Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) lived during a time of great upheaval in British society. Hardly a decade prior to his birth, the restoration of Charles II (1658) concluded a period of internal strife in England with the Civil War (1642-1646) followed by the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell (1653-1658). The reign of Charles came to an end at the Glorious Revolution which established William, Prince of Orange on the English throne in 1688, the consequence of which was the constant threat of a Jacobite rebellion throughout Swift’s adult life.

Born in Dublin of English parents (who had fled the Civil War), Swift would have been greatly influenced throughout his life by two powerful political forces. One was the divide between Tories and Whigs, the former generally supporting the Jacobite cause and the latter a more progressive policy. The lines that divided these parties were hardly clear and never consistent, but they led to many intrigues and infighting. A second force was the subjugation of the Irish originally by Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Swift moved back and forth between England and Ireland which indicates a struggle to consolidate his identity with one nation or the other. Ultimately late in his life he became a stanch Irish patriot writing works such as A Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier’s Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729). It was in this patriotic phase during which Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels.

The great majority of scholars analyzing Gulliver’s Travels pick up on these political influences. It is noteworthy that Swift in many ways was writing his travelog against the backdrop of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Robinson was an emblem of English society, and the plot of the book highlights a view of English colonial power as superior to the natives located in distant lands. Gulliver, on the other hand, is similarly English, but becomes much more skeptical about his English society. He travels to many different lands that have well-formed cultures. He is presented less as a conquering force and more as a learner, pitting each new culture against his own native England.

In my analysis of Gulliver’s Travels, I recognize the importance of these political forces, but would like to set them aside – to the extent that is even possible – in order to draw out the educational themes presented by Swift. Now, even as I set this limitation, it should go without saying that there is an inextricable link between education and politics in the classical sense that a well-ordered polis depends upon the quality of education provided to the populace. In that sense, Swift’s pursuit of an educational ideal actually contributes to his critique of British politics.

Lilliput: Education Based on Class Rank

Lemuel Gulliver’s first destination is the island nation of Lilliput, inhabited by a civilization of tiny people measuring only six inches tall. At first Gulliver is mistrusted by Lilliputians, but soon ingratiates himself, which enables him to learn more about their society. He learns that they are educated based on class rank. It seems that Swift is perhaps providing a critique of the boarding school system in England. He writes:

“Parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the Education of their own Children: And therefore they have in every Town publick Nurseries, where all Parents, except Cottagers and Labourers, are obliged to send their Infants of both Sexes to be reared and education when they come to the Age of twenty Moons; at which Time they are supposed to have some Rudiments of Docility.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 35.

Here we have compulsory education of the ruling class who are separated from their family at a very young age. Swift is given to exaggeration, so we should not read into this a description of the actual historical situation he is criticizing. It is possible he has in mind models of education proposed by Richard Mulcaster or Roger Ascham. Both men had a progressive bent, perhaps incited by Queen Elizabeth being herself a well-educated lady. It was desired that all children be educated, and they promoted the education of young ladies as well. They recognized that not all could afford an education but insisted that at the very least the local vicar should be charged to at minimum teach the youths to read their Bibles. The work of Mulcaster and Ascham likely atrophied in the 17^th century into something of a pro-forma educational regimen the left Swift disillusioned with what we might call the Etonian model of education (a boarding school for the elites with almost guaranteed admittance to either Oxford or Cambridge).

The education of the children of the nobility contained training in “Principles of Honour, Justice, Courage, Modesty, Clemency, Religion, and Love of their Country” (35). In short, the ruling classes were trained in the array of virtues necessary to lead the nation. Today we would be wise to espouse these ideals, but Swift goes on to identify how the ruling classes in Lilliput were mired in the idiosyncrasies of political life and the imperial court. For instance, these well-educated leaders of society were of two parties or factions, those who supported the wearing of high heels on their shoes and those who insisted on low heels (25). So, despite the lofty values of the education received by the nobility, it serves little to no purpose in public life.

The distinction between the classes is made evident when Gulliver observes the education of the lower classes:

“The Cottagers and Labourers keep their Children at home, their Business being only to till and cultivate the Earth; and therefore their Education is of little Consequence to the Publick.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 37.

Despite the progressive outlook of Mulcaster and Ascham, it seems that by Swift’s time the prominent educationalists of the era had not effected any lasting change. This is genuinely the tragedy of what we might consider old world classical education – the English model coming out of the Middle Ages, refined through the Renaissance, and vivified by the Reformation. Its inability to reform over time left it susceptible to more radical forms of progressivism especially after the turn of the twentieth century. Swift views the educational system of England as brittle and stultified, espousing high ideals that never truly get embodied by the leadership of the nation.

