“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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Here we observe the seedlings of the classical Christian renewal movement: the distinction between training students how to think versus what to think. Sayers’ diagnosis is that schools in her day had prioritized learning subjects over skills. Her solution: train students to be independent learners through a return to the classical liberal arts, especially the language arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.

In this article, I want to suggest that Sayers’ prescription for liberal arts education, and more broadly, the classical notion of self-education, is precisely what society is in need of today. Many modern schools have shifted their focus to spoon-feeding students information, teaching to the test, and creating “safe spaces” for students to be protected from opposing ideas. A return to the liberal arts–training students to get into the driver’s seat of their learning–will prepare them to meet today’s challenges with resilience and approach questions with both confidence and charity.

Persons as Self-Educating

Charlotte Mason, a British educator living at the turn of the 20th century, became a major proponent of this notion of self-education. As Karen Glass has helpfully unpacked in her book In Vital Harmony, Mason’s philosophy can be summarized in two key ideas: 1) Children are born persons and 2) Education is the science of relations.

When Mason says children are born persons, she means that they are born with the capacities to grow in knowledge, skill, strength, and character from the very beginning. We should not wait until a person reaches adulthood to begin taking her thoughts seriously. Rather, from a young age, we can begin to help children build a flourishing life. They are not robots to be programmed, sponges to be soaked, blank slates to be written on, or cattle to be herded through the education industry. Children are capable and, therefore, responsible. Our job as parents and teachers is to help children steward their moral choices, helping them gain mastery over their wills, form productive habits, and pursue knowledge from a place of intrinsic motivation, not behaviorist manipulation. As Mason put it, “a child is not built up from without, but from within” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, 25).

The second idea integral to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is that education is the science of relations. Learning is about seeing how all the different bodies of knowledge in God’s creation connect and then going on to form a personal relationship with this knowledge. For Mason, there is no such thing as emotionless, rote learning or information processing. If a child is really learning, then he is connecting with knowledge at the heart level. In addition, these relations are to be discovered, not created, by the child. We are born into a world designed by God with order and connection. Lifelong learning is about discovering more and more about how these relationships work and forming a synthetic integrated conception of the world.

For these philosophical reasons, Charlotte Mason was insistent that children must do the work of education for themselves. We cannot force-feed knowledge for true learning to occur. She writes, “One thing at any rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, 240). This emphasis on the active role students play in their education is key to preparing students to become strong, independent learners.

Tools, not Jigs 

So we want to set up children to be able to educate themselves, but how do we do this? Returning to Dorothy Sayers, the British medieval scholar uses the analogy of tools to help us understand what the classical liberal arts are all about.

In short, the liberal arts empower students to take on any intellectual challenge they face. She writes,

For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command.

This tools metaphor can helpful to hone in on, specifically Sayers’ distinction between a tool and a jig. A tool, such as a hammer, can be used for a variety of projects while a jig has one specific task. For example, I once purchased a very particular cabinet jig to drill new holes in my kitchen cabinets in a uniform manner. Given its specialized use, I have not had need of it sense. Meanwhile, tools like my hammer and drill, with their wide utility across a variety of projects, I use frequently.

Sayers underscores the point:

We have lost the tools of learning—the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the plane—that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work as a whole or looks to the end of the work.

To equip students for self-education is to give them tools, not jigs, the liberal arts, not disparate bodies of knowledge, “…for the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

Self-Education in a Coddling Culture 

With this idea of self-education in mind, I want to close with a brief connection to an epidemic in American culture today: the rise of fragile students who are easily perturbed, anxious, and intimidated. Jonathan Haidt, a sociologist at New York University whom I have written on before here, has identified specific falsehoods we have taught children that have contributed to the problem.

In order to raise up resilient students, we can employ the notion of self-education in the following ways:

1. Permit students to experience real moments of struggle. Don’t solve the problem right away, but rather give space for students to wrestle through the challenge.
2. Train students to think logically, using evidence and reasons to support their beliefs. To be sure, emotions are a gift from God to be celebrated and enjoyed. But when one’s feelings become the driver in argumentation and analysis, students struggle to approach challenges with fortitude.
3. Lead by example in seeking to understand the viewpoints of those with whom you disagree. Someone who holds an opposing view should not to be cast as the sworn enemy. Just because you hold a different view from someone else does not mean they are the sworn enemy. We need to be okay living in the tension of disagreement.

If teachers can implement these three ideas in their classrooms, they will help prepare their students for long-term success. In contrast, when students are shielded from struggle, trained to trust their feelings, and embrace the “us vs. them” mentality on complex issues, they will find it hard to adapt and persevere. Haidt writes, “When children are raised in a culture of safetyism, which teaches them to stay ‘emotionally safe’ while protecting them from every imaginable danger, it may set up a feedback loop: kids become more fragile and less resilient, which signals to adults that they need more protection, which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient” (The Coddling of the American Mind, 30).

May we as educators raise up a generation of resilient students who seek the truth with independence and resolve, preparing them to be lifelong learners who can tackle life’s problems and educate themselves with joyful fortitude.

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In my previous article, I reflected on the nature of civilizations: how they emerge, what they are built upon, and why they fall. I specifically examined the story of the fall of the Roman Empire. While it is difficult for historians to identify a single point in time when the decline began, various cultural, moral, and economic factors interweaved to ripen the moment for Rome to fall. And fall it did, ushering in a two hundred year period known as the Dark Ages. While the Middle Ages themselves span a period of one thousand years, many of which were full of learning and insight, the first few centuries after Rome’s fall can fairly be characterized as a step backward. Roads became unsafe, public works such as the sewage system went into disrepair, and libraries were disregarded if not burned to the ground.

And yet, the Dark Ages may have been dark for some, but they were not dark for all. When Alaric, King of the Visagoths, crossed the Rhine and sacked Rome, signaling the beginning of the end of Roman imperial dominance, an unexpected spark of civilization was fanned into flame in an unexpected place—Ireland. While literacy declined across the Roman Empire through barbarian expansion, it was the Irish who saved, or at least helped save, civilization. How could this be? It all started with a man named Patricius, also known as St. Patrick.

Patrick, Apostle of Ireland

Patrick was a middle-class Roman Brit who planned on living a normal life. It was a major surprise then on the fateful day that he was kidnapped on Britain’s western shores by Irish pirates and become a shepherd’s slave for the next six years, from age 16 to 22. He suffered major beatings and starvation. He lost out on the education his friends would receive. He learned what it meant to suffer without hope. That is, until the fateful day that God rescued him. According to his self-penned Confessio, with copies dating back to the 8^th century, a miraculous ship appeared one day and led by a vision from heaven, he managed to escape and return to his homeland.

Can you imagine? The freedom he experienced after six years a slave must have been incredible. Finally, he can get back on with his life in Britain. But interestingly, he chooses a different path. Instead and inexplicably, he decides to return to Ireland, this time not as a slave, but as a missionary. He became ordained as a bishop and returned to Ireland, the land of his captors, to bring them the gospel.

Now, there are many myths about Patrick in his effort to evangelize the Irish, many of which could very well be true. Did he fight off pagan priests in a wild west showdown of magic and power over the elements? I’m not sure. Did he teach the Irish about the doctrine of the Trinity using the three leaves of a shamrock? We don’t know (though imagine if he used a rock–I can’t think of a surer way to unitarianism!).

But we know this. The island was transformed by this man’s courageous service and ultimately God Himself. Over the next 300 years or so, during the so-called Golden Age of Ireland, over 200 churches were planted, an estimated 100,000 Irish men and women came to the faith. Slavery was abolished and ancient Celtic practices of violence and human sacrifice all but came to an end. While 1,000 miles away Rome was moving from peace to unrest, the opposite was the case in Ireland.

The Spread of Libraries

But I have not yet explained how the Irish saved civilization. Sure, Ireland may have been preserved, but what about the rest of Europe? When Rome fell, the inhabitants of the region were not as fortunate: an entire library of classical literature was nearly lost. Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Virgil, and Cicero. Lost. A thousand years of ideas about society, virtue, faith, and citizenship gone. The precious gift of literacy all but disappeared.

And yet, God in his providence, would use Irish monks to save it. While libraries burned on the Apennine Peninsula, they were built on the Emerald Isle. When monks and scholars fled the barbarian violence of the Goths and Vandals, they brought their texts to Ireland. There Irish monks fastidiously copied the texts, wrote commentaries, opened schools, and a renaissance of learning was born. Over the next few hundred years, Irish monasteries would pop up all over Ireland, Britain, and soon back to continental Europe. Eventually, literacy, learning, and confidence began to rise again in Europe, notably with Charlemagne and his prized teacher Alcuin. Western civilization, resting on the edge of a knife, was saved. Today there are decorated Irish manuscripts from the early medieval period that are the great jewels of libraries in England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and Italy, bearing witness to this amazing yet forgotten story.

Our Cultural Moment

We all feel the angst of our present times. While it is refreshing to live on the other side of the pandemic and the division it caused, we can sense that the tension is here to stay. As I write this article, Roe v. Wade has been overturned, sparking both celebration and anger. Meanwhile, inflation is rearing its ugly head, the Russia-Ukraine war continues, and the tenacity of the election year grows fiercer by the day.

With these kinds of issues swirling around us, it is natural for people to find ways to cope. These methods range from healthy to dangerous. For example, exercise can be a great way to relieve stress and clear one’s mind. So can picking up new hobbies, like keeping a garden or playing a sport. Sadly, of course, some people turn to less healthy methods, such as food, drink, or sexual addiction.

