Bible Curriculum

by M. DeWalt

The Design of the Bible Curriculum

            Granite Classical Tutorials offers a number of courses to help home-school parents teach their children the three skills of the trivium using lessons plans, teaching tutorials, and classical education methods. From 1st to 5th grade, in our Grammar stage, students learn the building blocks and tools of education. From 6th to 9th grade, they learn how to process thinking skills - this is the Logic stage. From 10th to 12th grade, they learn how to winsomely and effectively communicate - this is the Rhetoric stage. At Granite Classical, we have designed the Bible Curriculum to fit within the Logic stage where students learn how to critically think. It is at this stage that students begin to more deeply and effectively assemble the information they have learned when they were younger. If you have ever encountered a child who loves to debate, dialogue, and dispute everything you say, then you have been in the presence of someone well into this Logic, or sometimes called Dialectic, stage. At this phase students begin to puzzle together piece-by-piece as they learn how to properly examine their education, studies, and life in general.

           

            Though academically rigorous, a Granite Classical education is not only about academics. The main goal of our Bible curriculum is moving the student through knowledge and understanding toward godly wisdom and truth found in the Scriptures. 

The Benefits & Goals of the Bible Curriculum

The goal, then of Classical Education as Dorothy Sayers writes, “to teach students how to learn for themselves.” The Trivium provides the road map to making that goal a reality as the students internalize, evaluate, and express what they learn at Granite. From the writings of Plato to Shakespeare, and from Lincoln to the Bible, Classical education at Granite embraces the wealth of knowledge and truth found in Western civilization. The Bible class goes to the primary sources and mines their key ideas. With the Bible as the foundation and basis for truth, the other documents can be studied through a Christian worldview preparing our graduates for their future education.

The 8th grade Bible course serves as an introductory overview of the message of the Bible. This course helps each student explore the story of the Bible chronologically providing an overview of the history, literature, themes, major persons, key events, and topics in the Bible such as the role of God as the main character of His own story and the relationship between Scripture's divine inspiration and human authorship. The primary text for this is, of course, the Scriptures and secondarily Starr Meade’s The Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Study: A Survey of the Bible. Four-Volumes published by Crossway in 2010. By the end of this course the student will be able to know the following:

• The historical events and major teachings of the Bible.

• An academic understanding of reading an ancient text such as the Bible.

• A survey of the books of the Bible as related to introductory material and significant passages within them.

• The Scripture’s historical value and how it applies today.

• The major themes, topics, people, and covenants which all are summed up in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

 The 9th grade Bible course serves as a study of the principles of biblical interpretation, an introduction to the major resources available for biblical interpretation, and an exegetical study of selected passages from the various types of biblical literature. The major focus of the course is practical—the course goal is that the students develop sound methods of exegesis and application of biblical texts. The primary, text like that of the 8th grade, is once again the Bible, and secondarily Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding the Bible published by Zondervan in 2003. By the end of this course the student will be able to know the following:

•  Understand the significance of hermeneutics using the basic methods of biblical interpretation that have been practiced throughout history.The basic principles of grammatical-historical interpretation that lead interpreters to discover the meaning intended by the biblical author.

• Understand the role that historical context plays in interpretation. The student will learn to recognize how historical context affects the application of Scripture to our daily lives.

• Know how to read the Scripture with an attentive eye to its literary context. What genre is the text? Why does genre matter? How does the literary situation and attitude of the text affect our interpretation and application?

•  Understand a text within the greater context of the Bible. How does this text fit in with the Biblical metanarrative? How does it relate to other texts that speak to similar issues? How does understanding this text within the larger metanarrative affect our interpretation and application?

•  Understand the major genres of scripture and the hermeneutical principles that should be applied to each genre.

•  Know the important tools that may be useful in the study of the biblical text.

At Granite Classical Tutorials, we seek to aid the parents not just in math, science, reading, and writing; but we highly value a student body that intellectually knows the Scriptures, how God works with His people, what Jesus Christ has done for His people and how the Spirit works in His people. At Granite, the Bible is taught both in overview and personal study skills so that students may learn the Scriptures more deeply than they have before, and learn how to use the Scriptures in their own personal study and private devotional at home. Keeping a consistent Christ-centered message of scriptural instruction, Granite has a wonderful tutorial program to help develop students who are ready to enter college or post-high school careers with a strong Biblical foundation.