There’s a lovely edition of Saint George and the Dragon written by Margaret Hodges and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman that is an excellent book for young readers or reading aloud as a family. It is a retelling of the famous rendition of the story in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. A story that connected Saint George to English royalty. With the coronation of King Charles III this weekend, we will see many symbolic representations of Saint George as he has been venerated as the patron saint of England since the Middle Ages. From the England’s Saint George flag (red cross on white background) to the stained glass window in the nave of Westminster Abbey depicting George fighting the dragon, there are emblems that keep alive the memory and significance of Saint George today.

We see the story of Saint George appear frequently under different names. Take, for instance, the story of Harry Potter saving Ginny Weasley from the Basilisk in the second novel in the Harry Potter series. Here Potter plays the heroic Saint George role. This interpretation has been posited by Jordan Peterson. He writes:

“She [Ginny] is the maiden—or the anima, the soul—forever incarcerated by the dragon, as in the tale of St. George. It is up to Harry, orphaned hero, to wake and rescue her.”

Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life (Random House, 2021), 79.

Peterson has been an important intellectual voice raising our attention of Carl Jung, an individual who provides a wealth of insight into the heroic individual. Viewing the heroic stories of figures such as Harry Potter, Bilbo Baggins and Saint George, Peterson sees how the heroic archetype emanates from the ultimate heroic figure: Jesus Christ. Peterson writes:

“In the desert, Christ encounters Satan (see Luke 4:1-13 and Matthew 4:1-11). This story has a clear psychological meaning—a metaphorical meaning—in addition to whatever else materials and metaphysical alike it might signify. It means that Christ is forever He who determines to take personal responsibility for the full depth of human depravity. It means that Christ is eternally He who is willing to confront and deeply consider and risk the temptations posed by the most malevolent elements of human nature. It means that Christ is always he who is willing to confront evil.”

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Random House, 2018), 180.

It is important to note that Peterson, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, has interpreted this passage from a psychological standpoint. He leaves open a more theological understanding of these passages and the nature of Christ. For this reason, we can see how Peterson’s psychological read of Christ is not in conflict with the theological conviction that Christ dies for sins as an atonement.

Having brought up Saint George, the dragon and Jordan Peterson, we are well situated to understand the relevance of Carl Jung to literature, history, mythology, psychology and philosophy. In this article we will explore Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and how it plays out in archetypes we see in narratives, myths and dreams. Once we have a good grasp of Jung’s framework, we can then consider what role Charlotte Mason’s method of narration might play relative to this framework.

Jung and the Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. He is best known for his theories of the collective unconscious, archetypes, and the psychological complex. His work has had a profound influence on modern psychology and psychiatry, as well as on philosophy, anthropology, literature, and religious studies. A protégé of Freud, he later broke away from his

Jung first presented his theory of the collective unconscious to the public through his essay “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious,” published in 1936. He begins his definition by differentiating the collective from the personal unconscious. He writes:

“While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity.”

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9.1 (Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 88.

So, the personal unconscious can be understood as a storehouse of material that was once conscious for the individual. But the collective unconscious was never any individual’s personal consciousness. Jung goes on to state:

“In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature . . . there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes.”

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9.1 (Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 90.

To be clear, individuals experience this collective unconsciousness but it does not reside in any individual, but is a shared set of forms that Jung calls “archetypes.” Jung first studied this concept by analyzing the dreams of patients, a practice his predecessor Freud had likewise analyzed. As such, one of the primary methods deployed by Jung to identify archetypes of the collective unconscious was to analyze dreams. And while this method can be both fascinating and productive, I want to quickly move on to other avenues of study pursued by Jung. By this I mean the archetypes found in mythology and fairy tales. Jung writes in his essay “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”:

“Another well-known expression of the archetypes is myth and fairytale. But here too we are dealing with forms that have received a specific stamp and have been handed down through long periods of time.”

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9.1 (Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 6.

What this means is that archetypes have a mythological character that appear over and over again in literature and artwork. This is exactly what we see in the story of Saint George and the Dragon, a mythological archetype that gets re-packaged over and over again in literature under new guises—such as Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker—but connect to something heroic in human potential. We see this spelled out in detail in a stunning passage from one of Jung’s last works Mysterium Conjunctionis:

“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain.” He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives him faith and trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to sustain him, for everything that menaced him from inside he has made his own. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means.”

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14 (Princeton University Press, 1970), par. 756.

For Jung, the dragon resides within and must be confronted in order for the individual to truly know oneself and valiantly face the trials of life. One might be tempted to hear in this a form of self-realization that runs counter to faith in Christ for salvation; for Jung plays up the “faith and trust” in self. And while we must recognize that Jung was not friendly to the Christian faith, he saw how many of his concepts were actually grounded in Christian ideas. For instance, he identifies how the concept of archetype relates to the Imago Dei. One the subject of archetypes, he marshals evidence from both Irenaeus and Augustine to show how God has placed these archetypes of his divine nature within us. (see The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9.1 (Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 5.)

To express this all succinctly, what Jung posits is that our imaginative enterprises from ancient myths to modern literature express something deep within us that connects to a transcendent reality. The more we understand particularly the heroic archetype, the more capable we are as individuals to encounter the chaos of our world and the struggles we confront within. To put it another way, the ancient quest for happiness or eudaimonia is the hero’s journey for which we are best equipped by reading and assimilating this heroic pattern from the great works.

A Note on Jungian Interpretation of Literature

Reading literature in light of Jungian archetypes can be both enlightening and fun. I have introduced Jung to high school students in my Modern World Humanities class. It can be eye opening to see beloved characters from in a new light. Take, for instance, a few characters from the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We have a complex of characters that are archetypal. Victor Frankenstein is a tragic hero who we see leaving the home, pursuing new avenues of scientific discovery, and then needing to protect his one true love from the monster he created. Victor’s father is the wise old man, giving sage advice at various points to Victor. Elizabeth Lavenza is at various points the damsel in distress and the nurturing mother. And the monster is the villain that the hero must confront to protect the damsel in distress. Seeing these characters in this light adds meaning to our reading of the text and can bring insight into the message of the novel.

Furthermore, there can be productive discussion about Jung’s concept of the shadow self. Jung describes the shadow as a dark part of one’s inner self that must be confronted to become a whole person. He writes:

“But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.”

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9.1 (Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 44.

In the case of Victor Frankenstein, the monster represents his shadow self. He must confront that shadow and attempt to reconcile himself with it. Returning to the narrative of Saint Peter, we could then say that the dragon is not only an external force that must be confronted, but the dragon resides within. There is something profoundly Christian about this insight that residing within all of us is the villain we must heroically confront. And yet we are incapable of defeating the dragon apart from the help which God provides in Christ. I hear echoes Luther’s famous dictum simil justus et peccator “at once justified and a sinner.”

For Jung, literary criticism only played a small part of his understanding of the collective unconscious and the interpretation of archetypes. Yet he produced a brilliant essay on the matter written in 1922 entitled “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry.” In this he looks not only at poetry but at all forms of art as a means of expressing the collective unconscious for that era. He writes:

“The artist seizes on this image, and in raising it from deepest unconsciousness he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.”

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 15 (Princeton University Press, 1971), par. 83.

By “this image” Jung means something primordial or ancient in nature that wells up within the artist from this collective unconscious into a specified consciousness through the artist. We might refer to this as the artist’s muse to capture the idea using more classical language. When we are analyzing artwork, we are really getting at the message of the piece and how it communicates not only to the specific context in which it arose, but if it has enduring value, then also the transcendent values that still speak to us today.

We must be careful not to collapse all readings of literature and art into a reduction of Jung’s archetypes, a tendency all too easy to follow when we first learn of the archetypes. Dawson comments on this tendency:

“Take a text. Read the surface narrative. Stamp an archetypal pattern on to it. Assume its significance. Indulge in some woolly generalization. Case closed.”

Terence Dawson, “Literary Criticism and Analytical Psychology” in The Cambridge Companion to Jung (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 286.

The temptation is to hear only one story repeated over and over instead of hearing how the great metanarrative becomes expressed in unique detail and complexity generating insights that cannot be generalized. So, while I highly recommend reading literature with Jungian archetypes in mind, do so with the caution that such a method helpfully unlocks the potential meaning of the text rather than making all texts say exactly the same thing.

The Assimilation of the Heroic

Thus far I have focused almost entirely on Jung and now I must introduce him to another character, Charlotte Mason (1842-1923). Or perhaps I should say I should introduce Mason to Jung, for she precedes him by a generation. It is clear that Mason was deeply interested in psychology as each of her six volumes on education refer to the subject in some manner. She shows an astonishing awareness of figures in America and Germany, with William James (1842-1910), Johann Herbart (1776-1841) and Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) featuring prominently. She shows know awareness of the Vienna School inasmuch as no references to Freud or Jung are to be found in her writings. (A piece with some references to Freud was commissioned for the The Parents’ Review written by Sir Maurice Chaig entitled “Some Aspects of Education and Training in Relation to Mental Disorder” and was published in 1924, one year after Mason’s death).

Mason shows herself to be competent if not groundbreaking as it relates to the field of psychology, especially as it relates to childhood development and learning theory. It should be noted that her forward thinking about neuroplasticity—a term she never used but referred to with phrases like “a mark upon the brain substance” (vol 6, 100)—was eventually validated almost 100 years later through neurological studies as recently as the 1990s. I mention all this to indicate that it does not seem to be a stretch to consider Mason’s writings on educational philosophy highly compatible with the roughly contemporaneous works emerging in the field of psychoanalysis on the continent during her lifetime.

Much could be made regarding the psychological significance of her philosophy of education, especially concepts such as viewing children as whole persons or training children in habits. What I want to dig into though from a psychological perspective is narration. While this might seem a wholly academic process, I contend that it has psychological significance in light of Jung’s insights about the collective unconscious. To that end, let’s explore some of Mason’s thoughts as it regards the impact narration has on children.

We begin by understanding how narration is fundamentally about assimilation and not memorization. Central to Mason’s method of narration is cultivating the child’s power of attention to be properly deployed on living texts. She writes:

“He will find that in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read.”

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Living Book Press, 2017), 16.

Narration, then, bring the full power of the mind into contact with the rich details of the text, enlivening the imagination to picture or visualize the scene at hand. Note how she recognizes that this power of attention assimilates something into the child’s personal experience. By reading something like Saint George and the Dragon, the child assimilates that narration into himself as though it was a personal experience. That child becomes well practices in the heroic encounter with the forces of evil. She differentiates this from memorization, which lack this power of assimilation.

“This is not memory work. In order to memorise, we repeat over and over a passage or a series of points or names with the aid of such clues as we can invent; we do memorise a string of facts or words, and the new possession serves its purpose for a time, but it is not assimilated; its purpose being served, we know it no more.”

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Living Book Press, 2017), 16.

There is a place for memory work, not doubt, but it cannot bring into the character and development of the child with the same force as narration. This helps us understand an intangible aspect of narration. When we narrate, the goal is not to somehow quickly memorize the text in order to tell it back. Instead, the goal is to powerfully visualize the text, to take it into oneself so that the telling back is actually to share something that is becoming very personal to the reader. This personalization process entails an emotional and aesthetic quality that we as educators must be mindful to cultivate as students grow in the art of narrating.

