“A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.” (41)

In this series of articles we’re unpacking and reapplying Newport’s insights to see how they bring to light some of the core principles of classical education. For instance, the phrase multum non multa has often been used to emphasize an approach similar to his principles: depth over breadth, and quality over quantity. The phrase comes from a letter of Pliny the Younger 7.9-15 and originally refers to his advice for a student to read much, not many things. This could be taken to mean that he read the right books or the best books over and over again rather than simply reading more. It thus stands for an important classical prioritization of the quality of material read or studied, over simply checking the box of more subjects or books, regardless of their importance or enduring value.

In this article we’re going to unpack Cal Newport’s first principle of doing fewer things and apply it to the students’ work of learning in school. Along the way we’ll discuss some of the complex problems around what this means for the number of subjects, the structure of the school day, and the type and number of assignments we give to students. Let’s dig in.

In the context of knowledge work on the job, Cal Newport explains how his revolutionary idea of doing fewer things might play itself out:

“Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.” (53)

As I’ve said before, Newport’s book will likely be helpful and inspiring to classical school administrators as well. The dizzying variety of demands involved in running a small school can be overwhelming. Cal Newport’s not alone in the business and productivity workspace to argue for focused effort on the work that matters most and the ruthless elimination of secondary obligations that are really distractions. It’s almost a mantra, even if still widely unpracticed. For instance, in their book The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth behind Extraordinary Results, Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan made the best-seller lists by arguing that “success isn’t a game that’s won by whoever does the most,” but that instead people should ask themselves, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” In this context, Newport’s “Do fewer things” feels almost modest and more realistic in its understatement. 

Doing fewer things perhaps resonates most obviously with the multum non multa saying. I like to think of it most of all as embracing depth, not breadth. If you try to do too much in work or in school, you will often end up doing shallow, incomplete work of questionable quality. Committing to doing fewer things feels scary, as if we are abandoning the societal value accorded the sacred claims of “productivity” in the first place. But it actually enables the type of focus and attention necessary for the true productivity or accomplishment that moves the needle (to invoke a worn-out business cliche…). As Newport’s explanation reminds us, some projects matter more than others, and it can easily be demonstrated that this is the case in school too. 

Busyness and relentless activities do not produce great students. In the tradition there was a recognition that certain studies would serve as the foundation of other studies. The liberal arts were the “tools of learning,” according to Dorothy Sayers, that would enable the student to work as a craftsman of general learning and knowledge and therefore continue learning well for life. The problem of modern education was focusing on teaching “subjects” rather than these tools, and thus wasting labor. We can see how one of the central clarion calls of our educational reform movement (Sayers’ “The Lost Tools of Learning” essay) resonates with the call to do fewer things. What are those things we should do, according to Sayers? Grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. And all the subjects that you might choose are merely grist for the mill. The focus of the educator should be on the students’ accomplishment or productivity in handling these tools. 

This is one helpful way of approaching the challenge, but it requires the consistent intentionality of the teacher to work against the grain of her culture in a purely mental way. If the curriculum writers and designers consistently pull her back to the rigmarole of manyness over muchness, it is worth questioning how much has really changed here. This has led some classical education leaders to radical proposals like putting everything on block periods and cutting classes down to the bare minimum of “classical subjects.” The obvious problem with this is which subjects to cut. It may be easier in the upper grades to collapse history, literature and Bible or theology into one another through an integrated humanities course, as does the Omnibus series of Veritas Press. But in this case, we have not really saved time or done fewer things; we have simply combined or grouped these areas of study together. In the meantime, we have actually added to the number of subjects or courses studied by introducing philosophical texts into K-12 education, along with logic and rhetoric courses. 

In the lower grades we might ask what we are cutting with equal, if not stronger, force. Surely, we are not cutting phonics or grammar, penmanship or composition, history, literature or Bible? Perhaps we should cut mathematics and science? Or the unnecessary fine arts, like music and drawing? Are there any advocates for cutting PE? How about recess? What does “do fewer things” and multum non multa practically mean in a modern school? Is it really classical to have fewer subjects? 

My answer to the last question, and the answer of at least one stream of the classical tradition, is no. The problem is not the number of subjects but the approach to assignments and the pace and quality of student work. Quintilian, the famed Roman rhetoric teacher of the 1st century, provides the most ancient and authoritative voice for this embrace of manyness in subjects, if not in assignments. In his Institutes of Oratory Quintilian commends the importance of early training from the grammarian, and in that context emphasizes just how many subjects of books the student should read and learn from in his early years:

“Nor is it sufficient to have read the poets only; every class of writers must be studied, not simply for matter, but for words, which often receive their authority from writers. Nor can grammar be complete without a knowledge of music, since the grammarian has to speak of meter and rhythm; nor, if he is ignorant of astronomy, can he understand the poets, who, to say nothing of other matters, so often allude to the rising and setting of the stars in marking the seasons; nor must he be unacquainted with philosophy, both on account of numbers of passages, in almost all poems, drawn from the most abstruse subtleties of physical investigation, and also on account of Empedocles among the Greeks, and Varro and Lucretius among the Latins, who have committed the precepts of philosophy to verse.” (1.4.4; Translated by John Selby Watson, edited by Curtis Dozier and Lee Honeycutt.)

When Quintilian says that “every class of writers must be studied,” he encompasses the breadth of a humane and liberal education, not a bare-bones trivium training (without sufficient “grist for the mill”; let us give Dorothy Sayers her due…). We can hear the liberal arts categories, especially the quadrivium, endorsed explicitly in his mention of music and astronomy. And he specifically goes beyond those categories even to embrace the reading of philosophy, not after formal study of grammar and then rhetoric is completed, but before and during. 

It’s passages like these that show how insufficient a bare bones view of what it meant for ancients to study the trivium is, from the point of view of what we in modern times call “subjects.” Quintilian’s grammar stage (if we can call it that) embraced wide and humane reading across the subjects. We might even say that it encourages breadth over depth in reading, contrary to the apt phrase of Pliny the Younger. 

If any would claim that we are overstraining Quintilian’s context to apply it to the argument about the number of subjects for young students, we can point to an even clearer context where Quintilian specifically endorses sending our young orator in training to the teachers of grammar, music, geometry, acting and dance, and then answers the common objection of his day: 

“It is a common question whether, supposing all these things [grammar and music and geometry and acting and dance] are to be learned, they can all be taught and acquired at the same time, for some deny that this is possible, as the mind must be confused and wearied by so many studies of different tendency for which neither the understanding, nor the body, nor time itself, can suffice. Even though mature age may endure such labor, it is said, that of childhood ought not to be thus burdened.” (1.12.1)

Here we see him specifically take up the number of “subjects” studied at one and the same time, i.e. the question of a student’s course load, as it were. The supposed confusion and weariness might mimic our own concerns for leisure, contemplation and restful learning. His answer is so stunning and helpful that it is worth reproducing in full:

“2. But these reasoners do not understand how great the power of the human mind is, that mind which is so busy and active and which directs its attention, so to speak, to every quarter so that it cannot even confine itself to do only one thing, but bestows its force upon several, not merely in the same day, but at the same moment. 3. Do not players on the harp, for example, exert their memory and attend to the sound of their voice and the various inflections of it, while at the same time they strike part of the strings with their right hand and pull, stop, or let loose others with their left, while not even their foot is idle, but beats time to their playing, all these acts being done simultaneously? 4. Do not we advocates, when surprised by a sudden necessity to plead, say one thing while we are thinking of what is to follow, and while at the very same moment, the invention of arguments, the choice of words, the arrangement of matter, gesture, delivery, look, and attitude are necessarily objects of our attention? If all these considerations of so varied a nature are forced, as by a single effort, before our mental vision, why may we not divide the hours of the day among different kinds of study, especially as variety itself refreshes and recruits the mind, while on the contrary, nothing is more annoying than to continue at one uniform labor? Accordingly, writing is relieved by reading, and the tedium of reading itself is relieved by changes of subject. 5. However many things we may have done, we are yet to a certain degree fresh for that which we are going to begin. Who, on the contrary, would not be stupefied if he were to listen to the same teacher of any art, whatever it might be, through the whole day? But by change a person will be recruited, as is the case with respect to food, by varieties of which the stomach is re-invigorated and is fed with several sorts less unsatisfactorily than with one. 6. Or let those objectors tell me what other mode there is of learning. Ought we to attend to the teacher of grammar only, and then to the teacher of geometry only, and cease to think, during the second course, of what we learned in the first? Should we then transfer ourselves to the musician, our previous studies being still allowed to escape us? Or while we are studying Latin, ought we to pay no attention to Greek? Or to make an end of my questions at once, ought we to do nothing but what comes last before us? “

“7. So much more easy is it to do many things one after the other, than to do one thing for a long time.” (1.12.2-6, 7; pp. 61-62)

In this passage Quintilian makes a lock tight argument for our common practice of packing in subjects in period blocks and shifting a student’s attention from one to the other to make determinate progress in one, only to break off as fatigue begins to set in and start onto something new. While we may decry the school bell, as savoring of the factory, there is a sense in which this practice of the periodization of school into discrete subjects is both classical and incredibly powerful. Charlotte Mason had likewise repeated the Victorian proverb, “A change is as good as a rest.” It may even have been derived from this context, as Mason herself found an endorsement of narration in the early pages of Quintilian and her own familiar analogy of food and appetite for student learning, with variety as increasing the appetite or curiosity of the student. This is Quintilian’s early take on the science of human attention, as we have since explained through neuroscience: novelty increases both motivation and attention.

