Book Review – Recovering The Lost Tools Of Learning by Doug Wilson

Lost Tools Of Learning

Recovering The Lost Tools Of Learning by Doug Wilson

Synopsis:

Public education in America has run into hard times. Even many within the system admit that it is failing. While many factors contribute, Douglas Wilson lays much blame on the idea that education can take place in a moral vacuum. It is not possible for education to be nonreligious, deliberately excluding the basic questions about life. All education builds on the foundation of someone’s worldview. Education deals with fundamental questions that require religious answers. Learning to read and write is simply the process of acquiring the tools to ask and answer such questions.

A second reason for the failure of public schools, Wilson feels, is modern teaching methods. He argues for a return to a classical education, firm discipline, and the requirement of hard work.

Often educational reforms create new problems that must be solved down the road. This book presents alternatives that have proved workable in experience. (Taken from Goodreads page)

Review

The good thing about reading a book about classical education is that even if you’re reading a book from 1991 in 2022 the core of the details won’t really change.

Wilson breaks up the book into three main parts. The first part is the declining nature of public education and the failure of the American education system. This was in a day without critical race theory or pushing of trans/gay embracement. Where the biggest thing to worry about what only drugs and violence and no school-led prayer. Ah, the good ol’ days. There are some good statistics that are still available here and even 20 years removed have probably gotten only worse. It does not get bogged down in trying to prove the terribleness of government schools but highlights main areas where the call to go towards classical education is necessitated.

The second part is a call for Christian education. The need to build one’s education platform is highlighted on the need to have a Christian worldview foundation. The separation between what a Christian worldview looks like and an American view is probably better highlighted today and the expanse between the two is divided further. This is where classical education is introduced and rightly so as some might view the topic as just “reading the old stuff”. So the need to view “the old stuff” and even the secular stuff, both old and new, needs to be filtered through the Christian worldview. With presuppositionalism/Greg Bahsen/Van Til being more known today, or maybe more known to me, this is also an evergreen idea.

The final part is seeing what classical education is like and the case study of Wilson’s Logos school is used to show as the model. This was probably a foreign idea in 1991 but as an introduction to the topic in 2022 where you’re audience is probably more acceptable to the idea, more details of what it looks like would probably be beneficial. I would have liked to have seen some more direct contrasts between the public education model and classical model in coverage than in outcomes. It is there, but further detail would have been nice. A portion that was really beneficial was on seeing why learning Latin was an important tool. It’s not just to learn it so one can brag about knowing but the utility in both reading and other subjects are improved in learning Latin.

Probably the least helpful section was Wilson’s critique of homeschooling. Again, charity should be granted for a book from 1991 where an increase in even knowing about homeschooling to the reader was probably low. However, Wilson doesn’t really make his case for homeschooling and especially those that homeschool in a classical curriculum or co-op. While this is the least helpful section, it’s an ancillary topic to the more important goal to learn about classical education.

This is a quick read for someone to get a primer in understanding or being convinced of classical education. Even with 1991 statistics, one can skip the first part of the book and read the part about Christian worldview education (the second part) or what is classical education (the third part). The appendix offers some tools and example curriculum to get a direct showing of what’s involved in classical education. Still a good introduction book on a classical approach to education.

Final Grade

B+