Mason advises us to be rather choosy about the books we place before our young readers. we are to guide them away from “twaddle” (Vol 1, 176) and bring them into contact with “living books” (Vol 6, 154). She views what we read as the food of the mind. It feasts on ideas. And so our reading should be full of living ideas. As we grow healthiest with nutrient dense foods, so our reading should be dense with these living ideas. We are not merely interested in giving them intellectual power, we must also present to our children living books that cultivate their character, their duty, and their industriousness. She writes, “The great tales of the heroic age find their way to children’s hearts.” (Vol 6, 181) So, the prerequisite to narration having the outcome of plugging into the collective unconscious that Jung elaborates is to curate a wide array of living books from “a liberal range of subjects.” (Vol 6, 156)

This process of narration cultivates the wellbeing of children with the goal that children grow to have what Mason describes as “unity” and a healthy relationship of “oneself with oneself.” This links up nicely with the Jungian sense that the heroic encounter with dragons is an internal process of encountering the darkest parts of ourselves. Mason recognizes that her method has a psychological effect for children. She writes:

“They are curiously vitalised; not bored, not all alive in the playing-field and dull and inert in the schoolroom. . . . There is unity in their lives; they are not two persons, one with their play-fellows and quite other with their teachers and elders; but frank, fresh, showing keen interest in whatever comes in their way.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education (Living Books Press, 2017), 62-63.

How often have we seen students taking on different personality traits in different contexts? Mason contends that schooling that enables children to have an encounter with living ideas promotes the kind of unity of character that enables them to be the same person wherever they find themselves.

Ultimately, it is the internal battle we must enable our students to fight with valor. Mason in her volume The Formation of Character envisions this internal struggle. She writes:

“Modern scientists have added a great deal to the sum of available knowledge which should bear on the conduct of those relations of oneself with oneself which are implied in the terms, self-management, self-control, self-respect, self-love, self-help, self-abnegation, and so on. This knowledge is the more important because our power to conduct our relations with other people depends upon our power of conducting our relations with ourselves. Every man carries in his own person the key to human nature, and, in proportion as we are able to use this key, we shall be tolerant, gentle, helpful, wise and reverent.”

Charlotte Mason, The Formation of Character (Living Books Press, 2017), 86.

This encounter with the self is fundamental to individual wellbeing. And, as she notes, only when we have truly reconciled accounts internally can we conduct ourselves masterfully with the external world.

Hopefully this walk through Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and Mason’s method of narration has stimulated your thoughts on educational philosophy. One of the reasons I have elaborated this particular connection is to prepare myself to speak on this topic at the Charlotte Mason Centenary Conference in Ambleside, England this summer. I am honored to present at one of the expert panels on day 3 of the conference. There is a profound sense of privilege to walk the town where she spent a significant portion of her life a century after her passing.

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The character of Faramir is demonstrated in his resistance to the temptation of the ring. The downfall of Boromir had been his desire to possess the One Ring. Having brought the hobbits to the secret hideout overlooking the Anduin River, Faramir is confronted with the knowledge that Frodo carries Sauron’s greatest weapon. “Not if I found it on the highway would I take it” (J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Ballantine: 1965, 342). It was not as though Faramar hadn’t felt the power of temptation upon seeing the ring, it was his wise perception of the great peril for one wielding it, but also the care for Frodo, the ring bearer, that sustained him through his temptation.

As great as this moment is in the story of Faramir, the episode I find most fascinating is when Faramir invites the hobbits to a meal. Even in the rustic hideaway, it is a moment of great decorum. A table was set with a simple meal by the soldiers under Faramir’s command. The hobbits were invited to wash before supper and then to sit at the makeshift table.

“Before they ate, Faramir and all his men turned and faced west in a moment of silence. Faramir signed to Frodo and Sam that they should do likewise. ‘So we always do,’ he said, as they sat down: ‘we look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be. Have you no such custom at meat?’

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (Ballantine: 1965), 336

We hear in this moment an echo of Tolkien’s faith. Compare the Gondorian table grace to the Gloria patri prayer: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” (Note: Another hint at this harkening back to an older Christian piety is that they turned and faced west toward the place of their devotion. Churches were oriented east toward the sunrise which symbolized the resurrection. This practice fell away after the Middle Ages.) In the midst of quest and battle, this moment of quiet makes for a poignant reminder of our connection to something higher and more profound than ourselves. The scene goes on as Frodo answers Faramir’s question.

“‘No,’ said Frodo, feeling strangely rustic and untutored. ‘But if we are guests, we bow to our host, and after we have eaten we rise and thank him.’”

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (Ballantine: 1965), 336

Even though the hobbits have a far simpler culture than the civilized Gondorians, they still have traditions centered around the table. In particular, Frodo notes how gratitude is the final component when dining with others.

This little scene reminds me of a type of Thanksgiving meal. The scant resources of the Gondorian army feeds the wandering hobbits whose supplies are running low. Two cultures meet one another and exchange traditions and lore. In America we connect our annual Thanksgiving holiday to the Pilgrims feasting with the Native Americans. I could imagine hobbits of the shire celebrating Frodo and Sam’s meal with Faramir. The common thread amongst these celebrations is the idea of thanksgiving or gratitude. In days of old, the harvest feast served a similar purpose, gratitude to the Maker for that year’s yield.

A Definition of Gratitude

The word “gratitude” comes from the Latin gratus, an adjective meaning “acceptable, agreeable, pleasing, welcome.” From this word we derive other English words such as “grateful” and “congratulations.” We tend to prefer the words “thankfulness” or “thanks” – words having Old English roots – instead of gratitude, the Latinate alternative. At heart, gratitude or thankfulness is a natural affection. Edwards compares gratitude to anger finding that both natural affections can arise with or without passions associated with them. Just as I may be angered by someone I hate, I can also be angered by someone I don’t hate or even love. Similarly, I can feel gratitude towards someone I love or it may arise “without any true or proper love” (Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, 170-171). We shall come back to Edwards in a moment.

In modern psychology, gratitude has been analyzed for its relevance to subjective well-being. The Gratitude Questionnaire-Six-Item Form (GQ6) is a tool that analyzes how prone an individual is to experience gratitude in daily life. It is a rather short form that can be helpful in differentiating individual frequency and intensity of gratitude. The Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Scale (GRAT) – Short Form is a questionnaire comprised of 16 statements that are scaled by respondents “to measure an individual’s dispositional gratitude.” A very brief scale by comparison is The Gratitude Adjective Checklist (GAC) that measures an individual’s disposition by way of three adjectives: grateful, thankful, and appreciative. Social scientists have used these and other scales to measure dispositional gratitude, connecting increased gratitude to increased well-being. As we consider gratitude or thankfulness as an attribute worthy of cultivation in this article, measures such as these can be an asset that enables us to track our sense of gratitude over time. (The links above are to PDFs of the actual forms and can be accessed free of charge.)

From these considerations, we can define gratitude as a human affection or feeling that expresses appreciation. A person can have a greater or lesser disposition to express gratitude. And in addition, one can grow in one’s capacity to express gratitude. Finally, an increase in one’s disposition to express gratitude can positively impact one’s overall feeling of well-being or happiness.

A Theology of Gratitude

Having mentioned Jonathan Edwards above, it behooves us to further develop our understanding of gratitude in theological terms. We noted that gratitude is a natural affection, which leads him to claim that “it renders ingratitude so much the more vile and heinous” (171). There is something Aristotelian about his reasoning at this point. Gratitude is a virtue fitting to our nature and yet requiring cultivation, but it is all too easy to fall into the vice of ingratitude where the lack of gratitude is an offence against our humanity. Edwards reasons further, “The exercise of mere natural gratitude may be the foundation of a sort of love to God” (172), and yet without a true knowledge of God, the exercise of this virtue lacks any saving grace. The conclusion Edwards arrives at differentiates true gratitude from natural gratitude:

“True gratitude or thankfulness to God for his kindness to us, arises from a foundation laid before, of love to God for what he is in himself, whereas a natural gratitude has no such antecedent foundation.”

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections (Renaissance Classics, 2012), 175

The echo of 1 John 4:19 is made more explicit later in Edward’s argument. The origin of our true gratitude is not some mere natural gratitude that springs from some self-interest, but upon an understanding of our desperate reliance on God who supplies our need. This speaks in some ways of our utter inability to be truly grateful apart from a knowledge of our depravity and reliance upon the grace of God.

“But as to truly gracious affections, they are built elsewhere; they have their foundation out of self in God and Jesus Christ; and therefore a discovery of themselves, of their own deformity, and the meanness of their experiences, though it will purify their affections, yet it will not destroy them, but in some respects sweeten and heighten them.”

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections (Renaissance Classics, 2012), 181

So our natural gratitude become purified by Christ, but not destroyed. We might feel something of gratitude apart from Christ, but in Christ, that natural feeling becomes magnified as we recognize how far the love of God has reached to meet me in my depth from his heights. Every simple gift – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the warmth of shelter – is magnified by the immeasurable gift of Christ.

This is the message we have received in any number of passages of scripture. Consider as one example Hebrews 12:28, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” The better part of our prayers should be issuing words of thanksgiving to our creator and sustainer; far more than our requests, as important as these are.

A Philosophy of Gratitude

Such a theology resonates with what the philosophical tradition considers as the foundation of happiness. Here I am thinking in particular of eudaimonic happiness as expressed in the writings of Aristotle. The pathway to happiness in life is the cultivation of virtue. Even though Aristotle did not list gratitude among the virtues, there are ample reasons to consider it as such. Cicero, for instance, considered gratitude as “the mother of all virtues (mater virtutum omnium)” (For Plancius 33.80). We can even identify gratitude as a virtuous mean between vices of absence and excess in an Aristotelian manner. Edwards, for instance, spelled out how ingratitude is an assault on our humanity. This vice of absence is equally as bad as the obsequious groveler who ingratiate themselves to others but whose heart is far from truly thankful.

Ancient philosophy agrees with modern science that subjective well-being can be increased by cultivating gratitude. If we are not already convinced by the testimony of scripture, we can see by every measure how important gratitude is if we want to live lives of meaning and purpose.

I am struck by Jordan Peterson‘s latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for LIfe, which adds twelve more rules to his previous 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The last of the rules is expressed as “Be grateful in spite of your suffering.” For Peterson to conclude his most recent book with the concept of gratitude strikes at the continuing relevance of gratitude. Earlier this year when tweeting some 40 rules, Peterson included this rule and added, “Gratitude is the process of consciously and courageously attempting thankfulness in the face of the catastrophe of life.” This expression gets at an intentional practice of gratitude, not when one feels great about life, but actually developing such a practice when life is not particularly going so well. What this means is that there is no better time to develop a habit of gratitude like the present moment.

The Practice of Gratitude

To that end, I want to provide a few practical tools you may want to incorporate into your daily classroom routines. The empirical scales provided above offer some potential for older students to gain some understanding of their own disposition toward gratitude. Yet all ages can benefit from growing in the habit of gratitude. So, here are a few suggestions for you to consider.

The first practical tool for you to consider is a gratitude journal. Now you can devote an entire journal or notebook to this, or you can simply use a homework steno for this. The idea here is to record on a daily basis something each student is grateful for. This can be a basic sentence, such as “I am grateful for the warm weather outside,” or, “I am grateful that we got to go on a field trip today.” These expressions lay a solid foundation for expressing gratitude in concrete ways. Building on this, you can ask for more and more specificity. What made the warm weather something you were grateful for, or why was the field trip such a gratifying experience? Yet, even the simplest expressions of gratitude can have a deep impact on your students’ lives.