Does this mean block periods are bad? Not necessarily. The nature of the complex tasks, like socratic dialogue or writing, may actually benefit from longer stretches of work, especially for older students. But it is worth questioning whether the productivity claims of focusing on one project over multiple hour blocks apply to the education of children. As Quintilian concludes, it is easier to do many things, one after the other, than to persist in a single activity or project for a long time.

If, then, we have dismissed the spurious application of “Do Fewer Things” to cutting the number of subjects and the periods of modern school, what does that leave us with? Cut busywork! Cut the number of assignments down and instead ensure that students complete quality, complex work. Replace the endless hamster wheel of worksheets with written narrations and essay responses. Instead of coloring in preprinted outlines, have students develop an eye for careful copywork and artistry of their own. 

In the next articles on working at a natural pace and obsessing over quality, we’ll explain further what this application of “Do Fewer Things” looks like as we embrace depth over breadth in our approach to work, rather than cutting important subjects from K-12 education.

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Making the decision about where to go to college and what to study in college has a lot of weight during the high school years. There can be a lot of anxiety and fear surrounding college choice. Students feel like if they don’t make the absolutely right decisions, they could not only ruin their chances to get into their top college, they could ruin their life. The aim of this article is to remove some of the fears surrounding college choice and redirect the energy given to the college decision process towards some meaningful projects that students can work on that will provide direction and understanding, not just about colleges, but about themselves.

What is Vocation?

So what exactly do we mean by vocation? The Latin word voco means “I call,” and from this we can say that a vocation is a calling. What one does in one’s life has this sense that God is calling someone to something. It is a pursuit that calls us forward. In the Bible, we often see moments where God specifically calls people to something, calling them to an office of kingship or prophecy. But we all can have that sense of life direction, a sense of where we’re going and what we ought to be doing with our lives. For students in high school, this can feel like a very remote experience. What does it look like to be a grown up and to have a job, to have a family, to have a sense of what to do with this life that God has given. All of this feels so far off on the horizon. How could a high school student possibly know what their calling is?

However, in my many years of working with middle and high school student, I have observed how deeply spiritual these students can be. Thus, I think it entirely possible for students to have a sense of life mission or calling. We who are guiding these young people need to shift our questions from, “What college do you want to go to?” or “What would you like to do when you grow up?” to different questions such as “How are you going to show up in the world?” and “Why has God put you on the planet?” This shift in question moves us away from occupation to vocation. It begins to address the matter of what kind of person are you becoming instead of asking what kind of job will you have. It enables the student to cast a vision for what life will be like – the kind of person will they marry, what kind of parent or grandparent would they want to be, what will people remember them for when they attend their funeral. These are really weighty questions and point to the ways in which a single life will touch hundreds, thousands, millions of other people. So we need to help students thinking ahead in different ways than has been the case in conventional college guidance. While GPA and test scores still factor in when it comes to the college journey, the questions that will best help students solidify their sense of personhood are the ones we should place before them at this critical juncture in their lives.

A Biography of an Interesting Person

The best way for students to prepare themselves for this life calling or life mission is by cultivating the right mix of passion and discipline. While I have read numerous stories of college-bound applicants who have this kind of mix, I want to spell out what this looks like with a figure in a more remote past. What we will see is a person who didn’t have it all together at first, but pursued little passions that enabled him to develop key disciplines that eventually led to a big passion.

Scottish missionary Alexander Mackay (1849-1890) grew up just outside of Aberdeen. His father was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland and a farmer in the Aberdeenshire countryside. Alexander, therefore, grew up on a farm, and what he did on that farm was tinker with all the machinery on the farm. He learned how things worked. He took things apart and put them back together. In addition, he went into town on a frequent basis and the shops in town. He worked with the shop owners to figure out how to do different things with equipment, whether it was the printer shop or the carding mill. As this young kid tinkered with things, he had the opportunity to develop a lot of little passions. At this point in his life, he didn’t have a grand vision of becoming a missionary. In fact, his father worried about Alexander’s pursuits of worldly knowledge. These little passions, however, meant that Alexander developed a set of disciplines surrounding how to work on mechanical objects.

At 18, Alexander went to the University of Edinburgh and studied engineering there. The development of mechanical disciplines paved the way for him to attend a world class university. He continued to develop disciplines in mathematics and engineering. He had developed into someone very interesting in the field of engineering through this pursuit of little passions that enabled him to develop key disciplines. In fact, after graduating from Edinburgh he was recruited by a company in Germany to help them design steam engines for farm equipment. His work there earned him recognition for the development of innovative technology. Alexander went from little passions to developing disciplines, becoming a really interesting figure in the world of engineering. But he wasn’t done figuring out his life’s mission.

While he was in Germany, he met with other Christians there. He had grown up as a warm hearted Christian, but he had devoted most of his time and energies to learning about math, science, and engineering. In Germany, he learned about missionaries going to Africa, and his heart was taken with this idea of connecting his skill in engineering with sharing the gospel in Africa. So at the age of 22, he made a decision to go to Africa, and he spent most of the rest of his life in Uganda and the interior of the African continent. Sharing the gospel and applying these engineering skills, he helped develop the infrastructure of the interior of Africa. There are hundreds of miles of roads that were designed and developed by Alexander Mackay. This life mission emerged well after Mackay had developed key disciplines. Growing up on the farm, he cultivated skills. He developed disciplines that made him renowned as an engineer. And then he found a big passion. The reason God had put him on this planet was to become an engineer on the mission field.

Let’s break down the principles exemplified by Alexander Mackay. He pursued little passions, which enabled him to develop key disciplines that propelled him forward. These key disciplines led to a big passion that honored his sense of God’s call upon his life. This pattern – little passions, key disciplines, big passion – is a sound alternative to the prevailing advice given to students during their formative years. A leading thinker in this area has been Cal Newport. In his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he spells out how the passion hypothesis (“follow your passion”) is misguided. He identifies two fallacies associated with the passion hypothesis. First, most students and young adults don’t have clearly defined singular passion to follow. This can lead to frustration if a young person takes on a career that they ultimately find they don’t really like simply because they were infatuated with a singular passion. Second, young people typically don’t have much data to support any sense of passion or interest. So they jump into a major and a career hoping for happiness, but lacking any evidence to show that they will actually find happiness following a singular passion.

Here’s where the little passions followed by key disciplines advice is far better than the passion hypothesis. Young people can flit about cultivating numerous passions: music, sports, science, literature, creative writing, computer coding, cars, economics. By trying on for size several interests, they are exploring their world in a way that matches their youthful inclinations. But accompanying the little passions is the development of key disciplines. The musician learns to practice effectively and perform before others. The athlete learns how to train efficiently and handle competition. The creative writer learns the discipline of writing regularly and delivering their work to an audience. What emerges in this little passion followed by key disciplines advice is a growing sense of life mission because they are accumulating evidence of not only what they like, but also what they are effective at doing.

Finding Opportunities to Develop Disciplines

In many respects, the journey to finding a vocation has less to do with the initial spark of interest and more to do with the development of disciplines. Consider the student who becomes interested in playing piano. Her parents sign her up for piano lessons. She is developing a small passion. That small passion is a pathway to develop discipline. The piano teacher provides coaching and mentorship. The student is not only given music to learn, but also practices scales and arpeggios. In order to perform well, there are disciplines that must be well rehearsed. And it is these well-developed disciplines that stand out when cultivated over time.

It might not be piano, but instead may be photography or computer programming. The pattern of identifying little passions that lead to opportunities to develop disciplines holds true. Learning the technical aspects of competent photography is a set of disciplines that impress others enough to be hired for a job. The aspiring computer programmer must acquire enough skill at programming so that people reach out to have their website updated or download an app. The pattern worth noting is that little passions lead to opportunities to develop disciplines. Only when disciplines have been developed do individuals get the opportunity to pursue big passions.

Now, I told the story of Alexander McKay to develop the pattern – little passions, key disciplines, big passion. This pattern, though, is not a thing of the past. I have seen this carried out by students who have been guided by these principles.

Consider a young person who in high school became really passionate about architecture. She spent time making architectural sketches, from high rises to houses to cathedrals. Her passion about architecture, drawing and design led her to develop disciplines in math and science. She ended up majoring in mechanical engineering at a Christian liberal arts college. The skills she developed enabled her to excel as an engineer after graduating from college.