A growing trend I have seen people turn to for respite from the pressure of our current times is the screen. While the statistics vary, it safe to estimate that Americans spend anywhere from 7-10 hours on a screen per day. This includes cell phone usage, checking email, watching the news, and streaming shows (most often through services like Netflix or DisneyPlus). While it is outside the scope of this article to explore the neurological effects of this trend, I do want to register a concern nonetheless. In tense times like these, not unlike those in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire, we do not need more distraction. We need meaning. Our souls do not need more entertainment; they need engagement with the goodness and beauty of the world. Most importantly, of course, we need spiritual connection with our Creator God and to experience the grace available to use through union with Christ.

Cancel Netflix, Save Civilization

To wrap up this series, inspired by Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, I was reminded and inspired by the power of books, specifically the Great Books. These books have been passed down throughout the ages and organically vetted for truth, depth, and insight. They serve as the foundation of civilization, both locally and globally. The West has its canon as does the East. My encouragement, then, for all of us seeking to kindle a renaissance of education is this: go to the library and read great books. Walk in the way of the Irish, put down your screens, and get lost in the world of word-encoded ideas. Ponder the good, true, and beautiful. Think deeply about God, humanity, and the created order. Cancel your Nexflix subscription and save civilization.

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With this groundwork laid in Aristotle and modern research, we proceeded to articulate an understanding of the arts as situated in history and culture, as familial and traditional in nature. The upshot of this view is that we must apprentice students into specific traditions of artistry. We are not training abstract intellectual skills that can be transferred to new contexts, as Bloom’s taxonomy and the faculty theory of education supposed. When we train students in arithmetic or grammar, just like painting or gymnastics, we are inducting them into something both old and new. The ancient insights, styles and methods in these domains have been continuously adjusted and updated since their inception. This does not mean we must accept modern methods or assumptions in various arts (see A Pedagogy of Craft), but it does entail that some traditional artistic abilities and practices have little relevance in our contemporary context. Few schools teach horseback riding or ancient sailing and navigation techniques, and for good reason.

The Limitations of Artistic Divisions

In a similar way, there is no sacrosanct set of divisions between the arts handed down as if from on high. What we see in the classical tradition is a variety of distinctions between the branches of various artistic traditions as they developed over time. Many of the things that we regard as grammar (e.g., distinctions between singular and plural, parts of speech, types of sentences) are discussed by Augustine of Hippo in his treatise On Dialectic (de Dialectica). We should not be surprised at this fact. Since the arts are living traditions, human descriptions of their boundaries and nature are like mapping a flood plain. So, as much as we may nerd out about the Seven Liberal Arts (I am speaking to myself as much as to others…) we should not be disturbed when Hugh of St Victor, for instance, refuses to follow the early medieval divisions. 

(In the Didascalicon Hugh advocates for four branches of knowledge or wisdom: the theoretical [disciplines like mathematics, physics and theology], the practical [ethics and politics], the mechanical [architecture, medicine, agriculture, etc.], and logic, or the science which ensures proper reasoning and clarity in the other sciences.)

While we are, in this series, developing Aristotle’s divisions of the intellectual virtues, therefore, we should not prejudge the idea that his is the best or the only proper mapping of the intellectual virtues, the educational project or the distinctions between categories of knowledge. This series should be viewed as the opening of a conversation about rethinking our educational goals within Aristotelian terms, as more philosophically sound and helpful than Bloom’s Taxonomy. In the same way, though I have often referred to the classical distinction between the arts and sciences, it would be more accurate to reference the Aristotelian distinction between artistry (techne) and scientific knowledge (episteme), which had the effect in the tradition at varying times and places of issuing in a similar distinction between the branches of knowledge and of arts. 

Likewise, with arts in particular, I have proposed a fivefold division of the arts as in my view the most helpful for gesturing toward wholeness in our current renewal movement, and not because I dismiss the elegance of the threefold vision of common, liberal and fine arts, endorsed by Chris Hall, Ravi Jain and Kevin Clark. 

Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship

1. Athletics, games and sports
2. Common and domestic arts
3. Professions and trades
4. Fine and performing arts
5. The liberal arts of language and number

The main reason to do so lies in the realization that athletics, games and sports are indeed forms of techne, but they are not easily captured under the headings of common, liberal or fine. This is a problem if, as I contend, athletics, games and sports rightly play an important role within education. Separating out professions and trades from the common and domestic arts, secondarily, gestures towards modern cultural realities post-industrialization. Tending a garden in your backyard represents a different stream of craftsmanship than managing a commercial greenhouse. We risk a high degree of unhelpful equivocation by attempting to use medieval categories in the modern world. 

Of course, the fact that these are arts does not entail that we are obliged to train students in all of them—an impossibility in any case! What I have said is that we should structure the academy optimally to cultivate the arts and that we should aim at a universality, not a comprehensiveness, of artistic training in our K-12 educational programs. It is possible to train students in representatives from each of the five categories, with the liberal arts occupying a central role for the production of the other intellectual virtues (see later section in this article). As I discussed in an earlier article, the choice of which arts to cultivate constitutes a cultural judgment based on the calling and opportunities of a particular school. 

If all this talk of the culturally situated nature of the arts lands me in controversy, at least I can claim that I am not anti-tradition, but I am in fact restoring a proper understanding of artistic traditions against the modernist pretensions about objectivity. As Aristotle articulated so clearly, techne concerns itself with the ultimate particular facts, with what may or may not be, with contingent things and not with necessary being. Knowledge of how to make something does not constitute knowledge of the essences of things or philosophic wisdom. These truths are part and parcel of the natural limitations of artistry. 

The Transcendence of Artistry into Morality

However, it is also worth recognizing how artistry can in fact transcend itself. If craftsmanship can be figuratively represented by skillful hands, then as we already explained those same hands are hardwired to the heart and head, and even the spirit. In a way we have already noted this fact at length in the prelude to Apprenticeship in the Arts. Aristotle himself recognized the similarities between morality and artistry. But we have not as yet duly noted the extent to which the training of the hands also conditions the heart. As Comenius recognized, the arts require their own sort of prudence, by which the artisan foresees what will turn out for the best with his artistic production. 

Likewise, a hard and painful practice regimen enables the production of good and beautiful things. In this way, apprenticeship in the arts participates in the nature of the moral training that enables a person to delay instant gratification for the sake of a greater reward later. By thus disciplining the desires, artistic training acts as a natural prelude and arena for the development of self-control and this not only in athletics and sports, but in all the various arts. In both artistry and morality, one must aim at a target and pursue it through reasoned use of contingent means. Techne transcends itself through its natural participation in all the moral virtues and in the intellectual virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom. 

After all, the sphere of human production has a natural affinity with the sphere of human action and goods. Producing something beautiful and valuable is itself a prudent action for a human being. Even more, developing some form of artistry is necessary for living a good life and enjoying the good things of life. Adopting a craftsman mindset in one’s work and getting into the flow of deliberate or purposeful practice constitutes a chief element of a prudent, and therefore happy, life. One must at times display the moral virtues of courage, temperance and justice in the serious work of artistic excellence. Jordan Peterson, for one, has discussed the importance of fair play and reciprocity in games as an emergent ethic. 

Artistry’s Moral and Spiritual Limitations

All this said, we can note again the limits of this blending of artistry into prudence. After all, the super star performer and artistic genius are also liable to moral dissolution and depravity, as we have daily witness in the tabloids. As in the case of the traditions of artistry themselves, it seems that self-control and moral foresight are not necessarily transferred from one sphere of life to another. The devoted Olympic athlete has his impeccable diet and training regimen, but he might be notoriously licentious or proud.

This limitation even shows itself in the spiritual sphere where transformations of artistry can mask, for a time, the impurities of the heart. As Jesus stated explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matt 7:21-23 ESV)

Spiritual gifts, or what we might call spiritual forms of artistry (since they are productive acts in the world), do not ensure that such artisans are morally sound. They might outwardly perform spiritual works, but in the eyes of God they remain still “workers of lawlessness.” In the same way, our liberal arts educated students may become nothing more than “clever devils,” to borrow C.S. Lewis’ phrase from The Abolition of Man. 

Among other things, this is why we must go on from artistry, which, for all its possibilities for transcendence, is properly basic and preparatory to the other intellectual virtues, rather than constituting them in itself. As Saint Paul claims, “I will show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31b ESV), while he transitions from the gifts of spiritual artistry to the transcendent value of love, over and above all the intellectual and moral virtues on display in their full extravagance and grandiosity. Not just tongues of men, but of angels—what a statement to put the trivium arts to shame! “Prophetic powers” and understanding “all mysteries and all knowledge”—what phrases to humble the prophet, scholar and philosopher alike! 

It may be that we can ascribe the term ‘wisdom’ even to the greatest exponents of the arts, as Aristotle mentions in Book VI, ch. 4 of the Nicomachean Ethics. But by this we do not mean either that practical wisdom for life or philosophical wisdom of the highest mysteries.

Artistry as a Prelude to the Other Four Intellectual Virtues

And yet again, the arts can by their very nature transcend toward philosophical wisdom just like toward moral prudence. In the fine arts, for instance, it is not only their beauty that we prize but the messages that our great artists have embodied in shape and form. These insights into the nature of life and reality are valuable in so far as they are true. Or to put it another way, great artists rely on their intuition (nous) or understanding of reality (both in universals and in particulars) for the messages they have skillfully conveyed in artistic form. This intuition about life can, fortunately and unfortunately, coexist with poor habits and a personal lack of prudence. The artist may be our muse, whether or not she herself practices what she preaches!

