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l e a r n i n g f rom th e pa s tsome trus t in ch a riots a nd some in hor s es,

but w e trus t in the n a me of the lord ou r god.psa lm 20:7

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able to witness Pages becoming Squires, and Squires becoming Knights. The jousted, did tricks with their horses and even fought hand to hand. The students enjoyed an authentic Medieval meal as spectators.

The fourth graders also studied Anglo-Saxon literature by reading Beowulf. This piece captured their attention as they read each day about what pain and triumph came to the Danes.

In science, the students began studying electricity and magnetism. They were able to make their own electromagnets using wood, wire, magnets and a battery. This was a challenging but successful experience for all the students. They have also been doing scientific tests on minerals and were able to grow their own crystals. Students were able, within hours of completing the experiment, watch them grow and then change throughout the week.

own eyes” into a kingdom – first with a king who was rejected by God (Saul) and then by king David who was a “man after God’s heart”. They were able to see David’s patience, kindness, mercy, and trust in the Lord, as well as his most terrible sins. They compared his repentant heart with Saul’s unrepentant one.

The third graders are given a unique oppor-tunity in this important year to dive deeply into a rich history, as well as intimately learn more of the wonders in God’s world and appreciate the things that create the foundation for life.

As the third grade finishes their study of ancient history, the fourth grade class picks up with an in-depth study of the Middle Ages. As the students begin to learn about this exciting time period, they are able to experience and partake in several different roles of this time. First, the stu-dents participated in Monastery Day with “ora et labora” (work and prayer) as their

theme. Students dressed like Monks, cre-ated beautiful illuminated manuscripts of Psalm 23, ate a simple meal together that included leek soup, bread and drink, and had quiet time to read and contemplate God’s word. Then, came Viking Day. This was a day that students were able to experi-ence life as a Viking. They created a Viking helmet to wear for the day, constructed their own long ship, read Norse Myths, exchanged goods in a trading game, went on a raid and shared a feast together. And finally, the students put on the annual Medieval Faire. Each student was given a unique historical figure or role to act out for the day. They were required to dress as the person, give a speech and presentation and explain their position in the Middle Ages to other students. The day was filled with a roasted pig, jousting, traditional dances, and even a catapult competition.

Another highlight was a field trip to Medieval Times. The fourth graders were

The third graders have had an exciting start to this new year. As they continue the rich experience of learning history chronologically, the third graders jumped right into studying a new time period, focusing on the Greeks and Romans. The people and wars of this age came alive as the students’ re-enacted of The Trojan War. The Trojan War play only described the end of the war– Odysseus’ plan to make a giant horse that Greeks could hide in to sneak into the city of Troy. But the students also knew how it all started (with an argu-ment among goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, the fairest), which god was on which side, and why Hector or Achilles weren’t in the play. This experience was enhanced further as the students read Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff (a retelling of Homer’s Iliad) and spent several exciting weeks cheering, one day for Hector and all the Trojans, and another day for Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax, and all the other Greeks who came to help Menelaus win back his beautiful wife Helen.

In addition to their history lessons, the third graders continued learning about influential people from this time and land. Students learned about the famous Greek scientist, Archimedes, who discovered an important scientific law related to buoy-ancy. After observing the amount of water that overflowed when he got into a bath, he deduced that an object displaces its own

volume of water. To further understand the principles of density and buoyancy, students were each given a challenge to design and construct a boat out of alumi-num foil that would carry the most weight without sinking.

The students will also be growing their own garden soon, but before they begin growing their own classroom plants, and even eating the fruits of their labors later in the year, they will need to start from the ground up (literally) and learn about soils first. Students made their own edible soil out of pudding and wafers to help them better understand the different layers.

