by E. Christian
Kopff
Published in 1999 by ISI
Books
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Wilmington, Delaware
Paragraphs selected from chapters VIII and IX:
The Classics and the
Traditional Liberal Arts Curriculum, and The Ghost Dance:
Liberalism in Crisis.
"Now, it is one thing to say that the founders of our country
were classically educated and thought that form of instruction
worthy enough to recommend it to posterity. It is quite another
to assert that a classical education is good for Americans
today. Why should we, who live two centuries later,
want our children to have the same education as Thomas Jefferson
and the rest? (p. 97)
"One of the best books in English on education
[is] Albert Jay
Nock's Theory of Education in the United States (1932). As
Nock saw, there are a number of very good reasons why a liberal
arts education in our society must be grounded in the study of
the languages, literatures, history, and philosophy of ancient
Greece and Rome. First, the cultures of the ancient
Mediterranean provided the basis of American education from the
Colonial and Revolutionary periods through the nineteenth
century, and indeed into the first half of the twentieth.
(Greek fell from its position of educational preeminence before
World War I, but Latin remained a "more commonly taught
language" until the 1960s). Anyone who reads
Jefferson's literary commonplace book or who peruses the
correspondence of Jefferson and Adams will realize just how
deeply imbued America's revolutionary leaders were with knowledge
of antiquity. (p. 98)
"The commitment of educated Americans to the classics continued
from the eighteenth century through the end of the nineteenth
century. Given [the] classical subtext of American history,
then, not to receive a classical education is to suffer a kind of
alienation not much appreciated these days but nonetheless
real: an alienation from our own history. (p. 99)
"There is a yet more important reason we should receive a
classical education while in our youth. Such an education
provides, in quite pure form, true education, as distinct from
mere training. (p. 99)
"This distinction between education and training is Nock's and
it is a compelling one. According to Nock, education is the
study and mastery of a body of knowledge which is formative in
character. Training, however, involves the learning of
information aimed at the solution of an immediate problem or the
accomplishment of a specific goal. Now, both training and
education are important for a society. But anybody can be
trained to do something. (The complexity and difficulty of
the jobs will vary, of course, from short order cook to brain
surgeon.) Fewer students today, however, know how to profit
from education; perhaps fewer are capable. This becomes
clear once the nature of education is grasped. The goal of
education is to produce thoughtful people who have at their
disposal a wealth of general knowledge, and who, in the light of
this knowledge and with the courage to face facts, can judge
matters of significance in a disinterested manner.
Obviously this kind of formation is limited to the few who
possess the character, the talents, and the stamina to be
educated this way. A society without trained workers will
not get its work done. A society without educated citizens
will collapse in times of crisis and will wither away in times of
ease and prosperity. Simply put, a civilization without
educated citizens will cease to be civilized. (p. 99-100)
"Nock said the following about the "formative
character" of the study of the ancient world, words that
perfectly summarize the value of paideia ([i.e.,]
using the
classics as the foundation of education):
The literatures of Greece and Rome comprise the longest and
fullest continuous record available to us, of what the human
mind has been busy about in practically every department of
spiritual and social activity; every department, I think,
except one--music. This record covers twenty-five hundred
consecutive years of the human mind's operations in poetry,
drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, natural
history, philology, rhetoric, astronomy, politics, medicine,
theology, geography, everything. Hence the mind that has
attentively canvassed this record is not only a disciplined
mind but an experienced mind; a mind that instinctively
views any contemporary phenomenon from the vantage point of an
immensely long perspective attained through this profound and
weighty experience of the human spirit's operations. If I
may paraphrase the words of Emerson, this discipline brings us
into the feeling of an immense longevity, and maintains us in
it. You may perceive at once, I think, how different
would be the view of contemporary men and things, how different
the appraisal of them, the scale of values employed in their
measurement, on the part of one who has undergone this
discipline and on the part of one who has not. These
studies, then, in a word, were regarded as formative because
they are maturing, because they powerfully inculcate the
views of life and the demands on life that are appropriate to
maturity and are indeed the specific marks, the outward and
visible signs, of the inward and spiritual grace of maturity.
"Few students today have the desire to undergo such a maturing
experience. It demands more effort than most young people
are willing to make. Paideia is beyond them. (p.
103-104)
"So what is to be done? How are we to improve the education of
our children?
