Features of a Classical Education

[Kfamily]

I like the new updated look for Circe Institute:

 

http://www.circeinstitute.org/

 

I would love to share ideas and thoughts about this article and the four common features of a classical education:

 

http://www.circeinst...sical-education

 

 

Here are the four ideas:

 

the use of classical books and art,

a general preference for great art, music, and literature,

an integrated curriculum,

and idea-focused teaching

 

 

I feel like I include some of these features (and some need more attention than others) but that I need to work on the last two in particular. An integrated curriculum and idea-focused teaching are both aspects to which I've been paying more attention, but that definitely need more work. :)

 

What do you think it means to have an integrated curriculum in classical education? Does this just include integrating the humanities or does this include math, science and all subjects? For those of you who integrate at this level, how do you do this?

 

For those of you who have mastered idea-focused teaching, what resources did you use to accomplish this?

 

I have the following resources that I've been using to improve this area:

Adler's books (How to Read a Book and The Great Ideas)

WEM

links from 8FillTheHeart on Bloom's taxonomy and Jesuit teaching principles

videos from Circe

Memoria Press articles

 

I'm wondering what else I could use? Or maybe I should just stay focused on what I have for now?

I'm not leaving the ideas and methods that I love from CM behind, but I am trying to expand what I know to push myself as a teacher. I hope this makes sense. :)

If anyone would like to share some thoughts or suggestions, I would love to read them.

[ladydusk]

Subbing.

 

I think Cindy Rollins who writes the Ordo Amoris blog has had influence on Kern's thinking. She is very CM, so I definitely dont think you have to leave CM at all to benefit from CiRCE.

[Kfamily]

Subbing.

 

I think Cindy Rollins who writes the Ordo Amoris blog has had influence on Kern's thinking. She is very CM, so I definitely dont think you have to leave CM at all to benefit from CiRCE.

 

I like her blog too. I sometimes forget to keep up with it, but I enjoy reading her thoughts and ideas very much!

 

Yes, lol, I like to think that we are CM but with classical expansions. I think that CM incorporated many classical features in her curriculum and methods. Since the thoughts and explanations of methods for teaching upper school students are so hard to find for CM, I tend to think that using classical ideas are where I must go to become a great upper school teacher. But, I've realized that as I improve in this area for my older dd I'm also improve as a teacher for my younger dd.

[OrdinaryTime]

Those for points seem to better describe a liberal arts education than a strictly classical education, but I still like them!

[NASDAQ]

I would say that a classical education works towards mastery of Latin and some facility in Greek.

 

I am not fond of the definition given. I think it's too broad. Classical books and art -- you mean books and art from the classic Greek and Roman period? How much do we use them? All people want to focus on art and music that they would consider great. "Integrated curriculum" does not seem to be a feature of a classiccal education. And I'm not sure what idea-focused teaching is.

[serendipitous journey]

Just a thought: for a traditional, formal, and -- it is fair to say -- pretty strict idea of what Classical ed entails, search for posts by Ester Maria. She no longer posts here, though.

[Kfamily]

Just a thought: for a traditional, formal, and -- it is fair to say -- pretty strict idea of what Classical ed entails, search for posts by Ester Maria. She no longer posts here, though.

 

Yes, I'm so sorry that Ester Maria no longer posts here. I had always enjoyed reading her posts, and I still have many of them saved.

[momma2three]

What does "idea-focused teaching" mean? I'm trying to think of the alternative... practical teaching? I'd like to think that a Classical education provides that too.

 

I'll second what NASDAQ says, and also add the following thoughts.

 

I think #2 is a bit back-patting... I'd think that all types of education emphasize "great art, literature, and music." It's just that different people have different opinions about what makes something "great."

 

I don't really think of the neoclassical education style as being particularly integrated. There's some push to combine history and literature, but honestly a lot of that seems somewhat contrived and awkward, and if you stuck religiously to it you'd miss the vast majority of wonderful children's literature. Most people on this forum pick different curricula for different subjects: sometimes wildly different teaching styles and publishers. In working with various different types of homeschoolers over the year, the ones who consider themselves classical tend, ime, to have the least integrated programs. The families I've met who do very serious, parent-intensive unit study units seem to have that market cornered!