Brobdingnag: A Rudimentary Education

Gulliver – having escaped from Lilliput, returned to England, and crashed once again – lands on the island of Brobdingnag. Here the people are enormous, standing about 70 feet tall. It is an agrarian society that is both simple and peaceable. He is first taken into the home of a farmer and becomes the favorite pet of the farmer’s daughter. As was the case on Lilliput, he is presented to the King, which once again provides him a perspective on the whole of the Brobdingnagian society. As regards education, Swift describes it as “very defective,” indicating his disdain for such a system:

“The Learning of this People is very defective, consisting only in Morality, History, Poetry, and Mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in Life, to the Improvement of Agriculture, and all mechanical Arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as to Ideas, Entities, Abstractions, and Transcendentals, I could never drive the least Conception into their Heads.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 96.

Here we have a system of solid, bread-and-butter education. The subjects described would feed a populace well. But Swift notes how the scope of their education is only valuable insofar as it relates to life, and in particular their agrarian society. He depicts them as a very simple people who are not used to flourishes of intellect. Swift goes on to describe their legal system, an outgrowth of their educational system:

“No Law of that Country must exceed in Words the Number of Letters in their Alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But indeed few of them extend even to that Length. They are expressed in the most plain and simple Terms, wherein those People are not Mercurial enough to discover above one Interpretation. And, to write a Comment upon any Law, is a capital Crime.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 96.

Their education is simple, and their laws are simple. Swift seems to be indicating that such a society founded on a rudimentary educational system cannot have an elaborate legal system, but also doesn’t need one, as the populace is not all that creative in their criminal activity. They are simple people of the earth who are not prone to crime anyway.

Now, we might question Swift on this point, as the gentleman farmer is one of the ideals of a democratic society. Obviously Swift is making a point that the alternative to the class-based system of education in Lilliput is not a return to the simpler times when the populace only needed a rudimentary education. The discovery of the New World and the emerging Industrial Revolution pointed toward new horizons which the Brobdingnagians were poorly equipped to handle. As much as we might pine for simpler times, we must march forward and incorporate new ways of educating our young to meet the new challenges ahead.

Laputa: An Education Based on Scientism

The next destination Gulliver discovers – or actually is discovered by – is Laputa, a floating island that rules over Balnibarbi. The island itself is a marvel of engineering, as it can be steered in any direction over Balnibarbi by magnetic levitation. The King of Laputa uses the floating island to dominate the inhabitants of Balnibarbi by maneuvering the island over any rebellious cities to block any sun or rain from over the city, and to hurl rocks down on the inhabitants below. In extreme cases, the island can be made to slam down on a city. Lindalino is an example of a city that rebelled against Laputa. The rebellion of Lindalino is an allegorical representation of Ireland’s relationship with Great Britain.

As regards education, the Laputans were fond of mathematics, astronomy and technology. They founded an academy to research science and technology that would contribute to the advancement of their society. So enamored are they by their scientific thinking that “the Minds of these People are so taken up with intense Speculations, that they neither can speak or attend to the Discourses of others” (114). Their scientism, in other words, while aiming as the betterment of society in actuality has made them less capable of living meaningful lives through distraction.

Their scientific endeavors are governed by professors who “contrive new Rules and Methods of Agriculture and Building, and new Instruments, and Tools for all Trades and Manufactures” (130). Swift points out that “none of these Projects are yet brought to Perfection; and in the mean time, the whole Country lies miserably waste, the Houses in Ruins, and the People without Food or Clothes” (130). The point Swift is making is that scientific speculation is of no use if it does not actually solve problems that people face in real life. Among the many ridiculous projects undertaken by the Academy of Lagado is a new approach to architecture:

“There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 133.

In Jason Barney’s twin articles on technicism and scientism, he addresses the same issues we encounter today in a culture where undue focus is placed on STEM without proper attention being paid to how education ought to be cultivating wisdom amongst our students. Without growing in wisdom, the moral framework of care for people’s actual problems is absent from our educational system. This is why STEM wedded to a liberal arts tradition is so powerful.

Now, to be fair, the scientific thinking in Swift’s age directly led to the Industrial Revolution, which in total benefited society in many different ways. But Swift recognized that there is a cost in human terms that perhaps could have been averted had the scientists of earlier generations been more conscientious about the tragic impact on human lives. The same goes for today. Very little ethical planning goes into creation and launch of new technologies. True, our smartphones have become everyday carry for the entire population. Yet, we are seeing the cost in lack of attention (see Nicholas Carr, The Shallows and Maggie Jackson, Distracted) and mental health issues (see this review article in Psychology Today).

The Land of the Houyhnhnm: An Education in Pure Reason

The final destination on Gulliver’s journey takes him to a location that is inhabited by Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms (pronounced “hoo-IN-um” or “HWIN-um”) are talking horses whose intelligence exceeds that of humans. They tend to flocks of Yahoos, who are irrational humans (or human-like creatures). Swift creates a contrast between the Yahoos who represent the worst of humanity and the Houyhnhnms who are noble, rational and peaceable. Gulliver comes to learn the language of the Houyhnhnms and undertakes instruction from them. He is rather looked upon as a brute in most ways similar to the Yahoos, which offends Gulliver.

