C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher

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

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

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

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

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

Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cal Newport, Deep Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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In this series, I have been exploring Charlotte Mason’s notion that education should be approached through a trifold lens of atmosphere, discipline, and life. Stemming from her view of children as persons, Mason argues that we are limited to three and only three tools to educate. All others encroach in some way or another upon the inherent dignity of the child.

She writes,

Having cut out the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, undue play upon any one natural desire, emulation, for example, we are no longer free to use all means in the education of children. There are but three left for our use and to each of these we must give careful study or we shall not realise how great a scope is left to us.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 95

In the first installment of this series, I took a closer look at what Mason calls the instrument of atmosphere. I explained that for the British educator the goal is to cultivate an environment of learning for persons: one oriented toward relationship, order, and natural beauty. From a classical perspective, we can say that cultivating an atmosphere in this vein is a foundational step for passing on a Christian paideia. 

In the second installment, I explored the instrument of discipline. Here I underscored the importance of training students in good habits as opposed to promoting mere behavioral compliance. While behaviorism focuses on reproducing particular external behaviors through systems of reward and punishment, habit training aims at the heart. Through the repeated practice of good moral habits, children develop virtuous character and the strength, with God’s help, to choose good over evil.

In this third and final installment, I will examine Mason’s notion that “education is a life.” For those unfamiliar with Charlotte Mason, the term “life” could conjure up a few different meanings. Does she mean one’s practical, or everyday life, in the sense that learning should become part of a child’s daily experience? Could she mean “life” in the sense that formal education cannot be contained within the perimeters of a physical classroom or schedule of lessons? Or does she mean “life” in the sense that real education is oriented toward the holistic flourishing of the child, during the school years and beyond?

In this article, I will aim to demonstrate that all three aspects described above are present in Charlotte Mason’s broader notion that our educational efforts ought to be oriented toward feeding the life of the child’s mind. The mind is not a blank slate to be inscribed with the thoughts of others nor is it a receptacle to be filled with atomized pieces of information. Rather, the mind is a living, even spiritual, entity that requires sustenance through ideas encountered in books, art, music, and nature. When the mind is fed probably, the whole child receives the intellectual, spiritual, and moral nourishment to lead a life of flourishing.

The Mind of a Person

Like the first two articles in this series, I will begin this discussion with Charlotte Mason’s notion that children are persons. This is the foundational premise upon which the entirety of her philosophy hangs. Children begin their formal education with a pre-existing intellectual appetite as well as thoughts about how the world works. They are eager to engage, explore, discover, and learn, long before they are led to do so in the classroom or homeschool.

While a conventionally modern analogue for the human mind is a blank slate, Mason compares the mind to an organism– an active and living thing that requires sustenance to continue living. She writes,

The mind is a spiritual octopus, reaching out limbs in every direction to draw in enormous rations of that which under the action of the mind itself becomes knowledge. Nothing can stale its infinite variety; the heavens and the earth, the past, the present, and the future, things great and things minute, nations and men, the universe, all are within the scope of the human intelligence.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 330

Here we see the sheer breadth of the human’s ability to explore, discover, and understand. The mind longs to truly know and insofar as it can continue to find knowledge, it lives on.

The Transformative Power of Knowledge

For Mason, it is important to note that knowledge takes on a transformative role as it becomes part of a child. Now, in contemporary society, we have become all too accustomed to the idea that truth is subjective and, therefore, relative to the individual. This generates mass confusion and the ultimate breakdown of rational dialogue as people speak of “my truth” or “your truth,” as if facts change based on who believes them.

However, as Christians, our foundation for truth is Christ himself . Our epistemological framework for knowledge is God’s transcendent nature, which is immutable. As a result, we can believe with confidence that ultimate truths about reality do not change; they are objective, or outside of us. True knowledge, then, is when people believe believe what is actually true (and have some warrant or justification in this belief).

When Mason emphasizes that knowledge must become part of a child for true learning to occur, she does not mean in the subjective sense that prevails in our culture. Rather, she is emphasizing the transformative power of knowledge. Karen Glass offers a helpful analogy to explain this phenomenon:

If you go to the cupboard looking for sugar and sugar is there, the cupboard is functioning as it should. If you ask a question and a child can produce the correct answer, you might assume that education was successful. The child “learned” the correct answer to the question. But what if that is entirely the wrong picture, and education is not about producing correct answers to drear questions? What if the mind is a hungry, living entity and not a receptacle at all? The cupboard is unaffected and unchanged by the presence of the sugar and other items within. It produces them upon request, but it remains exactly as it was before. So it is with children who dutifully produce the right answers but are unmoved by what they know.

In Vital Harmony, p. 67

Glass, in her exposition of Mason’s thought, makes the point well here that real learning ought to change a person. Mere information recall does not constitute true knowledge in whole-person education. While a cupboard is ambivalent to whether it holds sugar or not, a mind is transformed by the ideas it digests. You can gauge the nourishment of a child’s mind, not be how much they know, but by general indicators of life in general: eagerness, diligence, passion, and a zeal for growth.

Facts vs. Ideas

To truly feed a child’s mind, we must move beyond presenting them with mere facts or information. The instrument of “life” that Mason is referencing is the life of the mind fed on living ideas. To be sure, facts are important, and we want children to form true beliefs about God, creation, and humankind. The key is to present these facts within inspiring ideas that will feed a child’s soul, not merely fill a mental repository.

What is an idea? Charlotte Mason writes,

A live thing of the mind, seems to be the conclusion of our greatest thinkers from Plato to Bacon, from Bacon to Coleridge. We all know how an idea ‘strikes,’ ‘seizes,’ ‘catches hold of,’ ‘impresses’ us and at last, if it be big enough, ‘possesses’ us; in a word, behaves like an entity. If we enquire into any person’s habits of life, mental preoccupation, devotion to a cause or pursuit, he will usually tell us that such and such an idea struck him. This potency of an idea is matter of common recognition. No phrase is more common and more promising than, ‘I have an idea’; we rise to such an opening as trout to a well-chosen fly. There is but one sphere in which the word idea never occurs, in which the conception of an idea is curiously absent, and that sphere is education! Look at any publisher’s list of school books and you shall find that the books recommended are carefully dessicated, drained of the least suspicion of an idea, reduced to the driest statements of fact.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 105

In short, an idea is an aspect of knowledge that comes in contact with the mind, like two objects colliding in motion. Not all facts are ideas, but they become ideas when the mind assimilates and grasps knowledge for itself. This is why the teaching tool of narration is so powerful (you can read about its history in the classical tradition here). When we give children meaningful books to read and narrate, ideas are unlocked through the telling-back process. No two narrations are the same because no two minds are the same. Each mind will be drawn uniquely to distinct ideas even as they ideas remain grounded in objective truth.

Shedding light on how facts become ideas when they are integrated into a child’s broader base of knowledge, Maryellyn St. Cyr, of Ambleside Schools International, writes,

Facts are clothed in ideas. Facts are taught in relation to a vast number of things and integrated into a body of knowledge (part to whole). The learner assimilates this knowledge when it is reproduced or carries a meaningful connection. Learners can act upon information seen or heard through verbal and written narration, individual or cooperative relationships, or visual demonstrations of art and movement .

