Sunday, March 17, 2024

Classical Education, or, the Fearless Pursuit of Which Truths?

The New Yorker has a story this week about "classical education", focusing on middle and high schools, which reminded me that I had something to say about the "classical" curriculum being offered at the new University of Austin. 

In middle and high schools, "classical" education doesn't have much to do with the Greek and Roman classics. Instead it is about a vision of order: uniforms, quiet hallways, classrooms where respectful students memorize poems, diagram sentences, and learn facts about history rather than, I don't know, composing raps about slave revolts. On the one hand this is almost the perfect expression of one of contemporary conservatism's main themes, the fear of disorder; nothing speeds around conservative Twitter/X faster than a story about students assaulting their teacher. But on the other, some schools of this type do very well in poor neighborhoods, because it turns out that what many kids raised in very disorderly environments need is more order.

Besides, I loved memorizing poems, diagramming sentences, and participating in spelling bees.

Of course some of the current interest in education based on old books and old methods is just a reaction to various progressive foibles, and what some parents who send their children to such schools want is for them not to read stories about gay and trans people. But I have been doing my best to ignore that kind of trivia for fifty years now and propose to keep ignoring it, because I find it so peripheral to what education should be about. Education is too important to be left to people who want to fight about Heather's Two Mommies.

When we move to a higher level, whether that is college or the sort of elite prep school where kids really do read the Iliad, there is much more going on. At this level, one goal of a "classical" education is to get students away from their own lives and worlds and induce them to think in a more abstract, generalized way. Once they learn to do that, the theory goes, they can then apply their generalized reasoning skills and broad understanding of themes like justice and liberty to their own situations. There is a great deal of evidence from both the European and Chinese traditions that this can work. We have seen many, many people who were educated by reading 2,000-year-old books and went on to careers as political reformers and even revolutionaries (Jefferson, Robespierre, Talleyrand, Gladstone, Lenin, Yau Lit).

The classical model of education was always opposed, at least in the west (and after 1840 in China) by people who thought it was a gigantic waste of time. Better, the competing theory went, to immerse yourself in actual contemporary problems. This was related to the growing importance of science and engineering, which to many people seemed more useful subjects of study than Plato's ethics.

Which brings me to the University of Austin, a new university that is being opened with the expressed goal of fighting the takeover of American higher education by woke leftists. Their vision of education is "classical" in the sense of trying to get students away from contemporary concerns and toward a higher, more theoretical plane. From their description of the freshman curriculum:

Seminars will examine (among other subjects) the foundations of civilization and political life; the importance of law, virtue, order, beauty, meaningful work and leisure, and the sacred; the unique vibrancy of the American form of government and way of life; and the character and consequences of ideological tyranny. What is knowledge, and how does it differ from wisdom? What does it mean to say that we are modern? What is technology, and what are its intellectual presuppositions, social conditions, benefits, and dangers? Why do we suffer? Does death negate the meaning of life? Works studied will range from Homer, Euclid, Genesis, the Gospel of John, Ibn Tufayl, and Confucius to Descartes, Tocqueville, Orwell, Douglass, and O’Connor.

What I wanted to say when I first read this paragraph is that it is riven with contradictions at the deepest level. Other than being famous, what do these authors have in common? Consider the work from this list I happen to have looked into most recently, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, which translates as something like "Alive, Son of Awake." This medieval Arab work tells the story of a feral boy raised by a gazelle on a desert island, who teaches himself the language of birds and discovers the truths of philosophy by reasoning. In particular, he reasons his way to belief in one supreme god. He also becomes humankind's greatest astrologer, although I got lost in that part and skipped most of it. One might be tempted to call this mysticism, since it implies that an uneducated child, removed from the corruption of society, can work his way to divine understanding more readily than a scholar with a library full of old books. On the other hand, it is full of old philsophical ideas, especially Plato's.

Taken literally, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, is not an argument in favor of "classical" education. It is closer to the opposite, a sort of hippie faith in the innate creativity and goodness of children. It is also ridiculous. One assumes, then, that it is not being taught as a text the students are supposed to believe. 

So why is it being taught? Why are any of these books taught? Once upon a time people said that we assigned them because you needed some familiarity with them to be considered educated, but that is certainly not true now. Is it because they are good texts for introducing students to big ideas? Because the impressive names get students to pay attention in a way that books by Bill Smith and Ralph Jones would not? Because they make for good discussions? 

Do any of them contain some sort of truth that we want students to absorb?

Consider that the U. of Austin offers these two mottoes in parallel:

WE FEARLESSLY PURSUE THE TRUTH
At UATX, we recognize the existence of truth. We seek truth so that we may flourish.