Gulliver learns that the Houyhnhnms are both noble and virtuous as a result of their education in pure reason. “As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by Nature with a general Disposition to all Virtues, and have no Conceptions or Ideas of what is evil in a rational Creature, so their grand Maxim is, to cultivate Reason, and to be wholly governed by it” (202). The purity of their reason is arrived at without disputation or debate. They neither take into consideration “both sides of a question” nor do they put any stock in opinions or disputes. Now, we might consider this a liability as we train our students in dialectic or logic to pit ideas against one another to arrive at the truth. However, a truth once known need not be debated or disputed, it is only necessary to use the tools of dialectic in the search for truth. So it seems the contention Swift makes here is that this equine civilization has used their rationality to ascertain what is ultimately true and have thereby dispensed with dialectic.

The guiding virtues of the Houyhnhnms are laudable. Swift writes:

“Friendship and Benevolence are the two principal Virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular Objects, but universal to the whole Race. For a Stranger from the remotest Part, is equally treated with the nearest Neighbour, and where-ever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. They preserve Decency and Civility in the highest Degrees, but are altogether ignorant of Ceremony. They have no Fondness for their Colts or Foals; but the Care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the Dictates of Reason.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 202.

Swift looks upon the education of the Houyhnhnms fondly:

“In educating the Youth of both Sexes, their Method is admirable, and highly deserves our Imitation. . . . Temperance, Industry, Exercise, and Cleanliness, are the Lessons equally enjoined to the young ones of both Sexes: And my Master thought it monstrous in us, to give the Females a different Kind of Education from the Males.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 203-204.

In these quotes we see Swift holding up a moral standard against the prevailing educational model of his time and finding it wanting. The educational vision is simultaneously traditional in its use of reason to acquire virtue – the Houyhnhnms upon learning about Socrates “agreed entirely with his sentiments” (202) – and yet progressive in that it is equitably dispensed to all. This is not to say that the Houyhnhnms did not have their faults. They are so rational as to lack compassion or any scruples about what we would consider propriety. For instance, they had no qualms about trading their children at the annual meeting so that each household had an equal number of boys and girls. One might be reminded of Spock from Star Trek, although his humanity at times wins out over the rational Vulcan half of his ancestry.

The most telling aspect of Gulliver’s relationship with the Houyhnhnms occurs after he returns to England. Gulliver struggles to relate with other humans, even his own family. “I must freely confess, the Sight of them filled me only with Hatred, Disgust and Contempt” (220). From the time of his departure from the Land of the Houyhnhnms, he refers to humans as Yahoos and his experience as “my unfortunate exile.” To compensate for this, he purchase “two young Stone-Horses, which I keep in a good Stable.” He writes:

“My Horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four Hours every Day. They are Strangers to Bridle or Saddle; they live in great Amity with me, and Friendship to each other.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Dover, 1996), 221.

This is a bookend to the introductory letter in which Gulliver refers to his to horses as “two degenerate Houyhnhnms” (meaning they lack the speech of the actual Houyhnhnms) who influence him such that “I still improve in some Virtues, without any Mixture of Vice” (xi).

I think this indicates how the Houyhnhnm episode presents the author with an educational ideal absent in the prevailing educational model then current in the British Isles.

Renewing Our Educational Ideals

Swift’s book provides a really thoughtful engagement with what we might consider the ultimate goals of education. As such, we can productively engage with this reading to ask ourselves how we might understand and critique our own educational moment. Here are a few thoughts.

First, Gulliver reveals the vital importance of moral virtue. The simple morality of the agrarian Brobdingnag is cast in a positive light, even though it is not well informed by any high standard of intellectual engagement. Better is the Houyhnhnm set of virtues as it is connected to truth ascertained by reason. When we extract these ideas from the satirical setting of Swift’s world, there is much that we would want to establish as our own educational ideal. We ought to have as our chief aim to train our students thoroughly in virtuous living. They ought to be able to live with nobility and grace as a result of their educational upbringing.

Second, science and technology clearly have a place in education, yet it sits uncomfortably in an educational system. The humanities provide our students with a moral intuition that takes a long time to form. Moral reasoning is slow, while technological advancement is rapid. By the time the next technology burst on the scene, we are already decades late in our ability to think through the moral implications. IPads are already in the hands of toddlers, and we have not even considered whether this is a good thing. The educational system has approached STEM not as a way of thinking (scientific experimentation) nor as a means to solve meaningful problems. STEM needs to be taught such that it is properly situated within a liberal arts framework. The floating island of Laputa is a cautionary tale that still speaks today.

