So far in this series we have had occasion to develop the Christian underpinnings for prudence. “Be wise [phronemoi, prudent] as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), Jesus tells his disciples, utilizing the same word for prudence that Aristotle had named among his five intellectual virtues hundreds of years before. And while the New Testament does not consistently endorse this linguistic distinction between practical and philosophic wisdom (phronesis vs sophia), still the emphasis of the Bible lands squarely on the practical ability to discern the difference between good and evil, to see through the deceitfulness of sin and value goods rightly. Augustine’s ordo amoris, or the proper ordering of loves, provides an important theological development of the Greek philosophical vision of the prudent man. 

Practical wisdom is thus necessarily contrasted with philosophic wisdom (sophia), which for Aristotle involved perception (nous) of first principles and scientific knowledge (episteme) about invariable things, things that never change. We might call these invariable things eternal truths and think more readily of mathematics and metaphysics, than history and literature. What is best for human beings differs with different particulars. Christians might likewise contrast abstract or theoretical knowledge about the divine being, that He is eternal, immortal, impassible, etc., with knowing God himself in a saving relationship. As James writes in his letter, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!” (James 2:19 ESV). In the same way, prudence has the heart of action in a way that other intellectual virtues do not. 

Adopting a prudential perspective thus has the potential to transform our classical Christian educational paradigm by pumping the lifeblood of practicality back into it. To do that we must now begin to answer in earnest the question of how. What are the proper methods of instructing the conscience and instilling moral wisdom? We must begin with the preliminary stages of instilling prudence in the young, before delineating a pedagogy of prudence for our older students. The full dawning of prudence requires the later stages of reflection and rationality that await higher intellectual development in high school and college years. 

Can We Even Teach Prudence? 

At first, in consulting Aristotle we might be tempted to despair of a pedagogy for prudence. After all, the main requirement for developing prudence in Aristotle seems to be experience, a notion that is illustrated by the fact that scientific knowledge (episteme), while technically of a higher rank among the intellectual virtues, is attainable much earlier than prudence (phronesis):

What has been said is confirmed by the fact that while young men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has no experience, for it is length of time that gives experience; indeed one might ask this question too, why a boy may become a mathematician, but not a wise man or a natural scientist. Is it because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the first principles of these other subjects come from experience, and because young men have no conviction about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them? (Nicomachean Ethics VI.8, p. 1803 in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2)

In modern teaching circles we are inclined to believe that it is abstractions and universals that stymie the young mind. Aristotle provides a good counter to our inclinations here, as does the documented Flynn effect: “the increase in correct IQ test answers with each new generation in the twentieth century.” In his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein explains the increasing understanding of abstractions for children in the modern world:

A child today who scores average on similarities would be in the 94th percentile of her grandparents’ generation. When a group of Estonian researchers used national test scores to compare word understandings of schoolkids in the 1930s to those in 2006, they saw that improvement came very specifically on the most abstract words. The more abstract the word, the bigger the improvement. The kids barely bested their grandparents on words for directly observable objects or phenomena (“hen,” “eating,” “illness”), but they improved massively on imperceptible concepts (“law,” “pledge,” “citizen”). (39)

It turns out that abstractions are not as impenetrable to the young as we had thought. The linguistic environment of modern societies, which is rich in such abstractions (if deficient in other ways…), has provided for a steady advance in this sort of thinking. 

It has not, we can assert anecdotally, seemed to afford any meaningful advance in the particulars of prudence. Experience, we are tempted to believe, may not be the best teacher, but perhaps it is the only teacher of practical wisdom. We might forgive Gary Hartenburg, the author of Aristotle: Education for Virtue and Leisure (from the Giants in the History of Education series from Classical Academic Press), for claiming that the development of prudence must wait for after the conclusion of formal education (53-54).

I think that this pessimistic conclusion, however, is incorrect. Even if we must go beyond Aristotle’s admittedly incomplete writings on education (the section of his Politics which concerns education is corrupt and ends abruptly before its actual conclusion), we have reason to hope that we can influence the development of prudence in the young. In addition to a host of classical and Christian resources that answer the question, “Can virtue be taught?”, in the affirmative, as David Hicks memorably put it in Norms and Nobility (Buy through the EdRen Bookstore!), we need look no further than the great Christian educational reformer John Amos Comenius. 

Sowing the Seeds of All the Virtues

You might recall that John Amos Comenius, the brilliant Czech educational celebrity of the late Reformation era, came to our aid earlier in this series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. His reflections helped to establish the ultimate goal of Christian education as the cultivation of all the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues. In this way we were able to effectively replace Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain with a more holistic Christian paradigm focused on the virtues. Prudence uniquely ties together the moral and spiritual virtues at the rational center of human thought. It has therefore rightly been regarded as a hinge virtue, one of the cardinal (from the Latin cardo for hinge) virtues of classical and medieval tradition. 

Comenius, also, provided us a pedagogy of artistry through his method of the arts, laid out first in his Great Didactic, then refined and developed in the Analytical Didactic, which he published much later in life. The first of these developed analogies from nature to detail a thrilling and vibrant (if at times startling) educational vision. The second delighted in the bracing air of analytical logic and method, rather than continuing the playful analogies of his first great educational work. 

In a chapter of The Great Didactic entitled, “The Method of Morals” he begins by stating programmatically, “All the virtues, without exception, should be implanted in the young. For in morality nothing can be admitted without leaving a gap.” We can pause to note the natural metaphor of implanting, sowing the seeds of virtue we might say. (I explored this idea for the benefit of parents on Coram Deo Academy’s website: intro, memory, habits, ideas.) For Comenius, like Aristotle, the virtues do not “exist in separation from each other…, for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the excellences” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.13, Rev. Oxford Trans., 1808). 

Comenius goes on, drawing from medieval and classical tradition, to endorse the cardinal virtues explicitly, as the hinges on which the door of virtue is swung open:

Those virtues which are called cardinal should be first instilled; these are prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. In this way we may ensure that the structure shall not be built up without a foundation, and that the various parts shall form a harmonious whole. (211-212)

Comenius’ ordering of these virtues seems deliberate, as he continues through them in the order named, delineating certain “fundamental rules” for “shaping the morals” and “instilling true virtue and piety” in schools (211). It is refreshing to see Comenius’ clear endorsement of the classical tradition’s call to teach virtue and establish a bedrock of piety in our students (on which we might reference Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s chapter on piety in The Liberal Arts Tradition). 

But why does Comenius list prudence first? Most of the time the cardinal virtues are enumerated with prudence last as the crowning achievement after the preliminary moral virtues. Surely our awareness of Aristotle’s categorization of prudence as an intellectual virtue would cause us to place it after the moral virtues of temperance, justice and fortitude. We must read on to see that Comenius’s practical advice on how to instill these virtues requires the seeds of prudence to be sowed alongside every virtue. We cannot really train in virtuous habits, unless we are at the same time laying the foundation of prudence in the hearts and minds of the young. 

The Method of Instruction in Prudence

Charlotte Mason distinguished her method of habit training from mere behaviorism by her insistence on going back further than simply “sowing a habit” to “reap a character”. We must sow the idea that makes the habit valuable and good. In the same way, Comenius regards prudential instruction as the basis for the development of the moral virtues. He begins by stating, “Prudence must be acquired by receiving good instruction, and by learning the real differences that exist between things, and the relative value of those things.” Surprisingly, perhaps to our postmodern ears, Comenius asserts that “good instruction” on values is not only possible, but is grounded in objective reality. 

In our contemporary culture ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’ are sharply distinguished, and opinions and value judgments are classed as unimportant because they are contested in the public square. But practical wisdom is precisely concerned with, in Aristotle’s words, “that part [of the soul] which forms opinions” (Nic. Ethics, VI.5, 1801), and “correctness of opinion is truth” (VI.9, 1804). Understanding the “good instruction” of a teacher on the “real differences… between things” and the “relative value of those things” is therefore a preliminary to prudence. As Aristotle explains, 

Now understanding [nous] is neither the having nor the acquiring of practical wisdom; but as learning is called understanding when it means the exercise of the faculty of opinion for the purpose of judging of what some one else says about matters with which practical wisdom is concerned–and of judging soundly. (VI.10, 1805)

The key point for our purposes is that, while understanding a teacher’s “good instruction” is not prudence itself, it does exercise the faculty of opining and judging soundly. It therefore constitutes sowing the proper seeds for prudence, or laying the right foundation, to continue with Comenius’ vivid metaphors. 