The second practical tool is having students write a gratitude letter. Okay, this is a thank you note, but by framing it as a gratitude letter, you are able to break the mold, so to speak, of people’s preconceptions about thank you cards. Have students think about someone they would like to express their gratitude to. The act of expressing gratitude to another person is so powerful in their lives. You can incorporate this into a unit of letter writing by teaching your students how to include such things as the format of a letter, the greeting and closing, and how to address an envelope. In a gratitude letter, students should learn how to give specific details about what it is they are grateful for (a gift, an event, the meaning of the relationship, etc.) and the impact it has had on their life. They can also learn different phrases that express gratitude. Sending these letters to the recipients can be a powerful moment in both the students’ and recipients’ lives.

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A new book landed on my desk around the beginning of the school year. Robert Greene’s Mastery (New York: Viking, 2012) touches on a number of points that are worthy of exploration and consideration. It reads like a mix of historical biography and self help by a writer who is a master of his craft. I first came across Robert Greene when I listened to his 48 Laws of Power (New York: Viking, 1998) as an audiobook. At that point I largely dismissed Greene as a relevant voice in my life due to how Machiavellian his self-help advice came across. Yet, in Mastery one finds solid career advice based on the apprenticeship model from the Middle Ages. Intermingled in his delineation of one’s journey toward mastery, Greene chronicles the careers of past masters such as Leonardo, Mozart, Einstein, Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Curie, Carl Jung, and a host of others.

In this article I would like to delve into the second section of Mastery to explore the three phases of apprenticeship as spelled out by Greene. Because the book reads as advice given to an individual embarking on a new career, there is some translation that needs to occur to nuance Greene’s apprenticeship for a school environment. I will endeavor to examine Mastery from three vantage points: 1) the classroom environment as a locus of apprenticeship, 2) the teacher as apprentice, and 3) the work an administrator can do to create a culture of apprenticeship.

The Three Phases of Apprenticeship

Let us begin not with the three phases, but with the master idea of apprenticeship: transformation. Greene writes:

“The principle is simple and must be engraved deeply in your mind: the goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character–the first transformation on the way to mastery.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, 55.

I cannot help but hear echoes of Romans 12:2, “be not conformed to this world, but be transformed (μεταμορφόω) by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Our spiritual apprenticeship to Christ Jesus is modeled upon the disciples journeying with Jesus. Our minds and our character undergo a metamorphosis through long years of following Christ. I cannot imagine Greene has this in mind when he writes this, yet the profundity of the truth is well worth noting. The journey of the apprentice in whatever field we might consider is to become someone who is disciplined and focused.

The first phase of apprenticeship is what Greene calls “deep observation.” He lays out two broad categories that one observes in an apprenticeship.

“First, you will observe the rules and procedures that govern success in this environment – in other words, “this is how we do things here.” . . . The second reality you will observe is the power relationships that exist within the group.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, 57

I find Green to be fairly Machiavellian here, especially by framing his second category around power. Now it is true in an educational environment that there is an authority structure – the teacher-student dynamic. It might also be true that certain students wield a kind of power. I find the insights from Jordan Peterson helpful to temper power as the singular characteristic of hierarchies. He would contest that a framework of competence might be a better understanding of group dynamics. Now, competence is a form of power, the power of expertise, but it is different than the form of power that often gets expressed as dominance and unfair privilege.

Okay, so apart from that little diatribe, what Greene lays out is a phase of apprenticeship that features learning the skills of observation, focus, attention, and noticing things. Observation includes the social environment and human interactions. I like how he begins with noticing before making judgments. In education we often want to move quickly to analysis and judgement. Perhaps this is a liability in discussion-based learning. But there is genuine benefit to cultivating the simple skill of noticing things. One of the best tools for cultivating the skill of observation is the practice of narration.

The second phase of apprenticeship is what Greene calls “the practice mode,” which he defines as “practice toward the acquisition of skills.” (58) I think this is the phase that amounts to the biggest portion of apprenticeship, which does not mean it is the most important phase, but it stands to reason that much of our time on task occurs in this phase. Greene spells out what we might call a mimetic form of instruction.

“The natural model for learning, largely based on the power of mirror neurons, came from watching and imitating others, then repeating the action over and over. Our brains are highly suited for this form of learning.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, 59

Watching, imitating and doing over and over is the most visible part of the master’s workshop. Imagine the activity of the great workshops of the Renaissance where apprentices look over the shoulder of the master, go to their own station and practice repeatedly, often with the master then looking over their shoulders.

While there is much that we learn that gets expressed in language or numbers, Greene spells out how there are certain kinds of information that amount to “tacit knowledge” or knowledge that is difficult to put into words. The Medieval model of apprenticeship enabled the learner to put into practice this tacit knowledge, accumulating the 10,000 hours, a la Anders Ericsson, which might take a decade to master. Imitation and practice, then, is a significant idea derived from this second phase of the apprenticeship as Greene describes it.

Furthermore, practice develops over time. As an individual increases in skill, there is an effect Greene describes as the “cycle of accelerated returns” where practice becomes both easier and more rewarding. This correlates well with what Cal Newport shares about passion, enjoyment and interest coming after the accumulation of skill. For something like math, it might take years of work and training to get to the point where true enjoyment emerges. The same is true with excellent literature that demands considerable attention to detail and understanding of literary conventions. We might experience the opposite of joy and passion when encountering these domains early in our apprenticeship. Yet when we gain the requisite time on task, joy and passion emerge.

The third phase of apprenticeship is what Greene calls “experimentation” or “the active mode.” In this phase the apprentice attempts to work independently. Greene writes:

“As you gain in skill and confidence, you must make the move to a more active mode of experimentation. This could mean taking on more responsibility, initiating a project of some sort, doing work that exposes you to the criticism of peers or even the public. The point of this is to gauge your progress and whether there are still gaps in your knowledge. You are observing yourself in action and seeing how you respond to the judgments of others. Can you take criticism and use it constructively?” (62)

Robert Greene, Mastery, 62

Some of the words that stand out to me in this description of the active phase are “responsibility” and “criticism.” In earlier phases of apprenticeship, you can imagine the apprentice working almost mechanically. At one level there is observation where the apprentice is soaking everything in. At the practice stage the apprentice is building the habits over and over accumulating skill. Then at this level there is genuine ownership, a sense of personalization of the task at hand. When one takes personal responsibility for one’s own work, there comes with it a vulnerability or exposure of one’s weaknesses. This is why the goal of this phase is to learn how to take criticism well.

I am reminded of the growth mindset. Carol Dweck describes a form of constructive criticism, “Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap.” (Mindset, 203) As students work at the cutting edge of their knowledge and skill, honest and forthright communication enables them to have an accurate picture about what they are doing well, but also about what they are not doing well. Yet the child cannot be left there, they must then be given the tools to improve. In the apprenticeship mindset, we can add to Dweck paradigm that a significant part of education ought to be teaching students how to find for themselves the tools to improve, so that when they get to the active stage, they can receive criticism and then creatively explore ways they can improve.

Greene goes on to dig deeper into the emotional detachment one must learn in the final phase of apprenticeship.

“It is always easier to learn the rules and stay within your comfort zone. Often you must force yourself to initiate such actions or experiments before you think you are ready. You are testing your character, moving past your fears, and developing a sense of detachment to your work–looking at it through the eyes of others.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, 63

Stepping out of the comfort zone can occur at all stages. I think about students who question whether the answer they produce in my Geometry class is correct. I begin to shift that assessment back onto them. How do you know? Have you checked your work? What if the textbook is wrong? Can you be confident that you have gotten the right answer even if it doesn’t match what others have produced? The answer is either correct or incorrect. If the student is able to assess that on their own, they begin to have a detachment from relying on others to tell them the answer is correct – as though correctness is some mystery only revealed by the text or the teacher.

Greene concludes his delineation of the three phases of apprenticeship by relating it to the nature of work today. We are moving beyond the industrial factory-model of work. Everyone can be a creative by writing blog, producing videos or podcasts, hosting webinars, or starting a business. The apprentice mindset enables individuals to not view themselves as cogs in an economic machine, but to explore new possibilities for creative careers. He writes:

“In general, no matter your field, you must think of yourself as a builder, using actual materials and ideas. You are producing something tangible in your work, something that affects people in some direct, concrete way. To build anything well – a house, a political organization, a business, or a film – you must understand the building process and possess the necessary skills. You are a craftsman learning to adhere to the highest standards. For all this, you must go through a careful apprenticeship. You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, 64

The apprenticeship model Greene develops points to the fact that we cannot view the work of our students (nor our own work for that matter) as fixed. If we view ourselves as capable of transformation, the apprenticeship model provides a pathway to enact coaching and skills formation as a natural part of life.

Apprenticeship in the Classroom

When we are working with our students in the classroom, the three modes or phases of apprenticeship provide a helpful framework for the different kinds of work we are doing. I think it is important to keep in mind that these modes of apprenticeship are not strictly sequential, nor are they bound to long spans of year before one moves into another phase.

Beginning with deep observation, the first phase, I would encourage teachers to utilize the concepts of atmosphere and habit training to coach students in “how we do things here.” This is true with regard to how we carefully read texts or patiently observe something in nature. There are procedures and routines that must be learned, such as sitting in a ready position or having a moment of silence after the reading of scripture. Then there is the emotional/social intelligence component, where one of the ways we are training students is to have facility in relating with all kinds of people in different kinds of situations. This argues for a teacher’s direct involvement in breaks and lunch, in order to coach students well in the hugely important task of cultivating social skills.

Narration, or telling back, is essential to the task of deep observation. We cannot tell back what we have not given our attention to. While we tend to think of narration as part of a method, it is in and of itself a skill to be cultivated. Students can grow in the ability and capacity to narrate with greater attention to detail, to more fully convey the meaning of the author by utilizing his or her language and style, and to follow with greater nuance the sequence and order of thought in an episode. When we think about deep observation, the depth with which we are able to assimilate texts, music, artwork and nature provide a foundation for the next phases of apprenticeship.

The second phase, the practice mode, is where the bulk of the work occurs in a student’s life. We are wise not to consider this solely as homework. Much of the most effective practice a student or apprentice ought to do occurs under the watchful eye of the teacher. This provides greater scope for demonstration (“watch how I do it”) and correction (“instead try it this way”). Here I think the concepts in Make It Stick are invaluable. Spacing and interleaving are preferable to massed practice. At the heart of deliberate practice is a faithful guide – a master – who is able to place before the student the correct number of problems that will accomplish the most growth for the apprentice. This might entail a reduced number of practice problems in math or shorter writing assignments so that greater focus can be placed on discrete skills.

The active or experimentation mode, the third phase of apprenticeship, sees the students exploring their boundaries. We might hear a student ask, “What if I tried it this way?” or say, “I got the same answer but my steps were different.” A wise master poses open ended questions that force the student to be creative, considering an issue from a different angle. Teachers can provide a class with a problem to solve that requires teamwork, collaboration and may involve trial and error.

The big takeaway from thinking through the apprenticeship model in this way is that all phases are relevant to the group of students in your classroom. It could be a lesson weaves together observation, practice and experimentation. The phases might move back and forth between practice and observation with experimentation coming days later when the requisite knowledge and skill can be unleased on an interesting problem, issue or question. Perhaps a unit can be structure around this broad series of phases. I could see a quiz or exam structured accordingly. The key is to see how guiding students towards mastery involves all three: observation, practice and experimentation. Our role in this is to establish these guiding principles and then to be the master in the workshop alternately demonstrating and then providing feedback.

Teachers as Apprentices

The bulk of my thoughts has centered on the classroom environment. However, I think it is equally important to view our task as teachers as a craft. Whether you are in your early years as a teacher or have been in the classroom for decades, take as many opportunities as you can to observe other teachers. One of the brilliant tools available with TLAC is that there is video content where techniques and best practices can be watched. Some of the most important skills a master teacher deploys are actually quite difficult to put to words. We develop intuitions about which student needs attention, when to raise or lower a voice, whether to turn my back when writing on the board or where to position myself when the class returns from PE. It’s quite another thing if one sees another teacher doing these things. We catch much by way of osmosis. What this points to is getting outside your classroom to catch by any means available a glimpse into a colleague’s room.