Finally, one of the elements drastically missing from Swift’s tale is any sense of spirituality. It is a fairly secular book that seeks utopia but cannot deliver apart from any recognition of God. The noble vision Swift provides actually falls flat (at least for me) in the absence of any notion of redemption. We truly ought to take seriously the moral vision of virtuous living. But we need the moral exemplar of Christ; to follow in his footsteps, as it were (1 Peter 2:12). My hunch is that a great deal of the ills that befell the prevailing model of education in the British Isles was a tired and impotent form of Christianity that had become overly politicized in the aftermath of so many years of political turmoil. Both England and Ireland would have felt these effects. Swift’s search for an answer looked everywhere without addressing what I would consider the root cause, the British Isles had so contested different forms of Christianity, that it had missed the Christ who could redeem them all. That is likely an overgeneralization, but perhaps one that Swift fell prey to. In our day, with social media rants befalling us from the right and the left, are we likewise susceptible to lose sight of Christ? Any educational ideal apart from Christ is likely to go off the rails. Our educational renewal movement must keep this at heart.

The post Exploring Our Educational Ideals: Following along Gulliver’s Travels appeared first on .

I’ve already treated science briefly under the heading “The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games.” That’s because the quadrivium, or four mathematical arts, included not only arithmetic and geometry, but also music and astronomy. The quadrivium art of astronomy was the STEM of the ancient and medieval world, focused on developing the skills of tracking, charting and calculating the heavenly bodies and applying such knowledge to the travel technologies of the day.

But science itself as an enterprise is worthy of being treated more fully, as our psychologist does in a subsection entitled “The Delights of Science” (134-138). His main object is to restore science to its rightful place as a potential flow activity for his readers. Just as we could become amateur historians as a more joyful way of structuring our leisure time and finding meaning in life than watching TV, so for Csikszentmihalyi there’s no reason why we couldn’t become amateur scientists, even if we don’t have “extravagantly equipped laboratories, huge budgets, and large teams of investigators” (134).

As important as this contention is in a day when the professionalization of ‘big science’ and the utilitarian cowing to STEM jobs crowds out the love of science, I think we classical educators can take it one step further. It’s not just the love of science that needs to be restored; there’s also an older, more Christian conception of science as philosophy, or the love of wisdom, that needs to be rediscovered if we’re going to recapture the joy of science for ourselves and our students.

The Love of Science

But first let’s rehearse our psychologist’s encomium on the love of science. The first step in recovering the love of science is to strip away the sense of impersonal system hanging about it. One of the reasons we tend to discount the idea of being an amateur scientist—engaging in the work of science simply for the love of it (amateur coming from the Latin word for ‘love)—is because of science being conceived as an impersonal system for determining objective truth.

In fact, the problem may be the result of our textbooks which too often present accepted knowledge and theories without any of the story or narrative of their discovery. But even in our day and age it’s not the impersonal system of science that makes discoveries, it’s individual scientists, often working in teams to be sure, but not always. As our psychologist emphasizes:

“It is not true, despite what the advocates of technocracy would like us to believe, that breakthroughs in science arise exclusively from teams in which each researcher is trained in a very narrow field, and where the most sophisticated state-of-the-art equipment is available to test out new ideas…. New discoveries still come to people as they did to Democritus, sitting lost in thought in the market square of his city. They come to people who so enjoy playing with ideas that eventually they stray beyond the limits of what is known, and find themselves exploring an uncharted territory.” (134)

This is an important point to make because one of the natural joys of the scientist is the possible discovery of some new or striking truth about the created order. If our schoolbooks present scientific information without the stories of discovery, the flow experience of Democritus, “lost in thought,” is left out and the life of exciting exploration of the natural world remains unsung.

Practically oriented parents may push their children into science careers because of the hope of steady lucrative gain, but there’s a reason why many teenagers opt for the arts (even if the winner-take-all environment contains little hope of a sustainable career). The arts wear their enjoyment on their sleeve!

What may be surprising to us, in our technocratic world, but would not be, if we attended more to the history of science, is that the scientist can just as easily attain flow: “Even the pursuit of ‘normal’ (as opposed to ‘revolutionary’ or creative) science would be next to impossible if it did not provide enjoyment to the scientist” (134). You’ll remember that one of the requirements of getting into flow is the presence of “rules that limit both the nature of acceptable solutions and the steps by which they are obtained” (135). Well, Csikszentmihalyi quotes from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to illustrate how scientific research meets this standard:

“By focusing attention upon a small range of relatively esoteric problems, the paradigm [or theoretical approach] forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable…. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well…. The fascination of the normal research paradigm… [is that] though its outcome can be anticipated the way to achieve that outcome remains very much in doubt. The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle-solver, and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on.” (as qtd on 134-135)

This passage makes me think of how Ravi Jain has advocated for a pedagogy of puzzle, proof and play in mathematics. Apparently the same should apply to the early training of research scientists.

