Maths, Sciences, and the Liberal Arts
When parents hear that our school offers a classical liberal arts education, we're sometimes asked: "what about the maths and sciences"? It's one of our favourite questions, because math and science are an integral—if sometimes overlooked—part of liberal arts education.
The seven liberal arts as they developed from the classical Greek to medieval world comprise grammar, logic/dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the study of ratios and harmonies).
It should be of no surprise that the study of philosophy in the ancient world included training in the disciplines now categorized as maths and sciences. The aim of geometry, according to Plato, is not to serve practical functions, but to attain knowledge of the eternal. Instruction in it was prescribed as a means of “drawing the soul towards truth, and producing philosophic thought by directing it upward.” Plato's pupil, Aristotle, was accomplished not only in ethics and politics, but in chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, zoology, and botany; his contributions in the latter fields remained unsurpassed for two millennia.
At the Calgary Classical Academy, we believe that humane explorations in geometry, mathematics, and sciences reveal the order and harmony of the cosmos, inspiring wonder, reverence, and humility. They allow us to recognize our own place as part of a larger whole, and illuminate how we can order our own lives in harmony with the laws governing nature. Maths and sciences remind us that, contrary to popular opinion, truth does in fact exist, and it is intelligible through the application of reason.
We will deliver a systematic and rigorous program in mathematics and in the sciences, including the major disciplines of physics, biology, astronomy, and chemistry. Students study the natural sciences through a combination of direct observation (both in the classroom and in nature, wherever possible), experimentation and the testing of hypotheses, lectures, and readings — including primary texts. Students are provided with a broad foundation of factual knowledge, but our program does not aim only at mastery of content or procedures; students also come to an understanding of why things work as they do. They learn to observe, ask questions, hypothesize, construct models and theories, draw inferences and conjectures, and develop and test proofs.
The maths and sciences lend themselves naturally to the cultivation of wonder and curiosity, and opportunities for the experience of philosophical wonder should be deliberately nurtured. To that end, we make extensive use of the Socratic method, and provide opportunities for students to study objects and natural phenomena directly through outdoor education (e.g. when studying meteorology, zoology, geology, botany, astronomy, etc.)
We are also cautious of common pitfalls in the teaching of sciences and mathematics. First, these disciplines should not be taught solely for their utilitarian or practical value; we seek knowledge of reality for its own sake, so that we might learn to live in harmony with it, with a sense of appreciation and humility. Relatedly, we do not seek knowledge as a means of gaining mastery or dominion over nature. The fact that science can be used to alleviate human suffering does not mean that we should seek technological solutions to all the challenges that come with being human. Finally, we are careful to avoid descending into ‘scientism’: the idea that only those truths which can be empirically proven are real, and that science alone can provide the answers to moral, philosophical, or normative questions.
In addition, we use screen-based technologies in a limited and deliberate way in classroom instruction, and use of smartphones in school is prohibited. There are situations where these tools may be used to help illustrate a concept, or provide opportunities for mediated observation, but they are used on an exceptional basis only when necessary to achieve a particular learning outcome. The aim of the liberal arts is to enable people to become more fully human, and more fully free. These aims are incompatible with a dependence on or addiction to technology, particularly when it interferes with our capacity to concentrate, store information, engage in sustained concentration or contemplation, or where it diminishes our capacity for self-reliance.