Practicing lessons is most often done when a teacher is in college. They practice lessons, do a semester or year-long placement, and then are launched into their career. Daily teaching is indeed a form of practice, but it might not be deliberate practice. We might very well reinforce rather bad teaching habits unless some planning or focused attention on some technique is applied. Here I think a wise teacher will insert into lesson plans notes about techniques they will practice. I might note to myself, “walk up and down the rows in my classroom” or “use cold calling today” or “wait for more hands during history class.” Narrowing the aperture in this way gives us more leverage to cultivate discrete skills and perhaps track our growth in certain areas.

Talk with your supervisor about techniques you are working on in your classroom. Invite him or her to come observe you, telling them that you are trying something different today and would like their feedback. This is where you are simultaneously practicing the craft of teaching but also experimenting with the edges of your comfort zone.

You don’t have to be far into your tenure as a teacher to take another teacher under your wing. Oftentimes our pathway to mastery lies not in practicing in isolation, but in taking opportunities to coach and mentor other teachers. This doesn’t need to be formalized in any way. I have seen teachers only a few years into their careers come alongside new faculty to “show them the ropes.”

Creating a Culture of Apprenticeship

Observation, practice and experimentation should be encouraged amongst the faculty, and if you are an administrator there is much that can be done to plan training around the apprenticeship model. Here are a couple of ideas that I have implemented at various times and hope to build on in the future.

First, the most impactful thing you can do as an administrator is to observe your teachers. When I go into a classroom, I literally open a new Word document and simply type what I see and hear. I have told my teachers that I am here to learn and not to judge (a technique I learned from Jason). I need to be able to see what is happening in the classroom to understand the “teacher personality” of the teacher. I am often surprised to hear the teacher’s voice while teaching, which can be quite different than their voice when interacting one on one. I need to see how the students are behaving. I look at the décor and the arrangement of the furniture. I catch the major transitions and subtle looks between the two students in the corner. Untied shoes, untucked t-shirts, but also kind words, helpfulness and genuine thoughtfulness all get noted. I try to spend fifteen to thirty minutes in the classroom, which is quite a lot of time. Before I leave, I send a copy of my notes to the teacher. I include items of feedback and advice in and amongst the notes. I send my notes without expecting any reply, but sometimes I will get a good interaction going. Sometimes I will ask the teacher to interact with the notes during our next one-on-one meeting. The big idea here is that observation with feedback supports the teacher as he or she strives towards excellence in their craft.

Second, do what you can to enable teachers to observe one another. This is professional development gold! You yourself might need to sub or to hire subs to make this happen. At my previous school I devoted a week to peer observation, scheduling peer observations like a round robin tournament. Some preliminary planning sought to identify individuals that might have a technique or practice that would benefit another teacher. Some of the pairings were simply serendipitous. What I found was that peer observation injected a potent shot of energy into our work as teachers. Conversations around teaching practices lasted weeks after the peer observations. What’s more, it significantly boosted the culture of mutual learning I had wanted to implement for years. Why had I not attempted this peer observation things sooner?

Finally, my most recent experiment involves short practice lessons in small groups of teachers. By teaching other colleagues in a compressed format, we get outside the daily routines with the students and get highly valuable feedback from our peers. The format I used was to have groups of four teach lessons in five to seven minutes (which means it has to be short and to the point, likely a portion of a lesson), and then for three to five minutes the other teachers provide feedback (similar to my observation model above). Each teacher gets roughly ten minutes in the “hot seat” and then at the end we all discuss some of our big takeaways. It’s a fifty to sixty minute exercise that gets us into the mode of deliberate practice with one another. It also provides an opportunity for experimentation, the third mode of apprenticeship.

Hopefully this short interaction with Robert Greene’s book Mastery has stimulated your thinking about how an apprenticeship approach can impact your classroom or school. As I’ve reflected on this book, I find myself viewing my vocation as simultaneously one of an apprentice moving toward mastery and a master coaching apprentices. If this idea of apprenticeship has sparked your imagination, I would like to direct you to a resource created by my colleague, Jason Barney – the apprenticeship lesson plan. In this free resource, you will discover ways in which you shape your lessons around coaching and apprenticeship derived from Comenius’ method of teaching.

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In this series on child development, I will take a look at a few of these matters bridging historical debates with modern research on topics such as the nature of the mind, the stages a child goes through as it develops and the goals or purposes of child development. Along the way I will also have in view practical take aways that will enable us to make the most of our resources as teachers creating optimal learning environments for our students. In this first part, we will tackle the issue of what the mind knows and how it knows.

We begin by going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. What we will see is that they come to different conclusions about the mind, especially with regard to how the mind comes to know things. In a previous post I looked at some of the neuro biology of the mind, using Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows as a point of departure. Now we can go way back in time to see how the mind was thought of by a couple of classical thinkers. Plato will assert that knowledge is innate, whereas Aristotle will contend that the mind is a blank slate and knowledge comes to the mind from the eternal world. We’ll take a long look at Plato and Aristotle, since they initiate the long debate about how the mind acquires knowledge. Along the way we will see that despite their differences, both situate their understanding of the mind within a broader context of educational goals. The virtuous citizen is the goal. For one, virtue is innate and must be drawn out. For the other virtue must be acquired through habituating the mind in the direction of virtue.

Plato on the Innate Mind

Plato addresses education primarily in two works, Republic and Laws. In his Republic, a system of education is outlined that would best support a just and orderly city-state. This Socratic dialogue devotes much space to the means and ends of educating everyone in society, yet the ultimate goal of education is to create a ruling class composed of guardians and philosophers. Plato’s Laws was written later in life and is a dialogue with an Athenian stranger. Like Republic, education is considered to be foundational to a properly just and ordered society. A summary statement occurs in Laws 643e, “the education we speak of is training from childhood in goodness (ἀρετή), which makes a man eagerly desirous of becoming a perfect citizen, understanding how both to rule and be ruled righteously” (trans. R.G. Bury [Harvard University Press, 1967]).

For Plato, the chief end of education was to create a ruling class that would ensure the freedom of society. “Our Guardians were to be freed from all forms of manual work; their function was to be the expert provision of freedom for our state” (Republic 395b-c; trans. H.D.P. Lee, [Penguin, 2003]). In order to promote these ends, virtue or arete was the purpose of education. In order for society to be free, its leaders must understand and practice virtue. Plato considered it essential that all children receive education, even though it was only the males of the ruling class that would go on to advanced study in mathematics and philosophy. So there is something democratic in Plato’s view on education (education for all children) that eventually funnels into something much more aristocratic.

Plato divided educational stages into three basic groupings. In primary or elementary education, students would learn music and gymnastics. Around the age of 18 students would then enter into military training. Then around 20 select students would enter into higher education studying mathematics, astronomy, musical theory, logic, metaphysics and so forth. It seems that Plato desired all children, even girls, to participate in primary education, although whether that was applied in practice is difficult to tell. In Plato’s thinking, we can see the emergence of something like stages of development leading to a stratification of education into three levels of education: primary, secondary and higher education. We will keep this three-fold division of education stages in mind in anticipation of part two in this series, which will delve deeper into stages of child development.

The rationale behind Plato’s understanding of primary education is worth exploring. In Laws (2.653d) Plato posits that children are like the young of other animals in that they are incapable of “keeping either its body or its tongue quiet.” This is why the primary mode of education should occur through singing in choir and dancing. “The well-educated man will be able both to sing and dance well” (Laws 2.654b). The proviso is that the person should sing good songs and dance good dances (2.654c). We can relate this back to Plato’s general understanding of education as aimed at virtue in The Republic where he posits that the child ought to have presented to them good speech (εὐλογία), good music (εὐαρμοστία), good forms of dance (εὐσχημοσύνη) and good rhythms (εὐρυθμία) in order that the mind and character of the child be well formed (Republic 3.400d-e).

Now what Plato proposes as the central method of education is mimesis, or the art of imitation. One key passage will suffice to convey his thought here. When a person is presented with items of eternal goodness and beauty “he will endeavor to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in their likeness and assimilate himself to them” (Republic 6.500c). Thus, if a person is to be made into a virtuous creature, it is imperative that there is virtuous material for that individual to imitate. They become like the virtuous thing, which is why they must be presented with good speech, music, dances and rhythms.

I think Plato’s idea of imitation or mimesis has merit to it. We can perceive the connection between mimesis and narration, for instance. When we narrate or tell back, we are imitating and assimilating great ideas along the lines of what Plato envisioned. To learn more about the classical background to narration, see Jason’s second article in his series on the history of narration. I also appreciate how the CiRCE Institute has raised awareness of mimetic teaching as a method in the classical Christian movement. However, we might question Plato’s view of the child as dismissive of the child’s true potential. The view of the child is that it is a being that is not fully adult. In many respects this is true; many of the capacities of adulthood are absent in the child. But as we explore this concept of child development, Plato represents a particular view of the child as not adult and therefore lacking in some way.

Vocational Training or True Education?

There is much value in pausing here to consider a key aspect of Plato’s educational program. In Laws, Plato begins his analysis of education by looking at vocational training. He recommends, for instance, that a good builder should be directed to play with toy houses in the nursery (643b-c). This kind of vocational training enables the worker to be happy and possess mastery in a trade (643d). Plato then pivots to a definition of true education. If it was granted that the most happy and skilled craftsman was presented with miniature tools in the nursery, how much more would a virtuous citizen be trained to maintain a good state if presented with virtue in the nursery?

Based on his consideration of Plato’s Laws, Andrew Domanski provides a scathing comparison of Plato’s principles of true education and modernist education. Domanski writes:

“Plato insists on value-based education from the very outset. In so doing, he provides a moral and ethical impetus which is almost entirely absent from today’s secular systems of education. The general absence of Platonic virtue from modern early education goes a long way towards explaining the ills that increasingly beset our societies.”

Domanski, “Principles of Early Education in Plato’s ‘Laws,’” Acta Classica, vol. 50, 2007, p. 71.

As we consider how classical education seeks to renew lost educational principles, Domanski’s remark poignantly addresses a key critique we share. The failure of the modernist educational experiment has left generations adrift in a tempestuous ocean without any light to guide the way. The reduction of education to vocational training, Domanski argues, is not true education in the Platonic sense.

“It is clear by now that the bulk of what we call education today is, in Platonic terms, little more than vocational training. It follows that the majority of highly skilled professionals (for example doctors, engineers, nuclear scientists and economists), who have not received intensive early instruction in virtue, must be regarded as uneducated in Platonic terms. Conversely, a street-sweeper or labourer who has received early instruction in civic and moral values, would be considered to be education in the true, Platonic sense” (“Principles,” p. 72).

It is difficult to swim against this stream. Many students and parents come to us with the assumption that true education is merely vocational training. Many of us in our educational renewal movement were raised in this cultural assumption, making it difficult to not let the classroom collapse into mere vocational training. That’s why we need not only to train in virtue, but also to be advocates for a virtue-based education.