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Amateur Scientists

If we are inclined to doubt Kuhn’s description, our psychologist marshals the testimony of scientists themselves to confirm the point:

“It is no wonder that scientists often feel like P. A. M. Dirac, the physicist who described the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s by saying, ‘It was a game, a very interesting game one could play.’” (135)

If that weren’t enough, the sheer number of revolutionary scientists who were technically amateurs is truly astonishing: “It is important to realize that for centuries great scientists did their work as a hobby, because they were fascinated with the methods they had invented, rather than because they had jobs to do and fat government grants to spend” (136).

For instance,

• “Nicolaus Copernicus perfected his epochal description of planetary motions while he was a canon at the cathedral of Frauenburg, in Poland. Astronomical work certainly didn’t help his career in the Church, and for much of his life the main rewards he had were aesthetic, derived from the simple beauty of his system compared to the more cumbersome Ptolemaic model.” (136)

• “Galileo had been trained in medicine, and what drove him into increasingly dangerous experimentation was the delight he took in figuring out such things as the location of the center of gravity of various solid objects.” (136)

• Because the university of Cambridge was closed during the spread of a plague, “Newton had to spend two years in the safety and boredom of a country retreat, and he filled the time playing with his ideas about a universal theory of gravitation.” (137)

• “Luigi Galvani, who did the basic research on how muscles and nerves conduct electricity, which in turn led to the invention of the electric battery, was a practicing physician until the end of his life. Gregor Mendel was another clergyman, and his experiments that set the foundations of genetics were the results of a gardening hobby.” (137)

• “Einstein wrote his most influential papers while working as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. These and the many other great scientists one could easily mention were not handicapped in their thinking because they were not ‘professionals’ in their field, recognized figures with sources of legitimate support. They simply did what they enjoyed doing.” (137)

Notice the words our psychologist employs to describe these scientists’ experience and motivation: aesthetic, beauty, delight, playing with ideas, hobby, enjoyed. It may be that our utilitarian pushing of science is backfiring by flooding the market with more scientists, to be sure, but fewer true researchers. Perhaps what we need in science, ironically, is fewer professionals, and more amateurs.

Loving Science in School

While our psychologist’s main goal may be to inspire modern adults to rekindle their love of science through leisure time study and experimentation, we could also apply these insights to science education in our schools. For example, recovering the love of science for our students might entail more attention to the story of scientific discovery. In The Liberal Arts Tradition, 2^nd edition,Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain envision science classes “tracing the developments of a scientific idea through various new observations, mathematical innovations, and philosophical or theological convictions” (124). In this way science “recovers a kind of story or narrative—not a purely literary narrative, but a technical narrative” (125).

They are not the first to suggest a return to the narrative of science. Charlotte Mason in the early 20^th century had already advocated for a “literary narrative” even if she did not go as far as Clark and Jain in advocating for the technical side of things:

“Books dealing with science as with history, say, should be of a literary character, and we should probably be more scientific as a people if we scrapped all the text-books which swell publishers’ lists and nearly all the chalk expended so freely on our blackboards. The French mind has appreciated the fact that the approach to science as to other subjects should be more or less literary, that the principles which underlie science are at the same time so simple, so profound and so far-reaching that the due setting forth of these provokes what is almost an emotional response; these principles are therefore meet subjects for literary treatment….” (Toward a Philosophy of Education, 218-219)

For Charlotte Mason the commitment to “literary” books, what she elsewhere called “living books” came out of her conviction that the mind naturally responds with attention to beautiful, vigorous writing. Of course, if literary science books told the story of science, it would also be easier for students to be asked to narrate in science class. But we should also notice that Charlotte Mason doesn’t just want the story to be told without students understanding the principles. In fact, it is the “due setting forth” of scientific principles which “provokes what is almost an emotional response.”

But this literary and technical narrative of science should not crowd out the place for wonder, for laboratory and for hands-on discovery, especially early in a child’s development. Charlotte Mason also advocated for nature studies, in which “children keep a dated record of what they see in their nature note-books” while going on a “nature-walk” one afternoon a week (School Education, 236-237). Her goal was to train children in the love of nature and the skill of “interested observation.”

An important side benefit of a joy-centered approach to science instruction is to open up to non-professional scientists (likely the majority of our students) the possibility of ongoing amateur scientific investigation. As our psychologist observes, “If flow, rather than success and recognition, is the measure by which to judge its value, science can contribute immensely to the quality of life” (138). Their science education should train our students for a life-long love of science, just as much as it prepares our future scientists for college.

Science as the Love of Wisdom

However, merely rediscovering the joy in science, as if it were only a fruitful hobby, doesn’t get us all the way to a fully orbed, Christian, classical vision of science. Instead, the tradition viewed natural science as one branch of philosophy, the culmination of years of training in the liberal arts.