[ElizaG]

If I've learned anything definite from the time I've spent reading CiRCE's web site, it's that Andrew Kern likes making lists. ;)

[Kfamily]

What does "idea-focused teaching" mean?

 

I was thinking that this meant a curriculum that keeps the great ideas such as beauty, truth, goodness, etc. at the heart of the lessons. But, again, this is an area where I'm still working and learning, so I'm hoping to get more feedback about this particular feature.

 

 

 

I don't really think of the neoclassical education style as being particularly integrated.

 

I'm hoping to not stay too focused on a neoclassical style (as far as our personal homeschool is concerned)...and yes, I would agree that neoclassical is not particularly integrated. I'd love to offer my dds a more integrated approach to science and math. We already have an integrated approach to the humanities side. This is why I was wondering what others thought about this. When Circe refers to an integrated curriculum, do they mean all subjects or are they meaning just the humanities?

 

There's some push to combine history and literature, but honestly a lot of that seems somewhat contrived and awkward, and if you stuck religiously to it you'd miss the vast majority of wonderful children's literature.

 

I completely agree, and while we do combine some history and literature, we usually focus more on literature as a separate set of books. I like to have history include spine(s) and some well-chosen biographies or one or two well-written historicial fictions along with primary sources and other media sources.

 

[serendipitous journey]

Just another thought (sorry these comments are so short and ill-formed -- our household is running on fumes at the moment, and needs attention from me): from a Classical classical perspective, and not a Circe one necessarily -- I'm thinking of the Classical Greek culture here -- math is naturally integrated with art & music. Science rather less so, from my reading; the Greeks actually had a thing about keeping their best maths pure and unsullied by actual measurements.

 

Geometry is an example here, both a case in point and an exception. The roots of geometry are very practical -- measure areas and boundaries of land parcels, build stuff that looks good AND doesn't fall over -- but esp. with the Pythagoreans you see a concept of mathematical purity develop that is divorced from practicality. This theoretical focus, some say, kept the Greeks from embracing concepts of "0" and infinity and, perhaps, developing the calculus centuries earlier than it happened ...

 

At any rate: it does seem telling that math & science didn't make it onto the OP. Yes? What is your ideal role for them in a Circe-centered/inspired education? Given your list, I wouldn't stick math onto science and make them the odd couple -- I'd tie math into your history (Bethlehem Books histories, like Archimedes perhaps; when they are logic or rhetoric, histories of numbers like 0 or pi or infinity), art (da Vinci, Michelangelo are obvious starts for this, as well as the beautifully patterned Islamic art and the art & architecture of the Classic civilizations), and music (music theory in addition to practice). Galore Park math materials do, IMHO, a very nice job of bringing historical and human-interest elements into their maths programs; MEP would also be good for this.

 

Science-wise, there is a series of 21 Projects books (da Vinci, Gallileo, &c) that could be useful, they are easiest used for older elementary or middle school children though. For children grade 3 & up Beautiful Feet has a history of science package; you could easily distribute the materials across your history studies, augmenting as you wish.

 

I'd suggest livingmath.net but I am afraid they may not be around any more ...

[Shmead]

What does "idea-focused teaching" mean? I'm trying to think of the alternative... practical teaching? I'd like to think that a Classical education provides that too.

 

I think the opposite of "idea-focused" is "student focused", where you let the students' interests shape the scope and sequence. An idea-focused education is going to prioritize developing a child who knows a great deal about a wide variety of things, from the workings of nature to the foibles of human nature, and can discuss those things comfortably. A child-focused approach is going to prioritize developing a child who has deep self-knowledge, is happy in their own skin, has a life-long passion for learning, and has the tools needed to learn anything they set out to master. All of those are good goals, and I think all educational philosophies hope for all that, but you do have to have priorities.