WE CHAMPION ACADEMIC FREEDOM
At UATX, students, faculty and scholars have the right to pursue their academic interests and deliberate freely, without fear of censorship or 
retribution.

It seems to me that these two statements directly contradict one another. If you believe in the truth, and think that having it leads to flourishing, why do you tolerate falseness? And why do you assign classic works that nobody agrees with any more? Ibn Tufayl may be ridiculous (as I think), but he is far from the worst author in the "Great Books" curriculum. From Aristotle's defense of slavery to Lenin's preaching of violence as a sacred calling, the western tradition is really pretty awful. The Iliad is about how great it is to kill people. If the Gospel of John is true and promotes flourishing, what possible reason could there be to read the Iliad?

What if some student, professor or scholar thinks that the "American form of government and way of life" are not "uniquely vibrant," but monstrous and horrific? What if some student, professor, or scholar thinks contemporary America is a Satan-besotted doomscape due for righteous cleansing by God any day now? What if somebody is a woke Marxist?

Two contradictory visions of education are on offer here and, I think, two contradictory visions of America. In one there is the Truth, and we struggle to understand it and align our lives to it so that we may flourish. Everything else is, by definintion, false. This is the way Jesuit education used to work: yes, a fair amount of intellectual exploration, but always in the service of Catholicism. Some of the conservative intellectuals who have been in the news lately seem to share this perspective, like Sohrab Ahmari, who has argued that since freedom and democracy have made America a godless wasteland, we should discard them. 

You cannot, in a deep, philosophical sense, be for both unfettered debate and a nation that flourishes because it adheres to a certain truth. And you cannot, I submit, simultaneously value the western canon, believe fervently in free inquiry, and operate a university that has any real connection to modern conservatism.

To the extent that the UATX curriculum tries to straddle this divide, it is incoherent. Of course, it might still function ok; the whole program of American higher education is incoherent. But I wonder if UATX can maintain the enthusiasm of its supporters while pursuing both academic freedom and conservatism.

Which gets me back to the two visions of America I alluded to back in November. One kind of American patriotism maintains that there are good and bad Americans. The good ones stand for God, Country, Military Sacrifice, the Constitution, football, barbecue, driving big cars, and Standing On Your Own Feet. The bad ones, well, you know who they are.

I adhere to a different model of patriotism. I think America is great because it holds all kinds of people who agree about nothing. I like the country the way it is, and I would hate to see it evolve into anyone's idea of perfection. This extends to how I feel about education. I like assigning old books partly because they are full of ideas I find horrific. My own educational plan would include subjecting my students to Aquinas on why masturbation is worse than rape, Lenin on revolution, the Iliad or the Hagakure on war, and so on. I think education should shake people up.

But I would be the first to admit that I don't know the truth about the Big Questions, and that my way of teaching probably doesn't help anyone else work that out, either.

I have met various conservatives, going all the way back to Party of the Right guys at Yale, who told me that they celebrate unfettered debate because it inevitably leads to conservatism. I think that's nuts. So far as I can see, unfettered debate inevitably leads to disagreement. If UATX really pursues a policy of complete academic freedom, they are going to end up with Marxists, Maoists, Woke Liberals, Race theorists, Libertarians, and probably Holocaust deniers.

I submit that you cannot simultaneously value the western canon, believe fervently in free inquiry, and operate a university that has any real connection to modern conservatism. I mean, hardly any of the authors in either the UATX list or the similar list at St. Johns believed in democracy; most of them would have been frankly horrified by America. (On the other hand the curriculum for Directed Studies at Yale includes more democrats.)

I suspect that what the rich people backing UATX want is the middle school model, education that is orderly, patriotic, anti-hippie, anti-woke. Some of the professors involved probably do want genuine free inquiry, including taking Marxism or polyamory seriously as ideas. As I said, it is certainly possible that UATX can come into being and thrive despite this contradiction.

But to the extent that UATX really promotes the Fearless Pursuit of the Truth, it will promote, not order or conservatism, but violent disagreement.

8 comments:

  1. " If you believe in the truth, and think that having it leads to flourishing, why do you tolerate falseness?"

    ... I don't get it. Where is the contradiction? I believe two-parent families are better than other models, but I would fight against anyone who would try to force it on people or who would try to ban people advocating that actually two-parent family is wrong.

    Plus I may believe in truth and I may think _I_ know it, but still I might be open to the idea I am wrong and therefore I need to tolerate people, who in my opinion espouse false ideas, because by discussing them I might find out whether I am mistaken.

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  2. Whoa, you've performed the amazing feat of making me want to defend a right-wing enterprise!

    First, and most important, I'm attracted to UATX because it seems dedicated to what is, to me, the most beautiful and rarest pillar of a sound education: the belief that not all learning takes place outside the classroom.