When Children Love to Learn, p. 103

Conclusion: Towards a Liberal Arts Curriculum in Ideas

For children to love learning and cultivate a vibrant intellectual life, they need more than an inspiring classroom atmosphere. They need to be taught a curriculum that is ideas-rich and be given opportunities to assimilate these ideas for themselves. Rather than pre-digesting knowledge as adults and transplanting it into bite-sized pieces for children to swallow like a pill, Charlotte Mason advises that we have children read living books with rich narrative content.

A classical liberal arts curriculum, complete with stories, poetry, music, art, and nature, is the key to nourishing a child’s mind in this way. The goal is not for students to recall every bit of information from their studies with scientific exactitude, but to provide avenues for their minds to latch on to a few select ideas that will change them forever. Coupled with the teaching tool of narration, educators will find that through ideas-rich education that children will learn more and retain more as their minds are awakened and inspired to truly know in the fullest sense possible.

How to begin? I will leave the closing word for Charlotte Mason herself:

All roads lead to Rome, and all I have said is meant to enforce the fact that much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, “The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.”

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 111

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How can teachers approach this year in a way that is different from the past? Experienced teachers may have a good idea at this point what their growth goals are for the year. To be sure, taking inventory of one’s skill in the craft of teaching is important. However, sometimes as people we need more than a new goal to pursue. We need a spiritual and mental reset.

In this blog, I want to encourage teachers to consider ways they might approach this year with more self-awareness and an increasing sense of peace. So often the frantic nature of our modern world throws us off kilter. But classical educators, with our eyes fixed on the good, true, and beautiful, ought to be different. Let us explore, then, some practical ways we might begin to cultivate peacefulness within ourselves, ultimately looking to the Lord to fill us with the peace that can only come from Him.

The Value of Self-Reflection 

Self-reflection is a helpful exercise to both begin and end your day. If you already have a morning devotional routine, then you can probably just add this to the mix. During self-reflection, you want to think through the elements of your day that you expect to be the most rewarding and challenging. What are you most looking forward to? What are you dreading? How do you hope to act and react throughout the hard parts? These sorts of questions can begin to prepare you emotionally for what could happen and equip you to respond how you would like to in real time.

A question I have started asking myself in the morning is, “At the end of the day, what do I hope to be most proud of?” Almost always, my answer has been that “I would love and serve people well.” Admittedly, I am somewhat surprised by my answer. With a full day of work before me, coupled with my goal-oriented personality, you might think it would be some accomplishment that would bring me the most satisfaction. But when I answer the question, assuming I am being honest with myself, the answer has to do with how I relate to those around me.

Self-reflection is also a helpful practice for the end of the day. Questions like “What did I do well today? What am I most proud of? How did I respond in the scenario I knew would be challenging?” can help bring closure to what perhaps has been an otherwise challenging day. The reality we must come to embrace is that life is not perfect. There will always be situations we wish had gone differently. But by asking these sorts of questions and processing what did happen, we can grow in embracing reality and see that God’s gracious plan is sufficient for our needs.

Additionally, through self-reflection, we grow in awareness of ourselves, both our words and our deeds. To this point, leadership professor Harry Kramer writes,

Being self-reflective means that when you’re at the top of that sine curve, you already know what you’ll do when things do go so well. You will be alert, and prepared for those initial signs of disappointment or upset, and you’ll act on them quickly, without getting sidetracked, being surprised or losing precious energy to worry, fear, anxiety, pressure or stress. Without self-reflection, you have chosen to wait until a crisis hits to figure out what you’re going to do, and by then it’s too late.

Harry Kraemer., Becoming the Best: Build a World-Class Organization Through Values-Based Leadership (Wiley, 2015), p. 22

When teachers practice self-reflection, they grow prepared mentally and spiritually for what surprises might come that day. Whether it is a misbehaving student, an upset parent, or overbearing administrator, teachers can approach the day with an inner-sense of peace grounded in God’s grace for them.

Leaning into Leisure 

As Josef Pieper observed many years ago in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, we live in a world that has largely reduced humans to workers. Education, family, and society have all become servants of economic output. To his point, more and more Americans are putting in 50 or 60 hour work weeks, as the research shows, leaving little desire for meaningful rest when the work week ends, if it does at all.

The solution, according to Pieper, is leisure. He writes, “Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude–it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend, or a vacation. It is in the first place an attitude of the mind, a condition of the soul, and as such utterly contrary to the ideal of ‘worker’…” (46).

What Pieper is getting at here is that leisure is not merely equivalent to non-work. It is not the default state of mind we find ourselves in when we are not on the clock. Rather, leisure is a contemplative state of being in which we grow as integrated selves and experience wholeness. It means not being busy, but letting things happen.

As Christians, we can introduce a spiritual layer to the conversation: leisure is the experience of connecting with God and growing in our reliance upon Him. To do this, we need time and space from activity. As we sit in silence, pondering the state of our being, our minds can further contemplate the nature of God and His eternal attributes: His holiness, eternality, and omniscience, for example. As we do so, we grow in acuity of our own finitude and the need to rest within the hands of God.

Reading to See

Finally, teachers can prepare for the upcoming school year by making time to read. In this way, they feed and nurture their own intellects even as they plan to nurture the intellects of their students. Admittedly, this way of thinking is quite counter-cultural. We have come to view education as a transaction of information that requires little intellectual depth for oneself. So long as the PowerPoints are made and lesson plans are full, preparation for the year is complete.

But what if real teaching is a meeting of the minds? If this is the case, then the teacher’s intellect is just as important for the learning that will take place as the students. Teachers can come to each lesson prepared to learn themselves, to change and be changed, by the knowledge they encounter.

In his latest book, Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner, examines the lives of six great political leaders from the 20th century.

Adrian Woolrdridge, writing at Bloomberg on Kissinger’s work, observes, 

All six of Kissinger’s heroes were serious readers and writers. Sadat spent almost six years in solitary confinement with only books for comfort. In 1933, Adenauer retreated to a monastery to escape from the Nazis and spent his time studying two papal encyclicals, promulgated by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, which applied Catholic teachings to socioeconomic conditions. Thatcher read her official briefs until early in the morning and drew attention to grammatical errors and stylistic blunders. De Gaulle wrote some immortal French. Deep literacy provided them with what Max Weber called “proportion” — “the ability to allow realities to impinge on you while maintaining an inner calm and composure.” It also provided them with a sense of perspective as they put daily events into the wider scheme of history or even God’s will.

When teachers read, especially when they read deep literature, their minds enter a state of deep contemplation and peace. After a busy school day, with the bustling of student activity, reading can be a strategic way to unwind. Of course, there are lots of other great ways to rest, but I would suggest that specifically for teachers, reading can be an exceptionally enriching activity. It feeds the intellect, plants new ideas in our minds, and, as Wooldridge mentions above, allows us to view daily events within a wider frame of history and, ultimately, God’s sovereign hand within it.

