A friend left a comment yesterday saying that she took Latin in highschool but she, by no means, had a classical education. She asked what it is about classical education that makes it a classical education? These are only my thoughts. I am sure there would be many CE purists would disagree with me but I think there are a few things that set CE apart from any other type of education.
Many people mistakenly think that if they teach latin to their children then their child is being given a CE. There are many factors involved before you can start talking CE. First, latin alone does not make a CE. The teaching of latin needs to be joined with the teaching of logic and rhetoric. There are not many methods that advocate logic. Ambleside Online recommends the reading of Adler's How to Read a Book and deems that logic. I don't consider that book one of logic at all. I have always been puzzled by that recommendation. Studying logic, to me, means taking a formal traditional logic program as well as a material logic program. Rhetoric is held in the same light. Studying Corbett's Rhetoric would be considered a formal program. Studying invention and arrangement of an idea and the logic of that idea is part of Classical Education. Being able not only to write about an idea is important but to be able to discuss the idea, to be able to deconstruct an idea and put it back together orally is also, I think, part of Classical Education.
This leads me to my second point. Classical Education is all about ideas. It is about the pursuit of wisdom and virtue through the understanding of the Great Ideas. These ideas are given to us by the Great Thinkers of our time. Many of these thinkers came to us during the time of the Ancient Greeks. These ideas, therefore, are tainted by their culture of many gods. Do those ideas still stand today under a worldview of Christianity? This is just one area in which these ideas are taken apart and examined. A student of CE is encouraged to to truly think about the Great Ideas through discussion. There are two modes of discussion or instruction, if you will. Didactic Instruction and Socratic Instruction are the two forms that discussion can take. Admittedly, I don't know too much about the first form but Socratic discussion is the art of leading a student to fully understand an idea through a series of questions. Teaching the Classics is a program that leads the teacher to an understanding of how to lead a Socratic discussion through literature.
To my way of thinking, in CE the discussion is the crux of the whole philosophy. Discussion as well as writing are the two important ways for a child to learn abut virtue. Many educational methods and philosophies do not advocate discussion. Writing is an important tenet of any method but discussion seems to be always left behind. The student is given a textbook or a book and is told to read it then write an essay on some topic from that reading. That is the extent of that learning. There is little discussion. I think that that is a big piece of the puzzle that is missing in our children's education. In discussion, the student is exposed to various ways of thinking, not just his own. He is able to hear the thoughts of others. He is able to see the 'other side' of an issue. Through discussion, an idea can be torn apart logically and then put back together again to shed a different light on the topic.
I think discussion can be helpful at all ages. I am trying to instill this in my children's education now, even though they are still young. A perfect example is what occurred yesterday during our reading of a Greek myth. I was reading Usborne's Greek Myths to Rocky and Missy (they are 7 and 5 yrs. old.) We were reading Pandora's Box. We started talking about the similarities between this story and the fall of man. Rocky and Missy were able to see the similarities between Eve and Pandora. Through discussion, they were able to tie two 'stories' together and gain a new understanding of each. We had a great time of talking and understanding.
There are probably many more characteristics of CE that set it apart from the myriad of other methods, but these two (discussion of the Great Ideas and the melding of latin, logci and rhetoric) are the main ones for me.