    Second, you're right that, as stated, the university's two stated principles stand in tension. But I would submit that institutions are often held up better by their internal tensions than by internal consistency (consider, apropos of our earlier discussion, Francis and Innocent IV for the medieval church). Also, I suspect that part of the problem comes from the aesthetic/populist requirement to state their beliefs in a positive way--ie, what they like rather than what they're against. But on some level, I would think an important part of what they mean by "we believe in truth" is really, "we're against killing discussion and thought by the tendency to say, "whatever, everyone has a right to their opinion, dude." This is the school for pain-in-the-ass, uncool people who like to have arguments. I'm all for it.

    Third, adopting mutually contradictory works doesn't to me in the slightest undermine the mission, unless the purpose really is to just produce cloned GOP operatives (which even I don't think it is). I think *part* of the idea is, for example, to get some students excited by the Iliad and its world, and then hit with them with the very different gospel of John (causing some of the devout to perhaps ask themselves the salutary question, if I like the Iliad so much and am left cold by John's Gospel, what sort of Christian am I?). That is, part of the idea is to realize that tension stimulates thought. And, as I'm sure you'll admit, there's more in most of those works than your thumbnails allow, so the contradictions aren't always *quite* that stark; the Iliad isn't just about the fun of killing; Ibn Tufayl includes a sort of proto-Averroism, an important idea for non-theistic conservatives ("neocons" as was); etc.

    In practice, a lot of it depends on how the atmosphere evolves in practice. I can imagine a mire of comfortable, grant-grubbing groupthink, but I can also imagine a lively place where, among other things, it might be fun to be the liberal in the department. If I were twenty years younger and didn't hate both moving and hot weather, I'd be tempted to apply for a job.

    Of course, I'm also mentally compiling a long list of other books that should be included. I think you might get interesting stuff out of asking intellectually engaged conservatives to write an essay putting Homer and Fanon side-by-side.

    I'm curious what you mean by the line, "you cannot simultaneously value the western canon, believe fervently in free inquiry, and operate a university that has any real connection to modern conservatism." (The first thing I think of is that perhaps what modern conservatism most genuinely wants in their leaders' shriveled hearts-of-hearts is, alas, docile, cookie-cutter middle management for both business and government--but maybe that's not what you have in mind as the contradiction. And maybe, here's hoping, it's not even true.)

    I'm curious what you mean by

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  3. Whoops, sorry about that second "I'm curious what you mean by"; don't know how that happened.

    After spewing my screed, I'm sobering a little and realizing that, tragically, all this may be beside the point. It's simply too much the case that what's really needed these days at the college level, at least for the first two years, is mainly remedial.

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  4. "One assumes, then, that it is not being taught as a text the students are supposed to believe."

    ...can one safely assume that?

    We're talking about a medieval Islamic text whose primary purpose is to argue for the primacy and supremacy of the Abrahamic god, using a form of emotional reasoning which doesn't hold up to true logical rigor, but which is satisfying to the kind of people who want clean, intuitive answers that back up their preconceptions.

    I don't know about you, but that sounds exactly like the kind of work you'd see chosen by the same American Conservatives who would choose to teach the Gospel of John (which is the weird one full of mysticism) but at the same time NOT teach any of the other Gospels.

    American Conservatism has become deeply mystical, with little regard for rationality. It's not about examining objective truths, it's about justifying what they want to believe.

    "The Iliad is about how great it is to kill people. If the Gospel of John is true and promotes flourishing, what possible reason could there be to read the Iliad?"

    The answer is obvious. To teach young Conservatives how great it is to kill people.

    It doesn't matter if it flies directly in the face of the Gospels of John. It doesn't matter if, rationally speaking, there is a massive logical disconnect. These people don't care about logic. They care about feelings - both inspiring certain ones, and then having some nebulous authority to point to in order to justify them if challenged. It's not rational, but they don't care.

    "Support Our Troops!", etc. These are the same people who frame people crossing our southern border as "Invaders". These are the same people who want to arm teachers in schools. The love of violence is a MASSIVE part of modern American Conservatism, and one of the most worrying signs of it sliding ever more into Fascism, Machismo, and the Cult of Death.

    What if some student, professor or scholar thinks that the "American form of government and way of life" are not "uniquely vibrant," but monstrous and horrific? What if some student, professor, or scholar thinks contemporary America is a Satan-besotted doomscape due for righteous cleansing by God any day now? What if somebody is a woke Marxist?

    Then they're deemed "not a Real American" and excluded or punished. Yet another trend of Fascist thought, "Dissent Is Treason". Look at how Conservatives turn on any of their number who dare to criticize Trump. Look at how they worship a man who asked his Secretary of Defense about the possibility of calling in the army to shoot protesters he disliked.