Conclusion

As teachers prepare for the start of the 2022-2023 school year, there is a lot they could and should do. But amidst their teacher checklists and marching orders from administration, my encouragement is to take some time to develop new habits. Self-reflection, intentional leisure, and reading to see are just three examples to help you begin.

Let me close with some encouragement from scripture. Towards the end of Colossians, Paul writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word and deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:15-17). More than anything else, may teachers at our schools this year be filled with the Word and Spirit of Christ, remembering that they are His hands and feet, equipped for every good work.

What ideas come to mind for you as you seek to start off the school year on a strong note? Comment below to share your thoughts with fellow teachers.

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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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At the same time, no one explicitly endorses the excision of reading from the curriculum as they would the penny from U.S. currency. We know deep down that reading is something we cannot do without. After all, how will the next generation read stop signs and Instagram posts? Yes, I am being somewhat facetious, but the point remains: society understands that it needs literate citizens to continue to function.

In this blog, I submit three reasons for society to embrace deep reading as both an immensely practical and inescapably moral skill to pass on to the next generation. By “deep reading” I mean more than reading for practical information or to enjoy the latest fan-fare novel. I mean the sort of reading that draws one into deeper opportunities for contemplation, discovery, and renewal. Recently, Dr. Patrick Egan made the compelling case for choosing to read old books over watching the news. This article will dovetail off of his work as it explores different facets of the human experience and how deep reading enhances each of them for the flourishing of society and its members.

Deep Reading is a pathway to creativity. 

In our technological age, the opportunities for entertainment are endless. With smartphones in pocket and streaming services on the rise, people who claim they are bored are without excuse. Whether we are waiting in line at the grocery store or have an evening to ourselves, never fear, the harvest of Silicon Valley is plentiful.

But what if humans were created for more than entertainment? What if we are actually designed, not to consume, but create? While theologians continue to debate the doctrine of imago dei, certainly one implication is that human beings have the capacity to make new things. God has endowed humans in his likeness with the rational, moral, and social capacities to order, build, program, grow, and build, creating new instances of beauty and order within his creation. 

In My Tech-Wise Life (BakerBooks, 2020), Amy Crouch, the daughter of author Andy Crouch, offers her thoughts growing up in a tech-wise family. As she reflects on boredom and entertainment, Crouch proposes that the cure for boredom is not distraction, but wonder (145). However, in order to experience wonder, we need to be undistracted. We need to experience boredom. It is only when our minds are given the freedom to not be inundated by external forces that it has the time to ponder for itself. This pondering leads to ideas, which in turn generate wonder and discovery.

Reading helps facilitate this process of wonder. Unlike screens, which captivate one’s attention from beginning to end, reading is an activity in which the reader remains in the driver’s seat. The reader can slow down at times to re-read a passage or give an idea more thought. She can pause to consider whether what she is reading is true. These moments of reflection allow the mind to wander and ponder, entering a flow of thinking and creativity. And lest we think that reading enhances creativity only in the humanities, this doctoral student in immunology at the University of Chicago would beg to differ. 

Deep Reading preserves a free and moral society. 

Behind the excitement about practical disciplines like business and engineering lies a dangerous assumption: contemporary society’s reading ability is “good enough.” We can move beyond the fundamentals of reading and writing because we have mastered them. After all, we live in a country where practically everyone goes to school and graduates “adequately” literate. But is adequacy the proper goal for a skill as foundational as reading?

Recently I have taken a deep dive into the writings of Wendell Berry and came upon an essay he wrote in 1970 entitled “In Defense of Literacy.” In this piece, Berry argues that the submission of literature to the practical is a perversion. He offers two reasons for this. First, the term “practical” is often synonymous with “immediate.” Once a thing falls out of short-term use, it loses its place in the world. This myopic thinking about time and place sacrifices long-term flourishing for short-term benefits.

Second, language preserves ourselves and our values. In a literate society, language is used both for good and for ill, but especially ill. Public discourse is premeditated and designed to achieve a proper objective. The surest way to confront language used for nefarious or deceptive ends is with language shaped by truth and goodness. Hence, Dorothy Sayers clarion call for the recovery of the liberal arts and the lost tools of learning. 

Towards the end of his essay, Berry clarifies that “a better language” grounded in morality will be discovered across the span of history, not “just the environment of prepared language in which most of us now pass most of our lives.” In other words, Berry recommends we read old books. For, as we read books outside the transience of the present, we develop “a more accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal.”

Deep Reading prepares future leaders. 

Parents and educators alike want their children and students to be leaders, not followers. This is a laudable aspiration. And while the term “preparing leaders” is a buzzword that is often overused and underrealized, the solution is not to abdicate from this goal, but to gain clarity on its true meaning. What do we mean by leadership? What are the traits of a godly leader? How can we prepare students to remain faithful to biblical principles of leadership, especially as headlines of fallen Christian leaders continue to break?

Interestingly, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a leader of leaders in the latter half of the 19th century, heralded literacy as the pathway to freedom for African-American slaves. He understood that the ability to read and write empowered him to speak truth to power. Douglass would spend his life championing the cause of abolition as well as education for African-Americans during the Reconstruction Era. (For more information on Douglass and the liberal arts I recommend this brief article over at Circe institute.)

What is it about deep reading that prepares future leaders?

First, deep reading helps a young leader develop a thought life of her own. Leadership is rooted in the conviction to fulfill a vision for what the world could be, but is not at present. In order for these sort of visionary ideas to emerge, the mind must be fed with big ideas in the first place. But not only must the mind be fed, it needs to take part in this feast. In other words, young leaders need to spend time in thought about God, the world He created, and their unique place in it. While there are certainly plenty of successful leaders out there who have not developed a rich diet of deep reading, I would contend that those who do tend to be wiser, humbler, and more inclined to, in the end, finish the race.

Second, deep reading grants a developing leader glimpses of experiences they do not possess themselves. The greatest liability of a young leader full of potential is his lack of experience. He may have the academic qualifications, and even a couple notches on his belt, but he lacks that which a seasoned leader has in spades: lessons learned over decades of experience. While deep reading cannot replace these lessons, the voracious reader can make up for years, or lost years, by putting his head down in good books that illustrate key leadership principles. Learning these principles, and putting them into application on a daily basis, can put developing leaders on a fast track of wise and prudent leadership.

Conclusion

The art of reading, though not completely abandoned by society, needs a renaissance in education for the next generation. Deep reading, in particular, has the potential to shape young men and women to be more creative, committed to traditional morality, and capable of wise leadership.

Carl F.H. Henry, an American evangelical thought leader in the 20th century, once wrote,

Evangelical education stands on the brink of a pagan era in which men of faith can once more register a singular witness for God, and for objective truth and the name of Jesus Christ, and for man and freedom under God. God does not draft reluctant warriors for this larger conflict; they enlist as volunteers if they really count. And this is the hour for such volunteers. Tomorrow may be too late.

The God Who Shows Himself (Word Books, 1966), p. 119

Henry wrote these words over fifty years ago. Some would argue that the pagan era he predicted has arrived. If so, may his call for men (and women) of faith come to pass as well. If you are wondering what you can do to volunteer for the great cause of bearing witness to the name of Christ, perhaps a first step is to take some time to read a good book and let it do its work on you.