 

I think #2 is a bit back-patting... I'd think that all types of education emphasize "great art, literature, and music." It's just that different people have different opinions about what makes something "great."

 

Actually, I think there are a lot of educational programs that give very short shrift to any art or music, simply because of time: art and music always seems to come after math, science, all the language arts skills, social studies, etc. A kid that practices piano ten hours a week is "serious" about music: a kid who plays baseball ten hours a week is just a normal kid with a normal team practice schedule. I don't think even classical programs generally emphasize art and music, and I don't think it's a defining feature.

 

I don't really think of the neoclassical education style as being particularly integrated. There's some push to combine history and literature, but honestly a lot of that seems somewhat contrived and awkward, and if you stuck religiously to it you'd miss the vast majority of wonderful children's literature. Most people on this forum pick different curricula for different subjects: sometimes wildly different teaching styles and publishers. In working with various different types of homeschoolers over the year, the ones who consider themselves classical tend, ime, to have the least integrated programs. The families I've met who do very serious, parent-intensive unit study units seem to have that market cornered!

 

 

I completely agree with this. Chasing the unicorn of perfect integration is silly, IMHO: better to let the kids discover connections between things they are studying, and if that means they have to remember back six month ago, that's a feature, not a bug; it helps review and solidify stuff. Furthermore, people always seem to think integration means chronological integration. Connecting themes, ideas, tensions, and conflicts will naturally arise as long as kids are exposed to sophisticated source material.

[Hunter]

My PERSONAL definition of a Classical Education--that I do not expect others to have--is pretty much defined by part 2 of Climbing Parnassus. Latin, Greek, Math, and a smattering of English. I pretty much taught the rest of the subjects as hobbies.

 

When my youngest was planning on a college degree in Classics, I worked backwards from what the colleges were expecting. Latin and Greek and more Latin and Greek. Ummm, did I mention the focus on Latin and Greek? :lol:

 

I like TWTM 1st edition instructions for using trade books as textbooks, but have never followed a neoclassical history/literature cycle. I personally have always been skills first, rather than content focused, no matter what else I was doing.

 

For better and worse, my youngest's education was basically the Robinson Curriculum METHOD using the KJV Bible, several broken but overlapping sets of encyclopedias, library books and DVDs, and the cute bilingual Loeb Classics, instead of the suggested vintage books. And then a whole lot of intensive Latin and Greek and a little Hebrew added to that.

[stm4him]

Hunter, what did you use for Latin and Greek and Hebrew? I'm just curious....So far I love Latin's Not So Tough and Hey Andrew but we are only in book 2 of HA and book 3 of LNST. I haven't found anything for Hebrew that is complete so I'm waiting until they are in high school unless I find a series before that that works for us.

 

I think an ideas-focused education means that you study subjects in order to discuss ideas, rather than as an end in themselves. For example, we read classics in order to discuss ideas like freedom, love, etc. The round table discussion in the style of the Greek philosophers, for example, is the goal. But for Christians it isn't for the sake of figuring out our own truth, but absolute truth.

 

I agree with Hunter that it should have a heavy dose of Latin and Greek (and I would add Hebrew to this as well). My belief in the value of that is placed more recently in history to our church fathers and founding fathers rather than the ancient Greeks and Romans. I figure if the greatest minds in history studied these subjects that it has incredible value and equips one to study the greatest works in civilization for oneself without relying on others to interpret.

 

I think the three concepts most worth focusing on (in the grammar years at least) are memory, imagination, and observation.......

 

More later.....

[ElizaG]

I wish CiRCE would dig more deeply into the work of Marshall McLuhan and his colleagues. A couple of their contributors have touched on it here and there, but haven't gone very far. I'm not sure if this is because it directly challenges the emphasis on "ideas," or just because it's hard to get into without a lot of background reading.

