Philosophy of Education

The chief end of man is to worship and glorify God, and in doing this, enjoy Him forever.  We worship, glorify and enjoy him by hearing and keeping the great commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Because all education is religious, and all education is training for the worship of ultimate loves: i.e. money, status, worldly success, selfish liberty, or Christ; Geneva Academy seeks to self-consciously educate students toward the love and worship of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

As John Milton wrote “The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”

 

We need nurturing in order to do this well. Geneva Academy desires to assist parents and the church in the nurture and maturation of true lovers and worshippers of God. Rightly directed love and worship will bring about, through the blessing of God and the work of His Spirit, the sure growth of Christ’s Kingdom according to His promises to His children and their children.

 

The particular means used to accomplish this goal of teaching “worshipping man”(homo adorans) can best be historically described as a Reformational classicism.

 

The Reformers studied language, philosophy, theology, natural philosophy, literature and history of the ancients and medievals seeking after the wisdom of God wherever it may be found. They understood that all truth is God’s truth. They also knew their contemporaries and interacted faithfully and prophetically – speaking God’s truth with God’s love into every situation. They began with a solid biblical foundation in order to engage the world rightly. Likewise, we begin with God’s Word and His way of thinking in order to rightly engage the ideas of all the ages, learn from them, contend with falsehood, and then live differently in the present.

 

We train young men and women in how to think and we feed them God’s truth. But ultimately, it is our goal that our students live the truth – a cruciform life of service to God and to others.

 

We believe that the classical trivium is the best methodology for schooling. As first formulated by Cassiodorus, and as later revived and explained by Dorothy Sayers, the trivium seeks to teach toward the natural strengths of the child. The grammar, logic, and rhetoric of the trivium are the “three ways” in which the student is taught, as well as the closely corresponding subjects of Latin, Logic, and Rhetoric. The grammar stage (K-6) emphasizes the facts to be known. The logic stage (7-9) concentrates on the way those facts relate to one another. The rhetoric stage (10-12) develops the winsome presentation of those facts (see Trivium chart below) Scripture speaks of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom when addressing the same concept as the trivium. The trivium also follows the maturation process seen in the pages of the Bible and in history from the priestly stage, to the kingly stage and then to the prophetic stage.

 

We believe in continual reformation toward the image of God and are always seeking new insights into biblical methods of teaching.