Other students have followed a similar pathway. One student became interested in police work. After signing up for a ride along with a police officer at the local station, this student joined an internship program through the police station. When it came time to apply to colleges, her direct involvement in police work made her application stand out as she applied to several Christian liberal arts college. Choosing a criminal justice major is not the start of her journey, but simply the next step towards her sense of mission in life. Her interest was matched with opportunities to develop disciplines even as a high schooler to confirm her sense of vocation.

Flipping the Script

When it comes to conventional college guidance, I think we’re getting it all wrong. We often think about college guidance as completing the steps to get into the best possible college. What we need to do instead is flip the script. If we enable students to understand their sense of vocation or calling – if we disciple young people to discover why it is that God has placed them on this planet – we can encourage them to think differently about college. Instead of trying to accumulate a number of activities to stack a resume in order to become as attractive as possible to colleges, a better approach is to find these little passions that will enable them to develop disciplines in a few areas that make them an interesting candidate to a number of colleges.

When they develop one or two passions into disciplines, they are able to then demonstrate to these colleges that they have the ability to go deep in a those areas. They not only can articulate a sense of calling and direction in life, but they already have a proven track record of meaningful and tangible experiences. It all comes through a dynamic of connecting these little passions and these developing disciplines into a relationship with God where students are asking God on a regular basis, where are you going to take these things?

So college guidance is actually about helping students discover a big vision of what their life might be like. Here’s the reality, though. It’s impossible to be certain about a grand life vision at such a young age. This is why little passions are the best place to begin, because they can lead to a set of disciplines that point in the direction of one’s vocation.

The “Superstar” Thesis

A figure who helps to amplify the process described here is Cal Newport, professor of computer science at Georgetown University. In 2010, Newport published the last of his student books, a series of paperbacks oriented to providing advice to high school and college students. The title How to Be a High School Superstar may sound like clickbait. However, Newport packs the book with sound advice that hints at the ideas he unpacks in later works such as “deep work,” “craftsman mindset,” and even “digital minimalism.” Newport explains how the high school rat race to get into prestigious colleges entails excessive activities that make admissions candidates unimpressive while they work themselves into burnout. The alternative – the “superstar” thesis – is to do less while pursuing accomplishments that are “hard to explain.” Let’s unpack this a little further.

Newport delineates three laws that can be put into practice by students during their high school careers. These laws can be expressed in three words: underscheduling, focus and innovation. He writes:

“As my research into the relaxed superstars progressed, I began to notice three big-picture ideas popping up again and again:

The Law of Understanding – Pack your schedule with free time. Use this time to explore.

The Law of Focus – Master one serious interest. Don’t waste time on unrelated activities.

The Law of Innovation – Pursue accomplishments that are hard to explain, not hard to do.

These were the general laws that most of the students I interviewed seemed to follow on their path from average to standout.” (Cal Newport, How to Be a High School Superstar, xix)

I think these laws map well on the pattern spelled out earlier – little passions, key disciplines, big passion. Students need time to explore to find little passions. Then they need to take on the mastery mindset like a craftsman to gain skills and disciplines. These will then lead to something bigger in the accomplishments that can be difficult to explain. Let’s spell this out further.

Advising High School Students

The first message students need to hear is that they should give themselves the gift of free time. Sit down with your students and look over their weekly schedule. Identify pockets of time that can become opportunities for broad exploration. They need time to freely explore interests that could draw them into opportunities to develop disciplines. One word of caution, though. Free time cannot get absorbed into the internet. By underscheduling the student is using free time to cultivate interests, and social media and gaming will eat up all of that ability to cultivate interests. Instead of spending time on the internet, advise students to go outside and play. Just like Alexander went outside and played with farm equipment. He took things apart. He figured out how it worked. Advise students to read books. Find books at the library or at a local bookstore. The idea is to find things that genuinely interest the student.

The second message students need to hear is that they should remain cognizant of their time. It’s too easy to become overly involved in activities that will not help them to develop disciplines. Help make the connection between a few areas of interest and the skills they can develop within those. It could be that your role is to help them find specific opportunities to connect with an outside organization that takes interns. There may be mentors or coaches that you can help the family to find. The goal is to find interesting opportunities for the student to gain skills.

The third message students need to hear is that the modern economy has opportunities for them to share their gifts with others. Help your students to discover ways to share their interests through forums both within the school and more broadly. Consider how a student who starts a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel can own their area of interest in ways that are unique and interesting. Most of the tools available in the marketplace are available to high school entrepreneurs.

The ultimate message students need to hear is that God is at work to accomplish his purposes through his people. When we cultivate our interests and disciplines within an understanding that God created us for his good purposes, it can ignite our passions to envision a life of service to him. Already in high school, students can develop a sense of gifting and calling while exploring interests and developing disciplines. As a counselor, continue to ask the question, “What do you think God is doing through this?” or “What’s your sense of what God is drawing you to?”

Putting It All Together

The goal of college guidance should actually have nothing to do with college at all. The guidance we provide aims at a life well lived. Our work with students ought to enable them to consider their own vocation or calling. Far from being a fanciful self-reflection, students who are guided to explore exciting interests that lead them to develop deep disciplines will gain real insights into themselves and their relationships with God and others. While it might be impossible to truly know one’s calling as a high schooler, I firmly believe that students who undertake these steps will have a greater ownership of their college choices and a fuller sense of what they are interested in pursuing in their lives.

If you have enjoyed these thoughts, be on the lookout for our upcoming podcast with Tami Peterson, founder of Life Architects. She and I discuss a wide range of ideas pertaining to college guidance. Subscribe to the Educational Renaissance Podcast on Spotify to catch all the latest episodes.

Training the Prophetic Voice by Dr. Patrick Egan is a must-read for classical Christian educators seeking to build a robust rhetoric program. Grounded in biblical theology, this insightful book provides a framework for developing students’ prophetic voices – the ability to speak with wisdom, clarity, and conviction on the issues that matter most.

As an experienced educator, Dr. Egan understands the vital role rhetoric plays in shaping the next generation of Christian leaders. Through time-tested principles and practical guidance, he equips teachers to cultivate students who can articulate the truth with passion and purpose.

Whether you’re looking to revitalize your existing rhetoric curriculum or lay the foundation for a new program, Training the Prophetic Voice is an invaluable resource. Discover how to empower your students to become effective communicators, courageous truth-tellers, and agents of transformation in their communities and beyond.

Order your copy of Training the Prophetic Voice today and unlock the power of your students’ voice in your classroom.

The post College-bound Superstars: How Classical School Students Can Cultivate Interesting Lives appeared first on .

Arising about the same time as our educational renewal movement have been seismic shifts in a host of technologies that dramatically changed the landscape for most individuals, whether they realize it or not. Today individuals have access to more levers of wealth creation than have ever been available before in history. Many call this the “New Economy.” Just like classical education harkens back to ancient wisdom previously deemed outdated and inconsequential to industrial educationists, the new economy champions such “outdated” concepts as artisanal craftsmanship, decentralized ownership of capital, and shared resources. The statement, “it’s more complicated than that,” holds true for both classical education and the new economy. To that end, this article will explore some of what we mean by the new economy, particularly as it relates to the economic world graduates from our school will be facing in the marketplace. But we will also reflect on how classical education seems to be well positioned to be a leading force in the new economy.

What is the New Economy?

In the new economy, the structures of the industrial age are being reshaped by innovation and technology. You can see the irony that the industrial age with its penchant for innovation and technology have created the new economy. In many regards, the new economy is situated within the industrial age, even though it has challenged many of the assumptions of the industrial age. For instance, industrialism promotes compliance and automaticity. To work in a factory, one must adhere to the procedures of the job at hand. The factory model does not require an individual to become a creative genius. Quite the opposite. Check your creativity at the door, just do the job as you are told. This is not to say that there is no room for creative genius, but that is reserved for the few that get to engineer the products and the way the factory is set up. The many work robotically, the few get to make the robots work.

The new economy, however, is defined by adaptability and creativity. We are witnessing a shift towards innovative business models and technological advancements that have transformed various sectors of the economy. Some have called this the gig economy, where individuals can leverage platforms to offer their skills and services on a freelance basis. Seth Godin is a proponent of this freelance approach to business today. In his book Linchpin, he repackages “gig” economy as “gift” economy. He writes:

“At first, gifts you can give live in a tiny realm. You do something for yourself, or for a friend or two. Soon, though, the circle of the gift gets bigger. The Internet gives you leverage. A hundred people read your blog, or fifty subscribe to your podcast. There’s no economy here, but there is an audience, a chance to share your gift.”

Seth Godin, Linchpin, 134.

