Of course, I'd prefer my child read classic literature and learn history than sit around reading propaganda on an iPad, but we can't return to a classical education in the truest sense of the phrase.

hat, then, did schools that were “classical” look like more than 100 years ago? A number of schools in the 19th century published their instructional plans. A friend of mine, Ian Mosley, instructor of Latin at the School of the Ozarks, provides a glimpse into one such school.

Compared with any number of published instructional plans from German gymnasia from the same time period, one curricular distinctive stands out: The overwhelming majority of instruction was in languages, especially Latin and Greek, both through explicit grammar instruction and reading in primary sources. These primary sources, the works of Cicero, Xenophon, Herodotus, etc., were the classics, hence “classical” education, and the objects of study, not Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, or C.S. Lewis.

All other subjects of instruction, including the study of history and literature in the vernacular, were accorded substantially less time. Most modern classical schools include instruction in Latin, sometimes as much as five hours a week. Occasionally, a classical school will offer Greek or a modern language. But compared with students at a 19th century gymnasium, students at classical schools today are mere dabblers.

High school-aged students at a German gymnasium in the 19th century would have spent 10 hours a week or more in Latin instruction, five hours or more in Greek, and additional hours of instruction in Hebrew and modern languages. The result was students, at least those at the top of the academic heap, who could read and even compose in the classical languages with relative fluency. Just imagine: Most doctrinal dissertations written in Germany well into the middle of the 19th century were composed in Latin.

. Traditional public schools have by and large abandoned the Western heritage and are nurseries for demagogy.

Students at modern “classical” schools, on the other hand, gain mastery of English grammar and are immersed in great writing from the best English children’s literature, such as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Wind in the Willows,” to staples of the Western canon, such as Homer’s “Odyssey” (in English translation, of course).

Choose between sending my son to school where he will learn to write beautifully in cursive, receive a content-rich instruction in history and science, and read “Treasure Island” versus a school where he’d be given an iPad, sat in “pod” with other students pooling their ignorance, and read sections of “I Am Malala”? That’s a no-brainer. But I’m also under no illusion that my son would be receiving a classical education in the historical sense of the word.