Our Uber driver chatters at us in Mandarin as he weaves through the crowded streets of Chengdu on a muggy morning after the rains. We pass honking cars, quietly-buzzing electric scooters, and squeaky bicycles loaded with cardboard boxes, heavily loaded garbage bags, and even a refrigerator. With a population of almost 18 million, Chengdu is the seventh most populous city in China. Old men mosey with t-shirts pulled up to expose their warm bellies, and children laugh as they splash in the sidewalk puddles. The usually smoggy air is cleaner than normal — probably by temporarily closing some factories — to impress the leaders of the recent G20 summit, and the locals are enjoying a rare blue sky. They have an idiom in Chengdu: “When the sun appears, the dog barks at it.” We emerge from the car, thank our driver, and walk cautiously along a slippery stone path. Consuming our greasy pork baozi and warm soybean milk, we wait in a closely packed line for the elevator to take us up seventeen stories to a classroom of Chinese college students waiting to learn logic.

Classical Christian education is taking off in China. Yes, you read that correctly. I just returned from Chengdu, Sichuan, where (through an interpreter) I taught an intensive, week-long course in formal logic in a small, densely packed room of about forty young men and women. These intrepid grad students are preparing to be teachers of mathematics, classical literature, even Latin, in newly formed classical Christian schools throughout China. They are on fire for Christ and eager to learn. Many of them arrived early from their homes throughout the city for a devotional hour of prayer and Bible teaching. Continue reading Small Beginnings in China →