In Bible students got to see Israel develop from a nation that was led by judges and where “everyone did what was right in his

c o n t a c t u s

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Find us online at www.cambridgeclassical.org

Connect with us on facebook.com

For more information on our school:

Phone: 858.484.3488

Email: info@cambridgeclassical.org

Site address: 12855 Black Mountain Road San Diego, California 92129

Mailing address: P.O. Box 720508 San Diego, California 92172

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The fourth grade class has been taking their duties of service seriously. Beyond thier service around campus, the lords and ladies of 4th grade also venture beyond the confines of school bringing company and joy to neighbors. They have visited The Arbors, an assisted living facility, twice and spent time with the residents playing board games, making Christmas ornaments and singing carols.

m i n i s t e r i u m : s e r v i n g o u r n e i g h b o r s w i t h c o m p a n y a n d g a m e

The Cambridge School seeks to provide a distinctly Christian education in the classical tradition, which equips students to know, love, and practice that which is true, good, and beautiful, and thus prepares them to live purposefully and intelligently in service of God and neighbor.

o n t h e co v e r A third grade student strikes a pose while in the ranks with his fellow Spartan soldiers during Sparta and Athens Day. This is one of many special days when the history and philosophy the students have been studying all year comes to life. The third graders both battled at war and held philisophical discussions as they played their roles as Spartans and Greeks.

i n t h e c l a s s r o o m . . . f r o m v i k i n g s t o t r oj a n s

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In an attempt to answer this question I could point to distinctive Cambridge activities like weekly memory time, phonics and grammar lessons, and Latin instruction and show the direct connection to later rhetorical activi-ties and goals, but anything I could say has been addressed more generally throughout history by people committed to classical education. The most complete picture of the relationship of Grammar to Rhetoric is painted by Quintilian.

Quintilian’s “Institutes of Oratory” (Institu-tio Oratoria), or “The Orator’s Education,” provides an excellent picture of a rhetor’s education in classical Rome – an education that literally began at the cradle and ended at death.1 In this way Quintilian offers a

1 Quintilian outlines the purpose of his manual: “I shall proceed exactly as if a child were put into my hands to be educated as an orator, and shall plan his studies from his infancy.” 2 As I will be referencing Quintilian’s work often, I fear proper citation practices would unnecessarily clutter the page and hinder the reader. Unless otherwise indicated I will be quoting from throughout Book 1 of Quintilian’s text. I’m using the 2001 Loeb edition edited by Donald Russell. I also secretly hope that this tactic will motivate my readers to go and read Quintilian – if for no other reason than to fact-check their notoriously untrustworthy author.

model that finds an encouraging number of modern parallels inside the halls of TCS while demonstrating the importance of the work being accomplished in the lower grades in preparation for the Rhetoric stage and beyond.

Quintilian was convinced that the early stag-es of education were crucial to the formative and informative development of a mature, virtuous student, and he explicitly criticized other rhetoricians for thinking they could

merely “add the finishing touch[es]” at the Rhetoric stage suggesting that these educators saw early education as trivial, vocationally irrelevant, or, most probably, boring.2 In language that beautifully anticipates Cambridge’s cathedral meta-phor, Quintilian likens this to despising the “hidden founda-

tions” of a building without which the visible rooftop could not stand. He prescribes the kind of educational scaffolding that is inher-ently built into the three classical stages (i.e., Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) generally and structured curricula like the progymnasmata and Singapore Math specifically. Quintilian writes: “…one cannot reach the top in any subject without going through the elemen-tary stages – I shall certainly not refuse to stoop to those matters which, though minor, cannot be neglected without blocking the way to greater things.”

This kind of language may not be surpris-ing to many of us – we have to walk before we can run and master the fundamentals before achieving artistic expression in any field – but within the realm of education, in Quintilian’s day and in our own, pedagogical scaffolding is, at the very least, inconsistently formulated and lacking the intentionality necessary to create a harmonious progression from one stage to the next. This progres-sion begins with the vital, pre-rhetoric work

completed in the lower school; it is the lower school that builds the foundations upon which the upper school can build.

What does this work look like in the lower school? In order to fully appreciate the first step in rhetorical education, it may help to remember Quintilian’s conception of an ideal rhetor: a good person who is well spoken. It should come as no surprise then that for Quintilian, given young students’ propensity for mimicry, education begins with the teacher modeling virtuous behavior and correct speaking patterns at the earliest

possible stage. At this stage especially the student will pick up habits through imita-tion and experimentation. Quintilian writes: “We naturally retain most tenaciously what we learned when our minds were fresh: a flavor lasts a long time when the jar that absorbs it is new, and the dyes that change wool’s pristine whiteness cannot be washed out.” And so teachers must be good models for their students and be willing to gently, yet effectively, correct behavioral and intellectual missteps in order for the student to develop good habits conducive to later honing in the Logic and Rhetoric stages.