Not all artistic productions convey a high degree of knowledge about the world, but the higher fine and performing arts, as well as the liberal arts do. In fact, it is these traditional productions of genius—paintings and sculptures, poems and novels, histories and plays, speeches and debates—that act as the forerunners of intuition and scientific knowledge in the student. It is through attention to these Great Works that defy easy categorization that the perceptive and reasoning abilities of the student are honed and developed. They provide a form of enriched second-hand experience enabling students’ thought to grow and mature. By imitating them throughout their training in the arts, students are given more than simply artistry itself. They are given the forerunners of the other intellectual virtues: the opinions of authorities, “the words of the wise and their riddles” (Prov 1:6b ESV).

While experiencing artistic productions can lead to artistry in the student when combined with imitation and coached practice, it is through reflection on the authorities, especially in the liberal arts, that prudence, intuition, scientific knowledge and ultimately philosophical wisdom are developed. In this way, while artistry is not enough, it is by nature a prelude to the other intellectual virtues. For this reason, the tradition recognized training in the liberal arts as preparatory to the sciences. In particular, the traditional productions of artistic wisdom are meant to provide fodder for reflection on the nature of human goods, thus developing prudence. From our Aristotelian vantage point, we can see the late medieval vision of moral philosophy as informing the individual’s development of phronesis. 

In a similar fashion, the arts help us see in a way that we would not on our own, forming our intuition or nous, those starting points for reasoning, whether in human, mathematical or natural spheres. At the same time, training in the liberal arts of language and number enable us to demonstrate propositions to be the case, establishing a statement as true or false. In this way, artistry with words and numbers constitutes the necessary prerequisite for scientific knowledge in what the later tradition would have called metaphysics and natural science. Both deliberation (for affairs of human choice regarding goods) and inquiry (for universal and particular truths regardless of human desire), then, require use, if not mastery, of the liberal arts for their practice. And so, these other intellectual virtues are dependent upon the liberal arts.

So, we are for this reason justified in seeing the liberal arts tradition as in a unique way indebted to the Aristotelian paradigm of intellectual virtues. Although not everyone in the tradition articulated this distinction between the liberal arts and sciences in the same way, the insight about the liberal arts’ central role as the pathways to moral virtue and wisdom owes a great deal to Aristotle. 

It is important to conclude by stating clearly that training in the liberal arts, like other forms of artistry, does not always and necessarily lead to the other intellectual virtues. As Clark and Jain have contended in The Liberal Arts Tradition, the liberal arts are not enough. We need only look to Plato’s Gorgias to see Socrates demolishing this supposition before Aristotle came along. Rhetoric could be a mere knack or craftiness that makes the worse appear to be the better cause. All the arts have their forms of trickery that are out of step with moral or spiritual reality. Artistry, particularly liberal artistry, can transcend itself as the doorway into deeper things, but it need not and therein lies the danger of relying or focusing on it alone. Which is why we must go on from artistry, entering the realms of prudence next….

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 Scienc

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

12. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World

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

Next subseries in Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues:

The Counsels of the Wise, Part 1: Foundations of Christian Prudence

The post Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry appeared first on .

“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

The post Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World appeared first on .

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Analytical Didactic

This series began as an attempt to wrap up the loose ends of hints and speculations I had had for years, regarding the origins of Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration. Was it her own invention? Some passages I had discovered in a rhetoric textbook from the early 1900s, and then from Quintilian and John Locke, argued otherwise. Perhaps this, then, was a test-case for the broader question of Charlotte Mason’s relationship to the classical tradition.

Since then I have been able to fill in a pretty compelling set of stepping stones for the use of narration-like practices throughout the history of education. But one major gap remained…. the Middle Ages. I am excited to announce that I have filled in that gap; or at least, I have moved up the gap in the history of narration from the Renaissance proper to the twelfth century renaissance of the high Middle Ages. The source: John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon, or defense of the verbal and logical arts of the trivium. The proponent of narration: Bernard of Chartres.

While this investigation into the history of narration began with the theme of Charlotte Mason’s place within the classical tradition of education, it has come to represent more than that for me. In our recovery movements we have focused our attention on recovering the broader and more holistic purpose of education (the Why), in contrast to modern utilitarianism and pragmatism. In addition, we have rediscovered old curricular tracks (the What), like the liberal arts themselves. But we have not delved as deeply for the gems of pedagogy, the teaching methods of the classical tradition in all their multiform glory.

This short history of narration (which I am revising and expanding into a book to be published with Educational Renaissance) aims to uncover narration as it was practiced in the tradition, turning this pedagogical gem in the light of various centuries and cultural expressions. This historical understanding will then give us a flexibility and creativity of application with the teaching practice that we couldn’t gain any other way.

With that preface, let us travel back to the late Middle Ages!

The Twelfth-Century Educational Renaissance

Daniel D. McGarry sees the twelfth century as the birthplace of modern Western pedagogy, noting that while the “constituent elements were Greek, Roman, and early Christian in origin, yet it is also true that these received new form and life in the Middle Ages.”[1] He goes on to call this momentous time period of intellectual flourishing, in which John of Salisbury lived, the “twelfth-century educational ‘renaissance’.” Whether we agree with designating the twelfth century as the birthplace of modern Western pedagogy may depend more upon our assessment of the relative merits of ancient and modern teaching methods than anything else. But the important point for our purposes is the new life, and what we can undoubtedly call the rebirth of narration, among other teaching practices that occurred during this time period.

Jerome Taylor of the University of Notre Dame also has called the twelfth century a “renaissance”, describing it as “a time when centers of education had moved from the predominantly rural monasteries to the cathedral schools of growing cities and communes; when education in the new centers was becoming specialized, hence unbalanced, according to the limited enthusiasms of capacities of particular masters”.[2] Against this backdrop, John of Salisbury wrote his Metalogicon to combat a group scholars who repudiated the value of the Trivium arts of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, and claimed to advance on to mastery of philosophy in but a few years of study.[3]

John of Salisbury closes his discussion of the importance of full grammatical training by discussing an eminent teacher of the previous generation, Bernard of Chartres, who taught at the cathedral school there beginning in 1115. Bernard is the earliest figure to be attributed with the famous “standing on the shoulders of giants” conception.[4] With such a value for the thoughts of those who came before, it is no wonder that we see him using narration as a core teaching practice. As we have mentioned elsewhere, narration is a fundamentally pious act that accords well with a focus on classic literature and the Great Books.[5]

Bernard of Chartres Teaching Grammar

John of Salisbury begins by describing Bernard’s method of teaching grammar:

Bernard of Chartres, the greatest font of literary learning in Gaul in recent times, used to teach grammar in the following way. He would point out, in reading authors, what was simple and according to rule. On the other hand, he would explain grammatical figures, rhetorical embellishment, and sophistical quibbling, as well as the relation of given passages to other studies. He would do so, however, without trying to teach everything at one time. On the contrary, he would dispense his instruction to his hearers gradually, in a manner commensurate with their powers of assimilation.[6]

This explanatory lecture method is well attested for grammatical teachers in the tradition going right on back to Quintilian. What is noted as of special importance is Bernard’s avoidance of being pedantic about the wrong sorts of details. In his discursive commentary on texts, Bernard took a methodical and gradual approach, suiting his teaching to the receptivity of his hearers. His unique sensitivity to what his students could “assimilate” was likely borne of his practice of listening to his students narrate the next day (see below).

Proponents of narration might be inclined to see in Bernard’s method nothing more than the ineffective lecture-based approach to education that we deplore. But according to John of Salisbury, Bernard would not leave his readings of texts and lectures there, simply in the air to be remembered or not by his pupils. Instead, Bernard was aware of the necessity for mental exercise through narration or recitation:

In view of the fact that exercise both strengthens and sharpens our mind, Bernard would bend every effort to bring his students to imitate what they were hearing.[7] In some cases he would rely on exhortation, in others he would resort to punishments, such as flogging. Each student was daily required to recite part of what he had heard on the previous day. Some would recite more, others less. Each succeeding day thus became the disciple of its predecessor.[8]

Bernard’s teaching practice involved students in the imitation of the authors “that he read to them” (see n. 28). In addition, we can see that this was a required daily practice for all students – a fact that impresses us with the pedagogical value Bernard attributed to it.  John says he “would bend every effort” to this task. We might say that Bernard assigned his students homework to remember something of what he had taught them the previous day. Failing to complete your homework for Bernard’s class might have dire consequences (i.e. “flogging”). It seems at least partly ambiguous whether details from Bernard’s lecture would be included in students’ recounting of the content of the texts. But we could easily imagine commentary and text fusing together naturally when the previous day’s topics were retold by many students, one after another.

We might wonder whether the recitation that Bernard speaks of was similar to what Charlotte Mason called ‘narration’ or if it involved the word-for-word memorization of select passages from the texts Bernard read aloud, what many modern classical Christian educators and Masonites now call recitation. While the details here are somewhat ambiguous, a few factors push me in the direction of the former. First, the fact that “some would recite more, others less” seems true to life for educators who have used narration, whereas if word-for-word memorization were in view, we would expect a teacher to assign a set number of lines. Would Bernard leave it to chance which passages his students memorized? Likewise, the closing observation that each day “became the disciple of its predecessor” seems to fit better with an oral recounting of the content from the previous day by many students than memory work.

A later passage also exhibits the same ambiguity about whether narration or memorization is in view:

Bernard used also to admonish his students that stories and poems should be read thoroughly, and not as though the reader were being precipitated to flight by spurs. Wherefor he diligently and insistently demanded from each, as a daily debt, something committed to memory.[9]

It is possible that this passage refers to Bernard’s homework requirement of memorization, while the other refers to narration. Or both could refer to the same practice of narration or memorization. Either way, even if we were to conclude (which I doubt) that word-for-word memorization is intended in both these passages, we could still argue that such a heavy use of recitation (as “a daily debt”) edges into the benefits of the unique practice of narration because of how consistently and vigorously it engages the memory.