"A college curriculum is based on and develops the curriculum
of elementary and high schools. Children need to start with
the old three R's, the use of the alphabet and numbers. The
list of subjects to study after that stage, to quote Abraham
Lincoln, is short and sweet, like the old lady's dance:
Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Other subjects, including
history, mythology, English vocabulary and syntax, even the
basics of our government, can be taught in connection with those
subjects. Later we may want to add the study of modern
languages. Good secular schools may want to offer European
languages, e.g., German, French, Russian, or
Italian. Religious schools, of course, will insist on
Hebrew. But the principal goal of all language study must
be the command of significant literary works in their native
languages and an understanding of those languages' respective
roles in our common culture. Oral and written proficiency
have their place, but they must take a back seat to formative
knowledge. (p.109)
"This view of language education is not a visionary
fantasy. Children before puberty learn languages easily,
especially if the languages are related to their own language and
culture. The advantages of a classical language curriculum
are enormous. Even students who do not go on to college,
who do not finish high school, will have learned an enormous
amount of English vocabulary, because most English words come
from Latin or Greek. Although the most commonly used words
in English are not of Latin origin, the vocabulary of the
professions and of serious discourse on most matters is ancient
in its origins. Likewise, the masterpieces of our language
and important books that are being published now are written in a
heavily Latinate English. So those who go on to college to
study for the professions and to read the great books will be
well prepared. (p. 109-110)
"But what about computers and the physical sciences?
Should they be part of the curriculum in the early years?
The use of the computer should be learned the same way the
knowledge of English should be learned, at home. As for the
physical sciences, my impression is that good science is based on
good mathematics. If we hope to have our children
comprehend science at the university level, we should teach them
as much mathematics as we can. Math is the blood of
science; the more they learn the better. Besides, the
science that is taught in the best university science departments
is usually the latest results of a professor's research, which
often has moved far beyond what is found in a high school
textbook. The elements of mathematics, however, will not be
rendered obsolete by further research. (p. 110)
"Some physical scientists assert that they have no need for a
liberal arts education, rooted in the study of language, but they
do. Increasingly, younger scientists have lost track of the
historical and ethical basis of our civilization, and that is a
serious problem. Science is not spun out of the minds of
individual scientists. It is, on the contrary, the
achievement of a tradition of research fostered carefully and
slowly for millennia. Moreover, if they lose touch with
their own culture, scientists suffer from the lack of a narrative
structure to frame and render their professional lives morally
sensible. The effects on scientific ethics can only be
devastating. (p. 108)
"We talk much today of valuing creativity. If such an
attitude is to be more than talk, we must face the fact that
creativity is found in tradition. An educational curriculum
founded on Greek and Latin gave us Jefferson and Adams, Burke and
Samuel Johnson, not to mention Aquinas and Calvin, Michelangelo
and Bach, Copernicus and Newton. Educators have developed
curricula and texts that can be used to teach these languages at
all levels, from preschool through college. The materials
are out there, lying in the warehouses of the Cambridge and
Oxford University Presses. We have in our hands the making
of a reactionary revolution of excellence. Do we have the
will to give our children their heritage? (p. 111)
"Thinking within a tradition is creative. Indeed, it
provides the only basis for creativity, because what we call
creativity in philosophy and literature is really the humane
reconciliation of old problems with new insights. Moreover,
certain traditions have shown themselves able to respond
creatively and positively to foreign insights and visions--for
example, the tradition that extends from Homer through Plato and
Aristotle to Augustine and Aquinas. Great works of
literature, from Plato's Symposium to Augustine's
Confessions to Dante's Commedia, have been written utilizing
these foundations. Indeed, whole societies have been built
on them. (p. 92)
"However, handing down the torch of human understanding is a
risky business.... For our society to survive, we must escape
from a rapidly imploding liberalism to a tradition of ethical
reasoning that can provide the basis for consensus and
progress. And that is possible, if we return to our
religious traditions. As Lord Devlin told us in his
Maccabean Lecture in 1959, "No society has yet solved the
problem of how to teach morality without religion." So
we must "get religion" again if we want ethical
discourse in this country." (p. 94)
© Copyright 1999 by E. Christian Kopff. All rights
reserved.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, copyrighted work incorporated herein is
distributed under fair use without profit or payment for
non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref.]