What he is saying is that in the new economy, there is value in the unique voice an individual has. Finding the gift that you can give to the world means that you can utilize a host of tools to reach an audience in ways that were never possible in the old economy. There were too many gatekeepers that closed the doors to new voices. Now those gates are thrown wide open.

We could call this the sharing economy. Many traditional sectors have been disrupted by people who are willing to share personal resources through the connectivity available through the internet. Consider transportation and accommodation. Companies like Uber and Airbnb have revolutionized how people commute and find lodging. When we think about education, the internet has enabled organizations like Khan Academy to revolutionize who has access to quality education.

The emergence of e-commerce platforms has enabled businesses to reach a global audience without physical storefronts. This has leveled the playing field for small entrepreneurs and opened up new possibilities for growth and expansion. Consider a middle school student who has already started her own business by selling hand-made knitted objects through Etsy. This is a student who might be making a modest amount of spending money, but learning huge lessons in marketing, sales, production, and a host of other business skills.

These examples illustrate how the new economy has reshaped the industrial paradigm and has created opportunities for innovation, creativity, and collaboration. Embracing these changes can lead to exciting possibilities for both businesses and individuals alike. Understanding the new economy ought to influence how we approach educating the next generation. We are sending graduates into something that conventional education is not well equipped to serve. In order to grapple with this idea, let’s delve further into the kinds of skills that are important in the new economy.

What Skills are Required for the New Economy?

The new economy values skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. It rewards those who are willing to embrace change and continuously learn in order to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving landscape. The factory model of education produced students who could be workers with the factory system, compliant and productive. As Godin points out, this had wide-reaching implications even for non-factory jobs, such as the traditional professions like law, medicine and engineering. He lists a number of skills taught in the factory system:

“Fit in

Follow instructions

Use #2 pencils

Take good notes

Show up every day

Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines

Have good handwriting

Punctuate

Buy the things the other kids are buying

Don’t ask questions

Don’t challenge authority

Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject

Get into college

Have a good resume

Don’t fail

Don’t say anything that might embarrass you

Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback

Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities

Be a generalist

Try not to have the other kids talk about you

Once you learn a topic, move on.”

Seth Godin, Linchpin, 39-40.

Very few of these skills properly equip someone for the new economy. Contrast this with the talents needed in the new economy. The skills that stand out in the new economy are open-mindedness, creativity, proactivity, independence, ability to learn new skills, problem-solving, and making meaning out of raw information. Suffice it to say that the cram-test-forget process associated with the factory-model of education does not tend to cultivate these skills. When businesses can be run at the kitchen table, the factory model becomes insufficient to support creative, new enterprises.

It is interesting to note the extent to which new economy skills have taken over the job market. While technical expertise remains relevant to various industries, it is fascinating to find that places such as Microsoft and Apple are looking to hire individuals who show problem-solving, leadership and communication skills. Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, highlighted integrity as the key skill he values for his employees. JP Morgan looks for employees who can forge good relationships with clients and business partners. Across traditional business sectors, numerous “soft” skills are highly sought after in the market place, showing the extent to which factory-model skills such as compliance and rule-following simply are not relevant any longer.

The new economy is driven by new technologies that continue to disrupt the ways we do things. One of the downsides of the new economy is that it promotes distraction and overconsumption of digital entertainment. Thus, the insight provided by Cal Newport helps us to further elaborate the skills that are highly sought after in the new economy. The winners in the new economy are not simply those who can use the new technology proficiently, even though that is an important skill. Really, the winners will be those who can overcome distraction, accomplish work without digital tools, and can focus their attention adeptly. Newport articulates a stunning thesis:

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work, 14.

This idea of deep work, then, becomes the single-most important skill that drives all other valuable skills in the new economy. Central to Newport’s argument is the concept of deliberate practice. Having written about deliberate practice elsewhere, I found his summary a really helpful encapsulation:

“Its components are usually identified as follows: (1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work, 35.

Deliberate practice, then, becomes a master tool that unlocks an individual’s potential in the new economy. Tight focus and continuous improvement enable someone to achieve rapid improvements in specific areas. It also allows someone to produce something meaningful and then deliver that to others who care utilizing the technologies underpinning the new economy.

How does Classical Christian Education Equip Students for the New Economy?

It is striking that the new economy and classical Christian education emerged almost simultaneously. The question, then, is whether there is anything inherent in classical education that is uniquely associated with the new economy. My contention is that classical education, by championing a vision that education is for moral formation and lifelong learning, the disposition of classical schools matches in many respects the values of the new economy. What I mean by this is that in a world where we are glutted with information, people are hungry for meaning. Yet it is difficult for people to cut through the noise and distraction to make meaning of the raw informational materials. I think that’s where classical education truly serves the new economy most adeptly. Let’s explore a few of the ways this occurs.

Before diving in, I think it is also important to recognize some of the incongruencies between classical education and the new economy. For one, the new economy is driven by new technologies. By and large, the classical school movement has tended to be a low-tech schooling environment. That being said, it is interesting to see how there are new models of schooling that utilizing the platforms of the new economy. For instance, the Classic Learning Test (CLT) has provided a new type of college entrance testing by using an online testing platform. There are numerous classical schools that use online courses where remove video platforms enable rich discussion despite physically being in diverse locations. A second incongruity is that the new economy as an economy is not have at its core a moral value. So it is not as though this new economy is in some way morally superior to the previous economy. There are likely ways where workers and consumers are taken advantage of or manipulated. In addition, there are new dangers that have emerged in the new economy associated with internet security, disinformation, and lack of regulation. It behooves us to be aware of the risks of entering into the new and emerging marketplace.

The great books tradition was the first and most pervasive loss in the industrialization of education. Sure, some of the greats remained on, say, the AP English Lit reading list. However, reading the greats with a view of being formed by the great tradition has been lost in conventional education. They are largely read with a view to the salient information needed to pass tests. The classical renewal movement has celebrated the timeless wisdom and intellectual challenge contained within the great books. They represent a journey through the greatest works of literature, philosophy, poetry, drama and history that have shaped our understanding of the world. The great books tradition allows us to connect with the thoughts and ideas of brilliant minds from different eras. They inspire students to think critically, question assumptions, and expand our perspectives. Students embark on a transformative quest for knowledge and insight. In some ways, the greats books are a renewable resource, as we can continuously turn to them for second and third readings to glean deeper insights. The demonstrate that learning is a lifelong pursuit filled with endless possibilities for growth. When we think about the skills needed in the new economy, the great books tradition cultivates the hearts and minds of students to have a wellspring of wisdom to provide value in the marketplace.

Logic is yet another hallmark of classical education, being one of the three liberal arts or the trivium. Aristotle stands as a giant having tremendous influence over philosophical thought down through the ages. His logical system is founded on propositional truth. In many respects, the type of logic taught in classical schools stems from Aristotelian principles and serves as a way to train students in the art of reasoning. By learning syllogisms, fallacies, inductive and deductive approaches to reasoning, students are able to investigate complex problems and form evaluations of what is true and what is good. Logic is the backbone of critical thinking and reasoning. It allows us to make sense of the world around us, solve problems, and make informed decisions. The classical art of logic guides us in constructing sound arguments, identifying fallacies, and honing our analytical skills. The classical art of logic opens doors to a world of clarity and understanding. It empowers students to think with precision and confidence. In the new economy, logical skills enable thinkers to cut through memes and social media posts that have little substance in order to consider problems and issues in depth. Students trained in logic have the ability to find nuance and consider new avenues that are constructive alternatives to much of the social discourse of our era.

Finally, rhetoric is another hallmark of classical education, moving students beyond simply learning how to write or speak effectively. It champions the transformative power of words, enabling students to convey their convictions with clarity and winsomeness. The classical art of rhetoric is rooted in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. It is the art of using language effectively and persuasively. At its core, rhetoric empowers individuals to craft compelling arguments, sway opinions, and evoke emotions through the principles of ethos, pathos, and logos. As one of the liberal arts, it works with logic to enable the student to understand a problem and then raise one’s voice to help solve that problem. In the Christian tradition, there is an understanding of how the power of words – particularly God’s divine Word – can transform lives. The good news is conveyed through speech, connecting people to God’s grace and uplifting the soul. At other times, Christian rhetoric exhorts and challenges people to repent of sins and reform their ways. Quintilian considered that to be a good orator, one must be a good man (Institutio oratoria, book 12, chapter 1). So, what we have in view here is not some bombastic blowhard who captures people’s attention through sophistry. Instead, we are graduating students who can genuinely tackle the toughest problems of our day with reasonable speech and well-considered words.

The new economy is a market made for students like ours. Through our educational renewal, they are becoming equipped to provide meaning to a growing population that needs guidance and wisdom. It may merely be coincidence that has seen the classical educational renewal emerge at the same time as the new economy. Yet, it seems to me that the skills required at this time are exactly what we are providing.

