Mandi Gerth

About twenty years ago, my husband was listening to a radio talk show on his commute to work. Doug Wilson called in. He talked about a school he had started and a book he had written. I bought that book and read it. Then, I read Dorothy Sayers’ "Mind of the Maker." We had no children, just two Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but I knew then what sort of education I wanted for my future children.

In 2014, we decided that a classical education was worth moving across the country to obtain. We had been giving our children a private, Christian education, but it was not classical. We had saturated their lives with great books and created a family culture which valued learning. But that no longer felt like enough. We moved from Wisconsin to Texas and enrolled our children in a classical University Model school, and I learned what it meant to collaborate in the education of my children in a very sanctifying way.

Since my first reading of "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning" twenty years ago, I have read extensively on classical education and attended numerous conferences. I took a classroom teaching position at the University Model School where …