I’ve, admittedly, titled this post with a bit of a redundancy. Truth is always true in an objective sense (i.e. apart from the biases and prejudice), and so it is really a redundant thing to label it as objective.
But we live in a day in which truth is regarded as a malleable commodity. People refer to “my truth” and “your truth” as being legitimate categories of truthfulness. Truth is thought to be subjective rather than objective, and personalized rather than universalized. And so it is that we must articulate that we believe truth exists as an exclusively objective and universal thing.
An internet search on the history of the philosophical ideas relating to truth can lead to a host of rabbit holes and headaches. Greek philosophers attempted definitions of truth, and modernists have affirmed, modified, and rejected their contributions to varying degrees. Suffice it to say that there are a number of nuanced ideas out there concerning the true nature of truth.
But I don’t think it is a stretch to say that most humans throughout the first several thousand years of history would have defined truth with some variety of the expression: “that which accords with reality.” It hasn’t been until the past several decades that this notion has been updated to include a deep sense of relativity subjective to the interpreter. This means that truth-seekers thrived from the Solomon’s reign, into the age of Aristotle and Greek philosophy, through the rise of the Roman West, throughout the Medieval days and enduring even after the Renaissance. It has only been for the past two centuries that truth-seeking has come to be marginalized.
Classical education, therefore, calls students to again pursue to what humanity has pursued for most of recorded history — truth. Real, objective, universal, not-dependent-on-my-feelings truth.
And I’d like to share three reasons why this kind of truth is foundational to classical education.
1. Truth Empowers Educators to Educate
Real objective and universal truth provides educators with the most important teaching standard of all — that they teach what is actually true about the world.
There’s a nice little cliche that is sometimes used: that the word “education” comes from a Latin root ducare, meaning “to lead.” Sometimes we can make too much of the seemingly cool implications of an original language, but in this instance it’s at least safe to say that ancient peoples understood the educating of students to possess some kind of deliberate motion. That is to say that there’s a direction being aimed at. Or that someone knows where they’re going.
And this kind of movement, or leading, doesn’t happen unless there is an objective direction in view. The direction of all good education is truth, and without truth an educator cannot truly educate.
So, in a very real sense, I believe it is safe to conclude that truth-deniers actually do not have the ability to educate. They can pontificate (pose as an aimless authority), they can dictate (say stuff), they can orate (give nice speeches), they can speculate (consider interesting things). But without a commitment to objective universal truth, a teacher cannot educate.
2. Truth Unites Students Together
Objective truth unites all the students in a classroom. This happens for two reasons.
One, students in schools which love truth are united by truth because it is what all of them are seeking to find. The common goal of students should be truth, and the common enemy should be error. And so the teacher’s goal is the same for each student. Further, since truth is no respecter of persons, there can be true justice in education in the classroom which aims at truth.
Two, because students are ontologically (essentially) identical (i.e. a truth about humanity), they can truly be united as a classroom in being educated together. If students share an understanding of the truth concerning who they are as humans, then they recognize that not one of them is greater or lesser than the other. And this is the case because of the truth of what it is to be human.
It really goes without saying that you shouldn’t sign up your toddler for an obedience school class with your puppy. Even the Skinnerian behaviorist knows better than that. And why? Because we all know it’s true that humans should learn in an environment with those of like nature to themselves. Even this silly example is an implicit argument for the permanent fixation of the divine truth concerning what a human is.
And also at this point we can pause to see a helpful connection to the overall theme of this newsletter — that education is connected to God’s image in humans. Without the universal truth of what it means to be human, not only are students unable to have a sense of unity or justice in their classrooms, but no real education can happen at all. If we can’t nail down a real sense of what humanness is, then how can we suppose to teach humans how to be humans? Only a school committed to the Bible’s definition of humanity can produce truly educated humans.
3. Truth Connects Today to the Past
The presumption of objective truth is the only way classical educators can rightly attach what they are doing today to the human ideas and works of old. In other words, since truth is objective and timeless, our truths today are the truths of our ancestors, and when we teach the great ideas of the past we are indeed teaching that which is also still true today.
Truth isn’t malleable. It’s immutable. It’s fixed and transcends time. A human today is as a human was before. Reason and logic are today what they’ve always been. What a writer meant when he wrote it is what it means today when we read it. Unless truth remains fixed like this, we could never educate with the context of anything historical or predictive. It would all be present experience and feeling driven. Sound familiar?
Christians believe that all truth is God’s truth, and that he alone is the Author of truth (John 14:6 – “I am… the truth.”). We believe that truth exists because God exists and because he has revealed of himself to us, and that whatever he has revealed is indeed true. We believe that God’s Word alone is the only authoritative source of truth (sola scriptura). We affirm that he has made humans with the unique capacity to discover and discern that which is true, and that it is incumbent upon us to use and cultivate our rational abilities to so find out what is true.
Consequently, these foundational faith principles about truth and its real source must be explicitly pursued and articulated in the Classical Christian School. If they aren’t, we're going to fail at being Classical, and we’re going to fail at being Christian, and we’re also going to fail at doing real educating at all.