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Technology – and here I mean specifically screen-based devices – has transformed all aspects of our lives. Now, there are upsides to this technological transformation such as instant access to our fitness data or knowledge of the whereabouts of our children. But even these positives come with the burden of responsibility which is never easy to bear and easily leads to fixation on oneself or surveillance of our loved ones.

In schools, the implementation of screen-based devices seems to be what people mean when they speak of needing more money for schools. The devices come with certain upsides such as student management systems, testing portals, real-time feedback, etc. Yet many of these upsides come at a human cost. In his book Public Education in the Digital Age, Morgan Anderson asserts, “Technologically mediated interactions risk undermining authentic dialogue through its dehumanizing effects.” His framework for education is to view power as fundamentally exploitative, and he sees how tech companies have inundated classrooms with their devices, which thereby mediate human interactions. He is not necessarily calling for a return to traditional classrooms in a way that coheres with our educational renewal movement. Yet his point that technological incursions into our classrooms comes at a human cost is one we ought to pay attention to.

The discussion-based learning that is part and parcel of the great books tradition simply cannot be as effectively implemented through devices as through in-person interactions. That is not to say that one cannot receive a fine education through remote learning and that one cannot engage in quality discussions with the tiny headshots on a screen. I know of several programs that aim at high-quality remote learning experiences. It’s just that there are no replacements for the physical proximity of others in the learning environment. My conjecture is that low-tech schooling neither ought to be considered inferior to the tech-based classrooms of today nor ought to be thought of merely as reactions to the tech-driven models of modern education.

Wading into the Shallows

In the midst of the initial rise of the iPhone to the ubiquitous everyday carry device, Nicholas Carr’s 2010 publication of The Shallows called readers to carefully consider the perils of internet technology. It is worth interacting a bit with exactly what he means by “shallow” when it comes to cognitive function. In his chapter “The Juggler’s Brain” he lays out the cognitive benefits attained through sustained use of devices and the internet. The main benefits center around low-level cognitive functions. Carr writes:

“Research shows that certain cognitive skills are strengthened, sometimes substantially, by our use of computers and the Net. These tend to involve lower-level, or more primitive, mental functions such as hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and the processing of visual cues.”

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 139

There is a particular way the brain develops when it interacts with the high-powered devices we have on our desks and in our pockets. Particular neurons fire together weaving immense skill into regions of the brain associated with sight (visual cortex) and movement (cerebellum). We could add to Carr’s list video games and streaming services. Most of these screen-based technologies will activate certain areas of the brain while leaving others dormant. We will come back to this idea later to develop strategies to make the most of screen-based technologies to optimize high-level cognitive functions for learning.

Carr explores several other advantages that come with the relatively recent technologies that have entered our homes and schools. One of the uses that is often championed for having ready access to devices for learning is the ability to search and browse the internet to access relevant information. Carr notes how web searches “strengthen brain functions related to certain kinds of fast-paced problem solving, particularly those involving the recognition of patterns in a welter of data” (139). He goes so far as to say that users become “adept at quickly distinguishing among competing informational cues, analyzing their salient characteristics, and judging whether they’ll have practical benefit,” however, trends from social media argue otherwise. It seems to have become the case that users are more and more at the mercy of algorithms that filter information which rather stunts good judgment and discernment. But even granting Carr’s point, we should note how users become good at filtering information, which may feel like a higher-order thinking skill. But in actuality, simply finding data amounts to very little if one cannot then make something of it. We’ll see in a moment what Carr has to say about that.

One additional positive benefit that comes with the use of devices is what Carr explaines as “a small expansion in the capacity of our working memory.” Carr goes on to cite Small and Vorgan’s book iBrain who actually call our ability to hold in our minds massive amounts of informational tidbits “digital ADD.” They write, “many of us are developing neural circuitry that is customized for rapid and incisive spurts of directed attention” (Small and Vorgan 21). It is important to add the distinction that a greater capacity of working memory is not the same thing as cultivating a greater capacity in long-term memory. Much that gets stored in working memory gets flushed rather quickly. If you were to look back at your search history from even a week ago, you might be surprised at what you have since forgotten.

So much for the benefits of devices for our cognition. But what about the detriments? Carr questions whether technology is actually making us more intelligent. He argues that internet access “may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively” (Carr 140). To put it another way, you can either develop single tasking or multitasking, and one comes at the cost of the other. It really behooves us, therefore, to consider which is the more valuable of the two. Many studies have shown how multitasking or task switching have many detrimental effects on executive function, emotional wellbeing and skills development. Whereas single tasking has more positive gains especially when learners are focused on meaningful work and develop transferrable skills. Carr gets at this same point when he quotes David Meyer, “You can train until you’re blue in the face and you’d never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time.”

Carr next interacts with the work of Patricia Greenfield from her 2009 article published in the apex journal Science. While internet-based devices have enhanced our visual-spatial cognitive capacity, there has been “a weakening of our capacities for the kind of ‘deep processing’ that underpins ‘mindful acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.’” (141 quoting Patricia M. Greenfield, “Technology and Informal Education, Science, 323 (January 2, 2009): 69-71.) The word Carr uses is “weakening.” It is not as though when we enhance the visual and motor cortices that the neocortex comes along for the ride. Instead, attention, perception and long-term memory actually suffer. Think of it this way. The brain is a high-efficiency machine. If the brain perceives that it needs to shift to visual-spatial engagement with the highly stimulating world of the internet, then it will redirect its energies to visual and motor skills. Instead, if it perceives that more work ought to be put into singular attention, deep thought, perception, then it will direct its energies there instead.

What all of this amounts to is that the brain when exposed to devices, particularly for longs periods of time, begins to take on the characteristics of the devices. You have rapid switching between tasks, the ability to churn lots of data, and attention gets shifted amongst multiple stimuli. What gets lost is deep insight into the kind of thought that creates meaning. Carr concludes:

“The mental functions that are losing the “survival of the busiest” brain cell battle are those that support calm, linear thought—the ones we use in traversing a lengthy narrative or an involved argument, the ones we draw on when we reflect on our experiences or contemplate an outward or inward phenomenon. The winners are those functions that help us speedily locate, categorize, and assess disparate bits of information in a variety of forms, that let us maintain our mental bearings while being bombarded by stimuli. These functions are, not coincidentally, very similar to the ones performed by computers, which are programmed for the high-speed transfer of data in and out of memory. Once again, we seem to be taking on the characteristics of a popular new intellectual technology.”

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 142

Having waded into the shallows, we can see that a high-tech classroom promises certain kinds of cognitive intelligence, but not the kind that sets children up for meaningful engagement with the important questions of life. Focused work on the great books and wrestling with the great ideas runs counter to the shallow attention of the multi-tasking mechanisms we are becoming in the hands of our devices.

Read more about Nicholas Carr’s work as it connects to habit training in my article “Habit Formation: You, Your Plastic Mind, and Your Internet“

Diving into the Deep

Carr’s book, well over a decade old, still rings true today. The digital natives of today have been inundated with even more devices now with smartphones in the hands of veritably every student. Parents and teachers alike feel powerless to stem the tide as it feels like children ought to have these technologies in order to succeed in a new technological age, not to mention the ways in which such technologies keep the safe. The perception of success and safety come at the cost of an increasing shallowness as explored in the previous section. So what perspective can help us navigate a setting in which new, more powerful smartphones are released annually?

Here is where we take a step into the deep end. Cal Newport came out with two books that masterfully cut across the bow of the technological ship driving recklessly into the shallows. He released Deep Work in 2016 and then Digital Minimalism in 2019. It is worth exploring these two to get a sense of the emerging hope we have as an educational movement whereby we can with confidence commit ourselves to low-tech schooling.

The thesis of Deep Work is stated succinctly in the introduction. Newport looks at two economic factors, one having to do with the scarcity of deep work and then correspondingly the increasing value placed on deep work. He writes:

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work, 14

This is a central tenet of the new economy. Many think that the new economy is all about new technologies usurping the old system of manufacture-based industry. To some extent that is true. But the new economy is all about creativity and the creation of meaning out of the inundation of overwhelming attention-grabbing stimuli. On the face of it, the new economy can degenerate into mass consumptionism, with individuals binging Netflix shows, scrolling social media feeds, and following the latest YouTube personality. However, the new economy is also a place where deep work is rewarded because for those who can focus their attention and energies, they can create work that is meaningful.

It is instructive to consider Newport’s definition of shallow work as “noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate” (Deep Work 228). The examples Newport uses to explore shallow work are connected to the work place, especially the academic field. Yet, his definition of shallow work provides us a good guide as to the work we ought to engage in and assign in schools. If our schools are to graduate into the new economy with the rare and valuable ability to perform deep work, we need to avoid shallow work. I highly recommend reading Jason’s article on “Deep Reading” to explore further what it means to engage in the kind of deep work Newport is describing.