Here are two pages that get at this subject. The first one gives the background for MM's understanding of the trivium, as expressed in his PhD thesis, and it's fairly tough going. (I first learned about this topic during the brief period when my children were in school, and I had uninterrupted time to do a lot of reading and follow up on the references.  I'm not sure that I'd be able to grasp so much of it now.) The second one is simpler, and more obviously related to our own thoughts about classical education, as it was written during the initial hype about the "Great Books Movement" in the mid-20th century. But it might not make much sense without the first one. IDK.

The War Within the Word: McLuhan's History of the Trivium

An Ancient Quarrel in Modern America: Hutchins and Adler -- Sophists, Grammarians, and Dialecticians -- Cicero vs. John Dewey -- South vs. North -- Athens to Chicago


I would love to talk about this -- any way, any time. But with this latest "list" from CiRCE -- added on to much of their other stuff along the same lines -- I'm starting to give up hope that they're open to looking at the subject in a different way.

[ladydusk]

Mars Hill Audio did an interview with a McLuhan biographer in the last couple years. It was very interesting! It didn't go into a lot of detail about education (as I recall, I listened a while ago), but there was some good information about his thought.

[stm4him]

I was contemplating integrated curriculum and I think that just means that the subjects overlap and are regularly shown to be interrelated. Leigh Bortins/Classical Conversations writes a lot about this in the book Classical Education Made Approachable. We live in a universe, not a multiverse, and all things are related rather than being compartmentalized. I find that Latin often ties subjects together, and God is always central in our subjects, tying all things together. There are some subjects that are harder to do this with than others because of my own ignorance, but the more connections we find between subjects the more exciting the learning is for us, in my experience.....

[ElizaG]

PS to my previous post -- I do want to acknowledge that in having Dr. Taylor as a speaker, CiRCE is supporting what John Senior called "poetic knowledge," which I'm pretty sure is in the same ball park as what McLuhan describes as "grammar." It's basically inductive learning. Whether one is learning to "read" a text, or a painting, or someone's face, or the "book of nature," it's all starting through our sensory perceptions, and involves learning the "language" of that particular medium or cultural context.

 

Still, the sense I get from some of their other writers (including, at times, Andrew Kern) is that inductive learning is somehow suspect, and real education is about directly and explicitly teaching ideas (or ideals). A big example, for me, would be the emphasis on "should questions" in the study of literature. Not that these sorts of questions aren't appropriate now and then, but the fixation on them seems very strange. If it comes to that, I'd prefer CM's method of just reading the book and leaving the child to think about it. But it doesn't seem to me that either of these approaches has anything to do with classical education as it's existed through history.

[Kfamily]

I wish CiRCE would dig more deeply into the work of Marshall McLuhan and his colleagues. A couple of their contributors have touched on it here and there, but haven't gone very far. I'm not sure if this is because it directly challenges the emphasis on "ideas," or just because it's hard to get into without a lot of background reading.

 

Here are two pages that get at this subject. The first one gives the background for MM's understanding of the trivium, as expressed in his PhD thesis, and it's fairly tough going. (I first learned about this during the brief period when my children were in school; I'm not sure that I'd be able to grasp so much of it now.) The second one is simpler, and more obviously related to our own thoughts about classical education, as it was written during the initial hype about the "Great Books Movement" in the mid-20th century. But it might not make much sense without the first one. IDK.

 

The War Within the Word: McLuhan's History of the Trivium

 

An Ancient Quarrel in Modern America: Hutchins and Adler -- Sophists, Grammarians, and Dialecticians -- Cicero vs. John Dewey -- South vs. North -- Athens to Chicago

 

 

I would love to talk about this -- any way, any time. But with this latest "list" from CiRCE -- added on to much of their other stuff along the same lines -- I'm starting to give up hope that they're open to looking at the subject in a different way.

 

 

Thanks, I'm going to read these this afternoon. (We're in Okinawa...so it's 10 am on Tuesday here.)

[Jyniffrec]

I wish CiRCE would dig more deeply into the work of Marshall McLuhan and his colleagues. A couple of their contributors have touched on it here and there, but haven't gone very far. I'm not sure if this is because it directly challenges the emphasis on "ideas," or just because it's hard to get into without a lot of background reading.