Comenius elaborates on this preliminary instruction in prudence quoting from John Ludovic Vives, one of the great educators of the sixteenth century:

A sound judgment on matters of fact is the true foundation of all virtue. Well does Vives say: “True wisdom consists in having a sound judgment, and in thus arriving at the truth. Thus are we prevented from following worthless things as if they were of value, or from rejecting what is of value as if it were worthless; from blaming what should be praised, and from praising what should be blamed. This is the source from which all error arises in the human mind, and there is nothing in the life of man that is more disastrous than the lack of judgment through which a false estimate of facts is made. Sound judgment,” he proceeds, “should be practiced in early youth, and will thus be developed by the time manhood is reached. A boy should seek that which is right and avoid that which is worthless, for thus the practice of judging correctly will become second nature with him.” (212)

We can pause here to note that this sort of instruction cannot be given by a man or woman without sound judgment and some measure of prudence herself. You cannot give what you do not have. In matters of prudence, John Milton Gregory’s Law of the Teacher could not be truer: a teacher must know that which he would teach. We should also fix in our minds clearly that our modern dichotomy between fact and opinion has been entirely done away with (at least in this translation…). The fact is that riches are less valuable than friendship; you can call this an opinion or judgment if you want, but it does not reduce the importance or truth of such a fact. 

Proverbs provide a collected store of such judgments or estimates of the facts of a case, which can provide a preliminary to prudence for the young. Even where the reasoning of moral sayings and aphorisms is not spelled out, they are of immense value to the young in averting prudential error in valuing things rightly. As Aristotle claims, “Therefore we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for because experience has given them an eye they see aright” (Nic. Ethics VI.11, 1806). 

It is in the realm of prudence, then, that we must question Charlotte Mason’s outlaw of opining before children:

One of our presumptuous sins in this connection is that we venture to offer opinions to children (and to older persons) instead of ideas. We believe that an opinion expresses thought and therefore embodies an idea. Even if it did so once the very act of crystallization into opinion destroys any vitality it may have had…. (Toward a Philosophy of Education, vol. 6; Wilder, 2008; 87)

If by “opinions” we are talking primarily about personal views on contemporary issues or debatable matters of history or literary criticism where solid evidence is lacking, Mason’s point is well-taken. The precious class time should not be concerned with such trivialities and the accidence of their teacher’s preferred opinions. 

But if instead we are talking about matters related to living a good life and the general human condition, with what is truly valuable in life and what dead ends and roadblocks have prevented many people for making virtuous choices, then Charlotte Mason’s opinion about opinions must be soundly discarded. If a teacher’s hard-won opinions about such matters are not worth passing on to the young, the teacher should not be employed to give care to the young. In fact, we might go so far as to state that the most important quality of a teacher or tutor of the young is that he or she be a man or woman of prudence, with the ability to give instruction in the form of good opinions about life in the midst of all the studies. As John Locke openly declares in Some Thoughts Concerning Education:

The great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him by little and little a view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy, and in the prosecution of it to give him vigor, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets him upon are but as it were the exercises of his faculties and employment of his time to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect. (70)

The studies themselves pale in comparison to the training in “good habits” and the teacher’s instruction in “the principles of virtue and wisdom.” 

So, our conclusion, for the moment, is that the teacher of the young should not muzzle herself when it comes to opining on matters of wisdom and virtue. She should proactively and deliberately seek to share all the accumulated wisdom on living a good life that she has available to her, from proverbs and sayings, passages of scripture, lessons of life from history, literature, and modern examples. It is the job of a teacher of the young to thus opine. In the next article we’ll continue to explore the methods of instilling prudence in the young through not only “good instruction” but the use of examples, rules and discipline.

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Interestingly, Augustine of Hippo, the great medieval theologian, observed that the lives we live and the things we love are inextricably linked. What we love impacts if, and how, we embody the virtues. In this way, seeking to live a virtuous life is both a moral enterprise and an affective one.

In fact, Augustine defines virtue in one of his writings as the possession of rightly ordered loves. If Augustine is correct, then our classical classrooms are incubators for not only the intellect and conscience, but the heart. Or to put it better, the classroom can be a place where the intellect, conscience, will, heart, and even body can grow into an integrated whole.

In this article, I will examine one key passage in Augustine’s City of God to examine closer his notion that virtue can be understood as rightly ordered loves. Then I will offer some practical takeaways for classical educators today.

Origins of the City

In The City of God Against the Pagans, or The City of God for short, Augustine offers a defense against pagan accusations that the fall of Rome is the poor result of the empire’s conversion to Christianity. This magnificent work, earning its place in the western canon of Great Books, is composed of twenty-two books, the first ten of which critique paganism while the final twelve tell the story of the City of God vis a vis the earthly city.

Augustine begins his account of the City of God with creation and, soon after, the fall. Following a fascinating discussion on angels, he examines the sinfulness of humanity and how death is the consequence for Adam’s sin. Augustine’s writing here will serve as the groundwork for the doctrine of original sin, the idea that all humans are born with a fallen nature.

A Proper Response to Reality

It is within this context that Augustine discusses beauty, the good, and the idea of properly ordered loves. In his explication of the early chapters of Genesis, specifically the Nephilim episode, Augustine writes, “For bodily beauty is indeed created by God; but it is a temporal and carnal, and therefore, a lower, good; and if it is loved more than God is…that love is as wrong as the miser’s when he forsakes justice out of his love for gold” (Book 15, Section 22).

In this quotation, Augustine introduces the idea that within objective Goodness, there are various types of individual goods, each of which fall upon a plane of gradation. In other words, gradations of goodness and beauty are hard-wired into reality. This reality generates particular moral obligations for human desire, namely, that we ought to love these goods in a way that is commensurate with their value.

Considering the example of a miserly obsession with gold, Augustine writes, “The fault here, though, lies not with the gold, but with the man; and this is true of every created thing: though it is good, it can be loved well or ill; well when the proper order is observed, and ill when that order is disturbed.”

Virtue as Properly Ordered Loves

Augustine goes on:

But if the Creator is truly loved – that is, if He Himself is loved, and not something else in place of Him – then He cannot be wrongly loved. We must, however, observe right order even in our love for the very love by which we love that which is worthy to be loved, so that there may be in us that virtue which enables us to live well. Hence, it seems to me that a brief and true definition of virtue is ‘rightly ordered love.’

City of God, XV.22

Augustine makes two important points here. First, he points out that in order to love God well, we must love Him most, more than anything else. To love God second, third, or behind any other good, is to mis-love Him. 

Second, after ordering love for God as uppermost amongst our loves, we must properly order our subsequent loves. This affective work, we might call it, will serve as the foundation from which virtues can emerge. If Augustine is correct, then one cannot be truly courageous or just or exhibit any other virtues, without some general proper ordering of loves in place.

Takeaways for the Classical Classroom

Augustine’s words are both helpful and convicting for the classical classroom. We talk often about the pursuit of wisdom and the cultivation of virtue. Here at Education Renaissance, we have written extensively about the role of habit training in the project of moral formation and helping our students grow in virtue. If we can help our students rightly order their loves, I believe we will only grow stronger in these endeavors.

One way we can do this is by weaving questions of love and desire into class discussion. What do the different characters in the literature text we are reading love most? Are any of these desires mis-ordered? How have these mis-ordered desires contributed to the problems the characters face?

We can also take the opportunity outside of class to speak into the lives of our students, asking them questions to help them take inventory of their own loves. This should start with affirmation: “I have noticed that you do really well in x. Tell me more about that. Why do you love it so much?” Through these kinds of conversation starters, we can get to the heart and help students begin to monitor and tailor their loves appropriately.

As teachers seek to build class culture and rightly order loves in their classrooms as a whole, here are some additional questions one might ask:

• Do students love learning for the pursuit of knowledge or for the grade that comes with it?
• Do students serve others out of love for neighbor or from a desire to be recognized?
• Do students pursue mastery of some sport, instrument, or other discipline out of a love for the goodness and beauty they create? Or is their motivation driven by modern notions of success?

For most of these questions, the answer is probably both, just as it is for many of us. The goal is not to expect perfection in this area instantaneously, but to consistently plant seeds over the longterm, challenging students to go deeper and consider how they are growing in virtue as people through the way in which their loves are ordered.

