As we continue to explore our school-wide theme of “Restful Minds, Restful Hearts,” I want to delve into a simple but profound principle that lies at the very heart of classical Christian education. It is a Latin phrase you will hear often in our halls: multum, non multa. It means, simply, “much, not many things.”
In a world that is practically defined by “many”—many channels, many notifications, many choices, many activities, many voices competing for our attention—the idea of “much, not many” is a radical act of rebellion. It represents the conviction that a life of depth, meaning, and peace is found not by skimming the surface of a thousand things, but by plumbing the depths of the few things that truly matter. It is the key to moving from a state of distraction and anxiety to one of restful focus.
Let’s unpack The Modern Myth of “Many” for a moment.
Our culture operates on the assumption that more is always better. More extracurriculars, more AP classes, more followers, more options. And more can be a good thing, but it isn’t always. This belief system has created what many have called a “culture of overload.” We feel this relentless pressure to keep up, to not miss out (FOMO, anyone?), and we inadvertently pass on this pressure to our children. The result is a shallow breadth of experience, where we and our children are always busy, but rarely truly engaged. We end up doing many things, but none of them leave a lasting mark on our souls.
This is the very trap that Jesus warned his dear friend Martha about. She was a woman of action, of service, of “many things.” But her busyness left her “anxious and troubled.” Her sister Mary chose a different path. She chose one thing: to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen. She chose much, not many. And Jesus called her choice the “good portion.”
This story reveals a timeless spiritual principle, one that is echoed in another of Christ’s teachings in the Gospel of Matthew: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy… but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Our students all know the saying of CT Studd, “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
A heart that treasures “many things” will be scattered, divided, and ultimately anxious. But a heart that treasures the “one thing” that lasts—the “much”—will be focused, integrated, and at rest. The principle of multum, non multa is, at its core, an invitation to rightly order our treasures and, in doing so, to find rest for our hearts.
What does Much, Not Many look like in a Classical School?
Or to put it another way, how does this ancient wisdom shape the education we offer at Coram Deo Academy?
Now, a common misunderstanding of multum, non multa is that it means we should simply cut down on the number of subjects our children study. That we should strip the curriculum down to a bare-bones “essentials” model. Math and Language arts. That’s it. But this is not the classical view. In fact, the great Roman educator Quintilian argued for the exact opposite in the first century AD. He believed that young minds are energized by variety, and that studying a wide range of subjects—from grammar and music to geometry and philosophy—actually refreshes the mind and prevents burnout. He wrote that “it is easier to do many things in succession than to do one thing for a long time without a break.”
Charlotte Mason, a British Christian educator we’re influenced by, likewise repeated the Victorian proverb, “A change is as good as a rest.” The idea is that the attention of a student gets fatigued by focusing for too long on one subject. Variety in topics actually increases the student’s natural curiosity and appetite for learning. Can you imagine doing 3 hour math lessons? So, in a way classical educators would endorse a larger variety of subjects for young students, not just the bare essentials. We don’t think great art and classic literature and grammar and phonics and science and PE and classical music and challenging mathematics are too much for students. We have a high view of the child and what he is capable of. He naturally is born into the world with a relationship with all knowledge. We dare not keep him from anything in God’s complex, multifaceted and beautiful world.
So, if multum non multa doesn’t mean fewer subjects encountered at school, what does it mean?
Well, I think it means we must radically shift our focus from the quantity of assignments to the quality of engagement. It means we are not interested in the kind of “pseudo-productivity” that comes from completing endless worksheets or racing through textbooks. That is the way of “many.” We aren’t interested in mere coverage rather than deep thought. We want to create time and space for scholé or leisurely contemplation of all that is good, true and beautiful.
In other words, we are committed to the way of “much.” This looks like three things: 1) fewer, richer assignments, 2) depth over breadth in reading, and 3) mastery of foundational tools. I’ll break each of these down briefly.
