Technometry

Martin Cothran covered this topic a while back. Here is one of his well-researched, but brief, articles about it: https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/classical-education-puritans/ And here is an interesting recent article, not about the Puritans per se, but about the old question of whether we Christians ought to read pagan literature.  The Puritans thought that some was worth reading and some wasn't.  The question I ask when choosing literature is not whether there are bad ideas in the books, but why.  So my kids might read the Communist Manifesto, but not Harry Potter.  Other parents might make different choices, but we have to pray and think about it. https://scholegroups.com/why-read-pagan-literature/ American Christianity took an anti-intellectual turn during the early 20th Century and followed progressives down the modern education path, until the 1950s desegregation of public schools.  Then groups like Abeka and Bob Jones University started ...

My definition of a classical education is:  The Liberal Arts and the Humanities. Nowadays "humanism" usually means a human-centered approach to solving problems.  It's a worldview in which the human is substituted for the divine - just pagan naval-gazing. But before the modern era, and especially before the "enlightenment," humanism certainly did not mean what it does now. As we look back in the history of education, we should have a common understanding of the term "humanism." Some people confuse it with Roman Catholic philosophy during the Renaissance era.  Others mistake it for Protestant Reformed theology at the end of the Renaissance and call it the "New Learning."  But humanism wasn't either of those. A humanist was one who studied the humanities.  His use and enjoyment of the humanities was humanism.  During the 15th through 17th centuries, humanists had all sorts of theological views.  The Renaissance was an explosion of h...

Okay so Ramus actually isn't super famous, but maybe he should be. If we are going to study any Puritan educational philosophy, we have to spend time on Peter Ramus. Pierre de la Ram é e was a 16th Century Humanist Protestant.  Even though he had significant disagreements with prominent reformers such as Bullinger and Beza, Ramus was counted as a protestant martyr when he was killed during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.  He had been a student of Johannes Sturm, the "German Cicero" and major reformer of education in Strasbourg.  (Richard Gamble has a fun reading from Sturm in The Great Tradition ).  Apparently, Sturm sparked Ramus' great interest in the study and application of logic.  Ramus, being the orderly, logical mathematician that he was, looked at the Trivium as it was taught in his day, and thought it was disorganized.  In Logic and Rhetoric in England: 1500-1700 , Howell says, As Ramus looked at the scholastic logic, the traditio...

Worldview.  The integration of theology, piety, and work. I guess those are the concepts closest to technometry that we modern Christians might recognize. The Puritans of the 17th Century were interested in personal piety and sound, Biblical theology.   They were interested in the whole human - head, heart, and hands.  Technometry was the study of how we give glory to God by studying, via the liberal arts, what He has created and then applying what we learn to all sorts of work.  It was a study of how to apply God's wisdom to every area of life, from farming to politics.  Ames' Technometry was a textbook at Harvard for quite some time and had a wide influence on American philosophy. David Hill Scott has a good preliminary paper about technometry here .  I recommend reading that to get a general overview of the concept and of Ames' book. Piety and Christian education are inseparable. In The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Class...

I have been studying the philosophy and history of education as a hobby intermittently for many years. My interest in the subject just continues to grow as I have the blessing of educating my own children at home.  In the last several years, I have been focusing on reading more Reformed and Puritan authors and collecting evidence of their thoughts on education. I am currently working through the book "Technometry" by William Ames, with translation and commentary by Lee W. Gibbs.  After I finish typing up my summaries of that book here, I plan to type up my notes from writings on education by Machen and Van Til in the 20th Century, some of the Humanist Reformers in the 16th Century, and other Puritans besides Ames in the 17th Century. Gibbs calls Ames the "Father of American Theology."  I have found that educational philosophy is inseparable from theology, and every theologian has had something to say about education.  Before progressive modern education...