For, as the apostle Paul writes, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1-2 ESV).

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At the same time, we noted in the last article that our recovery movement has at times struggled to name prudence or practical wisdom specifically as a central strand of the liberal arts tradition. And because of our modern scientism this has likely resulted in a de facto neglect of prudential wisdom in the classroom. We may give lip service to wisdom and virtue as our goals, but our teachers may be only nominally inclined to turn the liberal arts we train or the classic works we study toward the ends of practical wisdom. 

Even when we teach ethics, we are often like C.S. Lewis’ moral philosophers, quick to philosophize in the abstract, and to teach Great Books in their historical and literary context, but reticent to help students apply moral reasoning to their own lives. In fact, there may be some classical educators who view such preachiness as out of place. Their view of classical education is all classical languages and literature, mathematics and science for its own sake and for the mental training they afford. Practical considerations that include the particulars of modern life and the choices that students will have to make are, in their estimation, wholly out of place. They are quick to cry pragmatism and utilitarianism, preferring instead an arcane and ivory tower classicism. I would encourage such persons to read Proverbs, Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Republic, and then return to read the rest of this series. 

In fact, Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence proposes the ideal middle way in education between practicality and liberality, between what is useful and learning for its own sake. The joy of learning is indeed one of the values of the classical tradition, but so is practicality and a stoic awareness of the limited time we have on earth. We might think of this under the classical quest for the good life or the life well lived. Education is not all fun and games, even arcane and intellectual ones; our choices often have the weight of life and death upon them. In this light, all subjects of study have a practical dimension to them, in terms of how human beings should think about, value and use them for other ends. There is a hierarchy of goods and needs, and human beings ought to value the world in a certain way, in accordance with a true ordo amoris, to cite Augustine’s phrase for a proper ordering of loves. By adopting this perspective or attuning ourselves to this dimension of things, we will begin to see how we might instill prudence in the young. 

Deliberating about the Beneficial

Aristotle begins his more detailed discussion of the intellectual virtue of prudence or phronesis with a set of common sense considerations:

Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general.

Nicomachean Ethics, VI, ch. 5 (trans. by W. D. Ross accessed at The Internet Classics Archive)

People with prudence are masters of deliberation or consultation (as some translations have it; the Greek bouleuo can mean to “take counsel, deliberate, or resolve after deliberating”). They are able to consider counsel within themselves or with the help of others (“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” Prov. 15:22 ESV), especially regarding what is good, beneficial or expedient for themselves. 

In case the idea of expediency or prudence itself sounds too Machiavellian, it is to what is expedient or beneficial (Greek sumphero) that Paul appeals in 1st Corinthians 6:1, instead of what is simply lawful. In this case, what is expedient or beneficial can be a guide to practical thinking with a higher moral standard than mere law. In this way, Aristotelian expediency can be baptized by applying Jesus’ Golden Rule to love others as we love ourselves. Since we naturally desire what is good and beneficial for ourselves, the spiritual virtue of love of God and neighbor can guide the intellectual virtue of prudence as we deliberate about what is good for our neighbor and ourselves in God’s good world. 

We must pause here to head off a potential misunderstanding of Aristotle’s statement above. In claiming that practical wisdom entails the ability to “deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect” like health or physical fitness, Aristotle might be heard as endorsing a philosophical quest for the good life, rather than something practical. On this view, Aristotle’s prudent person asks the big questions of life and doesn’t settle for simplistic answers or get sidetracked by subjects. After all, isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 

However, Aristotle cannot mean that a person could have practical wisdom and yet regularly and deliberately make choices that are unhealthy. Otherwise, how could it be that, as Aristotle later states, “it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, ch. 13). In their true form, moral virtue and practical wisdom are inextricably linked. So, some awareness of particular subjects, like health, that impinge on human wellbeing must be included in an education which aims to promote prudence. But it is one thing to study the art of medicine, with the goal of a profession in the medical field. It is entirely another to acquire the general understanding of particulars that will enable a person to live a healthy life, as one aspect of the good life. 

From this vantage point, we are prepared to distinguish between two ways in which an education might be practical. The more common usage today sees education as job training. And for all its abuses, there is a legitimate sense in which an education should involve apprenticeship in practical arts, trades and professions. An educated person should, in a Christian’s view at least (see e.g., 2 Thess 3:10, ESV: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”), be prepared to provide for himself and have something to share with others (Eph 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”). The second way education may be practical is in providing an understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, what is beneficial, excellent and praiseworthy in human life. Practical education not only enables a man to earn a living, but also to conduct his life.

Because of this, the art of medicine may be optional, but the study of health is not. But too often we neglect this second type of practicality in favor of the first. The same might be said of other subjects: history and politics, science and literature, technology, mathematics and economics. All these have their practical dimension, in which some understanding of them will help one to make beneficial or expedient decisions for oneself and others in the world. 

Deliberating with the Variables

Aristotle goes on to explain practical wisdom as distinct from the arts:

This is shown by the fact that we credit men with practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have calculated well with a view to some good end which is one of those that are not the object of any art. It follows that in the general sense also the man who is capable of deliberating has practical wisdom.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 5

In essence, prudential wisdom then is about calculating, consulting or deliberating about what is best. It consists in properly weighing the options. Moral virtue itself is a habit, and therefore does not involve deliberation. But only by deliberation are moral virtues maintained as habits, and only through the right hands will a person see the right ends and value the means correctly. The arts likewise involve habits, as well as thoughtful analysis of means and ends, but only for the purpose of production, not for essential choices about how to live in the world.

The prudential perspective thus sets limits on what is valuable to know or think. It is as the Psalmist said, 

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

Psalm 131:1 ESV

There is a humility in the concerns of prudence to focus on earthly things and human things, rather than divine or arcane marvels. The way Aristotle distinguishes these categories involves the idea of the variable and invariable, what is changeable or unchangeable. Philosophical discussions of contingency developed from this distinction between what must necessarily and logically be true and that which could be otherwise. We might think of variable things as the facts of a case. They are matters which could be different in a different case.

This distinction between the variable and invariable aligns with Aristotle’s distinction between practical wisdom (phronesis) and scientific knowledge (episteme). He explains,

Now no one deliberates about things that are invariable, nor about things that it is impossible for him to do. Therefore, since scientific knowledge involves demonstration, but there is no demonstration of things whose first principles are variable (for all such things might actually be otherwise), and since it is impossible to deliberate about things that are of necessity, practical wisdom cannot be scientific knowledge nor art; not science because that which can be done is capable of being otherwise, not art because action and making are different kinds of thing. The remaining alternative, then, is that it is a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man. For while making has an end other than itself, action cannot; for good action itself is its end.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 5

The goal of production is always its usefulness for something else, but a decision to act a certain way has its goal in itself: living a good life. So far so good on the distinction between artistry and prudence. We have had occasion already to define scientific knowledge (episteme) as the ability to demonstrate some truth. In Aristotle’s logical system of distinctions, the possession of scientific knowledge involves the demonstration or proof of something from first principles that could not be otherwise. Aristotle later mentions an example from mathematics: “that the triangle has or has not its angles equal to two right angles.” No one deliberates or takes counsel about that but only about affairs in which he can make a choice. The first principles that entail knowledge about triangles are fundamental and of necessity; we cannot really imagine a world in which they were otherwise. 

Our conclusion, then, is simply a restatement of Aristotle’s definition of prudence (phronesis) as a “true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to things that are good or bad for man.” The true reasoning of practical wisdom takes place in deliberation, when a person takes counsel by considering various actions. He or she must know the particulars of the situation as well as universal human values. As Aristotle’s says, 

Nor is practical wisdom concerned with universals only—it must also recognize the particulars; for it is practical, and practice is concerned with particulars. This is why some who do not know, and especially those who have experience, are more practical than others who know; for if a man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome but did not know which sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 7

Aristotle comes full circle on the example of health, enabling us to confirm that there is a prudential perspective on the subject of human health. We can distinguish it even further from scientific knowledge now through this example. While a person might know through deductive reasoning from the first principles of (ancient) medicine and nutrition that light meats are digestible and wholesome, he could still be unaware of the particulars. An experienced person might not know the general categories and theory, but know the particular facts that chicken is wholesome. So, in deliberating about what to eat that might promote health, the experienced person is at an advantage over the person with theoretical knowledge.

