Are We A Democracy
In Name Only?
Some People Hate Homer
Tomorrow's economy will be volatile and dependent on
flexible workers with a high level of intellectual skills. Thus,
the best vocational education will be. . . in the use of one's mind.
--Theodore R. Sizer, Horace's Compromise
Classical education's fine for the college-bound. Homer and Plato might be fun for intellectuals. But what about the student who isn't interested in college? What about the student who doesn't really care about scholarship? What about the student who wants to finish high school, get out and work?
A classical education is valuable even for people who hate Homer. [And, here's why: 21St Century Divided States of America, Brexit, European Union Nations, Israel and Palestine, China, Russia, and the Arab World--even the rest of us...newly discovered seven planets I'm talking to you, too!]
The classical education is designed to teach the student how to learn....the student who knows how to learn--and has had practice in independent learning--can successfully do any job.
Gene Edward Veith points out that the Greeks would have viewed with suspicion education that trains the student for a highly specific job. Such training creates "a slave mentality, making the learner an obedient worker utterly dependent upon his masters."2 [Technology--perhaps even Silicon Valley--Wall Street, and certainly the Halls of Power inWashington, D.C., I am speaking directly to you]
A classical education is useful.
But to a certain extent, to ask "What's the use?" is itself antithetical to the goals of the classical education. "The practical life," writes David Hicks, in a paraphrase of Plato, "falls short of completeness. The wealth one acquires in business is a useful thing, but as such, it exists for the sake of something else."3 The classically educated student aims for more than a life of comfort; she aims for a "life that knows and reveres, speculates and acts upon the Good, that loves and re-produces the Beautiful, and that pursues excellence and moderation in all things."3
The classical education, with its emphasis on the life of the mind, on reading and writing about ideas, is aimed at producing a student who pursues excellence and moderation in all things. This is Plato's "virtuous man" (who, parenthetically, is generally highly employable--a side effect).
There's yet another reason for classical education, which has to do with the nature of a democracy. From ancient times through recent centuries, only a small, elite segment of the population received the kind of education we've outlined in these chapters [The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise]. Because only a fraction of society is equipped to think through ideas and their consequences, only that fraction was qualified to govern--an act that demands that the governing members of society look past the immediate, the popular, and the simplistic in order to evaluate long-range consequences and complex cause and effect.
But, in a democracy, all citizens have a part in government. They should be able to look past immediate gratification, rhetorical flourishes, and simplistic solutions in order to understand which course of action is the right one to take. In a healthy democracy, the casting of a vote is the act of a well-trained mind.
Every citizen in a democracy takes on the responsibilities that were once reserved for the well-educated aristocratic segment of society. And so every citizen, college-bound or not, should receive the type of education that will develop the life of the mind.
What happens if this is neglected?
"The average citizen," David Hicks writes, "will begin to doubt the soundness of his own judgments. He will surrender his fundamental democratic right to ideas and to decision making to a few experts....[He will] grow lazy in his demand for a high quality of public thought and information. He will doubt his ability to decide the issues shaping his life, and he will take another step beyond representative government in relinquishing the privilege of self-government by putting himself at the mercy of a few experts. At last, abandoning his Western classical heritage, he will resign himself and his children to . . . a democracy in name only.[emphasis mine]"4
It's a chilling scenario, but already these tendencies are visible in America in the beginning of the twenty-first century. The classical education--for all students, not just for some college-bound "elite"--is the best preventive.
And yet you don't have to wait for your local school to come to this conclusion. You can train your child's mine yourself. [And, you should; any other thought, may be construed as Indoctrination]
* * * * * * *
Folks the proof is in the pudding. We aren't listening. Hearing. Or acting.
Albert Einstein said, If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
We're there. But, who's reading to our children, let alone, classically educating them? The hand that rocks the cradle truly rules the world.
Artists, Intellectuals, Inventors & Innovators drive both economic and social change. Where have all the humans gone? History repeats, rinse, repeat. When we know better, we should do better. Are we awake yet? Or at least alert? Technology is not the only thing that is changing our world. Refugees and immigrants are not the only circumstances, situations and issues that are in flux. We are experiencing a New World Order. Change. But, His Holiness, Francis I, along with many others warned us, looking back prophesized with almost precise acccuracy5 and yet we still do not act on the serious habits of a classically, good mind. What will it take for our modern communities, societies and cultures to do the Right, Just Thing? Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song, "Teach Your Children Well". Classically Train Every Child. That's should be our response to our historical mistake of No Child Left Behind. And, every parent left in the dust to the Race to the Top....left with only common core, nationally-normed tests, and purported standards bereft of any love of learning, or the lifelong pursuit of happiness let alone the everyday enchantment of contentment. Mr. Jefferson where art thou now?