 

 

An Ancient Quarrel in Modern America: Hutchins and Adler -- Sophists, Grammarians, and Dialecticians -- Cicero vs. John Dewey -- South vs. North -- Athens to Chicago

 

 

I would love to talk about this -- any way, any time. But with this latest "list" from CiRCE -- added on to much of their other stuff along the same lines -- I'm starting to give up hope that they're open to looking at the subject in a different way.

 

The above article is pretty fascinating. I haven't gotten that far into it yet (dh and I may go back and read some more Cicero first) but wanted to post that I'm really glad you put the link up. It touches on some things I have had in the back of my mind for a long, long time.

[8filltheheart]

 

An Ancient Quarrel in Modern America: Hutchins and Adler -- Sophists, Grammarians, and Dialecticians -- Cicero vs. John Dewey -- South vs. North -- Athens to Chicago

 

 

 

I have wanted to join this conversation, but I really don't have the time to devote to it that I would like. After reading the OP's list of 4, I followed the link to the Circe article. My over all impression was bleh......vacuous/vague with little substance or depth, disappointed that this was from Circe.

 

ElizaGrace, I didn't have the time to devote to the first link, but I read the 2nd. I am not familiar with much of the history of what was discussed but found it interesting. My reading on the history is from the Jesuit perspective, St. Ignatius's views, and the Ratio Studiorum. There are thoughts that parallel what was in the article you posted, mainly the discussion around education and the end goals with the Ignatian view summarized briefly as

 

The Ignatian education goal is to have individuals achieve “the ultimate end for which they were created.†It is through the interior mental freedom that the spiritual life begins its fulfillment. Educationally the objective is to enable one to have interior mental freedom from societal humanism with the objective of allowing true freedom of will to live life according to the Way of the Cross.

 

I don't have time right now to expand, but that freedom of interior intellectual freedom and my understanding of the philosophy over all seems to delve into the heart of this paragraph from the article you linked:

 

Education as conceived by the liberal opponents of Hutchins is more concerned with making the individual useful to the state than with making the individual potentially a ruler of himself and of the state. Whereas Hutchins' program would make every citizen a potential ruler, the "liberals" conceive rather of the individual as a technologically functional unit in the state. Meiklejohn employs the analogy of the individual as a note in the musical score of society, whereas Hutchins thinks of each person as a complete musical work. Again, Hutchins adopts the classical view of man as a rational animal and hence a political animal. The state from this point of view is an association of autonomous persons. Opposed to this, a conventional representative of nineteenth-century social thought, such as Dewey or Meiklejohn, regards the collectivity as the basic thing. The individual has no nature which is not conferred on him by the collectivity. Man is not a rational animal.

 

From my perspective, these issues are at the heart of the definition of classical education. How are men trained to think independently? Is the goal the questioning thinking individual or the acceptance of the collective answers? It is not about cyclical history. It is most definitely not about memorizing info in textbooks. It is not about ages/stages. It is about mental training, interior mental freedom, the ability to analyze rhetoric and sift through propaganda, etc. Based on "great thinkers" in history, authentic classical education (trivium and quadrivium) trains the mind toward these objectives.

 

Those goals are definitely not the objectives of modern education geared toward standardized testing output and PC agendas. Independent, non-conformity to "mass thinking" are to be squelched. Pre-digested info that gives students pre-fab answers means that there are only "single answers" to questions and that all questions have been "answered." A loss to the world and humanity is that loss of wonder and deep thinking which has been replaced by worker ants and complete acceptance of whatever is presented as "factual." (ok, that is waxing poetic, but I am in a very cynical mood this morning and that pretty much sums my view.)

[Soror]

A big example, for me, would be the emphasis on "should questions" in the study of literature. Not that these sorts of questions aren't appropriate now and then, but the fixation on them seems very strange. If it comes to that, I'd prefer CM's method of just reading the book and leaving the child to think about it. But it doesn't seem to me that either of these approaches has anything to do with classical education as it's existed through history.