Reclaiming the Practical Perspective for Classical Education

All that we have seen so far demonstrates the legitimacy of taking a practical perspective on various subjects in education. One of the unfortunate effects of the modern education landscape is that practicality has been subsumed under progressive education’s utilitarianism and pragmatism. In defending subjects like Latin, ancient and medieval history, and the arts, from those who swept out impractical subjects for dead people, some classical educators have strapped on the armor of “art for art’s sake” so long that have reflexively neglected the proper practicality of the classical tradition.

In this context, contemporary educators have tended to stress research findings to support making subjects relevant to the lives of their students. On the one hand, such insistence on connecting everything to students’ day-to-day lives seems extreme and anti-classical. Must I really make connections between modern day gang wars and the stories of the Greeks and Trojans? Context is everything. Such a teaching move could be either far-fetched or brilliant. Besides, the supposition that every subject of study must prove itself as relevant to the student before he or she can rightfully be expected to engage it with their full attention is manifestly pernicious. Teachers and schools end up cutting valuable subjects and justifying the practicality of STEM on the job-preparation motive alone. 

On the other hand, we now have classical reason, founded in the educational objective of developing prudence, to adopt the practical perspective, especially on the humanities, health, and economics, without neglecting the cultivation of other intellectual virtues in their place. After all, relevance is only one among several factors that “reduce stress and lead to the thinking, reflective brain response” (see Neuroteach, by Whitman and Kelleher, p. 69). It is not the case that every subject must justify itself as practical, in the sense of relevant to my personal life decisions. Yet the practicality of instructing the conscience for life must be the beating heart of the whole educational experience, not the whole of education but a living center that pumps the blood of human interest into every other part.

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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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In the quotation above, Charlotte Mason identifies what she believes are the three instruments of education at a teacher’s disposal: atmosphere, discipline, and life. In my first article in this series, I explored the instrument of atmosphere. 

In Mason’s view, the sort of atmosphere a teacher builds is dependent primarily on her view of her students. If students are primarily future contributors to the economy, then the efficiency-driven model of a factory will do. The priority will be to standardize the content as much as possible and boil down the educational process to an assembly line of simple, repeatable acts and interchangeable parts. Likewise, if students are information processors at core, then the atmosphere of a computer lab will suffice. Pack as much information as possible into a lecture, or textbook, and call on students to analyze the data as if they were little Microsoft Excel humanoids.

But if students are persons, relational beings made in the image of God, that are endowed with 1) minds to contemplate and create 2) wills to choose the good (or evil) 3) physical bodies to steward and 4) souls to connect with God Himself, then the task of education, and the atmosphere of a classroom by implication, will look very different.

In today’s article, I will move on to the second instrument of Mason’s triad: “Education is a Discipline.” We will see that, like atmosphere, discipline, or training, is very much an instrument with the idea of students as persons in view. God created humans as persons hard-wired for growth. Either they grow or decline over time; there is no such thing as a static human being. It therefore falls to parents and teachers to consider how they will help children grow, especially through supporting them to develop good habits from a young age. These habits over time become the soil for a child’s moral life to spring up. This is the instrument of discipline. 

Preparing Children for the World…But Which World?

Let us acknowledge it: life is difficult. People face a variety of challenges throughout life, whether they be financial, relational, professional, physical, or otherwise. This realization finds credence across philosophies and religions. The writer of Ecclesiastes observes that life is full of toil and ultimately meaningless (apart from God). The Buddha built a whole religion on four noble truths, the first being that “life is suffering.” There is no shortage of trials we will encounter as human beings. Our posture should therefore pivot from one of full avoidance of these trials, but rather an acceptance and preparation for how to overcome them.

In the classic dystopian novel Brave New World (First Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006), originally published by Harper and Brothers in 1932, author Aldous Huxley imagines a future world state in which the trials described above are all but eliminated. Through genetically engineering humans for specific castes, abolishing traditional moral norms, and mass producing happiness-producing drugs for daily consumption, the brave new world is one of ever-present, uninterrupted, happiness.

Interestingly, in this world, there seems to be no need for nobility, heroism, or discipline for that matter. It is a tailor-made civilization in which natural impulses are free to run their course with no fear of the consequences. Habits can continue to be helpful, but there are mechanisms already built into society to prevent real negative consequences from occurring. The startling result: “Anyone can be virtuous now” (238).

Of course, this is not our world, at least, not yet. The children we instruct, whether in our homes or classrooms, must be prepared to encounter challenges, friction points, trials, and opportunities to do what is right. This struggle is constituted both externally (in the circumstances they face) and internally (in mastering their own thoughts, desires, and choices).

Raising children to be disciplined, therefore, should be no afterthought in education. It is a primary responsibility for raising strong, thoughtful, noble, and virtuous men and women.

The Discipline of Habits 

Charlotte Mason believed that the key to helping children build strong moral wills and productive intellectual lives is through instilling good habits. These habits are to be trained, not through the harsh ruling of a Victorian task-master, or the behavioral manipulation of rewards systems, but through relationship, accountability, and support. Maryellen St. Cyr, co-founder of Ambleside Schools International, writes, “The idea of education as a discipline encompasses the full realm of education, taking into account its varied relationships–intellectual, moral, physical, religious, and social, as well as the great potential of persons to move in directions of change and growth” (When Children Love to Learn, 89).

This growth can be developed from a young age through habit training. In modern education, the general thought is to “let kids be kids” and by that it is meant for teachers to permit the majority of children’s natural impulses to run free in the classroom. The heart behind this sentiment, of course, is a desire for the children to be happy. But Mason’s profound insight, which is replete with biblical truth, is that equipping students to develop control over these impulses is actually what will set them up well for a life of flourishing. As one proverb puts it, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6, ESV).

We can begin to see that through helping students develop good habits–attention, self-control, respects for others, kindness, and responsibility–we are preparing them for a life of growth. In Home Education, Charlotte Mason writes, “It is unchangeably true that the child who is not being consistently raised to a higher and a higher platform will sink to a lower and a lower. Wherefore, it is as much the parent’s duty to educate his child into moral strength and purpose and intellectual activity as it is to feed him and clothe him” (103).

As teachers work to train habits in the classroom, they must always keep the vision of building up persons in view. To differentiate between building up persons and mere external conformity, Maryellen St. Cyr makes this table of distinction:

What Neuroscientists Have to Say

As we have noted on Educational Renaissance on multiple occasions, such as here, the practice of habit training, which is what Charlotte Mason primarily means by the instrument of discipline, finds encouraging support in modern neuroscience. Each time we perform an act, we are rewiring our neural pathways and even creating new brain cells, processes called neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.

Mason, herself a lover of modern research, was tracking the earliest scientific discoveries of this phenomenon. She writes, “New brain tissue is being constantly formed at a startlingly rapid rate: one wonders at what age the child has no longer any part left of that brain with which he was born (Home Education, 115). 

Later she goes on to conclude:

“What follows? Why, that the actual conformation of the child’s brain depends upon the habits which the parents permit or encourage; and that the habits of the child produce the character of the man…”

Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 118.

What a profound and even mysterious insight, this connection between moral philosophy and modern neuroscience. God, in His providence, truly created us as mind-body unities. Our brains affect our morals and our morals affect our brains. And while the non-religious materialist might use these scientific discoveries to make the case that even moral phenomenon has a natural explanation, I find the more compelling conclusion to be that this sort of moral-biological synthesis is exactly what we should expect of a universe fashioned by a wise Creator.

From Habits to Virtues

The Greek philosopher Aristotle is one of the earliest proponents of habit training. He draws a straight line from habits through virtue to happiness itself. But unlike in Brave New World, in which happiness is the maximization of pleasure, Aristotle tethers happiness to virtue. Happiness is an activity that is manifested over a whole life as humans align their lives with virtues laid down by reason (A History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From Greece to Rome by Frederick Coppleston, p. 334). However, unlike Cynic contemporaries in his day, Aristotle did not excise pleasure from the equation completely. He acknowledged that circumstances can and do play a role in one’s overall flourishing. But the pathway to happiness is ultimately through virtuous activity, not pleasure-seeking. To be truly happy, one must live a life of activity in accordance with virtue. 

So how do humans become virtuous? Aristotle believed it was through practice, by cultivating good habits. People become virtuous by doing virtuous acts. A soldier becomes courageous, not through reading about it, though that will help, but through stepping foot in the arena. Likewise, a child becomes honest by practicing telling the truth.