    When they talk about "Academic Freedom", they mean only mean for themselves and the views they endorse. It's an obvious double standard, sure, but they don't see it that way - after all, dissent is treason, and we don't give freedoms to traitors.

    You keep assuming mountains of good faith from a group of people who have demonstrated time and again that they act almost solely in bad faith. You keep looking for logic and reason in a group that long ago abandoned those things in favor of flexible morality, fair-weather principles, and magical thinking.

    You keep almost making the connection on your own - you noticed the weird fascination with mysticism; you pointed out the fundamental incompatibility regarding what they claim to value; etc.

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  5. I can't really explain the intense ambivalence UATX invokes in me. American universities need new blood and different approaches, and I agree that part of their problem is progressive group-think. Great books curricula seem to work for some people.

    But something about this project reminds me of those Evangelical high school text books that ooze revulsion for dirty hippies and black criminals and contrast them to a well-ordered society of god-fearing suburbanites. And that makes me recoil.

    When it comes to education I am always trying to ask deep questions: what is education for? and what program would get it toward that goal?

    What is the goal of UATX?

    Reading the Ilaid accomplishes some goals: get the students to look at a challenging but interesting text from a different culture, think about it, write about it. But why the Iliad? How do certain books end up chosen for these slots? As I said, there was a time when people thought you needed some familiarity with certain texts to be considered educated, but I don't think that is now true.

    Maybe the situation is like algebra: 95% of the people who study it never use it again, but STEM people think it serves a really useful function.

    But I worry that there is a sort of reverence for things that are Time Tested and have the Nobility of Age or what have you, and I am intensely suspicious of that kind of thinking. Plus, not a single one of the young people I know has any particular interest in the Iliad, Aristotle, or Plato. Nietzsche is a lot more popular, but you could probably do even better with Malcolm X.

    Personally I love the New Testament, but I always felt weird teaching it.

    If you think there are bad, false ideas, why do you teach books that are full of them? Because whatever you believe in, there is something in the western canon that violates it savagely. I like that, because I don't know what I believe. But I can't imagine why, say, Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito would support such an educational program.

    I have been thinking about university education for a long time but I have honestly never been able to get my mind around the point of a Great Books program.

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  6. In Poland we have canon of books too, and every few years there is a debate why we still teach some old poems or boring books. My answer is, and I hope it will be relevant here too, that we teach them because they provide common cultural foundation. In times when everyone can live in his/hers own bubble there I feel there is a need to preserve cultural core, so there still will be some basic shared language, basic set of metaphores and symbols, making it possible to feel we are part of one family and one culture. Moreover, those common books were used in the past by many other creators, so knowing them makes it easier to understand better numerous other books, movies, poems and even songs. It's a way to connect us to the past.

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    1. Watching Servant of the People— the comedy series that Volodymyr Zelenskyy starred in the before becoming president of Ukraine— he is a teacher who falls asleep with great books on his face and dreams about discussions with the Greek scholars.

      I absolutely appreciated these shared cultural references watching that series.

      What’s the point of reading the Iliad or the odyssey? common reference points when talking to people from China, Ukraine, Poland, France, Gambia, etc.

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  7. @John

    Honestly, I don't think you answered my question, which was a very specific one about what you meant by the sentence, "I submit that you cannot simultaneously value the western canon, believe fervently in free inquiry, and operate a university that has any real connection to modern conservatism."

    That's not an ambivalent sentence. It's very definite and direct and leads (or led) me to infer that you had very specific things consciously in mind. I wanted to know what they were. Why, very specifically, would you say the western canon, free inquiry, and modern conservatism are incompatible? Note that I am NOT saying I think they ARE compatible OR incompatible. I don't know what I think on that score. But it seemed like a very declarative, almost creedal axiom, and I wanted to know what you meant by it.

    *Perhaps* what you meant was that modern conservatism relies on the idea of a unitary truth, and there is no unitary truth in the western canon? That would be fair enough, though I wonder if it misses the point. I suspect that, as I suggested, the authors are coding certain rejections and allegiances in their statement of adherence to unitary truth--but they're not actually saying they have a very specific truth in mind for their school other than, you know, "Conservatives welcome!"--and maybe an opening to the most religiously devout. In terms of what they're rejecting, I was semi-joking, but I think there IS an element of trying to push away a "Closing of the American Mind"-style adolescent "be cool, dude"-flavored conflict avoidance. But probably the main thing they have in mind is rejecting faculty post-modernism/anti-foundationalism, as well as things like master's theses on the Plains Indians' pre-Colombian relationship with the horse.

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