Forging the American Mind: A Year-by-Year Guide for Classical Christian Education

In this follow-up to Battle for the American Mind, David Goodwin lays out the principles for providing a classical Christian education for children, K-12.

American parents have been desperate for an alternative to our broken, woke school system. Inspired by the insights of Battle for the American Mind, many gratefully embraced Classical Christian Education as an alternative—a deep tradition grounded in a biblical worldview. Instead of creating soulless careerists or woke activists, the lost tradition of CCE teaches children to care more about virtue and wisdom rather than conforming to a corrupt culture. New schools are popping up around the country.

However, parents and educators need a roadmap for incorporating CCE into kids’ lives. This is that map.

David Goodwin has taught classical Christian education for decades. In Forging the American Mind, he lays out practices, recommendations, and stories filled with simple, hard-won advice on how to parent and teach kids with wisdom, love, and ambition. How do you teach language? How do you teach Plato? What’s the best way to teach Christian history? How do you balance students’ individuality with respect for community? Goodwin offers answers to these questions and many more, and gives parents year-by-year plans, starting with the rambunctious elementary school years, through middle and high school, and concludes with an ambitious path to adulthood for teens.

Forging the American Mind is a revolutionary road map for transforming education. This book gives devout parents and teachers the concrete information and inspiration they need to build a new and better way of learning for all American children.