Bread is a simple pleasure. Combine remarkably few ingredients--flour, water, salt and yeast--leave it alone for a bit, then bake and enjoy. Yet breadbaking is also startlingly complex. Proportions of ingredients are important. Too little or too much of any one ingredient, and the bread might be edible, but won't be a joy to eat and share. This combination of simple and complex parallels Dominion's approach to education.

In "Spiritual Formation As If the Church Mattered," Wheaton professor James Wilhoit writes:

"A spiral curriculum has the student constantly revisiting topics and truths, with the aim of working these truths deeper into the fabric of our lives. In the early twentieth century, the field of religious education adopted the linear acquisition curriculum model used in math and science instruction. Educators thought that students mastered basic material and then moved on to more and more complex learning. A linear curriculum has much to commend it in many areas of study, but the wisdom of the ages saw the circular curriculum, analogous to the church year, as far more appropriate for spiritual formation."

Wilhoit's "circular curriculum" has a great deal in common with the classical approach that we use at Dominion. In the grammar stage, we take a "first pass," giving students information while their minds memorize so easily. In the logic stage, we come through again, connecting information that already has a home in the mind. In the rhetoric stage, we take a final lap, drawing and then communicating conclusions.

What are your thoughts? Does the spiral approach make sense?