Aristotle and the Blank Slate

Aristotle inherited many of the views on education Plato put forward. In many respects, Aristotle’s views are nuances of Plato. For instance, Aristotle views the goal of education as happiness. Aristotle highly esteems virtue along with honor, pleasure and intelligence, but one pursues these for the sake of happiness (εὐδαιμονία) whereas one does not choose happiness in order to pursue virtue (Nic. Eth. 1097b). Now regarding happiness or eudaimonia, Aristotle puts forward that true happiness is conceived as the good life, which we might also call a life well lived. Aristotle considers that all people would agree that it is the good life that produces true happiness, but that what constitutes this happiness is a matter of dispute (Nic. Eth. 1095a). So from the outset, Plato and Aristotle are not in fundamental disagreement about the goal of education, they simply are emphasizing what we might consider two sides of the same coin. Virtue and living the good life go hand in hand, with both being necessary to promote a civil society.

Another development Aristotle puts forward is the role habit plays in education. He proposes that intellectual virtue comes about through instruction, whereas “moral or ethical virtue is produced by habit” (Nic. Eth. 1103a). Aristotle sees an etymological connection between the words ethic (ἠθική) and habit (ἔθος). A student is therefore to gain moral virtues through repeated exercises that build the character of the individual. You can read more about Aristotle’s view of habits in Jason’s article “Excellence Comes by Habit.” In addition, you can download my eBook “A Guide to Implementing Habit Training.”

Like Plato, Aristotle divided a child’s educational program into three stages. Aristotle’s view of the child was less animistic, as he included alongside music and gymnastic reading, writing and drawing. There was still a belief in the limitations of the child, however, with higher intellectual pursuits reserved for males in their twenties. Between the primary level of education, which tended to be more mechanical, was the military training of youths as they learned strategy and tactics alongside their military drills. The stages of education in both Plato and Aristotle were not based on a fully articulated understanding of stages of human development, so we will wait for the next article to really dive into this matter.

The main point of debate between Plato and Aristotle comes not in the layout of their educational program, but in their view of the nature of the child’s mind. For Plato, all knowledge is innate, residing in the mind of the individual from birth. The role of education is therefore to unlock this innate knowledge through recollection or remembering. Because the soul is immortal, it has this connection to knowledge so that it is possible to discover what we do not know by courageous inquiry (Plato, Meno 86a-b). Plato illustrates this by Socrates questioning a slave boy and helping him discover his innate knowledge of a geometrical concept (Meno 84d-85b).

Aristotle, however, views the mind not as a storehouse of innate knowledge, but as a blank slate or tabula rasa. The mind of the child is like any other sense organ in that it is acted upon by outside forces. So one can write upon this blank slate by helping the child to acquire knowledge by learning and discovery (Aristotle, De Anima, III.4-7). Unlike Plato, who thinks education is the process of unlocking innate knowledge, Aristotle views education as the process of acquiring knowledge. This has been a longstanding debate for educational theorists down the ages.

The Enlightenment Dead End

The debate between blank slate theory and innate knowledge took on new energy during the Enlightenment. Rationalism had prevailed during the Renaissance era as a new humanistic impulse highlighted the role of human rational faculties as the sole source of knowledge over and against divine revelation. We can trace certain elements of the secularization of Western society to this transition, even though the rationalism of the Renaissance was one of the contributing factors to religious renewal during the Reformation.

Having already devoted so much space to Plato and Aristotle, we will rush our way through the major voices in the Rationalism/Empiricism debate. Several of these figures address education at length, and at some point I should come back to any number of them to further develop their nuanced take on education and learning. For now, however, the aim of this brief traipse through the Enlightenment is to see how blank slate and innate theories took on new emphases. In particular, we will see how both theories became divorced from the goal of education to form learners into virtuous individuals.

The Enlightenment questioned whether human rational thought was indeed the source of knowledge, pitting several figures against one another. Rationalists such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz were contested by Empiricists like Bacon, Locke and Hume. A new emphasis on scientific method placed more confidence in sensory experience as the true source of knowledge, placing doubt on the role of rationality. The concept of the mind and its nature figured prominently in this debate.

René Descartes (1596-1650), regarded as the father of modern philosophy, argued that ideas are innate, divinely supplied and accessed through the application of logic. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1678), on the other hand, was an early proponent of empiricism, believing that human behavior can largely be explained materialistically. Ideas, he posited, are external to the human mind. This combination of materialism and non-innate ideas meant that Hobbes viewed though, imagination and memory as instances of sense experience working on the matter of the brain.

John Locke (1632-1704) took up the debate, directly opposing Descartes’s view of the mind, believing the mind to be devoid of all ideas at birth. It is experiences acquired through sense that become imprinted on the mind. Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) then categorically critiques Locke point by point. He posits that universally assented truisms must be innate. Anyone not assenting to a universal truth demonstrates that they have not become aware of it, not that it is not innate. This goes against Locke’s idea that universally assented truisms are actually acquired through experience, just that people have forgotten when and where they learned it.

The idea that human knowledge is solely gained through experience is then championed again. David Hume (1711-1776) essentially views human experience as sensate, making us nothing more than a bundle of nerves. For Hume there are no norms, only facts. This move in the empiricist camp moved rapidly toward skepticism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a rationalist who took a different view on norms, finding morality to be natural or innate. Surprisingly, though, he proposes that society has a negative influence impinging on the child’s innate perfectibility.

This review of the rationalist/empirical debate is far too succinct, but it lands us in a place where both innate knowledge and blank slate notions are no longer tied to the sense of virtue espoused by Plato and Aristotle. On the one hand, the blank slate theory of the empiricists leaves the individual a mass of sensate nerves, and knowledge as a store of facts disconnected from a sense of “ought.” On the other hand, innate knowledge can be likened to the “noble savage,” or humans in their natural state. Civilization corrupts this innate knowledge in the attempt to indoctrinate the individual with some moral code.

Confronted by Neuro-biology and Cognitive Science

Recently Steven Pinker challenged this state of affairs in his book The Blank Slate: The Denial of Human Nature (2003). Pinker’s concern is that people have committed to a view of human development as a blank slate to explain problems like racism or sexism as learned behaviors. He draws upon advances in neuro-biology and cognitive science to demonstrate that there are elements of the mind that are innate. He points to Noam Chomsky’s theory of language to show that underlying all human language are universal concepts of grammar. There is a certain amount of genetic code that determines, to some extent, cognitive behaviors. Furthermore, the brain has sets of neural networks that preprogram the mind to accomplish different cognitive functions, such as learn language, calculate quantities, or put one thought with another.

Pinker combines this notion of innateness with breakthroughs in neural plasticity to show that even though the mind is not a blank slate, the innate aspect of the mind is not predetermined solely by our genetic code. Yes, genes do a fair bit of work to determine certain outcomes, but genes work with feedback from the environment. Interestingly, the sense perception work that was so powerful an argument for empiricists in the Enlightenment didn’t account for genetic code. What Pinker shows is that aspects of our personality and temperament, which are genetically determined, create something like a sieve that regulates how we interpret our environments. Nature and nurture are working with and against each other, causing our minds to develop in somewhat unpredictable ways. Even though Pinker demonstrates how our minds are composed of far more innate factors that the blank slate accounts for, he also shows how neural plasticity means our brains change as they learn, acquiring new, non-innate knowledge. Pinker’s work, then, seems to move us in the direction of a synthesis of innate and blank slate theory in helpful ways.

One last idea I want to draw out from Pinker, which is why I have devoted so much attention to him, is that in light of the innate yet malleable mind, he demonstrates that morality is a universal. Every culture shares a great deal of common moral code traits. This concept reminds me of Jordan Peterson’s connection between the snake reflex and dragon narratives. Our brains are wired to flinch away from snakes or anything that looks like a snake. This is an innate, hard-wired reflex that requires no conscious thought. If we were to see, think and then react, we would already be bitten by the snake. This deep neurological structure is something Peterson connects to a universal fascination with dragon narratives. It seems that just about every culture has stories of heroes confronting dragons to rescue the maiden. What Peterson is observing is something that seems to be universal in every culture and that has a basis in our neurological brain structure. This corresponds well with what Pinker is talking about. Whereas the result of the Enlightenment project left us with a material brain and no virtue, Pinker has applied recent science to show a more nuanced understanding of the human mind connected with virtue.

Practical Take Aways

Having walked this long road through philosophy and theory, let’s consider a few practical results of this study of how the mind develops. First, we see how theories of the mind brought us to a fairly destitute place devoid of values. As an educational renewal movement, we can now understand that the goal toward which the mind is developed is a value-rich end. We are cultivating virtues. Certain aspects of virtue are inherent in the child, while others require us to bring virtuous knowledge into contact with the mind. We can agree with Plato that courage already resides in the person and only needs to be unlocked. But we can also agree with Aristotle that a truly courageous person is one who is practiced in courage, who has formed the habit of courage. Let us not shy way from connecting learning to values.

Second, the mind seems to come preprogrammed for learning and that certain avenues of learning are optimal for acquiring new knowledge. I was struck by this quote from Charlotte Mason which seems to anticipate some of Pinker’s conclusions:

“I have so far urged that knowledge is necessary to men and that, in the initial stages, it must be conveyed through a literary medium, whether it be knowledge of physics or of Letters, because there would seem to be some inherent quality in mind which prepares it to respond to this form of appeal and no other. I say in the initial stages, because possibly, when the mind becomes conversant with knowledge of a given type, it unconsciously translates the driest formulae into living speech.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp. 333-334

Notice how she finds that the mind has a certain “inherent quality” that enable the mind to acquire knowledge. That quality is a literary bent. The mind really likes story. So when presenting new information, embedding that knowledge in story form optimizes learning. I think this is why a vast majority of Scripture is in narrative form and why children love to hear stories. Let us not shy away from placing before our children great stories full of rich ideas and noble values.

Finally, the notion that children are persons takes on new significance when we realize that their minds are composed of innate qualities and yet are capable of learning much new knowledge. When we consider how children are beings with genetic data and predispositions but are also beings capable to tremendous change, there is a sense of marvel we should have when beholding a child. When we educate there is untapped potential that will grow and learn regardless of our influence on the child. In this way the teacher really needs to get out of the way so that the child can flourish. But because the child can also be molded, we as teachers must be careful to place before the child that which is worthy of his or her attention. Let us not shy away from promoting a growth mindset among our children.

The post Human Development, Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind? appeared first on .

At this point in the series, we pivot to the formation of individuals in our classrooms. We will see that the tools available to us come in very familiar forms. We will also see how the classical art of rhetoric enables students to express their unique prophetic voices with thoughtfulness, skill and eloquence.

Previous articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Internalizing the Prophetic Message

Before anyone can speak prophetically, one must be connected with the content of divine revelation. The Word of God is living and active, and therefore has the capacity to speak today in our lives personally as well as to speak to the needs of our society. I can think of no higher calling for a teacher than to impart to the students given into her care the internalization of God’s Word. Let’s explore what this means carefully.

Learning scripture is about more than gaining a knowledge of the content of the Bible. Throughout the Word the people of God are called to a proper affective response to the Word. So for instance, the worship of God is to be done with reverence and awe (Heb. 12:28). To be instructed in divine wisdom entails humility in our disposition (Prov. 15:33). The attitude we are cultivating in our students is one of seeking the Lord without pride or self-righteousness, so that they may walk humbly with God and care to live out his just commands (Zeph. 2:3). Cultivating the affective domain enables the student to avoid hypocritical legalism or entitled antinomianism.

Other affective responses to scripture that ought to be cultivated among students are joy and wonder. The Psalmist writes in the great acrostic poem about scripture that God’s testimonies are “the joy of my heart” (Ps. 119:111). Our tendency as educators may be to aim for interpretive exactitude as we teach the Bible. This may be the result of training students in proper interpretive methods or of promoting our theological tradition. However, we can sometimes steal the inherent joy and wonder the reader of the Bible can have. The Word is God’s communication to us, his people. I don’t want to place a false dichotomy here. We can strive for highly accurate interpretations of scripture without robbing our students of the joy they can take in the text. However, as we evaluate our students in an educational environment, it can be easier to determine whether they have “correct” answers, thereby implying that precision is more important than joy and wonder.