At the end of the day, it seems most likely that Bernard employed both narration and word-for-word memorization (as did Charlotte Mason and countless educators throughout history). What he was most remarkable for was his use of these imitative exercises as a daily requirement for all students. In this way, we can see the features of earlier rhetorical and grammatical teaching reinvigorated and taken seriously in a way that John of Salisbury, at least, found remarkable and rare in his own time.

Bernard’s “Conferences” and the Narration-Trivium Lesson

For classical educators who worry about a bare recital of content, Bernard’s methods went further to cultivate what we might call the higher order thinking skills and creative production of his students:

A further feature of Bernard’s method was to have his disciples compose prose and poetry every day, and exercise their faculties in mutual conferences,[10] for nothing is more useful in introductory training than actually to accustom one’s students to practice the art they are studying. Nothing serves better to foster the acquisition of eloquence and the attainment of knowledge than such conferences, which also have a salutary influence on practical conduct, provided that charity moderates enthusiasm, and that humility is not lost during progress in learning.[11]

Bernard’s “daily debt” did not only involve narration and/or memorization, but also literary composition and discussion. These “conferences” might have sounded like what we call socratic seminars, involving the discussion of ideas from the authors being read as well as their relationships and applications to other ideas. This conclusion finds support in John’s claim that they would have a “salutary [health-bringing] influence on practical conduct”. Or else, these conferences could have required students to critique one another’s prose and poetic compositions, judging their merits and flaws. In all likelihood, both sorts of discussions occurred thereby fostering both “the acquisition of eloquence and the attainment of knowledge”.

Bernard’s method of teaching grammar thus coheres broadly with the Narration-Trivium lesson structure that I have advocated for as a fusion of Charlotte Mason’s narration lesson with the classical tradition.[12] Bernard’s explanatory lectures provided the set-up or 1^st little talk that enabled his students to understand the texts that he read to them. His extended commentary on the text cleared up further difficulties and focused on the detailed development of grammatical learning. The text and proper explanation were then required to be narrated, not immediately, but the next day by each student, as much as he could remember. Students’ preparation for this task might have involved them engaging in their own sorts of retrieval practice activities (perhaps involving notes) which would enable them to tell in detail the next day. They may also have memorized word-for-word particular passages or quotations from the texts, which they might have jotted down in a commonplace journal.

Then students would engage in “conferences” where they discussed the ideas and features of the texts they were studying, based on their knowledge of the text gained through lecture and narration. Finally, they would also write their own imitative compositions, share them with others for discussion and critique, thus training them in dialectic and rhetoric, the second little talk and a creative or analytical response to the text. Instead of happening all in a single lesson, this process would begin on one day and continue into the next, a practice that I would commend as well, esp. for older students. The Narration-Trivium lesson structure is intended to be flexible and adaptable by the teacher to the nature of the subject-matter and the needs of the students.

Bernard’s Methods as a Classical Inheritance

We might be tempted to think of Bernard’s grammatical pedagogy involving narration as simply a blip on the timeline of the Middle Ages, but its resonance with the practices of the classical era should cause us to wonder whether there were many more unremembered Bernards throughout the Middle Ages at earlier monastic or church schools, who followed the traditions of genuine classical learning. Even in his own time, Bernard’s pedagogy was adopted by many, according to John, even if it died off quickly:

My own instructors in grammar… formerly used Bernard’s method in training their disciples. But later, when popular opinion veered away from the truth, when men preferred to seem, rather than to be philosophers, and when professors of the arts were promising to impart the whole of philosophy in less than three or even two years… [they] were overwhelmed by the onslaught of the ignorant mob, and retired. Since then, less time and attention have been given to the study of grammar. As a result we find men who profess all the arts, liberal and mechanical, but who are ignorant of this very first one [i.e., grammar], without which it is futile to attempt to go on to the others.[13]

John of Salisbury’s nostalgic reflections of his own quality instruction in grammar by teachers following Bernard’s approach might cause us to wonder whether the human tendency to take short cuts is really to blame for narration’s neglect. As Plato feared, writing has proved to be “a recipe not for memory, but for reminder,” filling men “not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom”.[14] In all times and places, narration (alongside other genuinely classical teaching methods) represents a hard and uphill climb, but the true route to the peak of the mountain of intellectual virtue.

In this final article on the history of narration, I’ve given you a taste of the book that Educational Renaissance published in early 2022: A Short History of Narration. I hope you’ve been inspired by the history of narration and that you will buy the book to take your practice of narration to the next level. Also, check out our webinars, like Habit Training 2.0 or one on Narration 2.0, to get the practical resources and insight you need to bring ancient wisdom into modern era in your classroom!

[1] Daniel D. McGarry, “Introduction” in The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2015), xv.

[2] Jerome Taylor, “Introduction” in The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, translated by Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961; Forgotten Books reprint, 2018), 4.

[3] He actually addresses one particular advocate whom he nicknames Cornificius for the ancient detractor of Vergil, but this may be a literary fiction, and either way, the individual represents a movement of thought, on which see John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 11.

[4] John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 167:

Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to [puny] dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.

[5] See Jason Barney, A Classical Guide to Narration, 89.

[6] John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, translated by Daniel D. McGarry (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2015), 67.

[7] The translator adds a note, ibid., 68: “Literally: what they were hearing, namely, the selections that he read to them [from the authors].”

[8] Ibid.

[9] Another note from the translator, ibid.: “Bernard apparently required of each of his students the daily recitation of some passages memorized from their current reading.”

[10] Translator’s note, ibid, 70: “collationibus, collations, conferences, comparisons. Although ‘conferences’ would seem to fit here as a translation, Webb holds that ‘comparisons’ is better….”

[11] Ibid.

[12] See www.educationalrenaissance.com for a free eBook explaining the Narration-Trivium lesson.

[13] Ibid., 71.

[14] Plato, Phaedrus in The Collected Dialogues, 520.

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Analytical Didactic

The post Expanding Narration’s History in the late Middle Ages: Bernard of Chartres from John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon appeared first on .

For example, the habit of timeliness is indispensable for a life of ease. Imagine how difficult life is for the person who struggles with timeliness. He is constantly behind–missing meetings here, chasing deadlines there–and feels the constant pressure to keep up and keep calm despite the ever-present burden of the clock. On the contrary, imagine the person who has mastered timeliness. He is able to go about his day with an exceptional disposition of nonchalance. He effortlessly moves from task to task, allowing his habit of timeliness to pave the way for peaceful relationships and productive outcomes to emerge.

Charlotte Mason famously taught that the most effortful aspect of being a teacher is not the teaching itself. It is the habit training that goes on behind the scenes. If teachers equip students with good habits, then the lessons, provided they are of the right sort, will take care of themselves (Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 99). Students will gain a newfound ability to focus, concentrate, follow instructions, and engage the ideas of the lesson with an exceptional degree of independence.

More recently, modern research has confirmed the fascinating neuroscience behind the formation of good habits. It has also confirmed that the formation of habits geared toward strengthening the will are the most reliable indicator for achievement. Modern researchers have given a name for this special bundle of will-power habits: Grit. 

In this article, I will explore how teachers can help foster grit in their students in the classroom through guidance from Charlotte Mason on habit training. The concept that comes closest to grit for the British educator is perfect, or thorough, execution. Perfect execution is the act of completing a task as well as one can within a reasonable amount of time. Cultivating this habit takes strategy and effort to be sure, but the reward is worth it. Over time, children develop habits of perseverance, responsibility, and care for one’s work, all leading to a unique strength of will: grit. 

What is Perfect Execution?

Have you ever wondered why some children write with remarkably elegant penmanship and others rush? Or why some children complete fitness exercises with perfect form all the way to completion while others struggle? 

While it is tempting to attribute these feats to natural talent or even gender differences, the truth is that both tasks were carried to completion through habits of perfect execution. By “perfect” I do not mean literally perfect, but the repeated act of aiming for perfection through giving a thorough effort each and every time. 

For children who complete tasks with thoroughness, two factors are at play: First, they care about their work. They have come to believe that the tasks they execute to some extent matter.

Second, they work with a resolved commitment to do their best. They do not settle for half-measures or shortcuts. They have the perseverance and fortitude to carry out a task to completion. This willpower did not appear over night. It came as the result of deliberate practice and usually, but not necessarily, the encouragement of a supportive mentor. 

Training the Habit of Perfect Execution

We tend to assume students will grow more proficient in a task over time simply through repetition. After all, we are told, practice makes perfect. What we fail to realize is that imperfect practice yields precisely that: imperfection. Admiring the German and French schools of her day, Charlotte Mason observes, “…if children get the habit of turning out imperfect work, the men and women will undoubtedly keep that habit up” (Home Education, p. 159).

To train the habit of perfect execution, Charlotte Mason taught that parents and teachers should hold high yet realistic expectations of children as they work. She writes, “No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required from him as a matter of course” (Home Education, p. 159). The key to growing in perfect execution is to prioritize quality over quantity, and to expect and support the highest quality the child is capable of each and every time.

When it comes to teaching penmanship, for example, it is tempting to think that a great quantity of practice is the surest way to learn to form letters. But Charlotte Mason cautions that it not so much how many letters are written, but the quality of the letters:

For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph.