Enjoy this article? Check out Jason’s earlier article on the same topic: The Importance of Deep Reading in Education.

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Life comes at us at a furious tempo enhanced by these new technologies. Which leads me to the news. The news is no longer arriving on our doorstep in print form and in our living rooms through three broadcast channels. The news shows up as headlines on our phone’s widget, in our RSS readers, in our social media feeds, not to mention the 24/7 news cycles of multiple broadcast channels. The transformation of the news from the domain of a few professional journalism outlets to the multivarious avenues of delivery today has made a lasting impact on our society, our culture and even our individual psyches. The multiplication of news has not made us a more informed populace. Instead, the phrase “fake news” emerged revealing a deep mistrust in all stripes of news media. In this article I would like to explore a few perspectives that will hopefully enable us to train our students to withstand the onslaught of contemporary news, which I believe has exacerbated the difficult landscape of the post-iPhone era.

The Example of C. S. Lewis

It behooves us to consider the sage advice of C. S. Lewis: read old books. This advice really speaks into our educational renewal movement. It is not that the old books distract us from the present. We are not burying our heads in the sands of days gone by while the world around us burns. No, instead we are gaining valuable perspective. The books that have stood the test of time contain insights that transcend the particulars of any given timeframe. It was said that when Lewis was introduced to a newsworthy event, despite the fact that he didn’t read the news, he had incisive thoughts about current events. This was because his reading of old books informed his thinking so that he could address the pressing concerns of his day from a well-considered perspective. Now, to be fair, Lewis did from time-to-time read the news. It is inevitable that one takes a glance at items of present-day concern. But his regular practice was to ignore the news in preference to literary and philosophical writings.

I remember reading Lewis’s Surprised by Joy and later Alan Jacob’s The Narnian while working on my PhD. At the time I had numerous news sources dumping headlines into my RSS feed. It struck me that Lewis’s habit of ignoring the news might be a way for me to clear out both the time and the headspace to make significant progress on my research and writing. Even though I wouldn’t be up on the latest events when conversing with my colleagues over lunch, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Here is the quote that got me started on my journey of giving up on the news, from Surprised by Joy:

Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be seen before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt, 1955), 159

Some of the key words and phrases that should jump out when reading this passage are “false,” “lost all importance,” “have to unlearn,” “vulgarity,” “sensationalism,” and “habit of fluttering.” This was Lewis in 1955, a decade after World War 2. Consider how much more these words and phrases offer a critique of our social media feeds. We swipe our finger on the iPhone scrolling for that which is sensational, probably vulgar, most likely false but above all is unimportant. As we try to make sense of our world, it turns out the news is one of the worst ways to gauge the way things really are.

The impact on our neurology has far-reaching consequences that we have yet to fully realize. In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr spells out how the internet impacts both our conscious and unconscious thinking as well as rewires our neurological networks. He writes:

The Net’s cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and then back out again.

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows (New York: Norton), 119

As we attempt to interact with our environment to understand the way things really are, the internet prevents us from the kind of deep reflection that would ultimately help us make sense of the world.

News in the Ancient World

If Lewis started me on my journey toward a news-free life, it was my research into the transmission of information in the ancient world that really caught ahold of me. In a world where most people could not read or write, oral communication was the means by which people learned about current events. News as we know it today was issued in the form of public edicts. Official policy was disseminated by written decrees conveyed to public areas such as city marketplaces to be read by town criers. Parchments might be publicly displayed for those who were not present to hear the announced edict. Important and permanent statutes might be displayed as placards or pillars that served public notice of rules and regulations. (see Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus, 166-168) The written word was essentially reserved for legal proceedings and official business. Note how edicts were read aloud publicly, since most people were unable to read.

In an oral culture, that which was truly newsworthy spread by word of mouth. At its worst, oral culture perpetuates gossip and misinformation. Yet, the expectation was that rules and regulations announced in the public square would utilize the rapid transmission word-of-mouth communication provided. A Roman authority could dispatch a minimal number of emissaries to strategic locations and know that the message would reach a majority of the populace. The edict read in the marketplace was soon spoken of along the highways and byways of a far-flung empire. Consider the example of the decree that went out from Caesar Augustus in Luke 2:1. Joseph of Nazareth didn’t read about this in a newspaper, it was likely disseminated first from a written edict read aloud in a major city and then spread via word-of-mouth, with the effect that most of the population abided by the regulation to be registered.

Now the point of all of this is that for the majority of history, most of the news that individuals received was learned through relationships, either business (i.e. trips to the marketplace), kinship, or community. The reception of newsworthy information through relationship means you could assess the relative reliability of your sources. If your uncle is a trustworthy, upright citizen, then when he tells you about something, you are inclined to believe it. The other fascinating insight provided by the concept that newsworthy items were received through close relationships is that the “news” was likely to be highly relevant to your daily life. Much of the click-bait types of news about citizens of Rome that would have scintillated the ears of remote Galileans would have been so irrelevant to daily life that it never would have been communicated. So in general the oral-dominant culture of the ancient world actually provided two major filters for newsworthiness: 1) source reliability, and 2) relevance to daily life.

Neil Postman 2.0

In 1985 when Neil Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death, the cultural artifact that most dominated public discourse was the television. Breaking down that word – tele-vision – provides two developments that can be traced over time. The first part “tele” can be traced back to the telegraph, which was the first technology that Postman shows transformed our culture from a typographical culture to an illuminated screen culture. He writes:

“The telegraph introduced a kind of public conversation whose form had startling characteristics: Its language was the language of headlines – sensational, fragmented, impersonal. News took the form of slogans, to be noted with excitement, to be forgotten with dispatch. Its language was also entirely discontinuous. One message had no connection to that which preceded or followed it. Each ‘headline’ stood alone as its own context. The receiver of the news had to provide a meaning if he could. The sender was under no obligation to do so.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (Penguin), 70

Notice the shift from reliability and relevance to irresponsible and irrelevant. No longer did news have to provide the context necessary to make meaning of life or to enable the reader to take action.

“But the situation created by telegraphy, and then exacerbated by later technologies, made the relationship between information and action both abstract and remote.”

Amusing Ourselves to Death, 68

The prefix “tele” means far away. So, “television” means literally “far away vision.” News conducted to us from remote locations requires significant mental work in order to make sense of the context, background and meaning of the information. And yet, the nature of news items is to disseminate information so rapidly, that meaning making cannot happen. This leads to our inability to act on the information we receive through “far away vision.” If something happen in remote Hungary, there’s very little I can do about it. I just have to receive it at an abstract factoid.

“This ensemble of electronic techniques called into being a new world – a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed does not permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child’s game of peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also endlessly entertaining.”

Amusing Ourselves to Death, 77

I am reminded of the famous scene in the 2000 film Gladiator where Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus, cries out in the coliseum, “Are you not entertained?” This is perhaps the new, highest value in society. Our pursuit is no longer for happiness, but for entertaining. Have we accepted a cheap substitute for eudaimonia?

“Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. That is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago.”

Amusing Ourselves to Death, 80

That was 1985. We are now approaching forty years since Postman wrote this, and therefore almost a century since Huxley wrote Brave New World. Imagine what Postman would have to say about the internet, social media and the smartphone. If a thirty-minute nightly news program on, say, NBC is sensational, fragmented, and impersonal, how much more has our social media feed contributed to this Huxleyan dystopia? The technologies have changed (although they are still “tele-vision”), but Postman’s insight remains just as true today. The internet is really just tele-vision 2.0, so we need all the more Neil Postman 2.0.

Reading Old Books

So how do we lead a resistance to this Huxleyan dystopia? To answer this I return to C. S. Lewis and his advice to read old books. This sage advice comes from an introduction her wrote for an edition of On the Incarnation by Athanasius.

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.”

With renewed purpose this year, I believe our educational renewal movement has the tools to equip our students with wisdom and knowledge to cut through the click bait headlines of our social media feeds. If nothing else, classical Christian education is about old books. What we mean by old books is the classics, the great books. These have been tried and tested. People come back to them generation after generation finding in them a rich vein of insight, meaning and perspective. Consider this definition of a classic book by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve:

“A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, “What is a Classic?” Harvard Classics, Vol. 32: Literary and Philosophical Essays

Compare this definition to what we find in the news. As classical educators, we have the opportunity to provide the antidote to a sensational, fragmented and impersonal media. What is the great book you will be sharing with your students? What treasure will enrich their minds and yours? When you open that cherished volume, enable them to see the truth, beauty and goodness therein. For from it they will gain so much perspective as to make the news pale in comparison.

One final word. When I previously taught senior history covering the modern world, I had my students read Amusing Ourselves to Death. I found that it provided a sound critique of culture from the World Wars to the present. If you haven’t adopted this work in your high school, it is well worth a look. The first time I worked through it with students, the Hunger Games movies were still fairly recent. They easily made the connections between the dystopian world Suzanne Collins created and the arguments Postman puts forward. At the conclusion of our reading of Amusing Ourselves to Death, I challenged my students to undertake a screen fast. Most of my students had jobs and drove themselves everywhere, so they had to plan ahead to be without phone, tablet, laptop or TV. For instance, I had one student who provided her mom’s number in case of emergencies. The challenge was to go 72 hours without any screen time. Upon completion of the challenge, the student then wrote a reflection on their experience. Some consistent patterns emerged. These students spent more time with family, spent more time outdoors, engaged in more leisure activities, got more sleep, exercised more, and overall felt a greater sense of wellbeing as a result of their screen fast. I even had one student who mentioned she noticed how much the birds sing. If you work with high school or college students, I highly recommend both Postman’s book as well as the screen fast challenge. They can really open the eyes of your students and empower them to enact real change in their lives.

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(See Jason’s article on CSI “7 Steps to Narrating the Bible”!)

In biblical studies we seek to cultivate the habits of reverence, humility, submission to the text, and other qualities of faithful scholarship. But I propose another goal should rise to the top: enjoyment. The enjoyment that students have in reading a novel, or an eerie poem, or an adventure epic. 

When students are engaging with the Bible, we should hear laughter and gasps. We should see quizzical eyebrows and wide-eyed shock. I love to see students jumping out of their seats to be picked to identify a ‘hidden’ motif of Joshua. To see awkward blushes and grins, in unfolding the romance of Ruth and Boaz. To see shock and dismay over the violence of Genesis. And I had to laugh at my student’s obvious frustration, annotating her way through the book of Judges, with its noted cycle of idolatry: “Oh no… This is so wrong… Oh why? … That was cruel… This is just sad… Be smart and think!… Not again!”

My students read through the entire biblical canon in community, and their literary enjoyment of it is a memory that will last. Whether visually depicting the imagery of a Psalm or orally narrating the downward spiral of Genesis, students will remember Scripture as profound, holy, and artistically compelling. St. Augustine quipped, 

“Perhaps someone inquires whether the authors whose divinely-inspired writings constitute the canon, which carries with it a most wholesome authority, are to be considered wise only, or eloquent as well. A question which to me… is very easily settled. For where I understand these writers, it seems to me not only that nothing can be wiser, but also that nothing can be more eloquent.” 

 On Christian Doctrine, section 9

Why have we often missed the literary beauty of the Scriptures? Why do we move so quickly to “personal application,” while failing to linger in the episodes and the larger, sweeping narrative? Many a theologian has noted that we throw out good reading skills when it comes to the Bible—cutting the text into bite-size daily chunks, reading without context in mind, failing to find the author’s key themes and motifs. 

We have our modernity to blame. Theologian Peter Leithart depicts the Enlightenment and subsequent theological disputes as having moved evangelicals toward only half of the equation: unfolding the literal meaning and the moral application. But in Rehabilitating the Quadriga, Leithart explains that modern readers have missed out on the riches of Scripture by overlooking the medieval fourfold approach. We have ignored allegorical (or typological) reading and anagogical (or forward-looking reading, in light of final things). He urges us to recover more ancient ways of reading Scripture. 

Many modern advocates of theological interpretation of scripture are seeking to revive the more ancient, literary and typological approach to Scripture, and the good news is that we can implement this in K-12 Bible classes, even without personal training in the field. We can apply best-practices from teaching other literature as we study the canon. Here are 5 practical tactics to cultivate an enjoyment of scripture through a literary approach:

1. Annotating a Reader Bible 

This methodology revolves around close-reading and annotating of the text, so it is crucial that students have their own copy of a simple pew Bible or reader Bible to serve as their consumable textbook. Most reader Bibles are published in 4-6 volumes to complete the canon, and they are available in most translations. Students will build a personal library of the whole biblical canon. The embossed hardcover on these reader Bibles simply say “Pentateuch” or “Poetry,” but inside, the Bible looks like a novel or set of poems. 

Students are taught to treat this book as the valuable resource it is—to mark it, underline, and annotate neatly in pencil. A black-and-white composition book completes the required resources. Students will add quotes to this commonplace book over the six years that they read through the canon. It is a solid setup for a literary approach: a hardcover “novel” plus a growing journal of quotations. 

2. Seeking Simplicity: Multum non Multa

In keeping with the classical principle of “much, not many things,” we should cultivate long-term focus on a text rather than jumping between many resources. Students can sustain attention through a whole book or whole canonical section.  

To strip away distractions, students are asked to read with a pencil on the text, annotating their way through a full book. But there are two ways to practice sustained attention: 

1) Close reading of dense chapters, full of meaning. (Read at least twice.) Or

2) Longer periods of reading through several chapters in one sitting. 

“Long form reading teaches the students to follow a plot, poem, or letter from start to finish,” noted Zach. “It also sharpens the students’ attention span by requiring them to work and remain focused. Long form reading isn’t done every class period, because we take time to dive-deep at key moments, but either way, students should interact with the text first-hand prior to the teachers dispensing information.”