Now, some may anticipate the objection of circular thinking. How can one do virtuous acts without being virtuous? But how can one be virtuous without doing virtuous acts? 

Philosopher Frederick Coppleston offers this response on behalf of Aristotle: “We begin by doing acts which are objectively virtuous, without having a flex knowledge of the acts and a deliberate choice of the acts as good, a choice resulting from an habitual disposition…The accusation of a vicious circle is thus answered by the distinction between the acts which create the good disposition and the acts which flow from the good disposition once it has been created” (335). 

In other words, virtue formation is a process. We train children to begin acting in certain ways, holding them to certain expectations, even before they fully understand the “why.” To be sure, we want to relationally come beside them and discuss how particular habits are for the good of themselves and others. But we also need to be patient, understanding that the process of moral development is a lifelong journey, even for adults, one in which moral knowledge and practice slowly grow more and more aligned.

Towards a Christian View of Virtue Formation

So far, I have been discussing the notions of happiness, virtues, and habits without much reference to our Christian faith. To begin making these connections, I find Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s comments in The Liberal Arts Tradition (Classical Academic Press, 2019) really helpful.

Clark and Jain augment a Christian, classical notion of Aristotle’s conception of virtue by connecting virtue to participation in Christ (137). Virtue is more than human effort accompanied by the goods that come of it. It is the path of following Christ and growing in Christlikeness. It encompasses increasing spiritual intimacy with Him through obedience and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Virtue for a Christian begins by being raised with Christ and becoming a new creation (Colossians 3). When this happens, the righteousness of Christ becomes ours, and we are empowered to begin down the path of sanctification, or personal holiness.

There is much, much more to unpack here theologically, but I will need to put this work off for another article. Suffice it to say that for Christians, habit training and virtual formation should be inextricably linked to our walk with Christ and growing in unity with Him.

Conclusion

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue (The Abolition of Man, 77). By training students in habits, we are preparing students for the real world. This world is not one free of struggle, pain, and unrestricted passion, as fantasized in Brave New World. Rather it is a world of both comfort and struggle, joy and pain, self-restraint and pleasure.

The well-trained student can navigate both, but not by accident. Rather, it is through year after year of virtue formation through habit training. As the metal worker bends his material into proper shape, so we has humans, through practicing habits, can gradually build lives aligned with virtue. United with Christ, we acknowledge that this strength comes not from us, but from the Holy Spirit, as His power is made perfect in our weakness.

If you want to go deeper into habit training, your next step is to download our free eBook. Enjoy!

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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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Dorothy Sayers, known for her essay The Lost Tools of Learning (1947), advocated for a return to liberal arts education. With a special emphasis on the language arts of the Trivium, Sayers believed that the best remedy against sensationalistic news headlines was to equip the intellect with the right tools. Sayers writes,

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

It took a few decades, but her essay struck a nerve. Today there are hundreds of classical liberal arts schools across the United States, and indeed, the world, who look to this essay as their source of inspiration. Through equipping students with the tools of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, students are trained how to learn independently, master words, and discern truth from falsehood for themselves.

C.S. Lewis, a friend of Sayers, offered different, but related, advice. In The Abolition of Man (1943), Lewis argues that the best defense against propaganda that preys upon our unguarded emotions is a good offense: trained affections (what we desire). Emotions and affections themselves are alogical (not illogical) and not the issue. The problem occurs when our desires, and emotions that accompany them, are untrained and left unprepared to respond to bad ideas. The solution for Lewis, therefore, is not to suppress our subjective responses, but to shape them properly. Lewis writes, “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts” (14). 

In this blog article, I will explore how Christian educators can preserve a holistic view of the human person, including emotions, while not falling prey to emotionalism. To do so, we need to avoid subjectivism on the one hand and disembodied rationalism on the other. The way forward is to train students’ affections and emotions to be in accordance with objective values embedded in reality.

An “Innocent” Grammar Textbook

In The Abolition of Man, Lewis’ thesis is that the key to saving the humanity of human beings in the modern world is to preserve the idea that a connection exists between subjective responses and objective values. That is, existence is not a moral free-for-all regarding what to believe and love, or how to live. Rather, there is an underlying moral fabric of the universe that humans must learn how to properly live within. 

To make his case, Lewis shows how subjectivism, the idea that there are no objective moral values, is already creeping into the broader western intellectual mainstream. Using The Green Book, a pseudonym for The Control of Language (1939), as an example, Lewis points out that the authors smuggle in language of subjectivity in their supposedly innocent treatment of adjectives. How so?

In this now-famous passage for Lewisian readers, the authors, whom Lewis pseudo-names Gaius and Titius, recall an episode from the life of Coleridge in which he and a fellow tourist visit a waterfall. As they behold the majesty of the falls, they are struck with awe. Coleridge deems the falls “sublime,” while his fellow tourist calls them “pretty,” to Coleridge’s chagrin. 

Gaius and Titius take this opportunity to correct Coleridge for his judgment of the fellow tourist. Coleridge, they write, has no reason to look down upon the poor word choice, because both descriptions are mere projections of subjective emotion. These value statements have no purchase on reality. It is not as if the waterfall actually contains a quality that merits a particular response. To be sure, if the tourist described the water as purple or if Coleridge claimed the falls were composed of salt water, this would be a problem. But for Gaius and Titius, the value statements such as “sublime,” “pretty,” or even “ugly,” cannot be aesthetically evaluated objectively because there is nothing aesthetically objective about the waterfall, or anything for that matter, to evaluate.

Attack on Metaphysics

The authors of The Green Book, it could be said, were merely drinking from the subjective water fountain of the academic waterline in 20th century Europe. In After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (2021), Michael Ward identifies two key figures who were influencing this subjectivism.

The first figure is philosopher A.J. Ayer, a leading figure for logical positivism. Logical positivism is the idea that meaningful propositions are only those that are either tautological (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried”) or empirically verifiable. In this view, moral and aesthetic judgments are mere expressions of emotion (6). There are no inherent qualities such as “good” or “beautiful” in objects of the universe. All that exists is the world of our five senses. Language is meaningful insofar as it describes the natural world or communicates incorrigible logical truths. The conclusion is that value statements are mere projections of individuals and therefore are data for the social sciences. Ayer writes, “It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychology and sociology” (“A Critique of Ethics” (1952) in Ethical Theory: An Anthology (2007), edited by Russ Shafer-Landau).

The second figure is I.A. Richards, an interdisciplinary scholar well-known for his work on subjectivism. Subjectivism, like logical positivism, holds that there are no objective moral or aesthetic values. Value statements merely reflect the internal feelings of the subject. They cannot and do not correlate to objective qualities in external objects (7). Ward writes, “He (Richards) makes the same subjectivist moves in the field of aesthetics as Ayer does in the realm of ethics. The beauty of art, just like the wrongness of theft, is an interior feeling only, a personal experience in the mind of an onlooker, not the external reality that merits a certain response” (8). 

With these philosophical ideas in circulation, you can see why Lewis is concerned. It is one thing for these ideas to gain traction in the ivory towers of academia. It is another thing for these ideas to be smuggled into grammar textbooks for the general public. Through the innocent teaching of grammar, a whole generation could grow up indoctrinated to believe in the nonexistence of objective values.

With World War II raging on around Lewis, Ward captures the Oxford professor’s fear well:

Had human civilization run its course? With entire sections of the population in mainland Europe being systematically exterminated, with food scarce and death falling out of the sky, no one could avoid wondering what had led humanity to such a pass or whether it would ever regain its equilibrium. And did it even deserve to? Did the word deserve itself still mean anything? The status of desert, of objective realities meriting certain responses, had become an inescapably pressing matter of concern politically no less than ethically and aesthetically. Modernity was producing barbarism, but did it really matter? (9)

To deny a world of objective value is to deny any possibility of proper action in the world, including our emotional responses. It is to release humans to the whims of instinct, the spontaneous urges of desire, and ultimately, slavery to our base appetites. In this world, there is no moral ecology, no basis for distinguishing virtue from vice and good from evil. All that is left is a Nietzschean battle for the will to power. Lewis dedicates the remainder of The Abolition of Man to further diagnose this grave issue and issue humanity’s final prognosis. Spoiler: It is not “pretty.”