Home Education, p. 160

In the quotation above, Mason is clear to emphasize that perseverance and perfect execution matter most in habit formation. Likewise with other activities, teachers should always expect the child to give her very best: “So with the little tasks of painting, drawing, or construction he sets himself––let everything he does be well done. An unsteady house of cards is a thing to be ashamed of. Closely connected with this habit of ‘perfect work’ is that of finishing whatever is taken in hand. The child should rarely be allowed to set his hand to a new undertaking until the last is finished” (Home Education, p. 160).

So often in our modern world we feel the pressure to be efficient and useful. In a block of time, we would rather perform ten tasks poorly than one task exceptionally. But here we see the secret for setting up children for long-term flourishing. The solution is not to pile on hours of homework each night after a full day of school. It is not to assign endless loads of busy work to keep students occupied. It is to assist students in approaching each and every task with the discipline to do their very best. This is how we as educators train the habit of perfect execution.

The Power of Grit

In her New York Times bestseller Grit (Scribner, 2016), psychologist Angela Duckworth shares her findings on the power of grit to drive achievement. She defines grit as the unique combination of passion and perseverance, determination and direction (8). People with grit are resilient and hardworking, propelled by some deeply held belief. They are convinced that whatever they are doggedly pursuing matters.

Central to Duckworth’s research findings is the notion that in examining cases of achievement we tend to be distracted by talent. That is, when we encounter a person who has achieved great things, we often chalk it up to raw ability. While there is certainly something to be said for God-given strengths and abilities, too often we let  natural ability overshadow the dedicated work ethic an achiever cultivated to get there.

To reconcile natural talent and the power of grit, Duckworth argues that “effort counts twice” (35). Rather than drawing a direct line from talent to achievement, the psychologist suggests there is more to the equation. For achievement to occur there are two instances of calculus. First, the achiever invests effort into his or her natural talent to develop a particular skill. Then, the achiever builds on that skill through more effort to reach the level of exceptional achievement. Effort counts twice.

More Important than Grit

It is important to note here that grit in and of itself is not equivalent to character in the moral sense. It is possible to have a lot of grit, and therefore to be a high achiever, but to be a very bad person. In Duckworth’s own social science parlance she distinguishes between strengths of will, heart, and mind (273). Strength of will, or willpower, includes attributes like self-control, delayed gratification, grit, and the growth mindset. Strength of heart includes what we would classically describe as moral virtues: gratitude, honesty, empathy, and kindness. And strength of mind includes curiosity and creative thinking.

In a 2018 interview with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Duckworth acknowledges that strength of heart does not lead to the same levels of achievement as strength of will, but it is more important. She admits that she would rather her own daughters be good before they are great.

This is an important word for classical educators, including Charlotte Mason followers. All this talk about perfect execution, grit, and achievement can quickly get our minds churning about how we harness this power for, say, elevating standardized test results. We would do well to remember, as Duckworth does in her own secular way, that “while man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). At the end of the day, more than achievement, we will be judged not by what we accomplished, but how we lived.

Fostering Grit Through Habit Training

So how do we help our students become more gritty, not for the sake of worldly achievement, but for true human flourishing? A great place to start is by cultivating the habit of perfect execution in the classroom. Commit to having your students only work on tasks they can complete with excellence and then hold them to it. 

Briefly, here are three steps for cultivating this habit:

1. Clarify your expectations. 
2. Cast vision for the worthiness of the work. 
3. Support them throughout.

By clarifying your expectations, you are making it unmistakably clear what your students are to do and how they are to do it. They should have a good sense of “the final product” so they know what to aim for. And they should understand that process and format matters: the “how” is just as important as the “what.”

When you cast vision for the worthiness of the work, you are giving your students a picture of why this work matters. This is what Charlotte Mason would call “sowing the idea.” If they are working on a map of Asia, for example, you could emphasize the beauty and variety we observe across the globe. Highlight some unique cultural artifacts from the region to help them form a concrete relationship with it. In order for the habit of perfect execution to take, student care is a necessary precondition. High teacher expectations without student ownership and care devolves into micro-management all too quickly.

Once they begin their work, teachers must support students throughout the assignment. There is a reason why the habit of perfect execution is so rare. It is hard work! As humans, our wills often fail us and we take the path of least resistance. We need wise and supportive mentors around us to hold us to the standard we set out to meet. This is the indispensable work of the teacher, and as Charlotte Mason warned, it takes the most effort!

Conclusion

As classical educators, we seek to form humans holistically as virtuous young men and women. We believe that school is not reserved exclusively for the cognitive domain, but that there is work to be done in the moral and spiritual domains as well. Through helping students develop the habit of perfect execution, we are helping students forge wills of perseverance and grit. As we do so let us keep our motivations in check. It is not ultimately to propel our students to chase after worldly achievement or to elevate their will-power over others. It is to help them grow as workers in the field, reaping the harvest the Lord has prepared for His people, as we wait for His return. Habits of perfect execution and grit, I believe, can only aid them in this worthiest of work.

[Downlo

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Moreover, some Christians fear, utilizing brain science to boost cognitive performance through strengthening the brain sounds like a mad scientist’s version of humanistic self-help. In our secular age, God-talk has been pushed to the margins and human innovation has taken center stage. The good news, we are told, is that with the right life plan in place, we can grow strong enough to turn our lives around on our own.

How, as Christians, can we maintain our convictions about the reality of a spiritual realm and our desperate need for God’s grace while simultaneously availing ourselves to the best of current neuroscience? What insights might scientifically-observable processes like neurogenesis and neuroplasticity yield in our calling to conform ourselves to the image of Christ?

In this blog, I will draw connections between recent findings in neuroscience with the aims of a liberal arts education. Along the way, I will consider the relationship between the body and soul, including the brain and the mind, within the context of growing spiritually and morally. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate that a working knowledge in how to care for one’s brain is one way we can steward our human bodies well and to lead lives of virtue and wisdom in service to Jesus Christ.

Growing New Brain Cells Through a Love for Learning

One of the most stunning insights from current neuroscience is that we can grow new brain cells. As humans age, we lose brain cells over time, which is partially what leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Aging, of course, is unpreventable and irreversible, but the research is clear that caring for our brains can slow the aging process. By adjusting the way we eat, sleep, and exercise, we can create new brain cells that actually grow one’s brain and increase one’s cognitive capacity.

In Biohack Your Brain (HarperCollins, 2020), Dr. Kristen Willeumier (PhD, UCLA) offers practical tips for increasing neurogenesis, that is, growing new brain cells. Some of these tips include eating blueberries, learning new words, and writing with your nondominant hand (22). Interestingly, Dr. Willeumier writes, cultivating curiosity is another way for spurring neurogenesis. When humans learn for the sake of pure joy and a love for knowledge, new brain cells are created and neural connections are strengthened (184).

One of the key aims of a liberal arts education, of course, is precisely this: to cultivate a love for learning. As Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain have demonstrated in The Liberal Arts Tradition, a fantastic summary of Christian, classical education, tuning the heart is a critical stage that precedes training in the liberal arts. This stage they call “musical education” and it serves as the soil for knowledge of God, humanity, and creation to later flower (7).

It is thus important to point out that the goal of cultivating a love for learning in the earliest years of education has both affective and neurological benefits. As we put specimens of goodness, truth, and beauty before our students for them to love and pursue, their hearts (metaphorically-speaking) and brains grow.

Cultivating Intelligence and Intellectual Virtue Through the Trivium

Not only can we grow new brain cells with certain practices, but there is growing research that we can actually increase intelligence. Dr. Willeumier writes, “In terms of intelligence, research shows we can change our brain to boost intellect in a number of ways. Primary among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is by learning new information and skills, which helps to strengthen neuronal communication and rewires parts of the brain responsible for cognitive thinking” (42). Additionally, research shows we can increase intelligence by how we eat, sleep, exercise, and handle stress.

There are many ways to think about intelligence, but we all have three main types. First, we have what is called crystallized intelligence: the knowledge, facts, and skills we have accumulated over time. Second, we have fluid Intelligence: the ability to problem solve. Finally, we have emotional intelligence: the ability to interact and connect socially with others.

Interestingly, it turns out that reading long-form narratives is the best way to boost all three.¹ Reading for extended amounts of time, at least thirty minutes, improves overall neuronal connectivity and the integrity of white matter in the brain (188). Along with reading, several other modes of language acquisition strengthen cognitive capacity. Learning new vocabulary, studying a new language, and writing all contribute to strengthening memory, growing new brain cells, and staving off neurodegenerative diseases.

In the liberal arts tradition, the language arts are known as the Trivium. These are tools for fashioning, or producing, knowledge, as opposed to subject areas, or sciences, to be studied in theory only. In other words, they are the skills for learning and using language. However, the purpose of the Trivium is not merely to increase one’s intelligence. It is growing in wisdom and intellectual virtue, ultimately to service God and neighbor (47).

As Christian, classical educators, we want to promote the pursuit of objective truth, beliefs that correspond to reality. It is encouraging, and not surprising, to see that language acquisition has been shown neurologically to increase one’s intelligence. But let us not lose sight of the fact that intelligence is not the end goal for Christians. We are to use our minds to honor and serve the Lord, especially the way we use language. While all humans will use language whether they receive a classical education or not, the Trivium prepares students to use language wisely and in service to others.

The Brain and Gymnastic Education

For time immemorial, philosophers have argued about the relationship between the mind and body. How do these two parts of a person relate? Are they ultimately one thing or two? More recently, this debate has taken a scientific edge. Are mental states reducible to firing neurons?