 

As an aside I've been wondering about this specific aspect lately. I've always thought it better to just let children enjoy good literature, especially as they are young. Now I'm wondering if I'm/they're missing out because I'm not asking the "right" questions. My ds, 8.5, absolutely loves Grimm fairytales, he enjoys Anderson and Perrault as well but prefers Grimm. I could see us doing an in-depth study of them in the future, however for now it seems to me that we should just read and enjoy.

[Kfamily]

Those goals are definitely not the objectives of modern education geared toward standardized testing output and PC agendas. Independent, non-conformity to "mass thinking" are to be squelched. Pre-digested info that gives students pre-fab answers means that there are only "single answers" to questions and that all questions have been "answered." A loss to the world and humanity is that loss of wonder and deep thinking which has been replaced by worker ants and complete acceptance of whatever is presented as "factual." (ok, that is waxing poetic, but I am in a very cynical mood this morning and that pretty much sums my view.)

 

 

 

This is the philosophy that I really want to follow, but I'm afraid that I still have so much to learn that I can't seem to find the right paths to get there.

 

If you don't mind, I think that I will just follow your posts (and others here too). And I'll just keep reading and taking notes. :)

[Kfamily]

 

From my perspective, these issues are at the heart of the definition of classical education. How are men trained to think independently? Is the goal the questioning thinking individual or the acceptance of the collective answers? It is not about cyclical history. It is most definitely not about memorizing info in textbooks. It is not about ages/stages. It is about mental training, interior mental freedom, the ability to analyze rhetoric and sift through propaganda, etc. Based on "great thinkers" in history, authentic classical education (trivium and quadrivium) trains the mind toward these objectives.

 

 

 

I really meant to include this part of your post too.

[Soror]

This is the philosophy that I really want to follow, but I'm afraid that I still have so much to learn that I can't seem to find the right paths to get there.

 

If you don't mind, I think that I will just follow your posts (and others here too). And I'll just keep reading and taking notes. :)

 

:iagree:

The more I learn the more I realize I don't know, rather often it seems quite daunting. There are so many things to learn it seems hard to focus at times, as it is I've focused on the basics and trying to keep one step ahead of them.

[Shannon in TN]

 

As an aside I've been wondering about this specific aspect lately. I've always thought it better to just let children enjoy good literature, especially as they are young. Now I'm wondering if I'm/they're missing out because I'm not asking the "right" questions. My ds, 8.5, absolutely loves Grimm fairytales, he enjoys Anderson and Perrault as well but prefers Grimm. I could see us doing an in-depth study of them in the future, however for now it seems to me that we should just read and enjoy.

 

One of the things Kern said in Greenville was that the best way you can destroy a book is to study it and break it down. Not sure where that falls if you're trying to teach analyzing lit.

[momma2three]

One of the things Kern said in Greenville was that the best way you can destroy a book is to study it and break it down. Not sure where that falls if you're trying to teach analyzing lit.

 

Wow, I completely disagree with that, at least for really good, well written books. I think that there are probably plenty of junky reads that fall apart if you think about them too deeply or overly worry about particular scenes or actions. But a really great, well written book will only be enhanced by examining smaller parts and understanding how they relate to the whole.

 

That statement reads like someone who really didn't like high school English class, and didn't understand or pay attention to what the teacher was trying to teach. Don't get me wrong: I thought that plenty of middle and high school English was boring and pointless: but in retrospect, that breaking down and overanalyzing small parts of the book made me an incredibly strong reader.

 

Of course, I think that it would kill the joy of reading to force a child to analyze every single book they read. But selecting several books a year to carefully read and analyze seems like such a basic tradition of nearly all educational styles. Teaching kids and teens to look for important passages and to analyze them and how they relate to the larger whole is an indispensable part of an education, classical or not. Even as an adult I occasionally attend various book groups where having the ability to find devices in particular sections is an important tool when discussing the book.