However, education through imitation can only get one so far; lessons and schoolwork are essential components of the life of a student, but as Quintilian writes, a teacher should be concerned to keep assignments de-velopmentally appropriate for each student in order to save them from resenting their schoolwork even before they “are not yet able to love [it].” Yet this does not mean that

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There has been a lot of talk about the Rhetoric stage at The Cambridge School lately and par-ents with students in the early stages of Gram-mar might wonder – to borrow a Tertullian form – “What has Grammar to do with Rhetoric?”

“…one cannot reach the top in any subject without going through the elementary stages – I shall certainly not refuse to stoop to those matters which, though minor, cannot be neglected without blocking the way to greater things.”

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s e e m o r e e v e n t s at c a m b r i d g e c l a s s i c a l .o r g

i n f o r m at i o n n i g h tHear from the Founder & Head of School, Jean Kim, a current parent, and a teacher as they discuss the unique approach of Classical Christian education.

More striking than his towering 6’7” frame is Mr. Jim Hamilton’s passion for ancient history and languages. The Cambridge School is honored to have living curriculum teachers who have a contageous enthusiasm for the subjects they teach. Mr. Hamil-ton is no exception.

Mr. Jim Hamilton comes to The Cambridge School with a B.A. in Classical Civilization from UC Irvine and an M.A. in Theological Studies from Westminster Seminary California. Jim’s love of classical learning came to him when he took Latin and Greek early on in his studies at UCI. He developed a true passion for the language and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This was further cultivated in seminary when his love for ancient language was combined with the reading and teaching of the Gospel. Because of his spiritual and educational background, Jim is an adamant pro-ponent of a classical Christian education. He is excited to join the Cambridge ranks and eager to instill his love of classical language and history into the students.

“The opportunity to work at The Cambridge School was initially unexpected and has been a wonderful blessing for me. Graduat-ing in Classics and being only one of nine in my class, I always dreamed of teaching at a place like Cambridge, but never imag-ined that I would find it. I love working at the Cambridge School because it gives me the ability to inculcate the students with my zeal for classical learning that I wish I had discovered at their age.”

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what are your hobbies? I have always been a fan of less conventional activities. I typically spend my free time noodling on my electric guitar or practicing archery. If I have the opportunity to make it up to the mountains, I love flyfishing and skiing. what do you love the most about your job at cambridge? My favorite aspect of this job is that I not only get to teach the subjects of my particular interest, but that I get to further develop my own knowledge in Latin and ancient Greek and Roman history. When I look at my job in this perspective, it really doesn’t seem like work to me.

do you have a funny “classroom moment” to share? During the interview process, I taught a demo lesson to the fourth-graders. Not thinking of the disparity in our ages, I

made a comedic reference to the Jefferson Starship song, “We Built This City,” in one of the sentences that I had written for them to translate. Suffice it to say, the joke did not land--even after my rendition of it. if you could have any other job besides your current job, what would it be? I have always wanted to be in any kind of field where I could help people. If I did not have this job at Cambridge, I think I would be a counselor with particular focus on teenagers.

is there something about you that most people don’t know and would be surprised to learn? I imagine that most people wouldn’t know that I used to have hair that nearly went down to my waist. I was really into playing guitar in college, and everyone knows all the good rockers have had long hair.

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Hear from the Founder & Head of School, Jean Kim, and receive a tour off all the class-rooms, where you will see Classical Christian education in action.

Hear from the Founder & Head of School, Jean Kim, and receive a tour off all the class-rooms, where you will see Classical Christian education in action.

young students do not engage in academi-cally formative exercises.