A Good Offense is the Best Defense

The solution Lewis prescribes is not to excise emotion from the human experience, but to shape our affections, and the emotions that accompany them, properly. This is the antidote to both bad philosophical ideas, like subjectivism, and practical everyday challenges like sensationalistic news media or propaganda. Interestingly, the The Green Book authors offered their own solution to propaganda in their day: use exclusively empirical arguments to critique faulty, sensationalistic arguments, thereby leading to the deflation of the emotional force.

Lewis, however, proposes a different way that takes into consideration the emotive and affective aspects of what it means to be human. He writes,

They (Gaius and Titius) see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda–they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental–and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. (14).

In other words, the best defense is a good offense. To train against sensationalistic propaganda, full of goodness and beauty fakes, expose children to examples of real beauty and goodness, through rich literature (6). The solution, therefore, is not to dispel with emotion or desire altogether, but to train it according to moral and aesthetic values, holding logic, emotion, and beauty together. An empirical solution alone produces “trousered apes,” as Lewis puts it, not full-orbed humans.

The call to shape our affections and train our emotions, of course, assumes there is objective value in the world to which we must respond. Going back to the waterfall example, the reason Coleridge was disgusted by the word “pretty” was because he believed the waterfall merited more than the meaning that word could conjure (15). In other words, the term did not align with the objective beauty of the waterfall. Later Lewis writes that emotions are alogical (not logical or illogical) in and of themselves… “But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it” (19). Students need to be exposed to numerous examples of honor, courage, self-sacrifice, and beauty. As they do, their emotions and affections will overtime align with reason.

The Important of Musical Education

In The Liberal Arts Tradition (3rd edition 2021), authors Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain sketch out what this training might look like. In their paradigm for understanding classical education, they point out that the liberal arts tradition of education is more than a program for the mind. Indeed, the tradition reflects a holistic understanding of what it means to be human as a complex unity of mind, heart, body, and soul. 

One key insight from the book is that before the liberal arts can be properly studied, students should be trained in a precritical fashion, called musical education. The authors write, ” The musical and gymnastic education fitted the students’ hearts and bodies to reality. The training of the body and the tuning of the heart to love what is lovely helped nurture the virtues of courage and temperance (bodily restraint)” (6). In other words, through telling stories, reciting poetry, and beholding beauty in nature and art, students are oriented toward objective values even before they can analyze these subjects critically with the liberal arts.

Conclusion: Read and Practice

If you are a regular follower of Educational Renaissance, you will not be surprised that I am going to close by emphasizing the importance of reading the classics and cultivating good habits. Lewis writes, “Without the aid of trained emotions, the intellect is powerless against the animal organism” (24). How do we train affections and emotions in accordance with what is true, good, and beautiful? Let me suggest two general ways:

First, we can shape the moral imagination of students through reading, listening, narrating, and delighting in all that is good, true, and beautiful. As children hear stories of heroism, compassion, courage, perseverance, and honesty, they will begin to recognize these virtues as good and worthy of imitation. As they delight in God’s beautiful creation, behold a dazzling seascape, or enjoy an inspiring musical score, they will begin to develop a desire and appreciation for the beauty around them.

Second, we can help students gain experience in a life of virtue through practicing good habits. The repetition of acts of service, kindness, honesty, and other habits will shape their hearts and minds in a truly formative way. As teachers cast vision for students of a life led by the Holy Spirit, and support them encouragingly on a daily basis, students undergo the sort of moral formation that will lead them to be well-rounded humans, trained with affections and emotions informed by reason, and prepared to thrive in God’s created moral order.

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Well, that depends on what humans essentially are. If humans are, at core, cognitive creatures, then it makes sense to focus exclusively on the intellect. This was the predominant view of modernism. Influenced by the Age of Reason and the notable success of empirical science, modern schools adopted a, generally speaking, intellect-only attitude toward learning. They drew a distinction between facts and values and insisted that only empirically-grounded facts could be studied. Everything else was dismissed as mere emotional conditioning.

In the classical tradition, however, the idea never gained traction that a human can be reduced to a brain on a stick. Instead, philosophers like Plato espoused a tripartite portrait of human beings: humans possess intellectual, affective, and appetitive components. The formative purpose of education for Plato is to shape humans to be virtuous, that is, to develop proper affections that will empower reason to subdue the appetites of the flesh. Or, as C.S. Lewis put it in The Abolition of Man, education prepares a human to use the head to rule the belly through the chest.

In this blog article, I will explore the idea that a truly formative education shapes not only our moral strength, but our very affective desires. Drawing on the work of James K.A. Smith, I will show how habits shape desires and the object of our deepest desires reveals who we are becoming. Educators, therefore, must think carefully about the practices put on repeat in their schools and how these habituated practices are shaping the very affections of their students.

Creatures Who Worship

In Desiring the Kingdom (Baker Academic, 2009), Calvin College philosophy professor James K.A. Smith argues that humans are liturgical creatures. In other words, the longing to worship is a central feature of what it means to be human. The question is not whether we will worship, but what or whom we will worship. Deep within our bones is a desire to love and experience the transcendent. Until this desire is fulfilled, we remain restless, hungry, and unfulfilled. As St. Augustine put it in Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

In our modern secular world, religion may be on the decline, but our longings to experience transcendent fulfillment are not. Pointing to ongoing zeal for the market, malls, and the military, Smith offers three examples to demonstrate that when humans displace God as the object of our deepest desires, we replace Him with lesser goods. And when traditional religious rituals are excised, they are replaced with secular rituals, repeated affection-shaping practices, all the same. The diligent repetition of these practices is precisely how we keep the zeal for the objects of our desires intact.

Shaping Affections Through Habits

Now, on the surface, it may seem that humans wake up each and every day with the volition to choose what they will love and to what degree. But what Smith points out is that our loves are largely directed and aimed by habits already in play. These habits not only determine how we spend our time, but what we grow to love and, ultimately, what good life, or future kingdom, we envision to pursue.

Imagine, for example, the young man who begins each morning with phone in hand, checking last night’s scores across the National Basketball Association (NBA). He reads game summaries, notes individual player statistics, and checks the standings in each regional division. Finally, he scours the web for the latest updates on his favorite team, the Chicago Bulls. 

After a half an hour on the glowing rectangle, he rolls out of bed and prepares for the day. On the way to work, he listens to sports radio, recapping last night’s events, and looks forward to lunch break when he can discuss the latest NBA drama with his coworkers. He works diligently throughout the day and rewards himself every hour with a short excursion on his sports news app to preview the games scheduled for that evening. 

On the way home from work, he self-injects one more dose of sports radio, and thinks about whether he will watch the upcoming games at home or at a restaurant with friends. Pulling into the garage, he checks his text messages and the decision is confirmed. He pulls his Chicago Bulls jersey on and heads off to the local pub and is greeted warmly by his fellow religionists–I mean– fans.

Which Good Life? Whose Kingdom?

A cursory analysis of this everyday scenario would dismiss it as simply the story of a young man who enjoys professional basketball and supporting his local sports team. When we dig deeper, however, we see how his day is saturated with habits formed through practices that are training his desires and fueling his imagination. Checking his phone first thing in the morning, listening to sports radio on his drive into work, conversing with friends on the topic over a meal, and donning the ceremonial garb (a sports jersey) in the evening are habits which subtly reinforce who he is and what he longs for.

If he keeps this routine up, his devotion will only grow and with it his longing to re-experience day after day this vision of the good life. It slowly becomes part of who he is and brings a fulfillment that nothing else can. The path is set, with bricks composed of habits paving the way. His desires are honed in on the target and only the installation of new habits, humanly-speaking, can change the direction of the kingdom he is seeking.

Desiring the Heavenly Kingdom

LIke the basketball devotee, our schools are honing in on a certain target or vision of the good life, and this target is regularly reinforced through practices. For economically-prosperous countries in the West, it is very difficult to escape the attractive kingdom of wealth and materialism. This vision of the good life promises so much: comfort, popularity, acceptance, recognition, experiences, and the like.

But if our schools are to remain distinctively Christian we must look beyond this earthly kingdom in order to fix our eyes on something greater: the kingdom of God. What does this kingdom look like? 

In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul writes:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (ESV)

It seems to me that this passage captures the essence of the heavenly kingdom. It is a kingdom composed of citizens who do not pretend to be of high-repute or worldly honor. They do not view themselves as deserving of either God’s grace or cultural recognition. They see the promises of the world for what they truly are: empty siren songs designed to stroke the ego, meanwhile the rocks of destruction grow ever closer.  