In an article for Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, “Neuroplasticity and Spiritual Formation”, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, offers an interesting take on the relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain, he believes, serves as the passive recipient of experience, taking in the sensory data of the natural world. The mind, on the other hand, serves the active role of making decisions and choices about how to focus one’s attention.

Applying this approach to a current issue, Dr. Schwartz writes, “Many people are concerned about the effects of the internet on our distractibility. If ever there was an era in which the brain could be readily recognized as constantly putting out a call, ours is it. Because of this, more than ever, we now have to bring in the mind to decide what to listen to. A lot of what the brain is putting out calls about is not particularly good to listen to—certainly not to focus on.”

In this quotation, Dr. Schwartz suggests that while the brain serves as the central station for receiving sensory data, the mind’s job is to determine which data to focus on. In this way, Dr. Schwartz seems to conceive of the mind as the seat of the will, conscience, and affections. However, what Dr. Schwartz does not emphasize, at least in this article, is that the brain, neurologically-speaking, is very much active in these moments as well.

What I want to suggest is that perhaps we should think of training the brain as a form of gymnastic education, the broader training of the body. Clark and Jain write, “Education is not merely an intellectual affair, no matter how intellect-centered it must be, because human beings are not merely minds. As creatures made in God’s image, we are composite beings–unions of soul and body. A full curriculum must cultivate the good of the whole person, soul, and body” (29).

If Clark and Jain are right about the importance of promoting a fully-orbed Christian anthropology, and I believe they are, then it seems that caring for and training the brain is to be included. Fortunately, given the close connection between the mind and the brain, our lessons already lend themselves to this sort of training. As I have already shown above, training in the language arts grows new brain cells and strengthens neural networks. But it is worth stating and remembering that God has given us brains, which are physical organs, and we should care for them as we do other parts of our physical bodies.

Physicality and Christian Formation

There is one final point I would like to make about the relationship between the brain and liberal arts education. It is the idea that Christian formation, which is ultimately a spiritual process, often occurs through physical means.

In “The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Formation and Flourishing”, Dr. Brad Strawn and Dr. Warren Brown, psychology professors from Fuller Theological Seminary, write, “Humans cannot be reduced to disembodied souls or immaterial minds. We are embodied and embedded creatures. Our physicality matters, including our brains. Humans are formed and transformed through embodied and embedded experiences. Personhood is not the immaterial reality, but an embodied one.”

There is much to unpack in this quotation, and I do not agree with all of their philosophical conclusions, but I do think they point out something important. Sometimes when thinking about how to help students grow spiritually, we think of their relationship with God in individualistic and gnostic terms. In other words, we summarize Christian formation as a private encounter between God and their individual souls. But what these psychologists helpfully remind us is that often our relationships with God grow in communal settings. Whether it be the weekly church gathering, summer Bible camp, or small group Bible studies, we grow as Christians through embodied and communally-embedded moments.

Thinking about how adults grow in these settings as much as children, the psychologists write, “Many of the same formative social processes are at work in adults as in children: imitation, attachments, and life-forming narratives. What is at stake in ongoing adult development is the degree to which wisdom and virtue come to characterize persons.”

As we seek to cultivate wisdom and virtue in our students, as well as ourselves, we should remember that this endeavor, though moral and spiritual in nature, has a connection to our physicality. We should think through how we can harness physical experience to form our students in wisdom and virtue.

Conclusion

There is a lot more that could be said here. As we educate the hearts, minds, and souls of our students, how should we understand what is happening to the brain? In this blog, I have reflected on the relationship between neuroscience and the liberal arts. As educators, I believe we can use the insights of modern brain science to not only take better care of our physical bodies. We can use these insights to strengthen the liberal arts education we offer our students to help them grow in wisdom and virtue, and ultimately, in service to Jesus Christ.

Endnotes

1. Kidd DC, Castano E. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind in Science (6156): 377-380)

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Telling better stories requires a mastery of language, one of the keystone benefits of a liberal arts education. Language is perhaps the most under-appreciated gift that God has given His creatures. We often do not grasp language’s necessity until we are in need of it: when we are stranded in a foreign country or trying to communicate with a one-year old. Language is important because it unites us like no other medium. It serves as the vehicle for communicating how we feel, what we think, and why we are acting the way we are. Additionally, language has the rare ability of integrating the disparate strands of life, indeed of lives, into a unified whole. Language is the precondition for story, and story-telling is the foundation of culture.

In this blog, I will make the case that the liberal arts, especially the mastery of language, are crucial for preserving and transmitting a culture. Without language, formative stories are lost, and cultures fall into decline. Of course, not all cultures are worth preserving. For example, it is a good thing that the culture of the late Roman Empire passed out of existence. The hunger for world domination, degradation of human life, and lust for pleasure became propagations of Rome that made our world worse, not better. On the contrary, our mission as Christian, classical schools is to cultivate future culture makers, moored in biblical values, and heralds of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Training in the liberal arts will equip our students to tell better stories, and in turn, cultivate more attractive cultures, superior to the ones contemporary secular society can possibly offer.

Studying Latin: An Act of Resistance 

Let me begin with the study of Latin, a well-known curricular emphasis in classical liberal arts education. One of the most frequent questions I receive as an administrator at a classical, Christian school is “Why Latin?” After all, our modern world has been highly successful in passing on the metaphor that Latin is a “dead language.” Moreover, using a modern rubric of utility and innovation, it is difficult to discern any clear benefit of studying a language that is no longer spoken in the public square.

Amongst classical schools, it has become fashionable of late to please the modern demand for utility by citing the correlation between Latin and high SAT scores or to remind prospective parents that derivatives of Latin are present in 60% of English words. The usefulness of Latin relieves us moderns temporarily from the fear that all the time invested in an ancient language may not pay off in the real world. 

Of course, this perspective assumes a particular definition of “the real world,” namely, the world of professional advancement, wealth accumulation, and personal success, all measured against the performance metrics of the 21st century. But what if “the real world” encompasses more than our present century? What if the surest way to educate students who will shape future cultures is to ensure they have an acute grasp of the histories and ideas of the past? What if the key to a treasure-trove of wisdom accumulated over millennia is available only through the long-lost language of Latin?

If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the study of Latin should be recovered as an act of resistance. At the risk of overstating my point, this can be illustrated in the stunning image (and example) of Tank Man. Tank Man, the moniker for the courageous unnamed citizen who protested the totalitarian regime in communist China, boldly stood his ground the day after the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators on June 5, 1989.

While studying Latin may not threaten one’s life (some students may disagree), it remains an act of sacrificial resistance in its own way. With the growing skepticism regarding the value of reading old books, coupled with the excellent English translations that are easily accessible today, doubt remains whether the study of Latin is worth it.

What we must remember is that Latin is a portal to “the real world” properly conceived. Contra popular opinion, the universe did not simply pop into existence one hundred years ago. Human civilizations across the globe have existed for millenia. Latin is one entry point into one prominent civilization that has served as the seed ground for the modern conception of human rights, modern science, and the development of the western church.

By studying Latin, students receive a rare gift: the ability to directly access the geniuses of this tradition: Virgil, Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, and John Calvin, to name a few. We read these authors as faithful trustees of the Great Conversation, listening carefully to these voices that we might preserve the insights of what is good and true for future generations, while also correcting them in places where they were wrong or misguided. This process of preservation and correction is crucial for the project of creating future cultures.

The Privilege of Studying the Arts

Lately, I have been reading and writing on the life of John Adams, a Founding Father of the United States. Adams kept up a faithful correspondence with his wife Abigail, despite years of living overseas in Europe. In one particular letter to Abigail, Adams shares his multi-generational vision for education and the development of culture. He looked forward to the day when his children and grandchildren would not be preoccupied with war, but instead, would have the freedom to build a culture of goodness, beauty, and order.

Adams writes,

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Here we gain a rare glimpse of how one cultural architect envisions building and transmitting a culture. Adams adopted a long-term mindset with regards to his role in the development of American society. He understood the pathway to freedom and order in society and that it runs through war and governance. Once a free and orderly society is established, the next phase of study, composed of STEM subjects like navigation and agriculture, is used to build on the foundation. Finally, it becomes the responsibility of those trained in the arts to create a beautiful and good culture, leading to a better world.

Unfortunately, many schools today have lost sight of this long-term vision by focusing exclusively on the urgent: career-readiness. We forget that careers only exist in the first place in a free, orderly, and cultivated society. The best way to prepare students for their future career, is ironically, to help them gain mastery in more rare and valuable skills: the liberal arts.

A Babylonian, Classical Education

Oddly enough, the ancients seemed to grasp the power of the liberal arts for culture building better than us moderns. In the book of Daniel, we see that the powerful Babylonian Empire followed a process for their territorial expansion: invade, capture and assimilate. 

After laying siege and destroying Jerusalem in 586 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar captured members of the Jewish elite to assimilate them into Babylonian culture. These members of Jewish nobility were “…youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace…” (Daniel 1:4). The chief servant of the king was instructed to train these men in the language and literature of the Chaldeans. They were to be educated for three years, eating the food of the city and, more importantly, imbibing the Babylonian culture. 

Why were the Babylonians so set on educating a group of captive youth? They understood that the key to transmitting a culture was forming the mind through the liberal arts. By introducing Daniel and his friends to the gods, stories, myths, and values of Babylon, they would assimilate these young Jewish men into the culture. In fact, these young Jewish men were even given new names, with theological significance, branding them as citizens of the Babylonian Empire.

As we know, however, Daniel and his friends refused to be assimilated. They continued to use their original Jewish names and refused to eat the king’s food. Instead, they ate only vegetables, being careful to live within the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law. In return, God blessed them both intellectually and physically. God granted them “learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams…. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Dan 1:20). 