Now I would argue that there is a role for screen-based technology in schools. While I champion low-tech schooling, it would be irresponsible to send graduates off into the world unable to connect their deep work to the technological context that surrounds us. Here is where Cal Newport’s other book Digital Minimalism comes to bear. He defines digital minimalism as “a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.” (Digital Minimalism 28) The approach hinted at here embraces the use of technology, but clearly defines the parameters of its use. Our screen-based devices can be great tools, but terrible masters. And giving them unlimited time and attention places us at their service.

So, how do we set the parameters? Here I would like to outline a few principles and practices that can help you provide excellent technological training in a low-tech schooling environment.

First, clearly define the tools to be used. Consider what a student actually needs to be able to use to succeed as a student, particularly in college and career. This really boils down to only a few applications. They need to learn how to manage an email inbox and to write professional email correspondence. They need to learn how to format a paper in a word processor. Those two are the major ones, and if that is all your school trained students in, they would be well served. On top of this, you could choose to teach them effective use of presentation sofware such as PowerPoint. They could learn how to manage data in a spreadsheet. You could even go above and beyond by teaching them how to code. I could envision a rhetoric program incorporating some aspect of video-conferencing etiquette or cultivating the skills of video recording and editing. Notice, though, that the choices available are a rather short list. One needs only readily available programs on a laptop to access most of what one needs to train students in the academic use of technology.

Second, clearly articulate the goals for technology use. One could list what students will not do, such as check social media, watch videos, listen to music or play games. More importantly, establishing learning outcomes lets everyone know what we’re working toward. Our students will learn how to format papers according to the three major style guides typically used in higher education programs. Our students will learn how to manage a school-based email account with training in professional etiquette that receives regular review and grades each quarter. Our students will develop professional-looking PowerPoint slides according to sound design principles for their senior thesis presentations. With goals such as these, teachers and students gain clarity on why they are bringing their laptops and what they are using them for. The teacher knows well that the laptop has no need to be out during the classroom discussion of Pride and Prejudice, but that it will be taken out when the paper is written analyzing a character from the novel.

Third, repeatedly provide feedback to students on their use of technology. Teachers should tell students when they are mindlessly taking out a laptop. They should be able to note how demanding the tasks are that they are performing. Remember, we are guiding them toward the rare and valuable deep work and steering them away from the shallows. So, if a student has been given ample time to complete a paper in class, but the work is shallow, then we need to start asking them how they used their time. I might even need to sit right next to them to strengthen their capacity to engage in deep and meaningful work.

Ultimately, our educational renewal movement is well positioned to provide the new economy with capable young men and women ready to create deep and meaningful work. I recommend no screen-based technology through middle school and then very intentional incorporation of technology in high school. We want to cultivate an environment conducive to deep learning so that technology becomes the final piece of the puzzle for students well trained in reading, discussing and writing. The liability of bringing technology in too soon can result in a shallow learning environment that stunts the capacity of our students to excel in college, career and life. It is up to us to train them in the creation of meaning rather than merely being consumers.

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C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

I begin with a book that rivals in many ways the essay by Dorothy Sayers that got our educational renewal movement started. In fact, C. S. Lewis delivered these lectures (the Riddell Memorial Lectures were a series given over three nights at King’s College, Newcastle University on 24–26 February 1943) a good four years before Sayers (her paper was read at the Vacation Course in Education at Oxford University in the Summer of 1947). If you have read “The Lost Tools of Learning,” then you are well prepared to tackle these essays.

In three essays, Lewis mounts a defense of objective value in the face of moral subjectivism. He predicted the dystopian future we now live in where tolerance is the reigning virtue, despite the fact that we are not a very tolerant people, at least one wouldn’t think so when one reads comments on social media. This book provides a foundational rationale for the “classical” part of our movement. (This book pairs nicely with Mere Christianity, connecting the “Christian” part of our movement.) And yet it nicely goes beyond what we might consider a fixation on Western civilization as the sole or sufficient basis for a liberal arts education. We see this most prominently in his use of the Tao as representative of objective values based on natural law. What he is getting at transcends an East/West divide and demonstrates that values are meta-cultural.

Sample Quote: “This things which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) ‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. . . . The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.”

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (Harper, 2000): 43-44.

I could see this book being valuable if you are a teacher or administrator. It is also well worth adopting in an upper-level humanities course.

If you would like an opportunity to delve deeply into this book, there is an upcoming event you might consider joining if you are located in the American mid-west. The Alcuin Fellowship will be meeting on March 30-April 1 at Clapham School in Wheaton. We’ll be reading The Abolition of Man and having rich discussion around the book in small groups. There are limited spaces available. You can register for this fellowship at https://www.alcuinfellowship.com/midwestern-alcuin-retreat-2023/.

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher

Okay, so I reviewed this book in two posts back in the autumn of 2021. Jonathan is a good friend, and this is a good book. I keep returning to it because it offers such a compelling synthesis of Christianity with the liberal arts tradition. The wisdom of this book abounds, and we benefit repeatedly from the insights of a leading New Testament scholar. Yet, Pennington also puts the cookies on the bottom shelf, so to speak.

This book goes well with the previous selection, although it offers a more modern mix of metaphors and imagery. There’s a brilliance in being able to bring such individuals as Aristotle and Steve Martin together as Pennington does. I think you’ll find this is a volume that can speak to teacher and student alike.

Sample Quote: “Hence, as we have seen throughout this book, there is insight to be gained from what the philosophers said about all sorts of topics. We needn’t cut ourselves completely off from their wisdom. Rather, we can gather lumber from whatever trees are available as we build the Christ-shaped temple of our lives, with Holy Scripture as the building inspector. As Justin himself said, “Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians. . . . For all the writers [ancient philosophers and poets] were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them. For the seed and imitation that is imparted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the things itself, of which there is the participation and imitation according to the grace which is from Him.”

That last part gets a bit complex, but the point is straightforward – any wisdom in the world is from God, who created all, but we Christians have the grace that enables complete understanding. This includes the grandest human philosophical question: What does it mean to live a whole, meaningful, and flourishing life? What is the wisdom we need for the Good Life?”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher (Brazos, 2020): 203.

Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers

My next selection moves away from the humanities and provides something for those STEM teachers among us. Having taught Geometry for several years, I have appreciated how Barbara Oakley spells out effective learning strategies for students. I myself was never a great math student, and diving into teaching math well over a decade ago required going back to the basics. Along the way I found that math itself is not particularly difficult, but it can be quite different than the kinds of learning that goes on in the humanities side of the curriculum.

Oakley bases her work in solid neurological studies. One of the key insights in her book is to “chunk” mathematical and scientific concepts. A chunk is a conceptual piece of information that is “bound together through meaning.” (54) That “meaning” bit is significant because there’s a sense of the personal importance. The chunk attracts information or ideas to it, providing for mental leaps as separate units of information bind together through neural networks.

She provides three steps to forming a chunk. First, you focus your attention on the information to be chunked. (57) She advises learning in a low-distraction environment, free from screens. One of the core concepts here is that old neural networks enable you to form new neural pathways. In other words, we build from the known to the unknown. In essence, we want to create these chunks off of ideas, concepts or information that we already know well.

Second, you need to understand the basic idea (58). She differentiates the initial moment of understanding – the “aha!” moment – from the kind of understanding where you can close the book and test yourself on the problem. This is very much the way narration works. Being able to bring forward the formula, the steps, or the process in mathematics demonstrates that the idea is understood.

Third, you need to connect the basic idea to a context (58-59). In other words, a student needs to know when, say, apply the Pythagorean theorem, and when not to. She likens the chunk to a tool, “If you don’t know when to use that tool, it’s not going to do you a lot of good.” (59)

Chunking is not only valuable in mathematics, but across the curriculum. You can chunk historical concepts or literary terms. Chunking can be a pathway toward integration as we allow that chunk to attract more and more concepts to it. I think this is similar to Charlotte Mason’s expression about ideas, “Ideas behave like living creatures––they feed, grow, and multiply.” (Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, 77)

Sample Quote: “A synthesis – an abstraction, chunk, or gist idea – is a neural pattern. Good chunks form neural patterns that resonate, not only within the subject we’re working in, but with other subjects and areas of our lives. The abstraction helps you transfer ideas from one area to another. That’s why great art, poetry, music, and literature can be so compelling. When we grasp the chunk, it takes on a new life in our own minds – we form ideas that enhance and enlighten the neural patters we already possess, allowing us to more readily see and develop other related patterns.”

Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers (Tarcher Perigee, 2014): 197.

What I like about this book is that her strategies are not simply about how to test better to get good scores on tests or entrance into college, etc. Instead, she sees how this can be a pathway to deep meaning in life through acquired skill, and how an individual can achieve creativity in multiple domains of knowledge through accumulated competence. The quote comes from a section entitled “Deep Chunking,” which segues nicely to our next book.