The vision for the good life we desire as Christians, and pray for our students to desire, is marked by hailing the power of Jesus. Our Lord Jesus, “God from God, Light from Light,” descended into this world to bring the kingdom of heaven, marked by baptism, self-denial, forgiveness of sin, and the hope of resurrection. 

Liturgies in our Schools

Smith proposes that we can determine the kingdoms our schools are oriented toward by taking inventory of its daily liturgies. By liturgies, he means the thick practices that shape our vision of a kingdom. For example, the liturgies of the basketball fan described above are his morning routine on his phone catching up on all the highlights, connecting with his friends at lunch on the topic, and scheduling his evenings around the upcoming games schedule. These liturgies–practices with desire-shaping and imagination-fueling power–shape his vision of what he longs for most.

So what liturgies exist in our schools? What repeated practices seem to bear the greatest influence over the culture of the student body? Over the parent community? Over faculty and staff? Are these liturgies oriented toward kingdom values of lifting up the name of Christ, growing more holy, and learning as a way of bringing honor to God? Or are our school liturgies at present spreading the gospel of a different kingdom, perhaps marked by academic repute, cultural acceptance, and worldly achievement?

Diagnostic Questions for Christian Educators to Consider:

To help you as a Christian educator discern with the Spirit’s aid what liturgies exist in your school and what liturgies don’t yet exist, here are some probing questions to consider:

1. What repeated practices seem to have the most influence in your school? What do students get most excited about? Why? 
2. What can you have students do, and do on repeat, to help them learn about and grow in their desire for the kingdom?
3. What thick practices of the church are appropriate to bring into your school while respecting the unique place the local church is to play in the life of believers?
4. How can the practices you implement in your school be distinctively counter-cultural, yet perhaps not anti-cultural? In what ways is your school practicing baptismal renunciation and cultural abstention? What are you saying “no” to?
5. How are you using instructional time to shape student affections for the kingdom? How can you incorporate embodied learning practices into your lessons?
6. How are using non-instructional time to shape student affections? What practices exist in the hallways, during passing periods and lunch times, and at recess?

Conclusion

These are challenging questions to be sure and, more than anything, they are designed to give us pause to reflect on our craft. To shape student affections for the kingdom, teaching a Christian worldview is not enough. Offering Bible classes is not enough. A weekly chapel is not enough. These are necessary components to be sure, but, they are mostly cognitive strategies when the students in our classrooms are affective creatures. In order to reach affective creatures, we need affective strategies–approaches to education that reach the heart. These will be strategies that acknowledge our embodiment and see the connections between what we do, what we long for, and therefore, who we are becoming. May we as educators continue seek first the kingdom of God, and as we do so, invite our students to join us on the journey.

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The second event came later that year on September 18^th. Booker T. Washington gave a speech at the Atlanta Exposition. In this speech, presented before a predominantly white audience, laid out an educational plan that would aim at the advancement of blacks in vocational or industrial trades. Washington first advised “the friends of my race” to make “friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.” (Washington, “Address” 18 Sept. 1895) His was a message of reconciliation, spoken deep in the South, sounded the right note for those in attendance. The worry was that racial tensions would erupt in Atlanta, since Georgia had been adopting Jim Crow laws during the 1890s. It was only the following May that the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was made in the Supreme Court, upholding “separate but equal” segregation in the South.

What Washington meant by “making friends in every manly way” he immediately spells out in his speech:

“Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.”

Booker T. Washington, “Address by Booker T. Washington“

(For teachers interested in investigating primary sources, you can access the manuscript of the speech at this Georgia Historical Society webpage and listen to an audio recording Washington made in 1908 of excerpts from his speech available at this Library of Congress webpage.)

The Atlanta Compromise

For Washington, the strategy to make black lives better is to forgo such things as campaigning for government positions or contending for positions in the ivory tower of colleges and universities. It is a strategy that makes sense. Catch the wave of the booming industrial economy in the South and ride that wave to a better future. Washington’s speech became known as the “Atlanta Compromise” in part due to the cooperative program he laid out, but also because it caught the industrial wave, but also the wave of Jim Crow laws and segregationism.

Despite the rivalry that soon emerged between Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, the Atlanta speech was at first celebrated by DuBois. In a brief letter dated 24^th September of 1895, DuBois writes:

“Let me heartily congratulate you upon your phenomenal success at Atlanta—it was a word fitly spoken.”

It is not altogether clear exactly what DuBois is congratulating here. Was he particularly impressed by the content of the speech or did he recognize the emergence of a new leader to take up the mantle of Douglass? DuBois was himself an emerging leader although he was over a decade younger than Washington. Perhaps the heart of DuBois’ message to Washington centers less on the content of what was spoken and more on DuBois’s recognition of the role Washington could play as the heir to Douglass. No matter how we read the praise DuBois sends to Washington, it did not take long for DuBois to reconsider his position on black education and to challenge the very message of the “Atlanta Compromise.”

A Study in Contrasts

Washington and DuBois could not have been more different, and perhaps that accounts for the difference in their perspectives on education. Booker T. Washington was born into slavery on a plantation in Virginia. He was nearly ten when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, about which he writes that “some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased.” (Up from Slavery 20-21) As a freedman, Washington worked in the coals mines while attending Hampton Institute. At the age of 25, Washington was appointed as principal to what is now called Tuskegee University in Alabama. Tuskagee was a place where Washington could put into practice his “head, hearts, and hands” approach so that students were trained “to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people.” (Up from Slavery 160).

DuBois, on the other hand, was born into a free black family in Massachusetts, attending integrated schools during his childhood. He went to Fisk University where he encountered racism and segregation for the first time. After Fisk he went on to earn another bachelor’s degree from Harvard and then completed graduate work at the University of Berlin. He returned to the States and became the first black to earn a PhD from Harvard. DuBois was offered a position at Tuskagee, which would have seen him working alongside Washington, but instead took a position at Wilberforce University in Ohio. Later he taught at Atlanta University and developed a prominent voice domestically and internationally in scientific sociology. It is no surprise, then, that, as an academic tour de force himself, DuBois would champion a very different educational vision than Washington. He focused on the liberal arts with a view to raising up leaders within the black community who would be able to take up prominent positions in politics and business to enact real change in society.

The Talented Tenth

The thesis DuBois developed took on different nuances over time. In an essay entitled “The Talented Tenth,” DuBois lays out his philosophical conviction that the object of education must be the formation of the person rather than money-making or technical skill.

“Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it—this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” 33-34.

He goes on to demonstrate that through the generations leaders rose up even during slavery to provide leadership that ultimately led to emancipation. These were exceptional people, which proves his point that the training of exceptional leaders is what will continue to lead equality of the races. DuBois lays out the program of study for students at his Atlanta University.

“Here students from the grammar grades, after a three years’ high school course, take a college course of 136 weeks. One-fourth of this time is given to Latin and Greek; one-fifth, to English and modern languages; one-sixth, to history and social science; one-seventh, to natural science; one-eighth to mathematics, and one-eighth to philosophy and pedagogy.”

W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” 49.

This sounds very much like the liberal arts education we have promoted in the classical Christian educational renewal movement. From DuBois’ perspective, it is the liberal arts that will train up the next generation of black leaders who will transform society.

Not So Different

Now the delineation of these two educational programs has thus far been expressed in stark terms. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” emphasizes industrial training while DuBois insists on a liberal arts education for the “Talented Tenth.” It is all too easy to draw lines between these pedagogical models in hindsight. Yet there are many ways in which we may see overlap between these two. Yes, the divide between DuBois and Washington was exacerbated by the essay DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk entitled “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” in which he was critical of Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery. However, DuBois later gave perspective to exactly what was at the heart of their disagreement. It was not the educational program, per se, but the trust that dutiful, diligent work would lead to acceptance of a black work ethic among whites in the South. He writes:

“I realized the need for what Washington was doing. Yet it seemed to me he was giving up essential ground that would be hard to win back. I don’t think Washington saw this until the last years of his life. He kept hoping. But before he died he must have known that he and his hopes had been rejected and that he had, without so intending, helped make stronger — and more fiercely defended — a separation and rejection that made a mockery of all he had hoped and dreamed.”

