Welcome to the PAideia Family!

Greetings from the PACES PAideia Classical Education family! We look forward to developing friendships with you and your children as the adventures of this year unfold.

As you investigate God's design of history from the earliest days of
creation, through the great civilizations marching across centuries, to current
religious and political culture, we hope that He Himself will engender a
passion for His plan in your hearts and a vision to effectively work in His
Kingdom.

We pledge to you our love, humility, diligence, support, and prayer. Our aim is to glorify Him. Let the adventure begin!

What Distinguishes Paideia Within Classical Education?

Historically, classical education boasts more success in producing logical thinkers and productive leaders than in any other teaching method explored in Western civilization. From Socrates' questions with students on a Greek hillside, to the colloquia of the Renaissance, to the great universities established in the Great Awakening, the sequence of the trivium has delivered influential thinkers that positively shape history and culture on a world—wide scale.

An assortment of options to teach classically are readily available to contemporary educators; the distinction of the PACES PAideia Program is the emphasis on and commitment to parent-directed training within the parameters of the traditional trivium and quadrivium.

All classical programs focus on a systematic procedure for teaching facts, logic and rhetoric; PACES PAideia Program intentionally adds the weight of committed, informed parents as the primary, deliberate influencers on young scholars.

In this organization, the program exists to provide structure and content in curriculum, along with support and direction for parents; the family remains the dynamic, life-giving, perspective-creating, element that sparks enthusiasm and breathes vigor into subjects.

No program or staff can equal the family in effectual influence of children; PACES PAideia therefore purposefully weaves the family's interaction into each objective and goal.

How Does Paideia Classical School Work?

The foundational organizational unit of PAideia Classical Program is the family. All lesson plans, assignments, evaluations and special events are intentionally designed to help parents educate their own children. To that end, Paideia provides most of the administrative tasks associated with education, freeing the parent to enjoy more of the 'ah-ha' moments in their children's learning odyssey.

CURRICULUM

PAideia is structured around a four-year sequential study of the history of western civilization. We write lessons in Bible, literature, politics, art, music, architecture, and the sciences as interrelated subjects within the outline of history. Students study the four year sequence three times, at each level of the trivium.* A period's literature provides the bulk of our reading assignments, as students learn to think more from interacting with great men's ideas directly than by reading what others have said about them.

The Great Ideas

Human beings do not think merely in language, but within the context of ideas. We have focused on fourteen ideas that resurface in every aspect of culture from a biblical world view. We write each lesson with at least one of the '14 Ideas' as the philosophical hub. The beginning of each lesson plan identifies which of the 14 Ideas relates to the objective.

"The Great Ideas" of civilization emerge from what Mortimer Adler called the "Great Conversation." Adler believed great works of literature throughout western civilization function as an observable dialogue between great minds over centuries. Our students are taught to join this conversation by reading great books and discussing the philosophies which underwrite them.

To make discussions bona fide, students are also taught logic (recognizing valid arguments), rhetoric (how to express oneself precisely), philosophy, apologetics, theology, Latin, Greek, grammar and composition, and the sciences.

TEACHING

Our website provides parents with complete lesson plans and related materials each quarter. Families prepare ahead of class time, so that students are ready to discuss relevant issues when they come together. Class sessions rarely require lecture; our goal is to involve the 'PAideia' - the 'whole child' - so most sessions engage Socratic discussion or other activities that translate learning 'input' into eloquent 'output.' Architecture projects and art, sculpture, drama or music compositions are often part of presentations. Every lesson plan clearly states its objective.

SCHEDULES

Each campus maintains its own weekly class schedule. The entire PAideia community comes together for special events (see page 60). Most families also participate in small study groups organized and led by moms, each group meeting according to its own availability.

EVALUATIONS

In keeping with the paradigm that parents are the ultimate owners of their family's education, PAideia teachers give an evaluation of student work as evidenced in class on any given week; however, the final assessment of student accomplishment resides with the parent. Therefore, although teachers evaluate, give feedback on weekly assignments, and prepare quarterly evaluations, the parents retain the right to determine the final assessment .

PARENT HELP

Because most parents were not educated classically, many are somewhat intimidated at the thought of leading their children into such unfamiliar territory. For this reason, we provide a systematic course to assist parents in preparing to teach and evaluate their children through each stage of the trivium. Monthly classes, webinars, conference calls and regular workshops will prepare you to help your children.

Why do we do this?

The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. —William Ross Wallace

I can think of no more important job on earth than rearing the next generation of thinkers, believers, missionaries and visionaries. It is no overstatement that every civilization is only one generation away from moral, and thus eventual physical extinction. If godly fathers and mothers fail to educate their own children in the ways of Christian living, then our nation will fall as the previous great nations have before us.

The responsibility of rearing children is too great to abdicate to anyone outside the home, church and covenantal community of Christians. Religious education is not an elective; what we believe to be true about God and His Son, Jesus Christ, is pervasive in all we know and do.

What I believe about a Sovereign God and how He has dealt with idolatry throughout history determines the activities and pursuits I allow my children to participate in each day. The pattern for families, churches, and governments that I see in Scripture and how the following of those patterns benefit the nations who follow them, determines the career paths I direct my children toward.

A non-Christian educator once said, "What we do for the best and brightest, we must do for all our children." As I seek to educate my own 'best and brightest' it is my goal to encourage and aid other Christian parents who feel the way I do: that the goal of education is to know God and enjoy Him forever. This includes knowing all about Him: His working in the past; His creative presence in nature and the arts; His strength in victories and politics; His wisdom in raising up kingdoms and destroying other monarchies; His beauty in languages; His delight in His creation.

Teaching is not a job to me; it is not my career; it is my delight, my joy, my gift to a good God and His gift to me through this calling.

-Johnnie K. Seago