 

I know that you're not saying a direct quote, and hopefully it's taken out of context, but I'm really shocked that someone who is supposedly trying to sell a "classical" education would even joke about that.

[bpskowski]

From my perspective, these issues are at the heart of the definition of classical education. How are men trained to think independently? Is the goal the questioning thinking individual or the acceptance of the collective answers? It is not about cyclical history. It is most definitely not about memorizing info in textbooks. It is not about ages/stages. It is about mental training, interior mental freedom, the ability to analyze rhetoric and sift through propaganda, etc. Based on "great thinkers" in history, authentic classical education (trivium and quadrivium) trains the mind toward these objectives.

 

 

This is what I'm constantly questioning. Is what am doing helping them to pursue and perceive truth? Am I making them responsible to themselves and to the truth. Truth is within science and math for sure, not just the humanities. I like the ages/stages idea. At this "stage" (for me and mine, it's grammar) how well is truth pursued? It is definitely perceivable on some levels. Therefore trying to train mentally with tools such as memorization are helpful. But I'm constantly questioning the tools. Am I using the right tools, are they working? At this point the goal seems so far away, I am hoping we hit the mark.

 

But I know what I don't want and I see it everywhere (those worker ants!). So I am going down the "path to wisdom, well trodden though overgrown." (Sorry, I forget what book I stole that from - maybe Climbing Parnassus.)

[Soror]

On a related note, here are 2012 Society for Classical Learning recordings, the second listed is :

Andrew Kern: Teaching Literature Without Killing the Book or Student

http://www.societyforclassicallearning.org/index.php/resources/media/20-2012-conference-recordings

[ElizaG]

I'm glad a few people found the second article interesting. I read it through the whole way last night, for the first time in a while, and realized it didn't include some of the history and explanations that I thought it did. Oops. :) To fill in some missing bits:

 

At the time it was written, McLuhan had a lot of hope for the Great Books program in Chicago. Later, though, he began to think that the program wasn't living up to the Ciceronian ideal of eloquence he describes, but that -- due to the influence of Mortimer Adler and all the philosopher friends he'd hired -- it was heavily skewed toward dialectic. He discussed his concerns with Hutchins (who seems to have seen value in what he was saying), and actually put forward a proposal to take over the program himself, though of course it never went through.

 

It's not that McLuhan was against dialectic per se, but he thought it needed to be kept in its proper place, and that it shouldn't be taught to students who lacked the proper formation (fans of John Senior will see a parallel here). In the above article, he suggests that it would make sense for the dialectical model to be dominant in graduate study -- at age 18 or 21 -- *after* the student had been formed along the Ciceronian model, and thus, probably only to a minority of students who choose to keep studying that long. And from what I can tell, this is pretty much the way traditional Jesuit education was structured.

 

ETA: Just noticed a new article, which isn't specifically about education, but does a good job of explaining this understanding of the trivium:

 

Thinking Trivially about Radical Orthodoxy

 

The author, Benjamin Robertson, is a graduate of Wheaton College. I've been following his blog for a while, and I think he understands McLuhan's work much better than a lot of other people who've written about him (including some of his biographers). He also writes clearly, which is a big help. :)

 

"McLuhan often discusses the rhetoricians in conjunction with the grammarians as they had similar concerns with language, the former being focused on speech and the latter on written language. Both schools rejected the dialecticians’ attempt to strip language of its figures of speech and artistic elements to more directly state some abstract truth (184)."

 

"Grammar schooling, from classical Greece even to the Renaissance, entailed the study of literature as a way of knowing and perceiving the world. In the course of education, the student learned to read, speak, and write by reading the classic works of literature; this course of learning was also encyclopedic in that the teacher’s explication of the text covered the whole course of the arts and not strictly literature (31). The grammarian’s commentary on the poet would offer instruction in “agriculture, medicine, architecture, history, rhetoric, logic, music, astronomy, geometry, and the rest,†meaning that education in all subjects was acquired through literary exegesis (31)."