“W.E.B. DuBois,” The Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1965

The hopes and dreams of Washington were dashed not because of a blind faith in his educational program, but in his faith that respectable work would be universally praised by a watching world. If we were solely to look at the educational results in the lives of the individual students, a different perspective emerges. Creating educational programs with the aim of making radical changes in society misplace the actual educational aim. Developing human beings as whole persons is a more fundamental aim, and we are probably safe in saying the programs developed by both Washington and DuBois met this aim.

Moral Formation

My claim that Washington and DuBois are not so different rests not in the details of their program of study, but in the importance both men placed in the moral formation of students. Washington’s technical education placed emphasis on the moral and religious aspects of educations.

“We wanted to give them such an education as would fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time cause them to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people.”

Up from Slavery 160

We get a similar hint at moral and spiritual development in The Souls of Black Folk. For instance, DuBois writes, “sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skin.” (The Souls of Black Folk 261) In his essay “The Talented Tenth,” he delineates two main objectives for education in a post-emancipation society:

“If then we start out to train an ignorant and unskilled people with a heritage of bad habits, our system of training must set before itself two great aims the one dealing with knowledge and character, the other part seeking to give the child the technical knowledge necessary for him to earn a living under the present circumstances.”

“Talented Tenth” 58

Although DuBois was critical of Washington’s compromise, we see here a recognition that educated people must make a living. Yet, the first of the two great aims is knowledge and character. On even a cursory reading of DuBois, one is struck by his thorough knowledge of the Western canon, or what we might call the traditional liberal arts. So by “knowledge” we are not talking about a mastery of facts and figures prominent in an industrial age, but of the long tradition of great authors and ideas. This is knowledge that DuBois sees as transcending racial divide, even though it has come to be thought of as a collection of dead white men’s thoughts. Indeed, DuBois sees this long tradition as the foundation for character and creating a moral society.

So, where we find overlap in the Washington-DuBois debate is on this concept of morality. And it is on this concept we should give serious consideration to the ideas both men propound. These two men were seeking a Renaissance in their time, and in many ways they were the architects of a flowering of black culture. I am quick to add that their reflections on education are instructive not only for a minority culture, but promote global considerations that are crucial for us to get right in our current educational renewal movement.

Ideas not Ideology

Washington and DuBois both seek to promote the great society; one in which racial lines are erased and mutual respect leads to intellectual, moral and technological advance. Both men sought to utilize great ideas as a means of train young men and women. Great ideas are not the domain of one class, sect, race or people. They challenge us and through that challenge transform us through what we might call the dialectical process. We weight different ideas, discerning and discriminating, in order to arrive at a synthesis. Great ideas generate new ideas, transforming not only our minds but also our characters.

Contrast this with ideology. An ideology is a system of ideals often accepted uncritically and unquestioningly. Our current political and social landscape is rife with conflicting ideologies. The impact of the conflict of ideologies is that camps – whether to the right or to the left – attempt to commandeer institutions, whether that be media, government or schools. No longer is our society marked by discourse, dialogue and debate. Instead, ideology forces compliance with a set of preformed beliefs. Education becomes a method of indoctrination. Now one must be careful here, because there are sets of true propositions enfolded in these ideologies. The problem is that nothing is up for debate. Questioning the ideology is the same as denial of the ideology, and one becomes excommunicated from the “group think.”

As an educational renewal movement, there is a temptation to offer a counter set of agendas. “Okay, fine,” we might say, “the public schools are promoting the agenda of gender fluidity, then we’ll promote the alternative agenda.” I’m struck, however, that this was not the strategy of DuBois or Washington. Despite racism and segregation, they sought to train students in intellectual and moral skills that would enable them to enter into the discourse of the greater society. Classical Christian schools must avoid the allure of ideological agenda and remain true to training students in the logic and rhetoric that will prepare our graduates to take up nuances positions and speak persuasively from a place of well-developed convictions.

Hand, Head, and Heart

The classical Christian school movement might be more inclined towards the DuBois educational program. He, after all, promotes the very same liberal arts tradition we call home. However, DuBois himself saw the liability of creating an elite class that becomes self-perpetuating; enamored of its own self-importance rather than utilizing its position to raise all of society. Thus, a Washington-DuBois synthesis is well worthy of consideration.

The phrase “hand, head, and heart” comes from Washington. (Up from Slavery 85) This is a valuable triad to frame a fully embodied philosophy of education. I really like this phrasing pulled from the website of the Ecclesial Schools Initiative, “A classical education beckons learners toward goodness, truth, and beauty, wherever it may be found, integrating faith into all areas of learning, and helping students acquire the habits of heart, body, and mind that are essential for living a flourishing human life.” Kevin Clark, founder of the Ecclesial Schools Initiative, is one of the authors—along with Ravi Jain—of The Liberal Arts Tradition (reviewed here). Technical skill is recognized in this book as a “wholly legitimate pursuit.” In other words, we cannot be so singularly focused on the intellectual and moral development of our students that we leave no room for skills development. Clark and Jain write:

“The liberal arts are only intended to be the tools of learning to be used in all other studies. The three branches of philosophy and, in addition, theology, then contain the integrated tapestry of all other knowledge as represented by the innumerable particular sciences, such as biology, ethics, economics, and chemistry. Moreover, professional degrees, to be acquired later, recognize that other skills (arts) are needed for one’s vocation.”

Clark and Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition, 7

To this might be added apprenticeship in a trade as opposed to professional degrees. More and more the collegiate landscape has become overly expensive relative to its waning value due to the ideological agendas present in higher education. Graduates from classical Christian schools might be better placed in trade apprenticeships or military service. All of this to say that the liberal arts are a necessary element in learning the knowledge and character required to live a flourishing life. That life, though, needs to be embodied in vocations that support and promote flourishing. I highly recommend reading through Jason’s article “Apprenticeship in the Arts” where he explores professions and trades in light of Chris Hall’s Common Arts Education.

Educational Renewal in Light of 1895

The momentous occasion of Washington’s “Atlanta Speech” in 1895 marks a period of reflection and debate over education, particularly between Washington and DuBois. It is striking to note that 1895 was also the year when the first professional American football match was played (Sept. 3), the first automobile race occurred (Nov. 28), and the first moving picture film was shown (Dec. 28). When we consider how much society has been transformed by the onset of these modern artifacts, we can see that a significant aspect of what Washington and DuBois were wrestling with was not just racial in nature, but also pertained to how modernism eroded conceptions of individual character and community cohesion.

The impact of modernism has left us with a society that is fractured and hurting. Hopefully by tracing the debate between Washington and DuBois, we can see lines of constructive thought that invigorate our own educational renewal movement. We have in both Washington and DuBois compatriots who are deeply concerned to cultivate virtue in students for the betterment of society. If Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk or “The Talented Tenth” are not yet in your curriculum, I highly recommend their adoption. Perhaps this review of their work has inspired you to consider ways to broaden your understanding of the outcomes for classical Christian education. Perhaps our students, trained in the liberal arts, are exactly what our society needs to lead us out of our current political catastrophe. Perhaps our students, educated holistically in hand, heart and head, will embody the lives of flourishing that is the true outcome of a good education.

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One of the best aspects of conventions is the opportunity to meet new people and deepen old friendships. The Symposium began with guests arriving and mingling with one another over coffee.

Emma Foss, music teacher at Coram Deo Academy, let a time of worship to kick off the event. She structured the time of worship around Paul’s triad expressed in Colossians 3:16 to “sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.”

The first keynote address entitled “Cultivating the Joy of Learning in the Classical Classroom” was given by Jason Barney. He developed his thinking about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow. He based many of his thoughts on his book The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow through Classical Education, but also extended his thinking to apply flow in practical ways.

Participants could choose topics in the first breakout session, with tracks catering to teachers or school leaders. After a catered lunch, Patrick Egan presented the second keynote address on “Cultivating Virtue through Habit Training.” He connected the dots between Aristotle’s conviction that virtues are cultivated through habits, the biblical mandate to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6), and Charlotte Mason’s method of habit training.

A second breakout and guided discussion session preceded the final event; a panel discussion with all three Educational Renaissance authors moderated by David Seibel, Head of School at Coram Deo Academy. It was a discussion about discussion-based learning. The group differentiated discussions from other methods of learning and considered some practical applications for different grade levels and subject areas.

We are grateful for all the participants in this inaugural event. The staff at Coram Deo Academy did an excellent job hosting the event. We look forward to next year’s event. Stay tuned for further information about the date and location for the Educational Renaissance Symposium 2022.

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