Op-Ed piece on decline in teaching the Classics, and "schooling" vs. education

[Lori D.]

In case it is of interest to anyone, here's a recent Washington Post op-ed piece by Cornel West, who defends Western classics as he condemns Howard University’s decision to abolish teaching the Western Canon:

“Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.
 

Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
 

Yet today, one of America’s greatest Black institutions, Howard University, is diminishing the light of wisdom and truth that inspired Douglass, King and countless other freedom fighters. Amid a move for educational “prioritization,” Howard University is dissolving its classics department. Tenured faculty will be dispersed to other departments, where their courses can still be taught. But the university has sent a disturbing message by abolishing the department.
 

Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture. Those who commit this terrible act treat Western civilization as either irrelevant and not worthy of prioritization or as harmful and worthy only of condemnation.
 

Sadly, in our culture’s conception, the crimes of the West have become so central that it’s hard to keep track of the best of the West. We must be vigilant and draw the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other. The crimes spring from certain philosophies and certain aspects of the civilization, not all of them.
 

The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world. We should never cancel voices in this conversation, whether that voice is Homer or students at Howard University. For this is no ordinary discussion.
 

The Western canon is an extended dialogue among the crème de la crème of our civilization about the most fundamental questions. It is about asking “What kind of creatures are we?” no matter what context we find ourselves in. It is about living more intensely, more critically, more compassionately. It is about learning to attend to the things that matter and turning our attention away from what is superficial.
 

Howard University is not removing its classics department in isolation. This is the result of a massive failure across the nation in “schooling,” which is now nothing more than the acquisition of skills, the acquisition of labels and the acquisition of jargon. Schooling is not education. Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.
 

The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education. To end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage, vision and civic virtue.
 

Students must be challenged: Can they face texts from the greatest thinkers that force them to radically call into question their presuppositions? Can they come to terms with the antecedent conditions and circumstances they live in but didn’t create? Can they confront the fact that human existence is not easily divided into good and evil, but filled with complexity, nuance and ambiguity?
 

This classical approach is united to the Black experience. It recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of Black people, which is to lift every voice. That means to find your voice, not an echo or an imitation of others. But you can’t find your voice without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages.
 

As German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer emphasized in the past century, traditions are inescapable and unavoidable. It is a question not of whether you are going to work in a tradition, but which one. Even the choice of no tradition leaves people ignorantly beholden within a language they didn’t create and frameworks they don’t understand.
 

Engaging with the classics and with our civilizational heritage is the means to finding our true voice. It is how we become our full selves, spiritually free and morally great.”

[Sneezyone]

They're removing the major as a separate department, not the books and not the discussion of them, because they don't have enough students who want to choose that as a major. Cornel West is, as usual, hyperventilating over BUSINESS decisions, not academic or instructional ones. One doesn't need a whole department to read Socrates. We read it as part of my Public Administration major too.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Sneezyone

[Lori D.]

1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:

They're removing the major as a separate department, not the books and not the discussion of them, because they don't have enough students who want to choose that as a major. Cornel West is, as usual, hyperventilating over BUSINESS decisions, not academic or instructional ones. One doesn't need a whole department to read Socrates. We read it as part of my Public Administration major too.

I get what you're saying, but I don't see it really happening that way in real life, at least in my part of the country (yours may be different).

How long ago did you do your Public Admin. major? And does your alma mater still include reading/discussing classics as part of the Public Admin. degree? Because college catalogs change requirements pretty regularly -- usually every 2-4 years. So in as little time as just a decade, it's easy for what was once a standard to be completely gone, in favor of the "goal du jour."

More typically, what I've been seeing in schools at all levels (elementary / secondary / collegiate) is that once a school system starts cutting and/or shuffling, a subject area drops as a priority or goal. Which then later on is easier to drop entirely when those professors retire, or when there are further budget restraints.

Local to me real example: due to financial pressures starting 25 years ago and over a span of about 10 years, Music & Art in the elementary and middle public schools were dropped from a regular in-the-school program... to a once/week exposure class from a teacher who traveled around to multiple schools... to Music & Art just available at a few schools... to dropped entirely. Neither Music nor Art has come back to the elementary/middle school public schools in my area. Once they were out of the budget, they were "out of sight, out of mind." The new goal of "teach to the test" took the place of the old goal of exposure to the Fine Arts. Now if you want your student to have exposure to the arts, it's out of your own time / pocket / ability to set that up. That works for most homeschoolers -- but not so much for the many public school families in my area who are barely scraping by.

So, I disagree with you. When a college commits to having a whole degree program devoted to the Humanities or the Classics, it is a statement about what is an important overall goal to the college -- that the college is not just about providing degrees for getting jobs, but that the college is also committed to the importance of including studies about the whole human. Once a college lets go of devoting a department/degree program to that goal, and letting the individual books & discussions get "parted out" into the occasional class, it's easy for that goal to just completely slip away.

