The "New" Return to a Classical Education

Thank you, Professor.  That was really terrific!  Ladies and gentlemen, the second part of the evening will be a conversation between the learned doctor and me, at the end of which I promise to save some time for audience questions.

“I’m looking forward," said the professor, the star of the evening, as he settled into his chair in the middle of the stage. Out with a new book with a boring title, Classical Education Renaissance: Navigating Tradition and Innovation in Modern Learning, the professor was beginning to enjoy the second night on his speaking tour—or so he told himself. He was nearing seventy. His black head was shaved smooth, and his blue cotton shirt was tucked in, if a bit loosely. The much younger journalist next to him played with his mic for a moment. Even journalists have nerves.

Journalist:  In your lecture, you said that the new movement afoot to return to a “classical education” is mostly a Republican phenomenon.  

Professor: That’s right. But some Democrats are pushing for the same. In the book, I give examples such as the Brilla network of charter schools in the South Bronx.

Typical professor, mentioning his book already!  Professors, too, have nerves.  

Journalist: I’d like you to start by discussing how one defines classical education.

Professor:  Well, that’s exactly the question, isn’t it?  As I ask in the book, does classical education mean traditional education going back to the Greeks and Romans?  Or is a classical education where one studies the Trivium and Quadrivium. The Trivium consists of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, while the Quadrivium includes arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Each stage is believed to correspond to different cognitive abilities and stages of intellectual development.  

Some definitions of classical education highlight the Socratic method, which involves engaging students in critical thinking, questioning, and dialogue to foster intellectual inquiry and discovery.  Classical education may also be characterized by a "great books" approach, focusing on studying influential works of literature, philosophy, and theology from Western civilization. This approach aims to expose students to foundational ideas and intellectual traditions.

Ultimately, however, a classical education usually means studying the ancients, the Greeks, and Romans: Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, and Catullus.  And they were all guys, all white guys.

Journalist:  Which of those definitions do you favor?

Professor:  Well, as I said, it usually involves studying the ancients.  And that is a good thing.  I remember learning the history of the word “education” when I was an undergraduate.  It comes from the Latin “ex duco,” meaning to “lead out.”  Out of what, we might ask.  Well, Plato would say out of the cave.  You remember his allegory of the cave.  In it, he describes prisoners chained in a cave, facing a wall where shadows are projected. They mistake these shadows for reality. One prisoner is freed, discovers the outside world's true nature, and returns to enlighten the others. The cave symbolizes ignorance, the shadows represent illusions, and enlightenment comes from seeking truth beyond perception.  This can be seen more broadly as a metaphor for education.

Of course, when the prisoner who has made his way out in the light comes back to tell the others, his eyes are no longer adjusted to the darkness.  The rest of the prisoners now see a blind man and conclude that walking out of the cave is useless. So, however you call it, I favor an education including Plato.

No good journalist begins with their “bomb” question.  It can be unsettling to the guest and the audience in a way that no one ever recovers, the guest, the audience, or the interviewer.   Today, our journalist was taking the approach of making his guest feel comfortable by asking questions that confirmed his academic pedigree.  But he moved on to the bomb quickly, as both knew he would.

Journalist:  Why are Republicans suddenly interested in a classical education for their kids?

Professor:  That is a great question.  My research shows . . .

The professor was still playing coy.  Hiding in platitudes.  It was early in the book tour.  

Journalist:  It’s not only the Romans and Greeks, but it’s Christianity that the right wants to teach.  

This is called a nudge in journalistic circles.  It’s not uncommon.  Only the most seasoned speakers can resist it.  Noam Chomsky, for example.  

Professor:  Yes, that’s true.  Of course, there is an underlying thread directly from Plato to Christian theology.  The Christians get heaven and the afterlife from Plato.

Journalist:  Really?  Christ didn’t teach about the afterlife?

Professor:  No.  There was a famous conference in Jerusalem some years after Jesus died where Paul, the Roman, was leading one faction, and James, the brother of Jesus, was leading the other.  They had a big debate, and it was decided that Paul’s version of Christianity should be adopted rather than James’s.  And so today, Christians believe in the afterlife, whereas Jews do not.  This was the all-important imprint of Paul, the Roman, on what was until then a Middle Eastern religion.  It’s called the “Hellenization” of Christianity.

Journalist:  Now I’m getting an education.

Professor:  A study of the ancients will provide an education.  Look, here’s the bottom line . . .

The Professor was now warming up.  You gotta give it to professors.   On any given night, our guest speaker would be at home comfortably working on his book in his cozy library with the lamp turned low just so he could read, and on the table a glass, and then two, of wine to embolden his writing and encourage his imagination.  Now he’s on stage with an audience in a foreign city, environment, and no wine.  It’s an adventure similar to that of Shackleton.  

