2024 Education Conference:
The Independent Mind

For centuries, classical educators have taught students using time-proven methodologies and curricula. As a result, we have held to a reasonable confidence that what has always worked will continue to work. But are our students truly inoculated to what Lewis calls “the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age”?

Unfortunately, we have recently crossed the Rubicon, leaving behind Lewis’s polite press and microphones. We’ve entered a world where the digital barbarians are not simply at the gate but are firmly established in our homes. They dine with us, captivate most of our waking hours, and steal more than nine hours a day from the average young person in the form of glowing screens and competing narratives. These digital barbarians aggressively form dependent and soft minds lured by hours of carefully programmed algorithms tuned to the exact needs, interests, and wants. Even in the most Luddite homes, these influences leach through and captivate students, overriding a day of classroom-formed loves, affections, and knowledge with more tantalizing and delightful nonsense. These influences are not only from screens but from the accumulation of pressures reshaping the modern family driven by shifting economic uncertainty, over-consuming schedules, detachment from family and lack of generational wisdom, and a loss of church community and connections.

Can we form independent minds, resilient and thriving in our cultural moment, in the midst of the barbarians? Hope exists IF we are willing to pay attention and calibrate our schools and classrooms to the students before us and our modern parent partners. We can be confident, anchored in the Truth as purveyors of better stories and a love for deep thinking in an environment of more beautiful experiences and rich relationships. We can reassert a love of wisdom, over a love of opinion and self.

Just saying “no” to the barbarians isn’t enough; we have to say “yes” to something more alluring, which forms independent minds and is the heart of classical Christian education!

Workshop: “Fine Tuning Parent-School Relations for Positive Student Impact”
How do we partner well with today’s generation of Millennial and Gen Z parents? Many of the schools’ approaches to connecting and communicating with parents and students are changing. Most school administrators are not of the same generation as the parents they are serving. And many of the approaches, including the content and the systems we use to communicate, can be ineffective in a world on the run. This workshop will be a chance to roll up our sleeves and look at ten best practices that schools are implementing to better partner with this new generation of parents.

Davies Owens is the founder and host of the BaseCamp Live podcast. As a speaker, teacher, leader, and serial entrepreneur, he has connected with school leaders, parents, and students for more than three decades. His primary goal is to assist parents and schools in building confidence, clarity, and renewed enthusiasm as educators. With over two decades of experience in classical Christian school leadership, along with teaching and training leaders on a national scale, he has honed proven strategies and solutions to help them thrive.

Davies earned his M.Div. at Duke Divinity School and his doctorate at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, focusing on online interaction and community.