Ultimately, a full-orbed internalization of the prophetic message relies on good interpretive practices as well as a responsiveness to the prophetic message at an affective level. We as the people of God are called to be transformed by the message of scripture. This means that there needs to be a spirit-led responsiveness to the text that comes through an understanding that God’s Word speaks to us today. To cultivate this among my students, I have devoted time on a regular basis to have them personally reflect on scripture, journal their thoughts and pray about how God is speaking to them through scripture. Sometimes this happens at school, but I have also encouraged students to take a prayer walk in nature, opening their hearts and minds to listen to the still, small voice of the Lord.

Using Narration to Internalize the Prophetic Message

Scripture memory is a powerful tool for those who really want to live a disciplined Christian life. Mere memorization, though, can be a liability for a few reasons. One of the most meaningful phases of my growth as a young Christian occurred in college when I was involved in the Navigators campus ministry. It was there that scripture memory was allied to personal discipleship. I grew tremendously in my scriptural knowledge. But I also encountered two simultaneous temptations. One temptation was to view the discipline of scripture memory as a work of personal righteousness. If I hadn’t memorized as much as one of my peers, I felt as though I was somehow a lesser Christian. Another temptation was to take pride in my ability to memorize scripture. There were moments when I could show off all I had memorized. To be fair, despite these temptations, I have benefitted greatly from the scripture that was memorized largely because of the promise that God’s word “shall not return to me empty” (Isa. 55:11).

Here is where the practice of narration can be so effective in mitigating some of the temptation of rote memorization. When one narrates, the reader internalizes the sequence, phrases and ideas of the text and then tells it back. This act of assimilation can be more powerful than mere memorization, as Charlotte Mason explains:

“He will find that in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read. This is not memory work. In order to memorise, we repeat over and over a passage or a series of points or names with the aid of such clues as we can invent; we do memorise a string of facts or words, and the new possession serves its purpose for a time, but it is not assimilated; its purpose being served, we know it no more. This is memory work by means of which examinations are passed with credit. I will not try to explain (or understand!) this power to memorise;––it has its subsidiary use in education, no doubt, but it must not be put in the place of the prime agent which is attention.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 16.

Note the liability of memorization she points out. Memorization can give the feeling that something has been assimilated, but it has not become a part of the personal experience of the learner. As we train the prophetic voice of our students, the internalization of scripture must engage the whole person of the child. It should excite the imagination by having the student visualize the scenery and the argument. The mind is most engaged by observing details set within the whole of the surrounding passage. What we most want is to enable the mind of the student to be filled with a storehouse of scripture not merely at the word-perfect level of memorization, but with a full comprehension of the text that is appropriated imaginatively.

Telling scripture back through narration trains the student to express the message and meaning of scripture immediately after an initial contact with scripture. In this way, we are cultivating a practice of speaking aloud God’s revelation on a daily basis. This is the essence of the prophetic voice and it occurs in small moments after reading the Bible each day. A child well practiced in narrating scripture is well on his way to using his prophetic voice in life.

Habit Training as a Means to Internalizing the Prophetic Voice

The assimilation of scripture is not only an intellectual exercise since the message of scripture is to be lived out. James challenges us to have an active faith since, “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). Many have stumbled over this passage because of the Pauline doctrine of faith alone apart from the works of the law. However, James and Paul seem to be singing from the same hymn book. James is simply saying that a faith not lived out is not actually a living faith.

As teachers or parents, we can help children put feet to their biblical faith by carefully considering habits or practices to incorporate in daily life. Charlotte Mason devotes special attention to spiritual habits (we might call them spiritual disciplines) in her third book, School Education. She speaks about cultivating the habits of the religious life such that they begin with compelling ideas about God so that our practices are invested with the savor of communing with God. We can create little forms to express worship, reverence and devotion to God. She writes, “It is a mistake to suppose that the forms of reverence need be tiresome to them. They love little ceremonies, and to be taught to kneel nicely while saying their short prayers would help them to a feeling of reverence in after life.” (Vol. 3, pg. 141) Learning reverence is a delight to the child, and we can set up cues that enable the student to have a moment of personal connection with her Lord.

It is not surprising to find in our churches that there are cues and practices that draw us into a sense of God’s presence. We learn to habitually pray in certain ways and to find certain practices meaningful in our expression of worship. These kinds of cues and practices can be drawn into our homes and classrooms. Mason writes, “The chair, or the bedside, or the little prayer-table, or, best of all, the mother’s knee, plays no small part in framing the soul to a habit of devotion.” (Vol. 3, pg. 142) Note how the goal is not to make the chair or bedside a little temple. Instead, the soul is the actual temple for the indwelling Christ. Yet, establishing a place where a sense of God’s holiness can be experienced in a special way cultivates this habit of devotion to the Lord.

Paul instructs fathers in Ephesians to bring up children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Eph. 6:4) The word for discipline here is παιδεία which means training or molding. We can contrast this word with Paul’s use of ὑπωπιάζω in 1 Cor. 9:27, which has the sense of beating the body into submission. In Ephesians 6:4, the job for parents is to positively set the child on a course toward the Lord. This happens when we place in their lives objects and practices that incline them toward God. Habit training envisions the best for the child and then sets up structures to realize this vision in daily practices. You can read more about the connection of habit training and our Christian faith in my article “Christ our Habitude.“

I have seen this at work in my son’s life. One summer we made it a practice to have a short devotional each morning after his breakfast. The Egan boys usually are up before everyone else, so we had this alone time. There was something special about moment each day, and we simply sat on the couch together reading short passages of scripture. Even though I created a structure, he soon checked in with me, “Are we doing devotional this morning?” He had internalized the specialness of that moment, and his heart was positively inclined toward the Lord. That lives with him even now, years later, as he has accumulated many moments of divine joy. A morning connection with God is a well-formed habit.

Clean Your Room

In this article, we have been discussing the concept of internalizing the prophetic message. That’s because before one can go out and prophetically speak to address the concerns of our world, the message must first be taken into the individual. In keeping with this idea, it is likewise important for the message to have its transformative effect first on the individual. Here I want to explore the idea that a person cannot begin to solve the world’s problems until the student has begun to address the problems in his or her own life.

Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules for Life lays out a perspective on responsibility taking as a prerequisite to prophetic speech. He articulates this in his sixth rule: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” This rule has become something of an internet meme as it was expressed in various places by Peterson as “clean up your room.” You can watch his elaboration of this idea here. The point he is making is that the arena to practice applying the prophetic message is in the most immediate and personal sphere. If your room is in disarray, how can you possibly go about fixing a world in disarray?

To speak the truth, one must be completely aligned with the truth as it gets expressed in daily living. “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” (1 John 1:6) The first person truth must be proclaimed to is oneself. It is in the personal encounter with truth that the would-be prophet experiences the veracity of the truth to be proclaimed. This is where conviction gets set. The goal is not just to know true things, but to exert our wills such that our lives are conformed to the truth.

When I talk about internalizing the prophetic message, this notion of living out the truth in practical ways during daily life has something to it. If a child can learn to transform himself and his environment by being brutally honest with himself, then he has taken responsibility in the smallest and most immediate sphere. The little white lie must be confronted as the little tyke says to himself, “I am a dishonest person, and that must change.” Then he goes about rooting out falsehood, becoming an honest person. Perhaps the child looks about his room and sees the Legos strewn about. The light of truth reveals how much chaos and disorder is in his life. As he works to clean his room, he is learning responsibility and begins to marshal resources to solve problems in his little world.

Training the Prophetic Voice

For us as teachers we have many opportunities to cultivate the internalization of the prophetic voice in our classrooms. We should create environments where honesty and truth telling are highly valued. What I mean by this is that we expect of our students to say what they mean, and not accept little falsehoods, blame shifting or cute excuses. Speaking the truth is not about tattling on a classmate. Instead, speaking truth is about encountering the truth about oneself and then being given the support to do something about it.

Early in this article, we talked about learning the message of scripture and acquiring proper affective responses to God and his Word. One aspect of our environments should be a consistent and regular encounter with a personal and holy God. The spirit is there to comfort and convict. As we train our students, they must learn to be sensitive to God’s work in their life.

Using the tools available to us, such as narration and habit training, our students can be directed toward living lives consistent with the message of scripture. As teachers, we can often see avenues for their growth. There are insights we can share to help them “see the light” of truth. Are they consistently late to school? Is their math homework sloppy? Can their handwriting improve? Are they tipping in their chair? We teachers can speak truth to our students (or better have the students speak truth about themselves) in a supportive and caring way. Then we help them bring their lives into conformity with the truth by helping them come up with strategies be on time, tidy up their math homework, improve their handwriting or sit properly in their chair.

One day our students will go out into the world to encounter the problems they see there. They will need to use their prophetic voices to criticize and correct the world. Before they can do that, they will need to internalize the prophetic message. When we have this vision for our students, it adds meaning and purpose to our daily work in the classroom.

Other articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World

The post Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message appeared first on .

Previous articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

A Sweltering Day in August 1963

His white, button-down shirt with rolled up sleeves shows a man working diligently. With pencil in hand, he revises some thoughts that had been rehearsed in small settings over the course of the preceding years. This is the calm before the storm. A simple office provided to Martin Luther King, Jr. offered a little space to think and to write on the eve of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963. It’s an image of Rev. King alone, cerebral and dispassionate. According to legend, the prepared notes had no reference to the phrase “I have a dream.”

It was in this setting that a masterpiece was prepared. Rev. King referred extensively to the Bible, with allusions to the Psalter, Isaiah, Amos and Galatians interspersed, anchoring his speech to the biblical prophetic tradition. American patriotism rings through as well, with references to the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the national hymn “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” Literary allusions permeate the speech, with a deft rephrasing of one of Shakespeare’s famous lines in Richard III. The man was clearly a well-educated minister, perhaps seizing a moment of national television coverage to showcase his rhetorical sophistication.

Contrast the staid moment of solitude with the thronging crowds on the National Mall gathered near a body of water (the Reflecting Pool) looking at the mountain of steps leading up to the Lincoln Memorial. It was a full day, with numerous speakers and singers preceding Rev. King. The recently deceased John Lewis had spoken earlier in the day. Many celebrities and dignitaries turned out for the event. This was a charged moment, so much so that Rev. King caught a moment of lightning that took his prepared notes to another level.

As legend has it, Mahalia Jackson, who had sung “How I Got Over” earlier in the program, called out in the middle of speech, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” Rev. King departed from his notes and improvised with cadences of “I have a dream” punctuating the speech about two-thirds of the way through. It became something more than a speech. Martin Luther King, Jr. experienced a moment of transcendence that crystallized what the civil rights movement was all about. This speech directly contributed to a wellspring of support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation and outlawed discrimination.

Speaking Truth to Power

The phrase, “speaking truth to power,” is the essence of the prophetic voice. The nature of truth is funny, though. The Correspondence Theory, as expressed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, says that a statement or proposition is true to the extent that it corresponds to the way the universe actually is. If I were to say I live in Chicago, the truth of that statement would have to correspond to factual reality. For most people living outside the Chicagoland area, to say I live in Chicago is good enough. It is an approximate reality, because Chicago is the nearest major city to where I live. But in fact, I don’t live within the city limits of Chicago. My proposition doesn’t correspond to the world as it actually is. So have I actually told a falsehood?