Professor:  Here’s the bottom line:  if any kid reads Plato in any depth for any time, they will be better off in life.  That’s my humble opinion.  

Journalist:  You said that before. What was so great about Plato?

Professor: Plato set forth all of the key topics of philosophy: ontology, epistemology, and morality.   The 20th-century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that all philosophy since Plato is but footnotes. And let me go further: if the student is also reading the poems of Catullus, their education is already rounding out.

Journalist:  Why’s that?

Professor:  Have you read Catullus?

Journalist: No. I guess I didn’t receive a classical education, but I will. I will.

Catullus 5: Wikipedia

 Professor:  Read the poems to Lesbia—there’s a couple dozen.

Journalist:  Poems to Lesbia.  Ok, I will.  Should young kids be reading this?

Professor: These poems have been taught for thousands of years. To modern readers, they can be somewhat shocking for their frank and often indecent language and just the uninhibited emotions.

Journalist: I’ll read some tonight!

Professor: For hundreds of years, all proper students in England could recite and translate Catullus's love poetry. Lord Byron published his translations at the age of nineteen. 

Journalist:  I’m not sure all parents want to have Lord Byron on their hands.

Professor:   If only they would be so lucky!  

Journalist: Haha!

Professor: So now we’re on to the tension between parents and teachers, which is at the heart of the current conservative movement with parent’s rights and all that.

Journalist:  I have to say, I’ve personally been surprised by the conservative move to a classical education.  I mean, I get that there’s this move to preserve Western Civilization. . . 

Professor:  It’s a political reaction to the liberal agenda of inclusivity.  Conservatives don’t want their kids to think too much about the history of slavery in the country and are more focused on great quotes from the founding fathers. These are good quotes, don’t get me wrong. But can’t we learn all of the above?

Journalist: Education is education—knowledge and understanding wherever it leads.  

Professor: Is that a question?

Journalist:  Here’s a question.  This takes me back. A woman who was an administrator in a public high school once told me—we had got to chatting in the gym, of all places—she said that education is always subversive.  Do you buy that?

There was the real bomb question.  The earlier one was fake.

Professor:  Always subversive?  I do.  Of course, conservatives will argue that a safe and secure environment is more conducive to true learning and education.  And there’s something to be said about that.  Think back on your own life.

Journalist:  I remember a certain professor in college who was not interested in safety and security.  He took one foundation after another out from under me.  

Professor: Perhaps he knew you had some security and were up for it.

Journalist:  Perhaps.  At the time, I just thought that that’s what happens in college.  Of course, I look back now and see that the encounter was unique in my education.  

Professor:  There’s always that one teacher.

Journalist:  He was my one teacher.  He brought me out of the cave.  

Professor:  That’s terrific. As my ma’am would say, “Hallelujah!”

Journalist: It did involve some of the classic texts of Western History—Jane Austen, for example—but it also included some texts you don’t often hear of, such as the Latin American writer Carlos Fuentes.  I’ll never forget reading his book The Storyteller.  Eye-opening.

Professor: I know the book. Many would ask if the classical education movement is keeping out certain texts as well as certain people.

Journalist: This has been fascinating. So before I throw it out to the audience, I wanted to approach a topic we read about in the news—another political question. These days, there’s a good amount of pushback against “elites” on the Republican side  And yet, this is the same crowd crowing for an exclusive classical education. What do you do with that? 

Professor:  You’re now asking about my next book.  

Journalist: Oh, really? Okay, let’s wait for it, and we’ll leave it there and move out to the audience. If you have questions, please step forward to our two mics, one in front of me and the other on the far side of the room.

Professor:  As we wait for some takers, let me return to your earlier question about education always being subversive.  In my book, I quote the British philosopher Bertrand Russell a number of times.  He thought deeply about the topic.  And he says at one point something like—this may not be the direct quote, but you can look it up. Something like “the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Journalist:  That’s good.

Professor:  Today, everything is being politicized.  Education has become a battleground.  But the only battle is really between knowledge and ignorance.  We are all on the same side.  

Journalist:  I could go a thousand places with that, but I told the audience it’s their turn.

The professor continued, which began to make some in the room uneasy.

Professor:   Take Tucker Carlson, for example, who pushed with great enthusiasm on his Fox program for preserving Western Civilization and the importance of reading dead white English and American men and the Founders and all of that.  Then he went to Russia, gave a dictator an interview, and said that Moscow is a greater city than any of our Western American cities.  

The journalist ignored this bait and turned to the audience for questions. Unfortunately, none of them were any good.