The story of Daniel is a sober reminder, both of the perceived power of the liberal arts and the blessing of obedience to God’s Word. While the Babylonians sought to promote their mighty culture through the liberal arts, only God’s plan for this world would endure.

Telling the Greatest Story

Ultimately, for Christians, the most powerful, culture-shaping story we pass on to future generations is not about western civilization, the founding of a particular nation, or Babylonian mythology (I would surely hope not!). The most transformative story is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that our loving Creator sent his Son to offer forgiveness of sin and life through the Spirit, and ultimately to usher in the kingdom of God. The culture we seek to build and transmit must be rooted in this great story.

Our learning communities, whether at school or at home, need to gather each day and remind one another of the story of the gospel. We can do this in a few ways.

First, we can begin each day in worship, singing songs that promote an understanding of the glory of God, the fallenness of humanity, and the need for a savior.

Second, when we teach classes on the Bible, we can lead students into deep dives in biblical studies, while also helping students see the grand narrative of the gospel that unites all of scripture. We can also leverage insights from other domains, for example, reading the Bible as literature, in order to engage the imaginations and hearts of students.

Finally, we can integrate the gospel in our approach to student discipline. The gospel is not a self-help manual to equip students to fix their problems on their own. Nor is it a legalistic tome, denoting each and every expectation God has for human behavior. Rather, it is the grand story of God’s grace in our lives and His restorative plan for creation. The gospel allows us to guide students in moments of discipline to utter the words, “I cannot do this on my own. Lord, please help me,” and restore them into the classroom.

Conclusion

The stories we tell are powerful for transmitting a culture, and the surest way to tell stories infused with meaning and persuasion is through training in the liberal arts. In the post-Christian western world in which we live, our society needs to hear the good news of Christ anew. By training our students in mastery of language and the arts, we are equipping students to not only have careers, but to be leaders of the future cultures of society. May God grant us much wisdom as we continue in this important work.

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We closed the last article by proof-texting the importance of practice from the New Testament letter to the Hebrews: “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:14 ESV). We equally could have quoted from Paul’s famous encouragement to Timothy, “train yourself for the purpose of godliness…” (1 Tim 4:7). The word commonly translated as godliness (eusebeia) is the Greek word for piety, the fulfillment of one’s obligations to family, the broader community, and God himself. It is a virtual summary of all the moral and spiritual virtues. And Paul’s point is that Timothy should train himself, as a man exercises at the gymnasium to stay in prime shape for military service or the competitive games. 

The word for ‘training’ is gymnazo and had already become a standard metaphor for moral and intellectual cultivation by Paul’s day. In fact, Socrates himself had some of his famous discussions about virtues like friendship or temperance with his followers in the gymnasium. On more than one occasion he compared his method of dialogue to a wrestling match and once exclaimed that he had a furious love for that type of exercise in the pursuit of truth (Plato, Theatetus 169b-c).

In ancient Greece gymnastic training itself consisted, as we might have guessed, of physical exercises in strength, speed and dexterity, and these became the analogy for mental gymnastics of all kinds. Even today many standard textbooks contain “exercises” which attempt to “train” the mind in various skills through practicing them again and again until they become easy. In The Liberal Arts Tradition Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain restore the value of gymnastic training as fundamental element of the classical tradition. By implicitly connecting it to the quadrivium arts (see the tree illustration in the front matter), they draw on this analogy between athletic training and mathematical exercises. But on a deeper level, philosophers made a link between the moral training of the gymnasium, which fostered military virtues like courage and resourcefulness in the face of danger, and the virtue-training of the soul. For instance, Isocrates, the first great rhetorical teacher of Greece, advised one of his students,

Give careful heed to all that concerns your life, but above all train your own intellect; for the greatest thing in the smallest compass is a sound mind in a human body. Strive with your body to be a lover of toil, and with your soul to be a lover of wisdom, in order that with the one you may have the strength to carry out your resolves, and with the other the intelligence to foresee what is for your good.

Discourses, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library 209, p. 29 

Unlike many in the modern world, Isocrates saw no conflict between bodily training and hard work on the one hand and the mental and spiritual training of philosophy or prudence on the other. This earlier move goes some way in explaining Aristotle’s understanding of artistry or craftsmanship as an intellectual virtue, even without an awareness of the nervous system. As another example, take Socrates, whom we might call the first philosopher. Instead of fitting the stereotype of an ivory-tower intellect, cultivating the mind but despising the body, he never neglected the compulsory military exercises, even into old age, and sharply rebuked any who did (see Xenophon’s Memorabilia). Proper cultivation of the body and mind, after all, are necessary elements of moral excellence, as well as of the intellectual excellence of prudence or phronesis, the ability to deliberate and act appropriately with regard to what is good for human beings. 

Deliberate vs Purposeful Practice in Artistry and Morality

The analogy between morality and artistry, specifically the artistry of bodily training, is thus well established in the tradition. But there are differences to be noted as well, since not all practice is the same. Some practice is deliberate, with clear goals and feedback and an agreed upon process of steps in the cultivation of excellence; however, there are practice regimens that are less clear and agreed upon, where the movement toward excellence is more cloudy and ambiguous. This second sort of practice may still aim at excellence, and therefore it has been called ‘purposeful’ in modern research on elite performance, but the pathway is less structured and clear. It is more like bushwalking than marching on the Via Appia. 

In his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Anders Erikson describes the difference between this deliberate practice in the clarity of day and purposeful practice in the gloom and obscurity of night:

In short, we were saying that deliberate practice is different from other sorts of purposeful practice in two important ways: First, it requires a field that is already reasonably well developed—that is, a field in which the best performers have attained a level of performance that clearly sets them apart from people who are just entering the field. We’re referring to activities like musical performance (obviously), ballet and other sorts of dance, chess, and many individual and team sports, particularly the sports in which athletes are scored for their individual performance, such as gymnastics, figure skating, or diving. What areas don’t qualify? Pretty much anything in which there is little or no competition, such as gardening and other hobbies, for instance, and many of the jobs in today’s workplace—business manager, teacher, electrician, engineer, consultant, and so on. These are not areas where you’re likely to find accumulated knowledge about deliberate practice, simply because there are no objective criteria for superior performance.

Second, deliberate practice requires a teacher who can provide practice activities designed to help a student improve his or her performance. Of course, before there can be such teachers there must be individuals who have achieved a certain level of performance with practice methods that can be passed on to others.

With this definition we are drawing a clear distinction between purposeful practice—in which a person tries very hard to push himself or herself to improve—and a practice that is both purposeful and informed. In particular, deliberate practice is informed and guided by the best performers’ accomplishments and by an understanding of what these expert performers do to excel. Deliberate practice is purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there. (Peak 98)

Before this passage Erikson notes that he and his colleagues had identified certain fields, like musical performance, chess and athletic activities, where the “levels of performance have increased greatly over time” (Peak 97). This increase in feats of elite performance coincided with the development of “teaching methods” that assigned the student practice exercises specially designed to advance the student’s skills along the well-worn path of mastery. Since these exercises can be improved and honed as time goes on, students can advance more and more rapidly than their predecessors, and the myelin-wrapping activities of deliberate practice can enable human beings to attain greater and greater feats. 

A good example of this is 25 year old Roger Bannister breaking the 4 min mile mark in 1954. Before this time, it was thought to be physically impossible to break this barrier, but once Roger Bannister broke it several others quickly followed suit, and to date the four minute barrier has been broken by more than 1,400 male athletes, including some high school students. 

Anders Erikson highlights the need of a teacher for deliberate practice, who is qualified in that area of artistry or craftsmanship and therefore able to provide the exercises. This reaffirms our conclusion from last article, that contra the Rousseauian claims of unschooling, students learn best through the organized instruction of a teacher. However, we can note that in artistry or craftsmanship not all fields are equally susceptible to this type of deliberate practice. Erikson mentions hobbies like gardening and a number of professions, like teaching, business management and consulting, as areas that lack “objective criteria for superior performance.” He’s not claiming that practitioners of these arts cannot get better at what they do, but their path to excellence is less precise. They may practice purposefully toward improvement but there are no widely agreed upon standards (“objective criteria”?) or clearly laid out steps. In these arts, people practice in the dark. 

Identifying Subcategories of the Arts in Aristotle

It may be helpful at this point to lay out again my basic outline of Aristotle’s Five Intellectual Virtues, including an extra layer of subcategories, in order to draw your attention to the nature of the virtue of techne which we have defined as artistry or craftsmanship.

It will be noted that under techne are included athletics, games and sports, which are rightly regarded as intellectual virtues under Aristotle’s definition, because they produce something new in the world through a true course of reasoning: the athletic performance whether in simplicity of a long jump or the complexity of a gymnastics routine. It is perhaps helpful to classify athletics and sports alongside the other arts in order to collapse the cultural false dichotomies of our day. Anyone who has seen a master athlete, say a gymnast, perform, will be hard pressed to exclude his work from the broader category that includes professional musicians and artists, as well as professions, trades, and the common and liberal arts themselves. These are all complex skills or areas of mastery, and our five part division is intended simply to gesture in the direction of the main types of craft or artistry that have been devised by human ingenuity and divine inspiration. 

