Class Catechisms Are Awesome!

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Class Catechisms are awesome, and you should consider using them as part of your class this school year. Here’s why:

Class Catechisms are an effective way to evoke the kind of memory that cultivates wisdom and virtue.
Class Catechisms are an effective way to guide the heads and hearts of our students for the sake of cultivating wisdom and virtue.
Class Catechisms advance us toward our stated goal of providing leisurely and restful learning.
Class Catechisms free you from assessing the mundane and enable students to be challenged at deeper levels.

Before I make the case more thoroughly for why you should use Class Catechisms, I’ll first try and describe what they are.

What is a Class Catechism?

I first learned about this practice from Joshua Gibbs, a teacher and writer contributing to CiRCE and the Society for Classical Learning. A brief overview can be found here. In practice, a Class Catechism is a collection of essential questions and answers to be recited at the start of a learning period. Gibbs offers the following, “The catechism is comprised of the most powerful maxims and proverbs from each book, but also contains synopses of arguments, a timeline, and lengthy quotations from great literature.”

An extensive example for a Medieval class can be found here. Some examples from Math and Science can be found here. I will also provide my own catechisms at the end of this post.

Class Catechisms take time: time to create, time to implement, and time each class to practice. What follows are the reasons why the benefits of this practice far outweigh the cost of time.

Why You Should Use Class Catechisms

Repititio Mater Memoriae. Repetition is the Mother of Memory. For an idea to transform a student, it starts with memory. However, the kind of memory we are talking about here transcends the psychological concepts of short and long-term memory. The idea of memory here is what St. Augustine presents in Book X of the Confessions and what Stratford Caldecott presents in Chapter II of Beauty in the Word.

Memory that transforms is forged religiously: in community and in repeated practice. “Do this in memory of me.” The most religious words of our Lord are connected to the Eucharist. Memory serves as the foundation of an encounter. To evoke this sense of memory in our students, we must liturgically present them with an experience that is both communal and repeatable of the best and most formative ideas so that they may truly encounter the eternal Logos in all of their study.

Class Catechisms are an effective way to evoke the kind of memory that cultivates wisdom and virtue.

Festina Lente. Make haste, slowly. There is an urgency to the demands of education: to invite students into the vocation of cultivating wisdom and virtue. To meet those demands, however, requires the slow work of guiding students to the contemplation of the truth. Rising to the heights of contemplation requires firm foundation and tilled soil. Directing the attention of our students through Class Catechisms provides the paradoxical combination of firm foundations and tilled soil: firm foundations through the foundational ideas of the course and tilled soil through a vision of learning in love.

Class Catechisms are an effective way to guide the heads and hearts of our students for the sake of cultivating wisdom and virtue.

Multum non Multa. Do much of one thing rather than many different things. The school day is rough. Transitioning from one thing to the next makes it tempting to disengage and merely drift from one thing to the next, and it is easy for us to forget how tempting this is for the young.

As A.G. Setillanges recommends in his great work, The Intellectual Life, we need ‘moments of plentitude.’ We need pregnant pauses: time that bears fruit through rest and prayer. Class Catechisms provide such an opportunity before embarking on the holy work of learning.

Class Catechisms advance us toward our stated goal of providing leisurely and restful learning.

Finally, let’s give ]oshua Gibbs the last words.

What if you did not have to require students to memorize anything? What if you did not have to test students on memorized material? What if your students memorized massive amounts of information anyway, and they memorized it in such a way that they retained it for life? Step 1: The high school teacher (hard science or soft science, makes no difference) writes a catechism that encapsulates the most important names, dates, definitions, theories, passages, and lists that are covered over the course of the school year. Step 2: The class recites the catechism at the start of every class meeting. Result: The class begins in an orderly, ceremonial fashion every day. The students accidentally learn a massive amount of information. The teacher is freed up to ask more contemplative questions on exams. This practice has revolutionized my classroom. Come hear how a simple, yet thoroughly classical practice can help your students retain a memory of what they study and help you begin class every day in a contemplative fashion.
Joshua Gibbs, Essay presented to the Society for Classical Learning entitled, How a Catechism Can Transform Your Classroom/The Good Life in Confessional: Nominalism vs. Wonder.

Examples from My Own Classes

Classroom Rules

All Class Catechisms of mine end with a recitation of the Rules of a Virtuous Classroom. (I plan to go over these rules in more detail in later posts.)

Rules of a Virtuous Classroom

Prudence | Justice | Fortitude | Temperance

Why is virtue important? (Teacher)
Through discipline and grace, virtue. (All)
Through virtue, truth.
Through truth, freedom.
Through freedom, the fullness of life in Christ: la bonne vie!

What are the rules of a virtuous classroom? (Teacher)

Prudence (Leader)

Arrive to class prepared to actively engage & exercise good judgment in maintaining that active engagement. (All)

Let us be prudent! May we love God above all things with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength: let us do great things in the best ways for love of God. Omnia in excelentia, ad majorem Dei gloriam! (Reader)

Justice

Show respect at all times and in all manners to everyone and everything; pursue the common good of the class in thought, speech, and deed.

For the love of God, let us love neighbor as self. Through piety, may we love and respect the people and challenges God brings us.

Fortitude

Be on task at all times.

Through love of the good, let us quiet the mind to hear the magnanimous call. Through meekness and constancy, let us discipline the will to heroically answer the magnanimous call to be excellent in all things for the greater glory of God.