Now by ‘philosophy’ we don’t mean just the ivory tower study of obscure points, like whether or not we can actually know that we exist; based on the Greek roots a philosopher is a ‘lover of wisdom’. Wisdom encompasses not just the realm of metaphysical ideas, above most of our heads, but also the realm of humanity and the realm of nature; natural philosophy is what science was once called. In fact, science, which is from the Latin for ‘knowledge,’ and ‘philosophy,’ were once virtual synonyms. As Clark and Jain point out, “not until the turn of the twentieth century did the term ‘scientist’ begin to entirely replace the term ‘natural philosopher’” (The Liberal Arts Tradition, 2^nd ed., 108).

Charlotte Mason gestured toward a recovery of this ancient three-fold division of philosophy in her final volume Towards a Philosophy of Education when she structured her treatment of the curriculum under the headings: Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe. As the tradition would have called it, scientia divina, scientia moralis, and scientia naturalis.

To give you an example of how important it is for us as Christians to recapture this idea of wisdom including natural science, think for a moment of the wisest king in Israel’s history: King Solomon. When God came to him in a dream and offered him anything he wanted, long life, riches, victory over his enemies, he asked instead for wisdom:

^“29 And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore, ³⁰ so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. ³¹ For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. ³² He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. ³³ He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish. ³⁴ And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.” (1 Kings 4:29-34 ESV)

Notice! Solomon’s wisdom included the humanities, proverbs and songs, but also the knowledge of trees and animals, birds, reptiles and fish. King Solomon was a scientist! He spent his free time in the flow of scientific investigation and discovery. He was wise in the ways of science.

As Christian, classical educators we need to affirm the BOTH/AND of the classical tradition, rather than the EITHER/OR our thinking often gets stuck in. We want our students to be philosophers, wise in matters natural, human and divine, by God’s grace. Too often we get stuck in labelling ourselves and our students math and science people, or humanities people: jocks, nerds or drama queens.

Perhaps this common problem illustrates more than anything I have said so far the importance of recovering a love of science as wisdom for our students. Wisdom is holistic and humans are too. While it is not wrong to have expertise, especially in our complex world, that should not come at the expense of being well rounded.

We could all love and enjoy science a little bit more. Perhaps seeing it as God-given wisdom will send us on our own personal journey of recovering a love of science for ourselves and our children.

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.

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Previous articles in this series, The Flow of Thought:

Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake; Part 2: The Joy of Memory; Part 3: Narration as Flow; Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games; Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians.

Final installments: Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

The post The Flow of Thought, Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom appeared first on .

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?

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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.

The post The Flow of Thought, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games appeared first on .

Of course, we’ve heard Dorothy Sayers call the liberal arts the lost tools of learning, and we’ve tried to apply her insights about how the trivium arts can map on practically to the different stages of a child’s development, and that therefore the arts aren’t exactly subjects in themselves but more like a way of approaching each subject. But in the classical tradition the difference between an ‘art’ and a ‘science’ was a little bit more subtle. A ‘science’ is simple enough because it comes from the Latin word ‘scientia’ meaning knowledge. A science is therefore a body of knowledge that a person might master. The way to master a science is simply to learn or discover all the truth that one can about that area and integrate it so far as possible with everything else one knows. An ‘art’ however is not a body of knowledge but an ability to create or produce something. So, for instance, a person who has mastered the art of architecture, will have the ability to design sound and esthetically pleasing buildings. The person skilled in the art of underwater basket-weaving will be able to weave baskets while submerged under water. An art is about the ability to make something; it is not primarily about knowing truths.

This distinction goes all the way back to Aristotle, when he defined the intellectual virtue of ‘art’ as a “state of capacity to make [something], involving a true course of reasoning” (1140^a.31), whereas ‘knowledge’ or ‘science’ is a “state of capacity to demonstrate” (1130^b.10). In other words, someone who is skilled in the art of basket-weaving has the ability to weave a basket correctly, based on prior experience and practice and according to the actual nature of the materials and the needs of a basket (“a true course of reasoning”); on the other hand, someone who has knowledge, or has learned a particular subject or ‘science’, is able to show or demonstrate that knowledge, whether through inductive or deductive reasoning. As the late Victorian British educator Charlotte Mason also said, “Whatever a child can tell, that we may be sure he knows, and what he cannot tell, he does not know.” Now Aristotle’s distinction between the intellectual virtues of ‘art’ and ‘science’ became a crucial touchpoint for the classical tradition of the liberal arts and sciences. However, our modern classical revival movement has not always been so clear about this distinction.

In its clearest articulation, then, the seven liberal arts were not ‘subjects’ or bodies of demonstrable knowledge, but instead were highly complex skills that students needed to be trained in over a course of years. Of course, under the general heading of philosophy there was a science for every one of these areas, like the science of grammar, since there was in the tradition a whole body of discovered truth about the grammar of various languages, or about logical reasoning, or about the nature of the rhetorical task. There is a science for every subject. But that was viewed as distinct from training in the art.

