What do you feel are the essential elements of a classical education?

[MeaganS]

I have not read the original writing of SWB when she suggests this and the author does not source that statement, but has anyone else read of SWB calling her method neoclassical?

 

I don't know if she does in her book, but I know that she refers to the type of education she's suggesting as "neoclassical" in her lecture "The Joy of Classical Education."

 

And I just want to say this thread has been fascinating for me. Thank you all!

[8filltheheart]

The trouble is the quote has it wrong. Many streams of Christianity teach that man was "perfect" before he gained the capacity to distinguish good from evil (as God can), that the acquisition of moral capacity was a "theft" gained by an act of disobedience, and "fall" into sin (Augustine was no help here).

 

Gaining capacity to reason is not (in the main) seen as cause of celebration in Christian thought but as a source of evil and death. There are—of course—more sophisticated interpretations, but this one is mainstream. And no amount of reason or ethical behavior in life is seen as good enough to overcome man's "sin nature," that can only be washed away by the faith in believing in a man-god.

 

Further, when intellectual inquiry starts with a fixed answer and works backwards to make an apology or defense for that answer it is a very different thing that having free inquiry of reason. I don't see how you should be troubled by that plain-fact. It doesn't matter which sort of ideology engages in this sort of backwards justifications—because atheistic ideologies like Communism and Objectivism can do the same thing—you no longer have free inquiry, just a "defense of the faith," and that is not what is at the essence of Classical thought.

 

Bill

 

I'm not sure I follow your post and I don't have time to spend analyzing it thoroughly. I'm not sure how free-will equates in your description. Since man has free-will and is born w/the ability to accept or reject revelation individually, reason is fully a part of faith (or should be......w/mentally impaired individuals, I can accept the argument that it may not be.) W/o free-will than what I understand you to mean does make sense. But free-will leads forward to faith, not backward to acceptance.

 

I don't want to bring this to a theological debate for numerous reasons.

 

So let's leave religion completely out of the definition. What is the definition of classical education? Do you accept EM's definition?

[Spy Car]

I'm not sure I follow your post and I don't have time to spend analyzing it thoroughly. I'm not sure how free-will equates in your description. Since man has free-will and is born w/the ability to accept or reject revelation individually, reason is fully a part of faith (or should be......w/mentally impaired individuals, I can accept the argument that it may not be.) W/o free-will than what I understand you to mean does make sense. But free-will leads forward to faith, not backward to acceptance.

 

I don't want to bring this to a theological debate for numerous reasons.

 

 

Man, according to the story in Genesis, was not created with the capacity to distinguish between "good and evil." One can not "reason" without this capacity. This was a capacity, according to the story, that was gained though an act of disobedience. And was an action that is depicted negatively in Christian thought. As a Fall, as (in many traditions) Original Sin.

 

I'm happy to move beyond a theological debate, but I did not want to leave you failing to understand my post.

 

Bill

Edited November 18, 2011 by Spy Car

[serendipitous journey]

 

 

Please don't think I am making that a personal commentary!! I argued upside down/backwards until I was blue in the face that the "goals" of classical education could be achieved w/o Latin. I now believe that I was wrong.......not b/c my kids couldn't become well-educated and critical thinkers w/o Latin, but b/c it is a different education than classical.

 

 

 

... well, that does make sense; and fits well with Ester Maria and others have pointed out. Thank you!

 

I have bitten off more than I can chew here :blushing: ! There's a nugget of question/interest that I have, and have been trying to articulate to myself for a while, that I'm not able to communicate well. You are prob. right that I'll grow into it :)

[ElizaG]

Man, according to the story in Genesis, was not created with the capacity to distinguish between "good and evil." One can not "reason" without this capacity. This was capacity, according to the story, that was gained though an act of disobedience. And was an action that is depicted negatively in Christian thought. As a Fall, as (in many traditions) Original Sin.

I think you're misrepresenting the Christian teaching (at least, as Catholics understand it). But we've had this discussion before. And I still don't have the time or inclination to get into it. :tongue_smilie:

 

More to the point, if you discard all the forms of "classical education" that have been preserved and passed along by Christians, then you're left with.... :confused: IDK, but it would have to be something very different from what Ester Maria and Tim O'Reilly are talking about. Neither of them is a practicing Christian AFAIK, and the schools they've attended are largely secularized, but it would be unrealistic to deny that the educational methods they've encountered had substantial roots in the Catholic tradition (with adaptations from Protestantism, in the case of Harvard).

 

Anyway, I'd also be interested in seeing an answer to this:

 

So let's leave religion completely out of the definition. What is the definition of classical education? Do you accept EM's definition?

Edited November 18, 2011 by Eleanor

[Spy Car]

 

More to the point, if you discard all the forms of "classical education" that have been preserved and passed along by Christians, then you're left with.... :confused: IDK, but it would have to be something very different from what Ester Maria and Tim O'Reilly are talking about. Neither of them is a practicing Christian AFAIK, and the schools they've attended are largely secularized, but it would be unrealistic to deny that the educational methods they've encountered had substantial roots in the Catholic tradition (with adaptations from Protestantism, in the case of Harvard).

 

Anyway, I'd also be interested in seeing an answer to this:

 

Who said discard them? Very clearly the model of education from Augustine onwards that had a profound influence on the West (in particular) and is a legitimate tradition historically rooted in Roman Catholicism. No argument there.

 

If people don't like the term Medieval or neo-Medieval Education I could go for Scholasticism or neo-Scholasticism, if anyone prefers these terms. It is just very clear that the addition of theological assumptions as a priori truth makes the post-Augustinian version of intellectual inquiry and education very different than that of Classical Education, while retaining some elements of the pagan-era methods upon which the great intellectual figures of Catholicism added their own innovations with the aim of defending the faith.

 

Bill

Edited November 18, 2011 by Spy Car

[8filltheheart]

I think you're misrepresenting the Christian teaching (at least, as Catholics understand it). But we've had this discussion before. And I still don't have the time or inclination to get into it. :tongue_smilie:

:

 

:iagree: That does not represent my beliefs either, but that is strictly a theological discussion and I refuse to discuss theology on this forum.

 

Who said discard them? Very clearly the model of education from Augustine onwards that had a profound influence on the West (in particular) and is a legitimate tradition historically rooted in Roman Catholicism. No argument there.

 

If people don't like the term Medieval or neo-Medieval Education I could go for Scholasticism or neo-Scholasticism, if anyone prefers these terms. It is just very clear that the addition of theological assumptions as a priori truth makes the post-Augustinian version of intellectual inquiry and education very different than that of Classical Education, while retaining some elements of the pagan-era methods upon which the great intellectual figures of Catholicism added their own innovations with the aim of defending the faith.

 

Bill

 

According to this definition, I am assuming that classical students receiving such an education would be defined in (to use a word EM uses) promilles.

 

Based on the liberal arts/classical educators population at large, that definition would be most likely rejected as would the neo-classical definition and EM's definition would be far more representative of what is educationally understood to mean "classical education."

[ElizaG]

Just wanted to add -- speaking of Harvard -- anyone interested in the history of classical education in the US might enjoy The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century by Perry Miller.

 

(Though the vast majority of posters have doubtless read it already, since it's listed in TWEM. :D )