It is best to read in a good translation, to follow-along on a hard-copy as a skilled reader reads relatively swiftly, and then stop and do a close reading at key moments. Since they wouldn’t stop after every paragraph of the Iliad (because it’s lengthy), they keep up a similar pace with much of the Bible’s historical narratives. Otherwise, it can be hard to finish! 

Both reading methods seem . . . basic. Does this reduce the role of the teacher or eliminate direct instruction? By no means. But it does mean that the teacher’s role switches from lecture to hands-on coaching in skills. “Students benefit from habits and routines,” Zach explained. “Learning to read Scripture is like apprenticeship. The teacher is the lead learner and should model habits that the students will acquire over time, after much repetition. Good biblical reading should be seen as training.” 

3. Embracing Literary Skills 

Students at Veritas Christian Academy (the school where I teach Pentateuch and OT historical books) quickly learn that they will utilize literary skills daily in Bible class. There is no way to follow a complex text without using tools of genre, structure, precise vocabulary and synonyms. 

Precise attention to language is also how biblical theologians do their work. Many insights found by scholars are missed by average readers only because one’s literary understanding has to be increased to see the connections. Bible study tools that have been discussed for decades (“Listen for repetition”) only work when students understand the range of synonyms for a given word. 

4. Connecting with Ancient History

Since the canon is a collection of texts written in ancient Hebrew and Greek, we need to spend more time entering into the world of ancient history. Zach notes,

“Those who authored the biblical text had many similarities to us, but they also saw the world differently and we should learn from their worldview. It requires the reader to take on an ancient imagination.”

But discussing ancient history doesn’t have to be a dry, scholarly affair. In fact, since Veritas’ reader Bibles don’t contain scholarly footnotes or commentary, students have to use class discussion to work out their existing knowledge of ancient cultures and enter into “what this probably meant.” 

And don’t underestimate how much ancient knowledge is gained simply through broad reading of the Old Testament. The importance of land, agriculture, fertility, offspring, local gods, and differing gender-social roles is evident directly in Genesis.

Unleash your students’ creativity in wondering what life was like before the modern era! How did the ancients pass on writing, produce needed goods, utilize power, or reason about natural and supernatural forces? Even a bit of ancient background and ancient imagination goes a long way. 

5. Unleashing a Hunt for Imagery

Recurring words and images create through-lines across the Bible. Teach students to listen for repeated ideas, even if they don’t use the exact same word, and even if they seem like a minor concrete detail. These details will add up to a richer, more beautiful story when we keep track of them. But because motifs lie under the surface, we have to act like detectives. Have you heard repetition and wondered, “Is this a whole-Bible motif?” Check a scholarly work like the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Then do some thinking: What would this image mean to ancient people? Where did we see this motif earlier? Does it run all the way from Genesis to Revelation?

“We can be a lead learner, training students as apprentices,” Zach encourages. “Equip them with skills they need to be those with ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear’ God’s words, and then let them experience their own journey. My students often see aspects of the biblical text that I haven’t even noticed. I appreciate how we get to journey toward truth together.” 

A literary approach to the Bible lays a rich feast of manifold, complex meaning. What better could we spread before our students? Yes, they will have the choice as they grow, whether to go on believing. But I don’t think people want to walk away from a feast of meaning that is so very rich. When you start to see everything in existence illuminated by the light of Christianity, with all these layers of meaning—every concrete thing having a deeper, poetic, symbolic meaning. That is very hard to walk away from. It would constitute a loss to move from sacred, poetic living into non-meaning. Bare atoms. Nothingness. The richer the theology, the more lasting the faith. The imagery of the Bible can fuel new imagination for a kingdom way of living.

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Given the hype for STEM, defending the value of the humanities (as Martin Luther did, for one) is an important move in the broader education dialogue. And it’s one that’s not very hard to make, when there are articles like this one on how Google was planning to hire more humanities trained employees rather than more programmers. It turns out that technological change and the job market aren’t making the humanities irrelevant after all.

But for a while I’ve felt that the trade-off between STEM and the humanities is an unfortunate false dichotomy. (Logic lesson: false dichotomy – when two things are posed as mutually exclusive options when both can be embraced at the same time.) The seven liberal arts of the classical tradition encompassed BOTH the language arts of the trivium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, or perhaps humanities in a general sense) AND the mathematical arts of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy).

In a way, astronomy was the paradigmatic STEM discipline, since it wove together the science of the natural world with mathematical calculations to “save the appearances” and had applications to the travel technologies of the day.

Problems with the Trade-Off Between STEM and the Humanities

Part of the problem with the whole dichotomy is that we’re left arguing about whether to privilege STEM over the humanities or the humanities over STEM, when embracing both would be mutually beneficial. After all, scientists still need to write and publish those rhetorical masterpieces we call academic papers to advance the discipline. And what culturally savvy hipster could not benefit from some of the scientific precision of mathematics and design thinking?

But the other problem, which is more to the point for this blog article, is that a utilitarian focus doesn’t serve either the humanities or STEM careers very well. And that’s because too much focus on money-making skills for the job market doesn’t end up creating the best professionals in either domain. That comes from deep work, passionately and regularly pursued. The best programmers get good at it because they love programming!

STEM and the humanities, or the seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium, were discovered and developed in the first place, because getting into the flow of thought is a source of happiness and joy for human beings. Thinking along the lines of the liberal arts is more like a mental game than a utilitarian bid for power, money or success.

We get support for this notion from an unlikely source, the modern positive psychologist Mihayli Csikszentmihalyi. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial 2008), he writes:

“It is important to stress here a fact that is all too often lost sight of: philosophy and science were invented and flourished because thinking is pleasurable. If thinkers did not enjoy the sense of order that the use of syllogisms and numbers creates in consciousness, it is very unlikely that now we would have the disciplines of mathematics and physics.” (126)

The background for our psychologist’s claim is his idea that our consciousness as human beings is naturally disordered and chaotic, and so one of the primary ways to build human happiness is to engage in activities that order consciousness. While he explores many other ways of achieving flow, that optimal state where our skills meet our challenges and our focus is absorbed by a meaningful activity, one of his chapters is on the flow of thought, or how thinking itself can be an avenue into flow.

Mathematicians and physicists didn’t make their greatest discoveries and push the bounds of human knowledge because of utilitarian motives, but because they got lost in the joy of thought. As he goes on to explain, this claim flies in the face of many historians’ standard explanations of key discoveries:

“The evolution of arithmetic and geometry, for instance, is explained almost exclusively in terms of the need for accurate astronomical knowledge and for the irrigational technology that was indispensable in maintaining the great ‘hydraulic civilizations’ located along the course of large rivers like the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Chang Jiang (Yangtze), and the Nile. For these historians, every creative step is interpreted as the product of extrinsic forces, whether they be wars, demographic pressures, territorial ambitions, market conditions, technological necessity, or the struggle for class supremacy.” (126)

Yes, these developments in arithmetic and geometry coincided with applications to “irrigational technology,” but that doesn’t mean that the individuals who invented them did so for such utilitarian reasons. Often it happens that the knowledge necessary for some practical application is discovered first with no thought of its usefulness or application. Then only later, and often by someone else, that knowledge is applied to a practical problem felt by the civilization.