Edited October 24, 2021 by Lori D.

[Sneezyone]

2 hours ago, Lori D. said:

I get what you're saying, but I don't see it really happening that way in real life, at least in my part of the country (yours may be different).

How long ago did you do your Public Admin. major? And does your alma mater still include reading/discussing classics as part of the Public Admin. degree? Because college catalogs change requirements pretty regularly -- usually every 2-4 years. So in as little time as just a decade, it's easy for what was once a standard to be completely gone, in favor of the "goal du jour."

More typically, what I've been seeing in schools at all levels (elementary / secondary / collegiate) is that once a school system starts cutting and/or shuffling, a subject area drops as a priority or goal. Which then later on is easier to drop entirely when those professors retire, or when there are further budget restraints.

Local to me real example: due to financial pressures starting 25 years ago and over a span of about 10 years, Music & Art in the elementary and middle public schools were dropped from a regular in-the-school program... to a once/week exposure class from a teacher who traveled around to multiple schools... to Music & Art just available at a few schools... to dropped entirely. Neither Music nor Art has come back to the elementary/middle school public schools in my area. Once they were out of the budget, they were "out of sight, out of mind." The new goal of "teach to the test" took the place of the old goal of exposure to the Fine Arts. Now if you want your student to have exposure to the arts, it's out of your own time / pocket / ability to set that up. That works for most homeschoolers -- but not so much for the many public school families in my area who are barely scraping by.

So, I disagree with you. When a college commits to having a whole degree program devoted to the Humanities or the Classics, it is a statement about what is an important overall goal to the college -- that the college is not just about providing degrees for getting jobs, but that the college is also committed to the importance of including studies about the whole human. Once a college lets go of devoting a department/degree program to that goal, and letting the individual books & discussions get "parted out" into the occasional class, it's easy for that goal to just completely slip away.

In our area, art and music (chorus, orchestra, and band) are present in all elementary, middle and high schools. My degree was in 1998 but Socrates is still covered, yes, as are a variety of other works that led to the enlightenment and Protestant revolution. If they informed our founding documents, they’re studied. Maintaining a whole department when there simply isn’t the demand for that level of staffing is wasteful. Every school doesn’t need an entire department for classics anymore than every school needs a theatre department. Howard, literally, added that back in the last year or two b/c demand. Are the arts undervalued in some places, sure. Are students being systematically denied access to the federalist papers and Shakespeare? no.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Sneezyone

[bookbard]

We have art and music classes in every (k-6) school, but presented by the class teacher, not a specialist. If you want proper music or art classes, you can pay for after school classes. There's barely a single public school teaching Latin or Greek - maybe a few of the exam-entry selective schools would teach it. I doubt there'd be a university in Australia with a distinct classics department - it's all in with ancient history and archaeology. I don't think there'll ever be a huge renewal of classics, honestly. I feel like we have so many more sources of knowledge now that just Roman and Greek philosophers, in a way that our forebears did not. Not only do we have philosophical traditions from lots of different cultures, but we also have social sciences such as psychology and anthropology so we can actually test out ideas about humans work, rather than just pondering them. 

There was a huge debate about "western civilisation" in Sydney, with a conservative society trying to pay a university to set up a special "western civilisation" degree - but it ended up being caught up in politics, racism, all sorts things, and it wasn't about opening minds up, but turning them to a particular bent. It all fell apart, as I recall, messily. 

[kiwik]

There is a chicken and egg argument.  NZ is phasing out Latin in its national exams because not enough people are taking it.  None of the schools in my area offer it and my high school didn't 40 years ago so people couldn't take it.  So it isn't available because it couldn't be taken because it wasn't offered.  Maybe before that it wasn't offered because it wasn't taken but maybe it wasn't taken because people were encouraged to take other subjects   My son chose classics as an elective next year but there weren't enough takers.  Now he will be doing his first year exams without a social science/arts time paper.  So the year after it will be harder to correct that.  If I had thought classics would be cancelled I would have made him out history or geography as his reserve paper not art design.

[Earthmerlin]

I agree with Lori. Too much is cut from schools & hands-on parents are left to fill gaps. I am a PS teacher of over 20 years (in many states) & I’ve seen the same thing throughout. Learning for learning’s sake seems a relic for most students today. I believe there’s an imbalance of skills and knowledge with the former heavily stressed over the latter. Too narrow a focus in education leads to narrow-minded students. 
 

[JD1]

Did West actually write this, or did Victor Davis Hanson?!  I'm usually on the opposite side of West's views, but this statement from the op-ed sums it up for me: 

"The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education."