Cal Newport, Deep Work

Associate professor of computer science at Georgetown, Cal Newport not only delivered a best-selling book, but coined a phrase that has become part of the cultural parlance: “deep work.” In many respects, this is a counterpoint to Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows inasmuch as Newport accepts the premise that the internet has made us shallow and then goes on to propose a solution by going deep through focused attention. The book is designed in an interesting way. Newport begins by spelling out three ideas that get at the “why” of deep work. Then the second part of the book spells out the “how.” Here I want to focus on the first part.

Newport’s first two ideas interact with the new economy centered around knowledge work: deep work is valuable largely because it is rare. This points to a “market mismatch” where talented individuals who are able to produce knowledge that is deep. His third idea is that deep work is meaningful. This is an idea that riffs on the metaphorical meaning of the word “deep.” When our work connects to something of the human experience, there’s a depth of character that has intrinsic value. I like how Newport develops the concept of craftsmanship as a sacred practice.

Sample Quote: “Once understood, we can connect this sacredness inherent in traditional craftsmanship to the world of knowledge work. To do so, there are two key observations we must first make. The first might be obvious but requires emphasis: There’s nothing intrinsic about the manual trades when it comes to generating this particular source of meaning. Any pursuit – be it physical or cognitive – that supports high levels of skill can also generate a sense of sacredness.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work (Grand Central, 2016): 88-89.

As our skill increases, our sense of the meaning we are generating also increases. One gets plugged into the creative impulse that is part of our own imago Dei createdness. Now this is a point that is likely remote from Newport’s thinking, but his use of the word “sacred” points in this direction. Newport goes on to explain his second key observation that to access this deep meaning, we must embrace deep work as the portal to cultivating our skill.

One of the reasons why I recommend this book is that it has provided a framework for understanding how our educational renewal movement – perhaps counterintuitively – gives our students a strategic advantage as they enter the new economy. By encountering the deep ideas of the great works our students get connected to a level of depth not present in the school system. Many of our schools feature intense instruction on writing and rhetoric, which is essential to the knowledge work Newport describes as so rare and valuable. Graduates from classical schools are well trained to do deep work. So, by reading this you can cultivate the habit of deep work in yourself and your students.

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say

My final selection is a textbook ostensibly for college writing. This year I adopted this title for our junior rhetoric class. It is full of practical advice for writers learning how to build effective arguments in academic writing. We are using the fifth edition, which came out in 2021, but any of the editions that have come out since the original 2006 edition features most of the same contours.

The central idea of the book is that effective argumentation begins with a good understanding of what others have said before venturing into an expression of one’s own beliefs. They posit that “working with the ‘they say / I say” model can also help with invention, finding something to say. In our experience, students best discover what they want to say not by thinking about a subject in an isolation booth but by reading texts, listening closely to what other writers say, and looking for an opening through which they can enter the conversation.” (xviii). As classical educators, we are very aware that the great books tradition is all about the great conversation. How better to take advantage of the plethora of books we read than by utilizing that conversation to initiate new pathways for our students to explore based on the “they say / I say” model.

Another feature of this book is how it utilizes templates. The authors recognize the liability of training students to use templates. “At first, many of our students complain that using templates will take away their originality and creativity and make them all sound the same.” (13) But through practice and instruction, students begin to see how there is a basic structure to how good argumentation works. Even after initial exposure to these templates, we can analyze academic writing to identify not only the basic “they say / I say” structure, but also finer points of perspective, argumentation, and analysis. For students raised on the 10-sentence paragraph and the five-paragraph essay, this approach to templates builds on earlier types of templates.

Students are able to practice utilizing two major questions as they work through this book. There is the establishment of relief (using an idea from sculpture), between what you are proposing and what others might say. Students begin to become sensitive to the question, “Oh yeah, who says otherwise?” The other question that students learn to become aware of is the “so what?” or “what difference does this make?” set of questions. For students in junior rhetoric, this is excellent training for the work they will accomplish the following year during senior thesis. The essential skills students learn in this book are critical analysis of sources, summary of conventional viewpoints, handling controversial topics, and expressing the application and consequences of one’s point.

One chapter I really appreciate is the chapter on revision. For many students, revision amounts to identifying typographical errors and eliminating the teacher’s red marks. Well, the approach taken by the authors provides a handy guide to how to make substantial revisions to an essay.

Sample Quote: “One of the most common frustrations teachers have – we’ve had it, too – is that students do not revise in any substantial way. As one of our colleagues put it, “I ask my classes to do a substantial revision of an essay they’ve turned in, emphasis on the word ‘substantial,’ but invariably little is changed in what I get back. Students hand in the original essay with a word changed here and there, a few spelling errors corrected, and a comma or two added. . . . I feel like all my advice is for nothing.” We suspect, however, that in most cases when students do merely superficial revisions, it’s not because they are indifferent or lazy, as some teachers may assume, but because they aren’t sure what a good revision looks like. Like even many seasoned writers, these students would like to revise more thoroughly, but when they reread what they’ve written, they have trouble seeing where it can be improved – and how. What they lack is not just a reliable picture in their head of what their draft could be but also reliable strategies for getting there.”

Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say (Norton, 2021): 149.

After this introduction, which describes what many a teacher has felt, the authors provide guidance on how to make substantial revisions to an essay. The chapter on revision concludes with an excellent revision checklist. Students regularly run into the same frustrations we have with revision. They have a sense that they could express their thoughts in a better, more sophisticated way, but they are unpracticed in how to excavate their own writing with a view to finding the veins of gold, let alone finding the weaknesses to correct.

Conclusion

Hopefully this list of books to read in 2023 will inspire you to dig into some different areas where you can become a more inspired and skilled educator this year. There are tons of other books I could have recommended, and you likely have some of your own that are top of your list.

Even more essential than reading the selection of book listed here is building the habit of daily reading. Even a little bit on a daily basis begins to accumulate to a significant amount of input into your life. With lesson planning, grading, meetings and family life, it can be difficult to carve out time to read. Steven Covey talks about how important it is to “sharpen the saw.” For us educators, reading is one of the best ways for us to cultivate the joy of learning we want to inspire in our students. So whether it’s these books or others that spark interest in you, take a moment even now to read.

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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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“You’ve got to find what you love….[T]he only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.” (as qtd in Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, 3) 

There are few premises more ubiquitous in our career counseling world than this passion mindset; and, as Cal Newport demonstrates, there are few ideas more misleading and damaging. Stories of people who quit their day-job to pursue their dreams often end in financial ruin, as well as the dashing of those same dreams. Interviews of people like Jobs who have ‘found their passion’ actually reveal that “compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion” (13). This is because passion for a career often coexists with quite a bit of drudgery and comes as the result of a great deal of effort expended in developing rare and valuable skills or what we might call arts. In fact, it is the “craftsman mindset,” Newport explains, that is the surest route to work you love.

What is the craftsman mindset? It is to focus on a job as an apprenticeship in a tradition of artistry as a means to offer some valuable good or service to the world at a high degree of excellence or mastery. Perhaps you can see how his insight connects with the apprenticeship process that leads to Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of craftsmanship or artistry (in Greek techne). Newport contrasts the craftsman mindset with the passion mindset this way:

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you…. When you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy—these come later…. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions [like]…. “Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?” (38, 39)

Ironically the advice to pursue your passion in work ends up resulting in a hyper-critical and self-focused spirit that makes it almost impossible to enjoy your work. Instead, if a person allows their consciousness to get lost in the hard work of creating value through deliberate practice of their craft, they are more likely to experience flow and over time earn the career capital needed to negotiate the details of their work to their own liking. Newport draws on the research of Anders Ericsson on deliberate practice and applies it to the professional world of not-so-deliberate pathways to excellence. 

This excursus on career counseling paradigms has a purpose in our overall evaluation of apprenticeship in the arts. Newports’ compelling case for the craftsman mindset sets in stark relief the modern school’s marginalization of artistry and craftsmanship, for all our elite stadiums and flashing performing arts centers. One of the major effects of Bloom’s Taxonomy’s abstraction of intellectual skills is that it has severed the life of the academy from the artistry of the professional career world. In addition, the passion hypothesis is one of the plagues of the postmodern buffet of potential selves that students are being subtly and not so subtly indoctrinated into in our contemporary schools.

In this article we will explore how to restore this link through a recovery of artistry in our schools without embracing either utilitarian pragmatism on the one hand, or the ivory tower separation characteristic of many modern and postmodern schools, whether they call themselves classical, progressive or otherwise.

The Liberal Arts as Pathways of Professional Preparation

In endorsing Newport’s craftsman mindset, I am very aware that I will sound like a utilitarian pragmatist to many classical educators. What, after all, hath Career to do with the Academy? Isn’t the entire purpose of the classical education movement to throw off the tyranny of the urgent and the capitalistic reduction of education to career preparation? The Academy should focus on the timeless and perennial things, not STEM and training for the jobs of tomorrow. 