_____________________Albert Einstein said, If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
We're there. But, who's reading to our children, let alone, classically educating them? The hand that rocks the cradle truly rules the world.
Artists, Intellectuals, Inventors & Innovators drive both economic and social change. Where have all the humans gone? History repeats, rinse, repeat. When we know better, we should do better. Are we awake yet? Or at least alert? Technology is not the only thing that is changing our world. Refugees and immigrants are not the only circumstances, situations and issues that are in flux. We are experiencing a New World Order. Change. But, His Holiness, Francis I, along with many others warned us, looking back prophesized with almost precise acccuracy5 and yet we still do not act on the serious habits of a classically, good mind. What will it take for our modern communities, societies and cultures to do the Right, Just Thing? Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song, "Teach Your Children Well". Classically Train Every Child. That's should be our response to our historical mistake of No Child Left Behind. And, every parent left in the dust to the Race to the Top....left with only common core, nationally-normed tests, and purported standards bereft of any love of learning, or the lifelong pursuit of happiness let alone the everyday enchantment of contentment. Mr. Jefferson where art thou now?
Author's Blogpost Note: A 1985 graduate of Mr. Jefferson's academical village, I first read this work in 1999 (first edition) as my partner and I anticipated parenting during the aftermath of the Columbine Massacre on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. I have reread parts of this definitive, groundbreaking work, and the 'bible of every home educator, parent and student," every week since that day, sometimes daily, even hourly.
In other words, I have spent many an hour in discontent. But, not a day goes by since November 20, 2016, after our election cycle, that I have not sat in solitude pondering my reality and that of my legacy through our children and yours, contemplating my next action and the consequences of those threads of action. Just like our pontiff, His Holiness, Pope Francis I, and Peter & Paul and all the Saints befoe him, I am a bridge builder, seeking to break apart walls, breakdown barriers. tear into borders of discontent and injustice.
This particular excerpt is from Part III. The Rhetoric Stage: Ninth Grade through Twelfth Grade, 34. Some People Hate Homer, pp. 608 - 611. It was a harbinger for me with Columbine, in 1999 (first edition); a cautionary tale, on September 11, 2001--emotionally numb, but joyfully experiencing our second pregnancy, (second edition); frosty, on June 15, 2011 and the summer of 2011, when we made the decision and pulled our children out of institutional school to home education (third edition); and now, in the words of Susan Wise Bauer, ....[beyond] chilling after our election 2016 cycle and less than One Hundred Days in 2017 into our new administration under Trump's Make America Great Again. Are we all, like me, in our own Season of Winter? Like the Snow Queen or The White Witch in C.S. Lewis' Narnia? Indeed, Einstein knew, what I know. We are there. Well, and truly there. Now what? Teach Your Children Well. Serious Habits of The Mind.
In other words, I have spent many an hour in discontent. But, not a day goes by since November 20, 2016, after our election cycle, that I have not sat in solitude pondering my reality and that of my legacy through our children and yours, contemplating my next action and the consequences of those threads of action. Just like our pontiff, His Holiness, Pope Francis I, and Peter & Paul and all the Saints befoe him, I am a bridge builder, seeking to break apart walls, breakdown barriers. tear into borders of discontent and injustice.
This particular excerpt is from Part III. The Rhetoric Stage: Ninth Grade through Twelfth Grade, 34. Some People Hate Homer, pp. 608 - 611. It was a harbinger for me with Columbine, in 1999 (first edition); a cautionary tale, on September 11, 2001--emotionally numb, but joyfully experiencing our second pregnancy, (second edition); frosty, on June 15, 2011 and the summer of 2011, when we made the decision and pulled our children out of institutional school to home education (third edition); and now, in the words of Susan Wise Bauer, ....[beyond] chilling after our election 2016 cycle and less than One Hundred Days in 2017 into our new administration under Trump's Make America Great Again. Are we all, like me, in our own Season of Winter? Like the Snow Queen or The White Witch in C.S. Lewis' Narnia? Indeed, Einstein knew, what I know. We are there. Well, and truly there. Now what? Teach Your Children Well. Serious Habits of The Mind.
2Gene Edward Weith, "Renaissance, Not Reform," an essay posted at the Philanthropy, Culture, and Society website, August 1996; www.capitalresearch.org. See also Gene Edward Veith, Jr., and Andrew Kern, Classical Education: Towards the Revival of American Schooling (Washington, D.C., Capitol Research Center, 1997), p.78.
3David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (New York: Praeger, 1981), p.20.
4 Hicks, p.83.
excerpt with permission Bauer, Susan Wise and Jessie Wise. The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.