Once again relying on a clever metaphor, Quintilian argues that “just as the body can only be trained to flex the limbs in certain ways when it is young and tender” and that the development of strength can limit flexibility, “little children” must learn “little things” while they are young and intel-lectually flexible. This dual sensitivity to developmental appropriateness and the need for a formative education, far from creat-ing any tension within his system, informs Quintilian’s pedagogical philosophy from beginning to end as he creates lessons that are both rigorous and playful relative to each student’s age. Young children might play with carved letters to form words and make tactile connections with language so that as they progress through the later stages of

writing they can apply a similar playfulness and practicality to a carefully constructed, rhetorically-informed argument.3

In the end, Quintilian believed in an intentionally scaffolded education that was sensitive to the developing abilities of a student over time. This kind of education begins with careful and intentional work at the younger stages which powerfully shapes students and is absolutely necessary for later development in the Logic and Rhetoric stages.

This is a sentiment shared by everyone involved in The Cambridge School and one that finds special attention when designing curricula, building new grades and classes, and improving existing materials and meth-ods. This is work done as a whole school; we are not merely foundation layers or roofers, but we collectively undertake the role of architect-builders who are looking in both

directions up and down the educational timeline in order to ensure that the earliest stages of learning are shaped by the latter stages and that those latter stages build some-thing worthy of those strong foundations. Imitating a teacher’s humility and kindness, playing with letters, reciting during memory time, presenting answers in full sentences while standing and making eye contact, and even having mock gladiatorial contests not only cultivates real learning, academic enthusiasm, and character formation, but it anticipates the work of Rhetoric and lays the essential and congruous groundwork upon which later stages are built.

What has Grammar to do with Rhetoric? Simply put: everything. And the two stages are mutually dependent. Without Gram-mar, Rhetoric would be without support, and without Rhetoric, Grammar would be without aim.

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In order to better serve the community with the resources that we have been given, we are hosting a Free Kindergarten Readiness workshop. Please join us on Tuesday, February 25, as early childhood specialist, Louise Fougner, explains what makes a child ready for Kindergarten and how you can help them along the way. Mrs. Fougner will be doing a variety of fun and engaging activities you can take home and do with your child.

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3 While observing a kindergarten class I was excited to see this tactile connection being made as students composed words out of letters and letter groups on a felt board – an exercise they were disappointed to abandon at the end of the lesson. Quintilian would be pleased!

r e a d e m o r e at: c a m b r i d g e c l a s s i c a l .o r g / b lo g

what is the cambridge school? Founded in the Fall of 2006, The Cambridge School provides parents of San Diego County with a unique educational option for their children. Instruction is currently offered in Kindergarten Prep through eighth grade, with Highschool being launched next year. Cambridge is a Classical and Christian school, seeking to emphasize the truth of God’s revelation, the tradition of the great thoughts of civilization and the skills needed to be lifetime learners, thinkers and leaders. Our goal is to cultivate wisdom and virtue in our students so that they may love that which is worth loving and then go forth to act upon what they know and love. where are we located? We are just south of Hwy 56 at the Black Mountain Road exit. why classical education? The classical method was born in ancient Greece and Rome, used throughout the Western world by the 16th century, and remained the norm until at least 1850. The reason for its widespread use? It works. The time-honored teaching method employed at Cambridge is known as the Trivium, which imparts the basic tools of learning to the student. Becoming educated in any subject involves knowing its basic facts and principles (grammar), ordering and analyzing relationships concerning these facts (logic), and communicating conclusions in a clear, persuasive, and winsome manner (rhetoric). This three-phase model works because it focuses on the way children learn best at each stage of life and builds on the foundation of previous stages. Thus, it prepares students to become life-long learners who can think for themselves. And in today’s culture, such skills are increasingly valuable precisely because this educational model is the exception rather than the rule.

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THE CAMBRiDgE SCHOOlP.O. BOx 720508SAN DIeGO, CA 92172

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cambridge school open house friday mornings, 8:00–9:45am An informative time for interested parents of students entering Kinder-garten Prep through 9th grade in Fall 2014. Invite friends to learn more about Classical education, watch students present at Memory Time, visit our classrooms, and experience the Cambridge school community.

february 28, 2014march 14, 2014april 25, 2014may 16, 2014