For instance, Csikszentmihalyi tells of the discovery of nuclear fission and how the arms race of World War II is often urged as the inciting historical factor. However, the advancements in knowledge necessary to its development came before and were discovered in a more pleasurable and altogether collegial manner:

“But the science that formed the basis of nuclear fission owed very little to the war; it was made possible through knowledge laid down in more peaceful circumstances—for example, in the friendly exchange of ideas European physicist had over the years in the beer garden turned over to Niels Bohr and his scientific colleagues by a brewery in Copenhagen.” (126)

The joy of thought, of discovery and of solving abstract problems lies at the base of the advance of knowledge, in every age, time and place. As our psychologist summarizes:

“Great thinkers have always been motivated by the enjoyment of thinking rather than by the material rewards that could be gained by it.” (126)

This is supported by several quotations from the Greek philosopher Democritus, a highly original thinker: “It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new”; “Happiness does not reside in strength or money; it lies in rightness and manysidedness”; “I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia” (127).

The seven liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium are those tools of knowledge that are so pleasurable in the handling. Let’s take some time to break down a few of them and see how they work, just for the joy of it.

Gaming the Liberal Art of Grammar

In the classical tradition grammar referred to a much broader category of skills that the modern subject does today. It included all the complex skills involved in reading and interpretation, as well as the mechanics of writing. The term was derived from the Greek word for ‘letter’ (gramma), and thus referred to the holistic study of letters. The famous Roman orator and teacher Quintilian explained in the 1^st century that the best Latin translation of the term was the Latin word litteratura from which we get ‘literature’ (see Institutes of Oratory II.1).

It’s not an accident that in our psychologist’s many studies, one of the most cited ‘flow activities’ that people self-report is the act of reading (Csikszentmihalyi 117). Deep reading, getting lost in a book, is for many a pleasurable activity—the title of Alan Jacob’s book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (which I highly recommend) says it all.

Of course, the foundation of this great grammatical activity of piecing letters together into words is the activity of naming itself. Brining order to consciousness relies on some sort of ordering principle and words provide that. They name persons, places, things or ideas, therefore creating order in the mind for an experience or phenomenon, where only chaos existed before:

“The simplest ordering system is to give names to things; the words we invent form discrete events into universal categories.” (124-5)

In both the Judeo-Christian worldview and the Greek roots of the classical tradition, this primacy of the word is endorsed:

“In Genesis 1, God names day, night, sky, earth, sea, and all the living things immediately after He creates them, thereby completing the process of creation. The Gospel of John begins with: ‘Before the World was created, the Word already existed…’; and Heraclitus starts his now almost completely lost volume: ‘This Word (Logos) is from everlasting, yet men understand it as little after the first hearing of it as before….’” (125)

Readers of the Bible will know that in Genesis 2 God assigns the task of naming the animals to Adam in the sequence leading up to the creation of Eve. Adam, whose name means ‘humanity’ in Hebrew, is given the honor and joy of naming the animals that God brings before him—a task that is fitting for him, given how human beings were made in the image of God according to the chapter before.

In its broadest sense then, grammar and the other trivium arts of dialectic and rhetoric involve the practitioner of them in the process of bringing order out of chaos. It is a godlike activity, to borrow the phrase from Heraclitus, to name and distinguish and describe reality. Why should we wonder that such a process would be pleasurable?

Aside: Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!

You can download “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom” on the flow page. Share the page with a friend or colleague, so they can benefit as well.

Embarking on the Quest of the Quadrivium

As with the language arts, it is to the ancient roots of the classical tradition that Csikszentmihalyi goes in order to explain the flow of thought along the lines of the quadrivium:

“After names came numbers and concepts, and then the primary rules for combining them in predictable ways. By the sixth century B.C. Pythagoras and his students had embarked on the immense ordering task that attempted to find common numerical laws binding together astronomy, geometry, music and arithmetic. Not surprisingly, their work was difficult to distinguish from religion, since it tried to accomplish similar goals: to find a way of expressing the structure of the universe. Two thousand years later, Kepler and then Newton were still on the same quest.” (125)

The point that our psychologist is eager to make in this recitation is that the quadrivium arts were not abstract skills aimed at utilitarian ends. Instead, Pythagoras and his students had religious goals of a monumental nature in their numerical and mathematical work. The birth of the quadrivium was nothing less than a “quest” to “find a way of expressing the structure of the universe.”

We can easily see how such a pursuit would catch the hearts and minds of students. Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain present a similar picture of the quest of the quadrivium in their book The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education (which is coming out soon in a revised and updated version!). They point out that “there was deeply spiritual element to it as well…. Pythagoras thought that the harmony of the spheres, part of the liberal art of music, was established by the power of ‘the One’” (version 1.1, p. 53). This, along with their suggestion that “the study of mathematics ought to strike a balance between wonder, work, wisdom and worship,” seems suggestive of the type of joy and pleasure attained in a flow activity.

Of course, for that to be the case, there would need to be, not only a transcendent quest, but also a series of sub-goals and intermediate tasks with clear feedback and of limited scope, so that the rules for a flow activity could be met. When a challenge exceeds the person’s skills by too much, anxiety tends to crush the possibility for flow; likewise, make the activity too easy and boredom ensues (Csikszentmihaly 74).

The development of rules, representations and proofs seem to assist in the process of defining discrete next steps in the grand quest:

“Besides stories and riddles all civilizations gradually developed more systematic rules for combining information, in the form of geometric representations and formal proofs. With the help of such formulas it became possible to describe the movement of the stars, predict seasonal cycles, and accurately map the earth. Abstract knowledge, and finally what we know as experimental science grew out of these rules.” (125)

It seems that the experience of flow and the advancement of discovery almost require the phenomenon of the absent-minded professor. That is because one of the demands of flow is that the mind be wholly absorbed in a meaningful activity. The scientist or mathematician so absorbed has “temporarily tuned out of everyday reality to dwell among the symbolic forms of their favorite domain of knowledge” (127). A great example of this is how the philosopher Immanuel Kant placed his watch in a pot of boiling water while holding carefully onto his egg in the other hand, ready to time out its cooking.

As our psychologist concludes:

“The point is that playing with ideas is extremely exhilarating…. Not only philosophy but the emergence of new scientific ideas is fueled by the enjoyment one obtains from creating a new way to describe reality.” (127)

The Games of the Mind and the Tools of Learning

Such observations about how the liberal arts of both language and number are pleasurable activities may raise a brow of confusion for some teachers and parents.

After all, knowing that great professors, scientists and philosophers can have a grand old time in their work doesn’t solve the angst of my child or the child in my class, who is either bored by a particular discipline or filled with anxiety and self-consciousness.

So how can we help turn the tools of learning into games of the mind for our students who struggle?

Part of the advice our psychologist’s book seems to imply is a reframing of the teacher’s task. While we might be inclined to think that teachers are primarily supposed to deliver correct information to students, perhaps instead teachers should be designers of flow activities within the discipline. If our goal is to cultivate a love of learning in students, then they will have to experience the challenge and discovery of learning for themselves. Receiving the answers is not an empowering, godlike task that optimally challenges your current skills (unless you’re at least required to narrate them back…).