- Fewer, Richer Assignments: We believe it is far more valuable for a student to write one thoughtful essay, taken through multiple drafts with careful feedback, than it is to complete ten shallow reading comprehension quizzes. It is better to master one mathematical concept through deep, focused practice than to rush through an entire chapter with only a superficial understanding. This is why we take the time to pause after a reading and have students narrate. It produces a rich engagement with what they are reading and learning; it’s harder, but it’s also slower, deeper learning that’s actually going to last.
- Depth over Breadth in Reading: We read the Great Books. We don’t just read about them. We give our students the time to actually enter into the conversation with Homer, Plato, Augustine, and Dante. We would rather have them truly wrestle with one classic text and make it their own than simply be able to recognize the titles of a hundred, or worse repeat simplistic caricatures of their thought. This is an error that even our colleges and professors are guilty of. I remember in grad school, everyone ragging on Descartes and Kant and the damage they wrecked in intellectual history, and thinking to myself, “Have any of them actually read these philosophers?”
- Mastery of Foundational Tools: Classical education is about giving students the “tools of learning”—the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Dorothy Sayers called for a recovery of these tools in the 1940’s, because were being abandoned. They are subjects of study, but they are also the fundamental skills of working with language to structure and comprehend our world. By focusing on mastering these fundamental skills, we are not just pumping students full of information; we are giving them the ability to learn anything for themselves for the rest of their lives. This is the ultimate “much.” It multiplies their capacity for a lifetime of learning.
This approach feels slower. It requires patience. It doesn’t always produce the sheer volume of graded work that contemporary schools might demand. But it produces something far more valuable: it produces students who know how to think, who know how to learn, and who have been given the time and space to let truth, goodness, and beauty take root in their souls.
A stark example of this can be seen in the case of Generative AI. When a student uses an AI tool to write an essay, even from an outline, the student has certainly accomplished a task more quickly than he would have otherwise. These days with a good prompt the essay is also probably better than he could have done on his own even with considerable research and labor over phrasing. But how has that student been changed and developed as a person? The point of students writing essays, after all, is not for them to be published in an academic journal, but for them to learn how to think, to work through a process of thinking by writing. For a student to be transformed into a Critical & Creative Thinker requires a depth of time and intellectual labor that is overlooked in so many contemporary educational environments.
How about Cultivating “Much” in Our Homes?
This commitment to “much, not many” is a partnership. The restful, focused culture we cultivate at school can be powerfully reinforced by the culture you cultivate in your home. Let me offer a few humble suggestions.
First, protect the treasure of unstructured time. Resist the temptation to fill every afternoon and weekend with scheduled activities. Give your children the gift of margin—the time to be bored, to read for fun, to build a fort, to simply be. This is the soil in which imagination and self-discovery grow.
Author Richard Swenson describes margin as “the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.” (69) As human beings we need that space to thrive and to excel. We need to stop clocking our children’s hours of unstructured time as a waste and instead pray for what the Lord might do with that time in their hearts and minds.
Second, curate your home environment. You don’t need a library of a thousand books, but a well-chosen shelf of fifty great ones, read and re-read, will do more to shape your child’s soul. You don’t need every streaming service, but a family movie night with a classic film can spark deep conversations. Be the curators of what is good, true, and beautiful in your home.
This does mean some measure of judgment and guarding the gate to prevent activities that are less than life-giving from overtaking. I think in particular of how screens are designed to attract, addict and overload the attentional resources of a human being. Sometimes curating a home environment involves aggressive cutting out of unhelpful options. Then with the margin for the best things, these seeds will bear fruit and grow in our children to shape mature and profound interests that they will reap the benefits of for a lifetime.
Finally, model a focused heart. Let your children see you put down your phone to listen to them. Let them see you get lost in a good book. Let them see you prioritize a deep conversation over a shallow distraction. Much is caught more than it is taught. When they see you treasuring the “much,” they will learn to do the same.
At Coram Deo Academy, our vision is to “Love What Lasts.” This is simply another way of saying multum, non multa. It is a commitment to focus our hearts, our minds, and our time on the things of lasting and even eternal value. As we partner together in this great work, let us encourage one another to resist the tyranny of “many things” and to embrace the freedom and rest that comes from choosing the “good portion.”
To listen or watch, please view the link below.
