught to medieval philosophers and to 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.