 

"...[F]or the grammarian, nature itself was guided by the Logos and contained a universal grammar or reason (26). This meant that nature itself was a book to be read, a text from God that could be interpreted by much the same process as a work of literature. Central to the grammarians’ task of exegesis was the fourfold interpretation of the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical levels of any given passage or of any given topic in nature. Beyond the application of this method to texts both human and natural, McLuhan also notes other doctrines as central to grammatical thinking: “man is distinguished from the brutes by speech; the secrets of nature need to be approached via language and vice versa; Nature is the font of all arts; and the encyclopedic or liberal arts serve for the exegesis of Nature†(136)."

[ElizaG]

On a different note -- here's an article from 1876.

 

The Classical Education of the Day by T. A. Becker

 

If the author is to be believed, classical education (i.e., the study of Latin and Greek) in the United States was already on the decline in those days, and even in the better schools, it had never come close to typical European standards to begin with. I was both amused and saddened by the mention of "few and rare exceptions, which the writer rather takes for granted through patriotism than knows to exist from experience."

 

He also writes about the useless proliferation of textbooks, the desire for "quick and easy" methods of language learning, the overemphasis on sports in colleges, and the excessive number of colleges with low academic standards. In those areas, it seems that not much has changed. :o

[ladydusk]

Stradford Caldecott who wrote Beauty in the Word and Beauty for Truth's Sake linked today to a new journal which its lead article is about Marshall McLuhan's thoughts on education. I have not read it yet. Still mobile sorry for the crazy post. http://beauty-in-education.blogspot.com/2013/04/mcluhan-and-radical-orthodoxy.html?m=1

[ElizaG]

Stradford Caldecott who wrote Beauty in the Word and Beauty for Truth's Sake linked today to a new journal which its lead article is about Marshall McLuhan's thoughts on education. I have not read it yet. Still mobile sorry for the crazy post. http://beauty-in-edu...hodoxy.html?m=1

That's the one I linked to earlier, "Thinking Trivially about Radical Orthodoxy." :)

 

I hope this means that Stratford Caldecott is going to engage seriously with this way of thinking. He made a brief mention of it in Beauty in the Word, but didn't get into it in a deep way, which I found disappointing. (To me, the whole book was like that... kind of disjointed. Like he'd taken a whole bunch of intriguing ideas he'd come across, and made a salad. ;) )

[Shannon in TN]

 

 

I know that you're not saying a direct quote, and hopefully it's taken out of context, but I'm really shocked that someone who is supposedly trying to sell a "classical" education would even joke about that.

 

 

No, it's not a direct quote, but that was the gist of it. I have a recording of the panel that I attended - I'll have to go back and see what exactly he said. I completely agree with you. There were several books we studied in high school and college that really gave me a better understanding of what I was reading and why. But, then, when I mention to my dd - who LOVES to read - that as we progress through the years, we will be actually analyzing some books, she's so against it. She doesn't want her reading to be work and analyzing the book will "take all the fun out of it."

[ladydusk]

 

That's the one I linked to earlier, "Thinking Trivially about Radical Orthodoxy." :)

 

I hope this means that Stratford Caldecott is going to engage seriously with this way of thinking. He made a brief mention of it in Beauty in the Word, but didn't get into it in a deep way, which I found disappointing. (To me, the whole book was like that... kind of disjointed. Like he'd taken a whole bunch of intriguing ideas he'd come across, and made a salad. ;) )

 

Oops. Obviously I didnt follow your earlier link. :)

 

I havent read Beauty in the Word yet. It sits on my shelf taunting my tired brain.

[ElizaG]

I havent read Beauty in the Word yet. It sits on my shelf taunting my tired brain.

Some of the ideas are heavy, but the book itself is fairly light reading. In particular, the descriptions of educational philosophies and methods (Rousseau, CM, etc.) seem like the sort of thing you might find on a homeschooling blog.

 

I guess I came at the book with mistaken expectations. I was thinking of the author as an expert. But since then, I've realized that he's more of an enthusiast. Like Andrew Kern. :)