Naturally, students of the liberal arts would gain knowledge of all kinds along the way, especially concerning the liberal art they were studying, just as someone learning the art of basket-weaving would learn many things about baskets and how they are woven. However, a student’s ability to demonstrate their knowledge of basket-weaving is a completely different thing from their ability to weave a basket correctly. On the other hand, the liberal arts are a unique case, because the ‘products’ of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric are themselves the communicated products of knowledge, namely reading and interpretation (grammar), discussion and reasoning (dialectic or logic), and spoken or written persuasion (rhetoric). But the distinction still holds between the ability to make and pure knowledge.

How has the classical school movement grown in its understanding of this distinction? If we go back to Dorothy Sayers’s essay on the lost tools of learning, it’s easy to see that this distinction between arts and sciences was important for her. She claims that an important difference between modern and medieval education was the emphasis on ‘subjects’ versus “forging and learning to handle the tools of learning,” by which she means the trivium arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric. As she wrote, “Although we often succeed in teaching our pupils ‘subjects,’ we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think; they learn everything, except the art of learning.” Doug Wilson, in recovering and applying her essay, has emphasized particularly her mapping of the trivium onto stages of a child’s development, so that the grammar of each subject is emphasized for young students, then the logic or reasoning for older, and eloquent expression of truth about a subject for the oldest.

Then back in 2006 Robert Littlejohn and Chuck Evans wrote Wisdom and Eloquence, in which they argued against a strong emphasis on the trivium as stages of development, based on their analysis of the historical facts of the tradition. They also argued that the tools of learning are not the liberal arts themselves, but are skills like phonetic decoding, reading comprehension, critical thinking, research, public speaking, etc. The liberal arts, both trivium and quadrivium are subjects, not these discrete skills, claimed Littlejohn and Evans.

Now it’s important for us to concede their first point. The classical tradition has taught the trivium in many ways, but before Dorothy Sayers it’s almost impossible to find the idea that the trivium represents stages a child goes through in their development. In the Roman period students went to a grammaticus to learn how to read and write in Greek and their own language Latin. Quintilian, the famous Roman orator and educator, discussed how the equivalent Latin word for the Greek ‘grammatiké’ was ‘litteratura,’ literature, or I might say, literacy, and how among other things the student would learn to read literature and poetry, scan the meter, analyze the meanings of words, read it aloud properly with attention to proper phrasing and accent, and interpret it through all the necessary background information, whether historical, geographical or scientific (see Book 1.4 of Institutes of Oratory). That was training in grammar. After that a student would be sent to a rhetorical teacher like Quintilian to learn to speak publicly in every possible situation that might be needed to bring leadership to the public square. After that, education was done, unless a student wanted to go to Athens and study with the philosophers. That’s a very different picture of trivium education than what we might be used to; it’s not the grammar-logic-rhetoric as stages of development paradigm.

But to answer Robert Littlejohn and Chuck Evan’s last point about the liberal arts being ‘subjects’, we should go on to a more recent book by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition. In their chapter on the liberal arts they use Thomas Aquinas, who held Aristotle’s distinction close to his heart, in order to explain that the liberal arts are the “tools by which knowledge is fashioned” (33). “An art could be attained from an extensive foundation in action and imitation forming cultivated habits,” say Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, whereas “a science can be in the mind alone and does not require any practice or the production of anything.” Based on this distinction, from Aristotle to Aquinas and into our own recovery movement, it seems to make most sense to think of the trivium arts as something different than modern ‘subjects’. They are well-worn paths, they are complex imitative habits, they are the tools of learning, they are the skills needed to discover and justify knowledge.

Obviously, if this little review of our movement’s growing understanding of the trivium as arts is true, then it changes how we should view the trivium. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we should throw out our grammar, logic and rhetoric textbooks. But it should radically reorient us on what we think we’re doing when we’re teaching grammar. If ‘grammatiké’ is the ability to read and interpret texts, with all the sub-skills attached to it, like phonetic decoding, background knowledge, reading comprehension, etc., well then, what students need to master grammar in this sense is lots and lots of coached practice; they don’t necessarily need another lecture. They need to read harder and harder texts in all sorts of subject areas. And they need to be actively coached by their teachers in how to do this well, in what needs to be known and understood, in order to interpret this text correctly. And over time with practice, students will become more and more literate, they will become grammarians, skilled readers and interpreters. The same can be said for logic or, I prefer, dialectic, the art of reasoning and discussion. In order to master this art, students need to do lots and lots of discussing, being forced to think carefully about what they have read. They need to learn to argue with one another respectfully, anticipate others’ trains of thought, call out faulty reasoning in themselves and others. Most of all they need accountable practice in discussing important matters at a higher and higher level. Mastering rhetoric, lastly, comes in the ability to speak or write persuasively and knowledgeably about all manner of subjects. It is not the same as learning about the subject of rhetoric, the types, the proper divisions, rhetorical devices and flourishes that can be used, though these are all things it would be great for them to know. But a student could learn the science of rhetoric, be ready to spew forth the definitions of every term, yet be the least persuasive speaker or writer in the world.

