Progressive Hangovers
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Our Present Age and is republished here with permission.
Wait… Which Classical?
ACCS, SCL, ICLE, CCLE, CLT, ULE… classical education is developing its own alphabet soup of organizations. The number of acronyms testifies to a multiplicity of perspectives on the meaning and practice of classical education. Two important things to keep in mind: 1) we are in the business of repairing, which requires a lot digging, and 2) for all the progress we’ve made, we’re still hung up on a lot of progressive ideas.
Repairing the Ruins
The ACCS calls their annual conference Repairing the Ruins after John Milton’s argument: “The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright.” The metaphor suggests that there is something we lost and are working to rebuild. It could be said that the different acronyms in classical education come from different perspectives on what it is that we lost. The short answer is paideia, that elusive Greek word describing education and culture at once. Hegseth and Goodwin identify Western Christian Paideia as the driving force behind the classical renewal, and with good reason. However, the intellectual and practical question remains: what curriculum, pedagogical methods, and practices are most faithful to this paideia? After two years of M.A. level courses on classical ed, I am convinced there is no single answer. The curriculum was constantly changing, as were the methods. On the bright side, we have more precedents than we know what to do with, and there are general currents in the tradition which ground our working through the specifics. Nonetheless, our recovery of the Great Tradition requires sorting through a multitude of lowercase-t traditions and choosing which ones are best.
Progressive Hangovers
Sorting through these traditions becomes all the more difficult when the last century has increasingly detached itself from western Christian tradition. As progressive educators reinterpreted the ends of education, methods followed. To the degree that progressivism favored the present and future, it detached itself from a burdensome past. Without the anchor of the past, progressive education became a shapeshifting organism whose goals, methods, and metrics exist in a constant state of flux. And for a while, this organism had a monopoly on education in America.
This monopoly created a significant number of expectations for education. Likewise, it obscured our view of what education was and what it could be. The first generation of classical educators largely consisted of pastors, parents, and other concerned citizens who came from progressive schools themselves. With a limited number of guiding texts, classical ed meant things like socratic discussion, grammar-stage-logic-stage-rhetoric-stage, and teaching how to think instead of what to think. To varying degrees, these early implementations are indeed classical, and provided a necessary starting point for the classical Christian revival. However, these implementations were added as modifications to the existing school model… a largely progressive model.
Let me be clear: we owe this generation more than we can express for getting thing going. I am not critiquing them any more than I critique my own generation. Rome was not built in a day, and repairing the ruins of classical education will be a multi-generational process.
That said, these efforts will need to sort through and push past progressive hangovers. Of these, the structure of the school day could use radical reform.
The School Day
Consider these examples from the past.
John Calvin’s school in Geneva, where psalm-singing took an hour each day.
The historical fact that different classes received different levels of instruction.
This letter from Martin Luther, where he lays out a robust educational plan intended for 2-3 hours a day, so that children could spend the rest of the day learning the family business.
The one-room schoolhouse, where multiple grades operate in one room.
The long-standing tradition, which still exists to varying degrees, of private tutors.
The extensive debates in early American literature about the ideal education for a democratic republic. Some advocate a uniform education, some a graduated education where elites (whether by birth or by intellectual ability) receive a higher education. This assumes that the representatives are a new kind of “elite” class. Likewise, some wish to retain a true liberal arts education, while some prefer a more pragmatic education. In many ways, progressive education has followed the “democratic” to the detriment of the “republic.”
C.S. Lewis’ education, which involved formal schooling and private tutelage before his time at Magdalen College.
At the risk of generalization, progressive education assumes that the same education is fit for all. It is a leveler which, unfortunately, tends toward the lowest common denominator. Democracy politically and economically has its strengths, but cultural and educational democracy creates problems. In other words, western Christian paideia is not democratic. It prefers the inequality which lifts up an Augustine, Aquinas, Vivaldi, Dante, or Rembrandt above his peers and allows them to speak for the culture. It declares that all mean are equal in the sight of God and in the eyes of the law… but are unequal in their strengths and weaknesses.
The examples above demonstrate the varied educational models which existed at different times. These stand in contrast to the standard school day, where students go from class to class in a block schedule. Apart from elective classes, the standard schedule limits the freedom of educators to draw out the student’s strengths and target weaknesses. Despite aphorisms of “teach to the top third,” the class does not move at the top third’s pace. The top third are frequently bored, the bottom third are overwhelmed, and the middle third are somewhere in between, depending on the day.
I am also struck by Luther’s educational plan (see point 2), where a sufficient liberal arts instruction in Greek and Latin takes up about two hours a day. Contrast this with all the teachers (myself included) who complain that there isn’t enough time in the eight-hour day for all they “need” to get done. It may be that Luther’s goal is unrealistic. It may be that our schools are not using the time as we could. Or that stretching school over seven hours exhausts the mind.
The standard school structure also applies the principle of equivalence to boys and girls. Men and women are made differently. It follows, then, that cultivating masculinity and femininity involve separate educations.
Looking Forward
Classical educators are already experimenting with new structures for the school day: there exist already classical co-ops, in person or online, university-model schools, Charlotte Mason schools, single-sex schools or classrooms, forest schools, and go-live-on-a-farm schools. Each experiment represent an attempt to tailor education to specific needs of specific individuals. To different degrees, these schools break from the standard model of 5-day, 7-8 hour days, co-ed, uniform education. In one sense, tailoring education to individual needs is a very progressive idea. However, what the classical tradition knows, which progressives lost, is that many of the individual’s needs are met by tradition and the liberal arts.
As private education gains favor in the public eye, classical educators have great opportunities to push further. A key principle here is diversity. No one model should be standard. Five 7-8 hours days a week provides a structure and consistency which are, for many, precisely what is needed, and is an easier way to provide education for all. However, this should be e pluribus unum when it comes to stewarding time in education.