The power of this little fact of where I live is fairly minuscule. Thus we might call it a little, white lie. It’s fairly inconsequential in most circumstances. It’s also not the kind of truth we’re talking about when we consider what it means to speak truth to power. One of the limitations of a formal definition of truth is the inability to handle subjective values, such as goodness, beauty, justice and so forth. But it is exactly these kinds of values that we mean when we speak about truth in the context of enacting meaningful change in society.

Aristotle is once again helpful, this time drawing upon The Art of Rhetoric. In his opening chapter, he begins a definition of rhetoric through comparison with dialectic. In both dialectic and rhetoric, one poses two or more points to be examined and debated, with the view of arriving at the truth through a process of logical evaluation. Aristotle writes:

“Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible; our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, as we said in the Topics, when speaking of converse with the multitude.”

Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.1.12

What Aristotle is saying here is that truth and justice, although obviously better than falsehood and injustice, are not always decided upon by those who advocate for certain policies in society. Moreover, even if we were able to produce scientific facts, we would need to instruct the “other side” as though we were educating them. However, we often don’t have that kind of time, so the art of persuasion must be used to convince the “other side” of the truth and justice of one’s perspective. Aristotle continues:

“Further, the orator should be able to prove opposites, as in logical arguments; not that we should do both (for one ought not to persuade people to do what is wrong), but that the real state of the case may not escape us, and that we ourselves may be able to counteract false arguments, if another makes an unfair use of them.”

Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.1.12

Here Aristotle suggests that the one speaking truth to power should be able to take on board the opposite viewpoint, in order to point out and counteract falsehood. This begins to get at the heart of our nature as human beings. In our search for truth and justice, we are prone to error and corruption. Therefore we need such arts as dialectic and rhetoric to challenge our thinking as individuals and as a society so that truth might emerge despite our limitations.

Truth in a Free Society

Perhaps the most cherished freedom in our society is the freedom of speech. Given what has just been stated about our human nature, the freedom of speech is actually the freedom to be wrong. It would be impossible to make people pass a truth test before they could speak freely. For one, who could pass such a test, knowing the limits of our knowledge and the complex motives that stand behind our utterances? More concerning would be the question of who gets to make the test that would grant freedom of speech to others. That kind of power would mean that certain people could set a standard based on their own limited understanding of what they think is true. This would be unjust and tyrannical. Therefore a free society must allow all people to speak freely, which means most free speech will be wrong to some degree.

So where is hope to be found, if everyone is basically wrong to some degree? The implication of freedom of speech is that our society would be a place of discourse where ideas are put forward equitably such that the best ideas – those that are true, good and just – would prevail. Certain ideas rise to the top, with a majority persuaded of its virtues. However, these ideas must simultaneously be challenged by those who hold the minority position. It is interesting to examine how the framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to protect the minority viewpoint through mechanisms like the separation of powers, checks and balances, a bicameral legislature, and term limits, to name a few.

Western democracies have established discourse and debate as a means to providing the greatest possible common good by validating the role of the individual’s right to speak freely, even if what is spoken is incorrect or offensive. In keeping with Aristotle’s rhetorical theory, it is best to have people speak out what they actually think, so that we can fully examine the truth or lack thereof. We can trust that if a person speaks falsely or offensively, people will let them know. This is the hope of Western society; that truth can be spoken even by those not in power.

Social Media, Ideological Possession and Echo Chambers

One of the tragedies of our society has been the erosion of genuine debate and discourse. We get the false impression that we are engaged in debate and discourse through social media. But what we most often find on Facebook feeds or in the comments sections of websites is something more like a drive-by shooting. Facts and opinions are fired from the protected silo our devices provide. We rarely have to look a person in the eye, but instead type up charged communiques with a sense of our own anonymity. Social media exacerbates the lack of serious engagement of issues due to its ever-present and instantaneous nature. We are lured into thinking we are engaging in civil discourse, but in actuality it is anything but civil.

Into this environment we can place the concept of ideological possession. I have written a bit about Jordan Peterson in the past. In an interview with Helen Lewis, Peterson described what it looks like when a person is beholden to a particular ideology:

“So, you’re not … integrating the specifics of your personal experience with what you’ve been taught, to synthesize something that’s genuine and surprising, and engaging in a narrative sense as a consequence. And that’s the pathology of ideological possession. It’s not good. And it’s not good that I know where you stand on things once I know a few things. It’s like … why have a conversation? I already know where you stand on things.”

Interview of Jordan Peterson by Helen Lewis for British GQ

This is the kind of person who has taken a position on a particular set of issues, yet most of the thought has not been original. They have downloaded a set of ideas from a prominent voice on the right or on the left. The prepackaging of the ideas from favored media outlets makes it convenient for individual to not actually think but react. This is different from the person who has carefully worked out a theory or philosophy on their own. They posses their ideas rather than ideas possessing them. The effort to work out a theory or philosophy means they are skilled at considering new information and either synthesizing it or countering it in a thoughtful way.

An echo tells back what we have spoken. One of the liabilities of politically aligned news outlets is that people can live within echo chambers that reinforce their ideological possession. lt feels like thoughtful interaction with the news of our day. But without listening to ideas and viewpoints that challenge us, we are liable to reinforce a conception of truth with no assistance to root out the error of our thinking. Being loud and proud about things we think we know (but is probably only just what we heard on YouTube) is very different than speaking with a prophetic voice.

Training the Prophetic Voice

Let’s return to the two images of Martin Luther King, Jr. One image is of the man preparing. The other is of the man exercising his prophetic voice. For me this models our educational program. The second image is of a person at the right place, at the right time, with the best opportunity to deliver a compelling message challenging injustice and calling for reform. This is quite rare and not to be expected by all rhetoricians or by every would-be prophet.

It is the first image, the man in solitude gathering the thoughts of many centuries. Rev. King assimilated into himself the wisdom of his biblical faith and the wisdom of his Western heritage. The ideas of Western civilization were the means by which he perceived a way to correct the corruption of that very same Western civilization.

This is what we are doing now in our classrooms. We are giving our students the tools they need to assess and evaluate the cultural heritage we are imparting to them. I mentioned in our teacher training recently that in educating our young ones, we are passing the cultural baton to the next generation. That’s why it is so important to teach the Greeks and the Romans, the Italian Renaissance, Shakespeare, the U.S. and French revolutions, the World Wars, the Civil Rights movement and so one. We are providing them with the best authors and the best ideas our society has produced. But we do so knowing that for as good as that tradition is, it is also a corrupt tradition. We remain the kind of society that would enslave or murder if given the chance. But we are equally the kind of society that would emancipate and protect the vulnerable if given the opportunity. We pass on our cultural heritage saying, “We tried our best to root out some of the corruption, but there’s still some there. Now you try the best you can.”

Training students to have a prophetic voice means that we are validating and supporting the personhood of each individual student. We are calling them to seek for truth wherever it can be found. And when they find it, they will utilize the resources and skills they’ve acquired to promote and defend the truth in a society that needs their contribution to the great discourse.

Other articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message

Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World

The post Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power appeared first on .

Truth

Peterson grounds truth in the biblical conception of the Divine Logos as the creative force behind the universe.

“In the Christian tradition, Christ is identified with the Logos. The Logos is the Word of God. That Word transformed chaos into order at the beginning of time. In His human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, He died and was reborn. The Word that produces order from Chaos sacrifices everything, even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity.”

Peterson, 12 Rules, 223

As a consequence, truth is what orders the universe. To live in harmony with the universe is to encounter truth, brutal as that may be at times, and to abide by truth in speech and conduct. Peterson takes us to the prison camps, both Soviet and Nazi, through the accounts of Solzhenitsynn and Frankl (pg. 215) to see that truth often comes at great personal expense, and that untruth corrupts at all levels of society. For both the individual and society, “lies war the structure of Being.” (pg. 215). Knowing the truth will set us free, according to the words of Jesus in John 8:32, who calls us to abide in his Word. Centering our lives around truth is not easy, but the alternative is a life that lacks freedom, even though lies entice us through the deception that we can attain freedom through them. Peterson’s advice in rule 8 is “Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.” As educators, this advice orients us to assisting our students in the acquisition of truth, and challenging them to root out deception.

Educators often fall prey to the urgent needs of the moment. Grades are due, the students need to be prepped for the annual performance, or we’ve simply fallen behind in our unit. We figure delivering content efficiently is the best solution. Content delivery, that is the teaching of the facts and figures in our curriculum, is not the same as centering our classroom on truth. Surely, we are telling true things to our students, but the content is more likely to glance off the surface of their minds. To be truly centered on the truth, we must recognize the transformative nature of truth. Truth needs to be reflected upon. Truth needs to be expressed. Truth needs to be committed to. These are necessities that take time and effort in order for truth to take its full effect in the lives of students. I appreciate Peterson’s vulnerable self-reflection, recognizing how to detect truthfulness and deception within himself.

“If you pay attention to what you do and say, you can learn to feel a state of internal division and weakness, when you are misbehaving and misspeaking. It’s an embodied sensation, not a thought. I experience an internal sensation of sinking and division, rather than solidity and strength, when I am incautious with my acts and words. It seems to be centred in my solar plexus, where a large knot of nervous tissue resides. I learned to recognize when I was lying, in fact, by noticing this sinking and division, and then inferring the presence of a lie. It often took me a long time to ferret out the deception. Sometimes I was using words for appearance. Sometimes I was trying to disguise my own true ignorance of the topic at hand. Sometimes I was using the words of others to avoid the responsibility of thinking for myself.”

Peterson, 12 Rules, 224

My mom taught me something similar to what Peterson describes here. She called it the “uh-oh” feeling. I now call it my conscience. Our students need to learn how to feel and respond to their consciences, and to know when they are exhibiting the strength of truthfulness or are succumbing to deception. This takes time, and peace, and quiet. It also requires of us a level of commitment to the student that is challenging. We often want to detach ourselves from our students at the most opportune moments for learning to take place: namely lunch and recess. But these are the moments when we most get to live together with our students in meaningful ways. We’ll explore meaning a bit further below.

In the classroom, though, we can be mindful of two pillars that ground study in truthfulness. First, is the assumption that others have something to teach us. Peterson’s 9th rule states, “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” Intellectual humility is a virtue our society desperately needs. Intellectual humility is the disposition a thinker has that recognizes the limited nature of the individual’s knowledge. It is learned in the classroom not only when we read new texts. In some ways a student is more willing to listen to the books we read because there is an innate trust they have that the school will put before them something valuable. Beyond this, though, is the interchange between students through discussion and debate. Helping our students to listen effectively to their classmates is so important to developing an awareness that they don’t know everything. I would love for students to even know that they barely know anything at all, but that would be asking too much. Even while I say that, I also recognize my own need to listen effectively to my students, because there are plenty of times that the ethereal knowledge comes through the mouths of babes.

The second pillar of truthfulness is to mark the words you speak very carefully. Peterson’s 10th rule is to “be precise in your speech.” The classical tradition of liberal arts education promotes this ideal. The three forms of the trivium – grammar, logic and rhetoric – trained individuals to become competent language users through the acquisition of the mechanics of language, thought and persuasive speech. Precision in language gives us a means of accurately perceiving the world around us. Peterson describes Adam in the garden naming the animals. In an exposition on Genesis, he makes the point that “We can’t really get a grip on something before we have a name for it.” Precision in language helps us come to terms with the world that already exists around us. But it also affords us the creative potential to make something of the world around us. Language is the means by which we create narratives and poetry. Words can alter our perception of reality, creating order where once there was chaos.

