At Coram Deo Academy, we help our students practice habits that will benefit them for life, not just for school. Rather than using behavior modification, we focus on character by helping our students practice Attention, Obedience, Respect, and Responsibility. Over the next few weeks, I will share with you ways you can continue to use these habits in your home.
In this article, I hope to demonstrate that our belief as a Classical Christian school is to educate our students by drawing out potential, creating enlightening experiences, and helping conform them to the image of Christ. So what does this have to do with music?
Plato once admitted, “Education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else, rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary.” This leads to the main question I hope to answer this week: Why is music a valuable and necessary part of education, and what is its role?
Musical training offers undeniable skills and proficiencies, which can be transferred to other meaningful areas of life. This begs the following questions: How is it that the elements of music affect the innermost being of an individual? And how does music benefit one’s personal growth and development?
My goal over these next few weeks is to explain the importance of a musical foundation for young ones from the worldview of a Classical Christian Educator. One must first and foremost understand the biblical significance of a subject before attempting to understand it from a classical or educational approach. Hence, in this first post, I will begin with a reflection on music from a biblical perspective.
Shakespeare wrote, “Brevity is the heart of wit.” With that in mind, here are four short elevator pitches answering the question, “What is Classical Christian education?”