Howard as a private institution certainly has the freedom to make its own decisions, but West is articulate in his observations of a general malaise that is poisoning souls of our education institutions.

Decades ago I had a similar experience at Lousiana Tech U in Ruston, La. After reading the course catalog I was excited to take some courses in Philosophy, but after signing up each quarter, I was crestfallen to learn that the classes were mysteriously and repeatedly cancelled. Disappointed, after inquiring into the situation it was revealed that the only philosophy professor had been terminated 4-5 years prior!

 

[Sneezyone]

On 10/25/2021 at 5:22 PM, bookbard said:

We have art and music classes in every (k-6) school, but presented by the class teacher, not a specialist. If you want proper music or art classes, you can pay for after school classes. There's barely a single public school teaching Latin or Greek - maybe a few of the exam-entry selective schools would teach it. I doubt there'd be a university in Australia with a distinct classics department - it's all in with ancient history and archaeology. I don't think there'll ever be a huge renewal of classics, honestly. I feel like we have so many more sources of knowledge now that just Roman and Greek philosophers, in a way that our forebears did not. Not only do we have philosophical traditions from lots of different cultures, but we also have social sciences such as psychology and anthropology so we can actually test out ideas about humans work, rather than just pondering them. 

There was a huge debate about "western civilisation" in Sydney, with a conservative society trying to pay a university to set up a special "western civilisation" degree - but it ended up being caught up in politics, racism, all sorts things, and it wasn't about opening minds up, but turning them to a particular bent. It all fell apart, as I recall, messily. 

We still have specialists in our local schools but I know other states’ priorities are different. DS is taking Latin in PS now and it’s offered throughout the district in every high school. 🤷🏽‍♀️ Local schools, local priorities.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Sneezyone

[bookbard]

3 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

We still have specialists in our local schools but I know other state’s priorities are different. DS is taking Latin in PS now and it’s offered throughout the district in every high school. 🤷🏽‍♀️ Local schools, local priorities.

Yeah, I mean you've got more people in the USA, which makes a big difference! Also apparently we spend less on public education than the USA. But even if that changes, Latin would not be a priority. I doubt they'd be able to find the teachers, for one thing. 

[Sneezyone]

1 hour ago, bookbard said:

Yeah, I mean you've got more people in the USA, which makes a big difference! Also apparently we spend less on public education than the USA. But even if that changes, Latin would not be a priority. I doubt they'd be able to find the teachers, for one thing. 

True. We have the people because it’s been offered and taught, locally, for so long. It’s also about geographic/residential selection tho.
 

At the K-12 level, we have wide swaths of the country that pay lip service to education and ostensibly support the Western Cannon (TM) yet wouldn’t dream of funding the teaching of it in its fullness. In that sense, I agree with Dr. West. Learning the whole thing imparts a certain revolutionary fervor that’s not contemplated by its proponents.
 

At the higher ed level, if you want to study the classics, you have multiple places to study where those things are prioritized. Every school doesn’t offer every major. It’s a complete mixed bag. Students only have so much time and money to spend on a degree so deemphasizing ‘the classics’ means making room for/amplifying something else. Locally, a gubernatorial candidate is emphasizing the complaint of a parent/child that the reading of ‘Beloved’ in AP Lit. is problematic. I don’t think Mr. West would agree with that stance but his screeds about strategic business decisions in higher Ed are validating in the minds of many.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Sneezyone

[Dmmetler]

On 10/24/2021 at 7:46 PM, Sneezyone said:

In our area, art and music (chorus, orchestra, and band) are present in all elementary, middle and high schools. My degree was in 1998 but Socrates is still covered, yes, as are a variety of other works that led to the enlightenment and Protestant revolution. If they informed our founding documents, they’re studied. Maintaining a whole department when there simply isn’t the demand for that level of staffing is wasteful. Every school doesn’t need an entire department for classics anymore than every school needs a theatre department. Howard, literally, added that back in the last year or two b/c demand. Are the arts undervalued in some places, sure. Are students being systematically denied access to the federalist papers and Shakespeare? no.

I am in one of the cities considered top in the USA for music Ed. During even the time I was teaching as a music specialist, the average elementary music teacher went from being expected to teach 20 sections/week, plus an ensemble (which means 5 one hour classes a day) and most schools had 1 1/2 or two music teachers. By the time I left, 17 years ago, they had gone to one teacher per school, and fit them in as you can. So, that meant a lot of classes either got music for half a year, got it on a 10 day rotation, were doubled up so you taught 60+ kids at a time, or got shorter sections. Which, in turn, affected teacher planning time. Most schools lost ensembles because teachers simply did not have time to teach them. I was fortunate to win a grant that covered a band program for ONE year, including instruments, materials, and funded a general music teacher for 10 hours/week of teaching time -but after that year, I had instruments, but no time in my schedule to teach, because I had to cover all the classes at my school, but ideally also keep band going. For awhile,I was teaching band at 7:00 in the morning and teaching choir and guitar after school, on top of teaching 36 music sections. My kids weren't going to get music outside of school except for maybe a church choir, so I felt I was needed, but I was literally working the equivalent of a job and a half for a single salary. 