Clear language is the heart of excellent teaching. This idea is similarly expressed by John Milton Gregory in his The Seven Laws of Teaching. His third law — the law of language — is condensed into the statement, “Use words understood by both teacher and pupil in the same sense — language clear and vivid alike to both.” The words we use in our lessons should be precise, and we then look for precise language from our students. This pertains not only to academic stuff, but also to our general speech. I don’t permit loose words in my classroom. Any students who drops a fake swear word will be guided to consider what it truly means and why one would choose to use it. These have become a rarity simply because they know they have to be careful in their speech, or at the very least will have a lengthy conversation about the etymology of their colorful language.

Meaning

Precise speech not only enables us to accurately perceive the world around us, but it also assigns meaning to our reality: “We don’t see valueless entities and then attribute meaning to them. We perceive the meaning directly” (Peterson, 12 Rules, 261). This leads us to a consideration of life as meaningful. We teach not merely so students can learn facts. The words we learn aren’t merely a set of definitions. Our students are acquiring the ability to make sense of their world and to find meaning through their experience of the world. The last rule we will consider in this series is Peterson’s rule 7, “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).”

There really are two alternatives for each and every one of us. One can do nothing except that which would enable one to keep doing nothing. Or one can do something. Once that choice is made, you are either on a path of nihilism or on a path of meaning. The most frustrating thing to encounter as a teacher is the student who chooses the first path. We want all the best for them, but dance, sing, cajole as we might, they will only be satiated by their own wants and desires. The homework is unfinished yet again, only to find out they spent the better part of the evening playing video games. Or the child falls asleep in the middle of class yet again, only to find they stayed up most of the night binge watching an inane series on Netflix. The child clearly doesn’t care. There may or may not be concerned parents equally mystified by the behavior. Prodding doesn’t work. Rewards don’t cause lasting change. What’s to be done? Probably nothing. Nothing is what they’ve chosen.

Fortunately, this rarely occurs to the greatest extreme. But we see gradations in all of our classrooms. “Life is suffering,” Peterson states right at the outset of the chapter (pg. 161). One way to cope with that reality is to simply live for the moment.

“Follow you impulses. Live for the moment. Do what’s expedient. Lie, cheat, steal, deceive, manipulate – but don’t get caught. In an ultimately meaningless universe, what possible difference could it make?”

Peterson, 12 Rules, 162

The lure of meaninglessness beckons our students more and more. Hours can be spent on meaningless scrolling through memes and YouTube videos. Time has passed and nothing meaningful has been done.

“There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient. There is no careful observation that actions and presuppositions matter, or that the world is made of what matters.”

Peterson, 12 Rules, 200

The subtle lie behind the choice to live according to expedience is that you get to avoid suffering. That can never be.

We must be careful as educators to not shy away from meaning. Every class and every subject holds great potential for our students to encounter meaning. How sad it would be to come away from reading Homer without the student understanding in a personal way what it means to live a heroic life through personal sacrifice! History shows us over and over that tyranny must be opposed by people who value life and liberty. What just cause will capture our students hearts, propelling them into the world to make it a little bit better as they see it? Unfortunately, our students aren’t evaluated according to virtue or wisdom on their standardized tests. Yet, the quality of their lives most corresponds to their sense of value and worth. My concern with the state of education today, borrowing from the outdated factory model, is that its chief end is employment. But life is so much more than a job.

Education ought to be transformative in the lives of our students. As young people, they already experience suffering. If school is to truly equip them for life, we ourselves as teachers must be in touch with matters of vital interest to our students in acquiring for themselves a life of meaning. This only comes about by caring about something. Charlotte Mason’s educational method is founded on living ideas. We present to our students a vast array of possible interests about which they can develop care.

“We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room,’ should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care?”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, 170-171

Bringing students to a place where they care for a great many things sets them on a course to experience a life of meaning. Will they still suffer in life? Most assuredly. But will they find purpose and meaning through the suffering? Absolutely. And they will be better people for it.

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is an exploration of both order and chaos. There are quite a number of ideas he explores that provide tools for us to use as teachers.

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist from Canada and teaches psychology at the University of Toronto. He has risen to fame through the new media by posting class lectures on YouTube and participating in debates and panel discussions with people like Sam Harris, Douglas Murray and David Rubin (side note: I think the Vancouver debate between Peterson and Harris is an excellent example of charitable debate). Peterson’s career has focused on emotional wellbeing through the creation of meaning especially through systems of religious belief and cultural mythology. His first book, Maps of Meaning, amounts to his theoretical exploration of how humans construct meaning in life, while his second book, 12 Rules for Life, spells out more practically some of the abstract concepts contained in his first work.

Peterson has attracted criticism for his views, especially concerning his opposition to state-mandated politically correct speech, identity politics, climate change and gender roles, the latter of which we’ll explore briefly below. Despite criticisms of his work, I have found many his ideas compelling and full of potential educational value. While I might differ with him on, say, the particulars of biblical hermeneutics, or might question some of the applications of his major ideas, I think Peterson has thoughtfully articulated many ideas that frame the nature of our modern culture and that provide a compelling way forward toward creating lives of meaning.

A Posture to Learn — Looking to Lobsters

The first rule Peterson sets out is stated, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” The rule is based on Peterson’s analysis of serotonin and dopamine neurochemicals in lobsters, which have a very similar neurochemistry to humans. In a dominance hierarchy, winners enjoy a release of positive neurochemicals and losers produce lower levels of serotonin, which is then reflected in their posture. A dominant male lobster raises his claws in a show of self-confidence, demonstrating its positive outlook on life, whereas the lesser lobster cowers physically, mired in a wash of negative neurochemicals. Our culture is less prone to the physical blows lobsters land on each other in the deep sea, but we still have this basic hormonal setup. Peterson’s advice, then, is to take on the posture of the winner: stand tall with your shoulders back. We can enjoy the benefits of positive neurochemistry by striking a positive pose.

For educators, I think this can be translated into good postural habits. Students slumped over their desks or tipping in their chairs are not positioning themselves for optimal academic engagement. Sitting up straight with shoulders back, eyes forward in an open and ready position is going to help a student place their focus better. A student striking this positive pose is more likely to feel more positively about their learning. It’s no surprise that students who strike a defeated pose feel defeated by their school work. As teachers, we should hold our students accountable to their posture by cultivating habits of posture, such as sitting and standing up straight.

The Hierarchies of Life

More controversially, Peterson identifies how both lobsters and humans (not to mention all animal life) operate within hierarchical structures. The dominance model of hierarchies implies that an individual climbs to higher rungs in the hierarchy through success in interactions with others. The dominance hierarchy is pretty old, since it is hard-wired into our nervous system. Even if one doesn’t accept an evolutionary paradigm, Peterson’s work here provides a neurological basis for hierarchy that is still demonstrably embedded in our humanity. It explains our positive and negative reactions to success and defeat. Peterson’s advice to walk tall with shoulders back is a recognition that hierarchies are a reality in life and are here to stay, for better or for worse. If life is chaotic (which it most certainly is), then taking upon ourselves a posture to meet the challenges of life by bringing order to our chaos is to our benefit. To see ourselves as part of a hierarchy enables us to take responsibility for our role in the hierarchy, whether in a family, school, work, or society.

Peterson has received much of his criticism for this point from feminists who see Peterson’s claims as a promotion of a tyrannical male hierarchy. The feminist claim is that male dominance has been tyrannical throughout history, making Peterson’s claims about roles of men and women within society’s hierarchical structures a threat to the egalitarian aims of feminists. While it is true that hierarchies can be misused by tyrants, Peterson does not think that becoming competent within a hierarchy entails tyranny. Quite the opposite. It is competence, he claims, that would lead to mutual happiness between men and women in marriage and broader society.

Peterson has clarified over the course of several interviews his stance, championing equality of opportunity for women and men over equality of outcome when it comes to careers. Removing barriers for women to compete for jobs with men is a desirable outcome. But creating mandated quotas actually undermines freedom of choice, which is bad for society. He notes that in many Scandinavian societies that have created the most egalitarian laws, we see some of the widest differences in career choices, meaning that when given equality of opportunity, men and women will often choose careers based on a set of criteria that is grounded in factors such as personality and gender differences.

These are important issues for educators to work through as we contemplate how best to serve our students, creating opportunities for all while recognizing that not all will fit into our cleverly devised metrics. Thus, enabling all students to take our highest level courses is a noble aim. But if more girls than boys opt into advanced language courses and more boys than girls opt into advanced science courses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is broken. It wouldn’t necessarily be in the best interests of the students or the school to force more girls to take advanced science or more boys to take advanced languages. In my experience, these trends seem to ebb and flow, with some classes skewing one direction and the next the other. This ebb and flow is organic.

Less organic is the posture we take toward roles within hierarchies. In my previous post on Jesus as a learner, I mentioned how he learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb. 5:8). He embodied particular roles with the hierarchy of authority in various spheres, such as submitting to authority within a family or learning from the teachers of the law. Our students should learn how to live properly under authority, with respect and obedience. This is not some tyrannical power trip over children. Instead, it is teaching them to be at peace with their role as students who are under the authority of their teacher. It is not as though they will not live within structures of authority later in life. There will be bosses and magistrates. Cultivating a proper posture toward authority will enable students to enter into the world as self-controlled, competent people.

Practice Makes Better

Finally, there is an element of “fake it until you make it” mentality in Peterson’s first rule. Taking on the posture of standing tall with shoulders back doesn’t occur when we feel like it. Instead, the feeling of worth and wellbeing often occurs later. How do we begin to get rid of the feelings of self doubt and personal defeat? By doing something simple but powerful in posturing ourselves differently. When I used to teach string bass lessons to middle and high school students, one of the rules I taught my students was to act like an accomplished bass player before playing. They could visualize themselves as top performers who could rip through the difficult passages with grace and composure. I often saw this advice translate into better practice and better performance. Yes, they still had to put in the work of practicing the difficult passages. And yes, they still often made mistakes in performances — everyone does. But the mistakes weren’t as earth shattering as they once were. The confidence in their performances went up. And the joy in their music making increased.

Much of what a student does is practice. We often think of practice as homework exercises, construed as largely academic work. However, it is a wise teacher who considers the whole child. We are also helping the student practice their posture, their perspective on their work, the affections and loves. Learning how to practice when one doesn’t feel like it can be as important a skill as completing a set of long division problems. Peterson’s first rule, stand tall with shoulders back, is not simply about posture. It also speaks to a mindset that an individual take responsibility for their lives by focusing on one simple thing to practice. By getting some forward momentum on that one habit, others begin to follow.

Peterson writes about setting up automated routines in our life:

The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automated. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity. This can be perceived most clearly in the case of small children, who are delightful and comical and playful when their sleeping and eating schedules are stable, and horrible and whiny and nasty when they are not. (12 Rules, 18).

Imagine how complex getting started on homework is. Find a place to work, unpack the bag, identify the problem set, get yourself into work mode, stave off distractions that are likely more prevalent at home than they are at school, etc. If we were able to craft a stable and reliable set of habits where the time and space are automated each day, it reduces the complexity and effort it takes to even begin doing homework.

Homework is just one area, and probably not even the most important area, we should consider helping our students create practice routines. Organizing our folders, sequencing packup, and a whole host of the day’s routines can be a wellspring of opportunities to engage students in learning how to bring order into the chaos of the school day. We should never merely teach content. We are helping our students acquire rules for life so that these children may shape lives of meaning and purpose. As we craft our lesson plans and call upon our students to engage in academic work, we also ought to be mindful of ways we can cultivate healthy habits in our students’ lives.

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