Purposeful Practice in Artistry and Morality

But as we have said, not all techne have as fixed and exact a path of improvement as the others. And this is not only so in artistry, but also in matters of morality. In fact, this difference between deliberate and purposeful practice was anticipated by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics book II, where he also strikes a note reminiscent of the parable closing the Sermon on the Mount (i.e. building your house on the rock by putting his words into practice):

Since, then, the present inquiry does not aim at theoretical knowledge like the others (for we are inquiring not in order to know what excellence is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use), we must examine the nature of actions, namely how we ought to do them; for these determine also the nature of the states that are produced, as we have said. Now, that we must act according to right reason is a common principle and must be assumed—it will be discussed later, i.e. both what it is, and how it is related to the other excellences. But this must be agreed upon beforehand, that the whole account of matters of conduct must be given in outline and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning that the accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject-matter; matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The general account being of this nature, the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they do not fall under any art or set of precepts, but the agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation. (Book II, ch. 2, pp. 1743-4)

Here Aristotle claims that morality is more like practicing in the dark, since “matters of conduct must be given in outline and not precisely”. This is because the man who is too rash should aim back toward cowardice if he would hit the mark of courage, yet the cowardly should turn toward being a little bit rash. Aiming at the golden mean of virtue or excellence is relative to the individual person and the situation at hand, even if it is a real and true quality. 

In the same way the arts of navigation and medicine, two important professions in Aristotle’s day, depend very much on the case at hand and all the particulars. There may be sub-skills that their practitioners can master, but the complex problems that will be faced—how to respond to an oncoming storm or what treatment to try first for a patient with a tricky set of symptoms—resist any attempt to be boiled down to a clear and simple set of practice exercises. But this does not mean people cannot become excellent navigators or physicians, simply that the way is less clear.

So then, we have seen that some arts have well-defined and clear steps to mastery through deliberate practice, but others do not. Moral actions, for Aristotle, may be trained by cultivated habit and practice, but the way is not always clear and well-defined enough to be subject to a deliberate practice regimen. Christians might initially object to this claim, citing the ten commandments and the way of discipleship as a straight and narrow path. But on reflection we must admit that temperance is not attained simply by a regimen of fasting—that was one of the Pharisees’ mistakes—nor is love of God attained by the rich young ruler obeying all the outward commandments from his youth. Jesus must prescribe a specific cure for his love of security. And so, while we cannot do away with habit training and the mentoring process, we know that diagnosing moral ailments and prescribing moral remedies is more fraught than we might sometimes imagine. If the recitation of Bible verses and specific acts of contrition and restitution were necessarily effective cures, Christendom would have advanced into the modern age and the virtues would adorn all of its members.

Distinguishing Marks of Moral Virtue

Part of the wrinkle with practicing moral virtues is that they require certain characteristics beyond that of many arts. Aristotle introduces these extra requirements in his ethics by first explaining the apprenticeship process in the liberal arts of grammar and music:

The question might be asked, what we mean by saying that we must become just by doing just acts, and temperate by doing temperate acts; for if men do just and temperate acts, they are already just and temperate, exactly as, if they do what is grammatical or musical they are proficient in grammar and music.

Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do something grammatical either by chance or under the guidance of another. A man will be proficient in grammar, then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself. (II.4)

In both morality and the arts, it is always possible to stumble upon the right way by chance. A person can act justly and temperately on an occasion simply because the circumstances favor it. This is part of why a single just act does not make a man just. In a similar way, even a toddler can say a perfectly grammatical sentence, but this does not mean the child has mastered the art of grammar. Likewise, a child can act justly under the guidance of his parent or teacher; while this might be a necessary step in his training in moral habits, it does not mean the child is just. If a teacher holds a Kindergartener’s hand as she writes a word with her pencil, that doesn’t mean the Kindergartener has mastered penmanship. The apprenticeship process begins with guidance, but ends with self-directed mastery. 

So far so good, but in the case of moral virtues, there is a further set of requirements, making their attainment different from the arts:

Again the cases of the arts and that of the excellences are not similar; for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the excellences have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character. These are not reckoned in as conditions from the possession of the arts, except the bare knowledge; but as a condition of the possession of the excellences, knowledge has little or no weight, while the other conditions count not for a little but for everything, i.e. the very conditions which result from often doing just and temperate acts. (II.4)

The three requirements for moral virtue are 1) knowledge, i.e. the prudence or practical wisdom to know that they are acting in a way that corresponds with their ultimate good, 2) deliberate choice of the actions for their own sake, and 3) a “firm and unchangeable character”. The first requirement is necessary because if a person eats temperately without knowledge he has simply stumbled upon the right path by chance, and there is no expectation that he will persist in it, since being blind he cannot see the path he chanced upon. 

The second requirement that a person choose the act for its own sake would seem to contradict both Aristotle’s commendation of habit and his earlier discussion of happiness or eudaimonia as the only true end toward which all other choices tend. We can probably resolve these dilemmas by recalling our earlier discussion of habit as not being thoughtless. In the contemporary world the concept of ‘habit’ often has behaviorist undertones, due to the influence of modern psychology and naturalistic materialism. But it seems as if for Aristotle, a moral custom or habit should still be a result of conscious choice, even if those choices came earlier to solidify stock responses by a regimen of training. Likewise, the comment about choosing the course of action for its own sake, should not be seen as indicating a final end, but merely qualifying the act as chosen because of its goodness, rather than for an ulterior motive. For example, a person might choose to eat temperately one evening because he knows that he plans to rob a bank and wants to ensure that his body and wits are not sluggish while committing the dastardly deed. 

The third and final requirement needs little comment, since we all know that human nature is changeable and fickle; a character quality only recently adopted will not necessarily characterize the whole of a person’s life. The strength of this statement is an important correction to modern nonsense about it taking only 21 days (or 30 or 66) to build a new habit. At the very least, this is not true of the more complex moral virtues that represent a firm and unchangeable character, even if it can secure a propensity to take a multivitamin after your morning coffee. One reason for this is the fact that it is purposeful practice which we must engage in to discern between good and evil; therefore, the practice must be “constant” and have time to grow to ripeness or maturity (see Heb 5:14). If practicing morality is like bushwalking, then it takes longer to learn the route and how never to stray, than it does to drive to work on paved roads. 

Practicing virtue is not the work of a summer, a season, a semester or even all of grammar school, but of a lifetime. As Aristotle says,

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy. (Book II, ch. 4; pp. 1755-6)

Aristotle’s rebuke to the mass of self-proclaimed “philosophers” strikes a note that will be taken up again and again by the Stoics: the centrality of action for the cultivation of moral virtue. In this he is arguably correcting a crucial misunderstanding of Plato’s emphasis upon knowledge. Many of Plato’s dialogues go about the work of promoting moral virtue by first revealing the ignorance of Socrates’ conversation partners about the nature of true virtue, whether piety, justice, temperance or courage. This seems to imply a doctrine of salvation by knowledge, a concept that Plato certainly affirms in a number of ways throughout his works. Unfortunately, human nature makes it all to easy for us to mistake our own theoretical insight for this saving, sanctifying knowledge; on the Christian side of things, the gnostics are the prime example of this error, as they considered their special gnosis, or knowledge, as exempting them from the hard work of moral practice.

Crucial Distinctions between the Intellectual Virtues

For this reason, Aristotle is careful to distinguish episteme or scientific knowledge, the ability to demonstrate the truth of something, and moral virtue. The first concerns man as knower, to borrow the terminology from Mortimer Adler’s Aristotle for Everybody, and the second concerns man as doer. But in fact, this division goes deeper for Aristotle, since even the term ‘wisdom’ itself has a line running through it. Phronesis, prudence or practical wisdom, characterizes the wise in action, while sophia, philosophic wisdom, or the possession of both knowledge (episteme) and intuition (nous) about the highest things, concerns the wise in thought, man as knower. 

This important set of distinctions cuts the line straight through the arts as well, where two equally damaging errors pervade the educational world of Bloom’s taxonomy. First, modernism’s emphasis upon scientific knowledge (episteme) to the neglect of all other educational objectives has run ramshod over the proper training of the arts. A “bare knowledge” is necessary for developing mastery in the arts, but far more important is the apprenticeship model that embraces a regimen of deliberate or at least purposeful practice. This is because the arts primarily concern man as maker, rather than knower. The knowledge necessary is little more than a precept here or there to guide practice: always point your toes, lift your knees higher as you’re running, open your throat more and relax your tongue, hold your paintbrush this way. But in the case of the liberal arts especially, this scientific knowledge mindset has short circuited the apprenticeship process in the arts of language and number by overemphasizing knowledge to the neglect of sufficient practice and feedback. Elaborate textbooks convey a host of instructions, but teachers without the proper skill in these crafts fail to coach their students to mastery. 

At the same time, a mistaken focus upon abstract cognitive or intellectual skills, also born of Bloom’s, has replaced the traditional liberal arts themselves with half-baked acts of the mind outside of their holistic and natural process in the search for truth. Comprehension and analytical exercises isolate useless “academic skills” from the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge regarding ultimate questions. The distaste of many students for academics grows from this arid soil of academic training without any phronesis or sophia. 

The way out of this mess is to restore each of these intellectual virtues as proper goals for education throughout the school’s curriculum and pedagogy. While some ‘subjects’ may be more suited to developing a particular intellectual virtue, Aristotle’s intellectual virtues cut across traditional lines. To bring our conversation full circle, moral discussions should occur in the gymnasium. Bodily habits should be reinforced in philosophy class. Liberal arts training should follow the apprenticeship model and not simply impart knowledge. At the same time, ultimate questions and practical considerations of human action should point the student upward toward practical and philosophic wisdom. Practice in the classroom, the studio and on the field should be purposeful, if not deliberate, and we should not “take refuge in theory”. In the next article we’ll zero in on the apprenticeship model of training in the arts and what implications this has for pedagogy and structuring a school’s curriculum and classes.

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

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