Well, this leads me to propose a twofold understanding of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Each is both an art and a science, both a complex skill of communication and a traditional body of knowledge about that area. So everyone is right, Sayers, Wilson, Littlejohn and Evans, as well as Clark and Jain. This is perhaps easiest to see if I use my absurd outside example: basket-weaving. Imagine two different people who claim to be wise in the art of basket-weaving. One of them knows the whole history of basket-weaving, can name all the important figures, describe key changes in different cultures’ application of basket-weaving, and he himself even has his own particular theories about why basket-weaving developed as it did, but unfortunately, he has never actually woven a basket for himself. The other has never heard of any different way to weave a basket than the way that she was taught by her mother growing up, and yet she weaves baskets daily, that only get better and better, sometimes departing from tradition with bold and innovative designs. The first person is wise in the science of basket-weaving; the second is actually a trained basket-weaver, an artist in her own right. Of course, many artists also know some of the science, and many scientists have a rudimentary practice of the art.

The same can be said of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. There are bodies of knowledge about these arts that one can master. One can become a grammarian, one can study the philosophy of logic, or one can take courses in rhetorical studies at a university. Some amount of study in these sciences can help one to master the arts, just as knowledge of the history and various techniques of basket-weaving is useful to the artist. But someone could be a powerful public speaker without any study of the history of rhetoric, because of a combination of natural talent, imitation and coached practice.

This changes things for us as classical educators because it forces us to ask the question: “Which are we aiming for here?” If you look at many of our textbooks in grammar, logic or rhetoric, you have to admit that the method of the textbook seems to assume that the goal is primarily to teach our students knowledge about these ‘subjects,’ as if that were enough. This is to treat the liberal arts as if they were sciences. Now don’t get me wrong here, a science is a very good thing, and can be helpful, especially if it is fused with appropriate practice. However, the sciences of grammar, logic and rhetoric can be deadening if they are learned in the absence of training in the arts. There’s a reason in the tradition that the liberal arts preceded the sciences. And perhaps I should mention that it’s a particular flaw of the Enlightenment and Modernism that the sciences and being scientific are preferred to anything else. This may be one of the ways that we as classical educators have implicitly fallen prey to modern assumptions about education.

At the same time, we’re not the first classical educators to have fallen prey to this error. For instance, John Locke, the British philosopher, in his work on education, wrote:

“For I have seldom or never observed anyone to get the skill of reasoning well or speaking handsomely by studying those rules which pretend to teach it; and therefore I would have a young gentleman take a view of them in the shortest systems that could be found without dwelling long on the contemplation and study of those formalities.” (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, p. 140)

Locke claims that learning rules won’t make you either an eloquent speaker or a brilliant conversationalist, nor will logical systems of analyzing mode and figure, predicates and predicables, teach a young gentleman to reason well. That requires, he goes on, the imitation of great authors or thinkers and practice reasoning to the truth or speaking publicly. He recommends that young children be asked to narrate stories they have read, from Aesop’s fables say, and to read great orators. It seems that even in Locke’s day the classical practices of the trivium had gotten crystalized into a deadening form, where students learned the science, but not the art. They memorized rules for logic and rhetoric, but couldn’t reason to the truth, let alone speak fluently. As he explains later on,

“There can scarce be a greater defect in a gentleman than not to express himself well either in writing or speaking. But yet, I think, I may ask my reader whether he does not know a great many who live upon their estates and so, with the name, should have the qualities of gentlemen, who cannot so much as tell a story as they should, much less speak clearly and persuasively in any business. This I think not to be so much their fault as the fault of their education.” (141-2)

This is a haunting warning that we should heed well in our movement, in order to be sure that our schools don’t fall prey to this same fault. We might be training young ladies and gentlemen, who can spout off the right answers but do not in fact have the ability to think, speak and write, who have not, in fact, as Dorothy Sayers would say, learned the arts of learning.

Resources

Barnes, Jonathan, ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation,Volume Two. Princeton, 1984.

Clark, Kevin and Ravi Jain. The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. Classical Academic Press, 2013.

Littlejohn, Robert and Charles Evans. Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning. Crossway, 2006.

Locke, John. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (first published 1693) and Of the Conduct of the Understanding. Hackett, 1996.

Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory. Translated by John Selby Watson (1856), revised and edited by Lee Honeycutt (2007) and Curtis Dozier. Creative Commons, 2015.

Sayers, Dorothy. “The Lost Tools of Learning.” First delivered at Oxford, 1947. Accessed at http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html, June 2018.

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