Temperance

Strive to act responsibly at all times, moderating personal interests and aligning them with the common good of the class as much as possible.

Let us love doing what is good more than just doing what we feel like. Be diligent!

Senior Sacraments

What is the vocation of a student?

We are called by the Lord as students to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing our intellects with truth, our wills with goodness, our passions with beauty, and our whole being with unity.

What is the purpose of education (and of all human activity)?

The purpose of education, and all human activity, is the freedom to pursue the bonum vitae, the good life: Happiness.

What is happiness?

Happiness is the fulfillment of all desire: to know, love, serve, and enjoy God.

What is theology?

Theology is the science of God that studies the data of Revelation for the purpose of obtaining knowledge of sacra doctrina (sacred teaching): mystagogy.

What is knowledge?

Knowledge is what brings about unity between the thing known and the knower.

How do we encounter the fullness of Revelation?

We encounter and receive the fullness of Revelation in a two-fold way: through faith and reason. By faith, we receive the grace to believe in God and all that he has commanded. By a faith that seeks understanding, the Church has gradually made the riches of Revelation accessible in all ages by unpacking the deposit of faith. The fullness of Revelation includes all three sources of Revelation: Apostolic Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium.

What are the four causes of the sacraments?

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the sacraments may be considered in the material cause, which is the sensible sign, in the formal cause, which includes the words, grace, and virtues, in the efficient cause, which is Christ’s Passion, and in the final cause, which is eternal life (the Beatific Vision).

How are the sacraments established in the economy of salvation?

In the economy of salvation(all of the works God has done for us throughout salvation history), the sacraments are prefigured by the Father in the Old Covenant, made present by the Son in earthly ministry, and made manifest by the Holy Spirit through the Church.

Why sacraments?

God provides us what we need in the way we need it. Through the Sacraments, the Lord takes advantage of an order well adapted to educate us along the path that leads to perfection: the purpose of the sacraments is to heal the effects of sins (how God relates to us), perfect us in worship (how we relate to God), and builds up the Body of Christ (our relationship with one another).

Advanced Math I

What is the vocation of a student?

What is wisdom?

The ability to order all things rightly (St. Thomas Aquinas): to behold Christ the Eternal Logos.

Through Christ, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)

How could the study of mathematics lead to wisdom?

All of creation speaks to the order of wisdom in a powerful and formative language.

The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics. (Johannes Kepler)

What is virtue?

Virtue is human excellence; the perfection of our powers in the exercise of wisdom.

But always the conclusions of mathematics serve to exemplify rational truth…always mathematical knowledge symbolizes the power of the human mind to rise above sensible particulars and contingent events to universal and necessary relationships. (From the Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas)

How could the study of mathematics lead to virtue?

The good we seek in the study of mathematics is the freeing of our mind through the discipline of wonder by mastering the ideas of quantity as such and being formed by the order and harmony underlying all things.

As to virtue leading us to a happy life, I hold virtue to be nothing else than perfect love of God. For the fourfold division of virtue I regard as taken from four forms of love. For these four virtues (would that all felt their influence in their minds as they have their names in their mouths!), I should have no hesitation in defining them: that temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it. The object of this love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony. So we may express the definition thus: that temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is love bearing everything readily for the sake of God; justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man; prudence is love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it. (St. Augustine)

What is a system?

A well-defined system includes all of the relevant mathematical objets and their interactions.

What is a mathematical object?

A mathematical object is any representation of quantity: numbers, variables, terms, factors, expressions…

What are the fundamental ways that mathematical objects interact?

Mathematical operations are the fundamental ways that mathematical objects interact: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, functions…

What is a criterion?

A criterion is a mathematical statement that must be true for an answer to be valid.

What is the ideal we seek in demonstrating certainty?

The ideal we seek in demonstrating certainty is to communicate how we proceed to the unknown directly from what is knowable.

What is a function?

A function is a relation between a set of inputs and a corresponding set of outputs were there is one and only one output for every given input.

Astronomy

What is the vocation of being a student?

What is the good we seek in the natural sciences?

We seek demonstrable knowledge through discovering the causes of natural phenomena.

Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend. (Blessed Nicolaus Steno)

How do we pursue this good?

We pursue the good of the natural sciences by observing natural phenomena, describing what is observed, measuring what is described, analyzing what is measured, and constructing models to explain the phenomena.

Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. (Romans 1:20)

What are natural phenomena?

Natural phenomena are observable and repeatable events or facts that occur in nature.

What is Astronomy?

Astronomy is the natural science that studies celestial objects using light, physics, chemistry, math (and maybe biology) for the purpose of obtaining knowledge of the causes of the cosmos, the objects in the universe, and how they interact.

What are celestial objects?

Celestial objects are naturally occurring physical systems that exist outside Earth’s atmosphere and within the observable universe.

How is the act of explaining different from the act of describing?

Describing is the act of communicating what is directly observable without assuming the hidden causes. Explaining is the act of communicating what causes something to be what it is and change in the ways it changes (what causes the effects described).

Why is the difference between explanations and descriptions such a big deal?

The strength of the human mind is in its humility to discover explanations rationally (encountering Reality). The folly of the human mind is our tendency to arrogantly explain irrationally (assuming the causes disconnected from Reality). It is to strengthen our minds and avoid folly that we take great pains to describe what is Real before daring to pursue explanations. The difference is a big deal because knowing Reality with Faith and reason is a big deal.

kyle E. Albarado