 

This is the main reason I haven't returned to teaching K-6 music since having children. I could give extra time to try to give my students what they needed when I was a married adult with a husband who worked long hours anyway. I couldn't do that and be a good parent. And now that I no longer have kids at home, I can't imagine being able to handle the same things I managed in my 20's in my 50's. 

 

 

[Kassia]

On 10/26/2021 at 5:55 AM, Earthmerlin said:

I agree with Lori. Too much is cut from schools & hands-on parents are left to fill gaps. I am a PS teacher of over 20 years (in many states) & I’ve seen the same thing throughout. Learning for learning’s sake seems a relic for most students today. I believe there’s an imbalance of skills and knowledge with the former heavily stressed over the latter. Too narrow a focus in education leads to narrow-minded students. 
 

We've found that the curriculum has become very narrow due to high-stakes testing.  If it's not tested, it doesn't get taught.  Art, music, PE, home economics have all been sacrificed for the subjects that are tested.  And even in those subjects the focus is on the topics that will be tested.  It's very sad.  

[Sneezyone]

2 hours ago, Dmmetler said:

I am in one of the cities considered top in the USA for music Ed. During even the time I was teaching as a music specialist, the average elementary music teacher went from being expected to teach 20 sections/week, plus an ensemble (which means 5 one hour classes a day) and most schools had 1 1/2 or two music teachers. By the time I left, 17 years ago, they had gone to one teacher per school, and fit them in as you can. So, that meant a lot of classes either got music for half a year, got it on a 10 day rotation, were doubled up so you taught 60+ kids at a time, or got shorter sections. Which, in turn, affected teacher planning time. Most schools lost ensembles because teachers simply did not have time to teach them. I was fortunate to win a grant that covered a band program for ONE year, including instruments, materials, and funded a general music teacher for 10 hours/week of teaching time -but after that year, I had instruments, but no time in my schedule to teach, because I had to cover all the classes at my school, but ideally also keep band going. For awhile,I was teaching band at 7:00 in the morning and teaching choir and guitar after school, on top of teaching 36 music sections. My kids weren't going to get music outside of school except for maybe a church choir, so I felt I was needed, but I was literally working the equivalent of a job and a half for a single salary. 

 

This is the main reason I haven't returned to teaching K-6 music since having children. I could give extra time to try to give my students what they needed when I was a married adult with a husband who worked long hours anyway. I couldn't do that and be a good parent. And now that I no longer have kids at home, I can't imagine being able to handle the same things I managed in my 20's in my 50's. 

 

 

That’s no good. 😞 Our district does all school chorus for elementary and strings starting in 5th with band beginning in 6th. All fifth grades learn with recorders. I think there are two teachers? DS was only there half a year. Every high school (there are six or seven) has a big marching band and they all sound really good. Some are heavily influenced by the style of music/performances at our local HBCUs. Judging by this, albeit old, we are probably outliers. https://www.namm.org/news/press-releases/nationwide-survey-finds-best-communities-music-edu

Edited October 29, 2021 by Sneezyone

[Dmmetler]

The big problem is that good music programs cost money. You can't easily do band in a school where parents cannot afford instruments and even if you can get a big grant to cover them, like the VH1 grant, you run into trouble if the district cannot afford to pay a teacher and ongoing maintenance. 

 

Even recorder becomes an issue if the school can't afford to pay for them for every kid and parents can't, either. It becomes a "haves and have nots" thing. I LOVE the Nuvo instruments as a bridge to band, but ultimately, the only way they work is if the school can spend about $150 for each student in a given grade level so each can be issued an instrument for the school year, and then all cleaning and disinfecting happens over the summer-or if parents can. And if I, as a music teacher, had enough money to spend $150 on each of my 5th graders, I'm going to buy Orff instruments and percussion, which can then be used by ALL of my students. 

 

 

[kiwik]

Primary schools here don't have music and art the way you are thinking of.  Each class has one teacher who teaches all subjects.  Often they join to together or switch round to use each teachers skills better. But kids get art,music and PE without specialists or much investment.  Actual lessons though are generally funded by parents or charity.  In the 70's we did singing with a radio programme on speakers and whatever are or craft the teacher was interested in.  One year we did pottery and built a wood fired kiln.  I also remember to soap carving, lino blocks and printing, painting, flax weaving, weaving and embroidery.