Some examples are probably in order here. In a humanities class, perhaps students should be involved in the process of naming new experiences and ideas that they encounter in their books. How often, I wonder, does a humanities teacher think of the work of reading as an activity in which students will encounter new realities that they will then try to make sense of through concept formation? Are we asking them to notice and describe, to discuss and distinguish? That takes a lot of time devoted to classroom dialogue and is not so efficient as telling students the answers that teacher or students have diligently culled from SparkNotes.

For mathematics instruction Ravi Jain has discussed the importance of puzzle, proof and play. If we can get students puzzling and playing with numbers and formulas, then they will get in flow and start loving the process of discovery. Answers and alternate methods will generate excitement and be stored in their memory, as they strive for greater levels of skill along the quest. It can’t just be about chugging problems and memorizing formulas for an extrinsic reward, like a grade. The best programmers weren’t grade-chasers in their programming class (if they took one and weren’t just self-taught).

After all, the quest for ordering reality through language and number isn’t just about money and success. It’s a transcendent human activity, naturally pleasurable and desirable in and of itself. When we treat it as less than that, we fail to initiate our students into their full God-given inheritance as image-bearers and culture makers.

What other ideas do you have for turning the tools of learning into flow activities?

New Book! The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow Through Classical Education

Enjoying this series? Jason Barney revised and expanded it into a full length book that you can buy on Amazon. Complete with footnotes and in an easy-to-share format for teacher training or to keep in your personal library, the book aims to help you apply the concept of flow in your classical classroom.

Make sure to share about the book on social media and review it on Amazon!

Past installments – Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake, Part 2: The Joy of Memory, Part 3: Narration as Flow. Future installments – Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

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A notable example of this is told in professor Alan Jacobs’ book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford 2011). Joe O’Shea was president of the student government at Florida State and a Rhodes Scholar. At a lunchtime gathering for leaders to the university he boasted:

I don’t read books per se. I go to Google and I can absorb relevant information quickly. Some of this comes from books. But sitting down and going through a book from cover to cover doesn’t make sense. It’s not a good use of my time as I can get all the information I need faster through the web. (As quoted in Jacobs 72)

Professor Jacobs comments that Joe O’Shea was “obviously a very smart guy” and “has an excellent strategy”; however, his viewpoint suffers from thinking of reading simply “as a means of uploading data” (72).

That said, the ability to upload data is often precisely what the educational world wants students to do. This can be indicated by the nature of the tests that are given at the end of a unit. If students have successfully uploaded the relevant information, they will pass these tests, no matter how they did so. Data-mining is the skill of the internet age, and O’Shea is probably right to suggest that the short-from hyper-attention reading of internet pages will likely work just fine for the average student, let alone knowledge worker of the 21^st century.

Near the climax of his book Alan Jacobs makes a stunning claim to differentiate deep reading from schooling:

Rarely has education been about teaching children, adolescents, or young adults how to read lengthy and complicated texts with sustained, deep, appreciative attention—at least, not since the invention of the printing press. (109)

For Jacobs this rather dire pronouncement (at least from the perspective of our educational renaissance) strikes a positive note related to the central purpose of his book, which is to commend the pleasures of reading on one’s own simply at whim for those faithful few who love and prefer reading even in the throes of our distracting age.

While Jacobs may express some genuine nostalgia for the education of a figure like St. Augustine—who “spent countless hours of his education poring over, analyzing word-by-word, and memorizing a handful of books, most of them by Virgil and Cicero” (109)—his ringing endorsement of how the Kindle (irony of ironies) restored deep reading to his own distracted brain, for instance, is emblematic of his love for deep reading with a modern twist. In fact, one of the strengths of Jacob’s book is his moderate viewpoint, neither embracing doom-and-gloom ludditism, nor ignoring the distracting elements of the internet age. (For more on the details of this distraction I highly recommend Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.)

But all of this continues to raise the question, to what extent should the narrow and old-fashioned skill of deep reading be a major goal of education. It doesn’t admit of an easy answer. Like many highly complex skills taught nowadays—higher mathematics comes to mind—it has to be conceded that the vast majority of students will likely never use such skills in their normal working life. A simplistic pragmatism can hardly be the determining factor. Of course, some students must learn calculus, if only for the fact that our society will need some engineers, and students are unlikely to enter upon an educational and career path that they have had little preparation for in earlier stages of education.

Perhaps the same sort of enlightened pragmatism can speak up for deep reading. Unless we try to make as many of our students as possible into deep readers, we are unlikely to get the requisite quantity and quality of deep readers to cause our culture to thrive. The Renaissance is a good example of the cultural flourishing promised by a recovery of the classical tradition of humane and deep reading, as well as of the arts.

While I’m certainly not claiming that this type of pragmatic argument for the importance of deep reading in education is the only or even the best one, it is nevertheless an argument that will likely appeal to our generation. In a way, it parallels the argument of a recent best-seller by Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Grand Central, 2016).

Cal Newport argues that in our increasingly distracted world, the skill of engaging in deep work of one kind or another is becoming more and more rare. Therefore, knowledge workers or other professionals who have the discipline to block out the distractions and focus on the deep work that involves the deliberate practice of their craft will quickly rise above the average knowledge worker in terms of the quality of what they produce. That’s because of his equation:

           High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) × (Intensity of Focus)

He calls this a “law of productivity” and, given the science on what distraction and attention-shifting does to our brain, it’s hard to argue with its basic logic (40). For instance, he cites research by Sophie Leroy on attention residue demonstrating that people perform poorly when interrupted and forced to switch to a new and challenging task (42).

Those who work deeply will therefore produce more and at a higher quality than those who don’t. Because of this, they are likely to be more valuable in their chosen profession, leading to their own personal success as well as benefiting society through their exceptional expertise.

Deep reading is simply one form of deep work. And perhaps it is one that is ideally suited to training students in the capacity for deep work generally. What could be more suited to adapting students to the necessity of blocking out all external stimuli and getting down to work, than the requirement to read a long-form book for extended hours out of their day? Although Joe O’Shea may be able to rig the current system in his favor through his shallow data-mining reading, he is unlikely to demonstrate the type of scholarly depth of insight characteristic of the deep reader. The quality of his understanding and the sheer volume of material comprehended is likely to be dwarfed by the committed deep reader. O’Shea may be able to pass multiple choice tests with flying colors, but what sort of research papers will he write? How creative and original will be his proposals? Will he be able to contribute the hard-won and game-changing conclusions that are most valuable to our world?

In essence, then, my contention is that the discipline of deep reading, precisely because it is so rare and arcane, is likely to give our students in the modern age an incredible leg up, an advantage over other students that can hardly be overstated. For the majority of iGen students, saturated in and addicted to the distractions of the internet, social media and the latest on Netflix, deep reading will remain an undesirable and increasingly impossible discipline to cultivate. The few deep readers among them will inevitably turn into the leaders and the culture-shapers of the next generation, disciplined as they have been to tune out the distractions and focus on practicing a valuable skill to mastery.

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