While I understand and acknowledge the importance of this type of polemic against K-12 education as mere college and career preparation (in fact, we have engaged in it on EdRen from time to time, even or especially at the opening of this series countering Bloom’s Taxonomy), this argument in its bare form ultimately resolves itself into a false dichotomy. It is not either the case that education is all career preparation or that it involves no career preparation at all. In actual fact, a proper education ought to prepare a student for many different careers: as John Milton said in his tractate,

“I call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.” (see “Of Education” in the John Milton Reading Room managed by Dartmouth College)

Just performance might correspond to Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis), while magnanimous might gesture toward the enlargement of mind or soul characteristic of a person who has attained some measure of philosophic wisdom (sophia) through the long cultivation of intuition (nous) and scientific knowledge (episteme). But skillful performance corresponds to apprenticeship in those arts which undergird all the professions. 

While training in artistry is, then, not the whole of a “compleat and generous Education,” it constitutes a fundamental core of training in productive intellectual virtue. This can be illustrated further through recovering the liberal arts themselves as pathways of professional preparation. In our zeal for the ivory towers of the Middle Ages and Classical Era, we too often forget the origins of the liberal arts themselves as professional arts. It may be true that the liberal arts are used to discover and justify knowledge (see e.g. Clark and Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition 3.0, 39-43), yet they began their traditional life as practical skills for prominent professions. 

• Grammatical training prepared the scribes of the ancient world in using the technology of writing to assist in marketplaces or business transactions, the religious affairs of a temple complex or the administration of a royal bureaucracy. 

• Rhetoric came to prominence in classical Greece largely because of a democratic city-state polity which relied on public speakers and trial lawyers to decide the city’s political strategies and legal cases. 

• Dialectic might be Socrates’ own invention, but his art of discussion arose in a rich context of traveling public intellectuals and built on the tradition of wise men and sages who functioned as professional teachers and purveyors of wisdom, developing into the tool or art of the philosopher.

• Arithmetic is the characteristic art of the household manager, the merchant and the treasury official. The earliest written documents in many societies are more than likely numerical records and calculations of goods and services.

• Geometry is the architect’s and the general’s art, because both building and war require the exact mathematical calculations involved in creating sturdy and dependable use of resources, whether wood, metal or stone, or else in coordinating the movements of regiments of armed men, cavalry or assault weaponry. 

• Astronomy, likewise, concerned the military general, as well as the merchant or ship captain, since charting the stars enabled one to travel from place to place reliably.

• And finally, the art of music was practiced by musicians who provided entertainment and the cultural transference of stories and values through soothing sounds and melodies, along with the poetic words that often accompanied the playing of an instrument. 

Apprenticeship in these liberal arts, just like the common and domestic arts, or other professions and trades, functioned as pathways of preparation for a life of service to the community. Even if they could be contrasted with servile arts as more fitting to a free man in ancient cultures, they nevertheless performed important functions for society that were remunerated, in one way or another. Therefore, drawing too strong a dividing wall of hostility between the Academy and the working world strikes me as historically inaccurate. Students today may choose between a technical college (remember that techne is Aristotle’s term for artistry) and a liberal arts college, but that does not mean the liberal arts are unconnected to the professions. 

This argument may be complicated by the fact that few modern professions require a person to practice only one art anymore. The modern equivalent of a blacksmith (i.e. a member of a company that forges metallic tools) might engage in several arts in a given day: computer programming (a development of grammar and arithmetic?), project management (rhetoric and dialectic), engineering and design (arithmetic and geometry), and checking and responding to email (grammar and dialectic). Of course, there are the specific sub-skills of using particular computer programs, machine maintenance, etc., that might be unique to a specific profession or company. But the point stands that the liberal arts, like all other arts, are not absent from the working world of production but are deliberately preparatory to its tasks. 

Artistic Training in the Academy

All this follows naturally from what we have said in earlier articles on Apprenticeship in the Arts. Since arts are living traditions with an originator, they are constantly being updated and adjusted to new contexts and technologies. Navigation is not now what it once was. The arts are culturally and historically situated; they may carry with them the memory of their traditions, as painters now must reckon with the styles and movements of the past. But the traditional nature of the arts entails their vital connection to their contemporary expressions in many professions or by their elite performers. Apprenticeship in the arts is one of the ways that the Academy draws its lifeblood from the working world. 

As such, the Academy is most likely to excel at cultivating the virtue of techne in various arts when it draws some of its strength from the professions of the surrounding community. This is part of the brilliance of John Milton’s call for connecting what Chris Hall calls the common arts with the mathematical arts in his “Of Education”:

To set forward all these proceedings in Nature and Mathematicks, what hinders, but that they may procure, as oft as shal be needful, the helpful experiences of Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries; and in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists; who doubtless would be ready some for reward, and some to favour such a hopeful Seminary. And this will give them such a real tincture of natural knowledge, as they shall never forget, but daily augment with delight. (see “Of Education” in the John Milton Reading Room)

The idea that it is unclassical to share with students the experiences of the working world with all its goods, services and products is a pernicious one. We should be wary of falling into the trap of trying to prove that our education is unpractical to distinguish it from modern pragmatism and utilitarianism. Ironically, we will have to subvert the nature of the liberal arts themselves, as well as other arts to truly accomplish such an ivory tower task. It is all well and good to argue for schole or leisure as the basis of culture (see Josef Pieper’s book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, or Chris Hall’s reference in Common Arts Education, 41), but it is not quite accurate to blame the modern white collar and blue collar divide for a utilitarian view of the liberal arts, as Hall does: “these liberal arts were harnessed less for their ancient purposes, and more for their utilitarian ends” (41).

Leisure may have more to do with the philosophical act of contemplation, or the cultivation of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues of intuition, scientific knowledge and philosophic wisdom, than it does with the liberal arts. After all, this would seem to do better justice to the context of Pieper’s work. The liberal arts, like all other arts, are productive and savor more of the workaday world, even if they can be pursued for their own sake or as ends in themselves, as I have argued at length in The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow through Classical Education.

I absolutely concede the danger on the other side of reducing education to mere career preparation. This, however, is easily avoided by making the other intellectual virtues of Aristotle major ends or objectives of education as well. Prudence is not developed by time spent drawing a painting, nor is philosophic wisdom attained through an internship at a local company. But time spent being well coached by practitioners of various arts, in athletics, games and sports, common and domestic arts, fine and performing arts, the professions and trades, and the ever-present liberal arts themselves, will prepare students for the working world. 

By showing them how these arts are currently practiced and drawing inspiration from these contemporary contexts, students will look out at their future selves as producers and will be inspired and ignited with the passion necessary for deliberate practice. This is why Comenius places as the first step for training in artistry that the instructor “take them into the workshop and bid them look at the work that has been produced, and then, when they wish to imitate this (for man is an imitative animal), they place tools in their hands and show them how they should be held and used” (The Great Didactic, 195-196). Human beings by nature desire to create; we are imitative culture makers!

Comenius’ vision of turning schools into “workshops humming with work” has this outcome as one of its goals: the invigoration of the learning environment through a proper overlap with the working world. Creative production has a power in it that can be harnessed for educational purposes. Then at the end of a productive apprenticeship session, “students whose efforts prove successful will experience the truth of the proverb: ‘We give form to ourselves and to our materials at the same time’” (195). Students are internalizing the craftsman mindset focused on honing their craft in productive service to the world.

This is not a carrots and sticks based motivational method, but the second level motivation of what Daniel Pink calls “mastery” in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. He quotes Teresa Mabile, a professor of Harvard University, as saying, “The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences or business” (116). Pink goes on to associate this level of intrinsic motivation with Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow, the enjoyable experience of appropriate challenge in a meaningful pursuit of mastery. Connecting students organically to the real-world mastery of the working world, not trying to motivate them to perform well through grades and the threat of a menial career, is the real way to engage them delightfully in their studies. It also cultivates the craftsman mindset now that will help them experience work they love later. 

It is worth pausing to consider what percentage of an ideal school day would involve training students in arts. When you add up art class, music and PE, the language arts, math, and the training aspects of science, Bible, and the humanities, not to mention the sports, extracurriculars and other artistic lessons that students have after school, along with the practice regimen of both homework and these side pursuits, we might see the majority of a student’s day as engaged in some part of the apprenticeship process. It is imperative that we get this aspect of the Academy right. It is not just the training of students’ metaphorical hands that is at stake. 

In the next article, I will discuss the spiritual implications of how to capture students’ hearts through the apprenticeship model by creating a culture of craftsmanship. Building on our understanding of the importance of apprenticeship in artistry to connect the life of the Academy organically with the working world, we will delve into the example of the Renaissance guilds. This will help us consider macro-implications for the organizational structure of our schools, including the role of curriculum, academic events, and programs for specific arts in the Academy’s broader apprenticeship process.

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

9. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions

10. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

11. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry

Later articles in this series:

13. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry

14. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry

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