Classical worldview Classical worldview
One of the most delightful characteristics of homeschoolers is that they usually show
delightful disregard for most of the educational bureaucracy that has encumbered the
pursuit of true education in our country. Much to the annoyance and chagrin of most
educational institutions, homeschoolers tend to blithely pursue the educational excellence
of their children in total disregard of the many educational hoops that those institutions
are so eager to see them enslaved to.
Most educational institutions have become so obsessed with the hoops of education
(credits, students hours, etc.) because they have lost the conviction that there is a body
of knowledge that comprises the corpus of an education. So what is substituted is
institutional requirements. If you asked an administrator in many of these schools,
“What do I need to get a diploma” you would find they would have reams of
information to give you on all the specifics; however, if you asked “What do I need
to know to be educated?” you would probably find them speechless and quite incapable
of voicing anything but the most vague platitudes. Because they have no idea of what
comprises education, they fall back on institutionalism.
One of the main strengths of classical education is its assertion of a definite body of
knowledge that one needs to master to be an educated Westerner. Some educators think this
notion of definite “canon” of knowledge is very restricting; however, in fact it
is liberating for you are no longer enslaved to pursuing the approval of educational
institutions who provide “USDE grade A” certified education. Despite their great
assertions of authority, such institutions will always be befuddled when we ask
“Where’s the beef?” When you got the beef, the labels you choose are of
little consequence.
Put this in some article-
Remember what education is for. Not the success of some institution, but the enriching of
the homelife; to make our men more courageous and discerning, to make our women more
gracious and insightful, our conversations better competition for the television, out
story telling more captivating, our young men less likely to be the clods that are
incapable of husbanding their wives and our aesthetics tastes more akin to true beauty.
Classical education has a long history of both home-based and conventional school
settings. Our word pedagogue (literally child-leader) actually comes from the ancient
Roman practice of putting a domestic slave in charge of a child’s moral and academic
education. Even though the ancients did have center’s of learning (Plato’s
academy is a good example), it was very common for education to be carried out within the
home.
A good modern example of classical education carried out within the home is the education
of C.S. Lewis. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis recounts with great fondness
his years living with and studying under Kirk, a man whom, because of his tremendous
Socratic abilities, he nicknamed “The Great Knock” Under the tutelage of Kirk
and his wife, Lewis learned to translate French, Italian, German, Greek (especially
Homer), carry on a rigorous line of reasoning and love fine literature.
Even though classical education can be carried out in a conventional context, there are
some incompatibilities between conventional schools and the classical approach. Classical
education aims to educate the “whole man” rather than produce specialists who
are only capable in narrow areas of expertise. The pagans thought that if you were not
bound to eking out your livelihood by toiling in the fields from dawn to dusk, you ought
to pursue the life of the well-rounded “scholar” (from the Greek word skhole-
literally, one who has leisure). It was thought menial to “specialize” in one
task and develop a disproportionate level of skill in that particular area. Philip of
Macedon, upon hearing his son play the harp with great virtuosity, asked him, “Are
you not ashamed to play as well as that?” The King’s assumption was that the
prince should obviously be in need of developing so many other skills that he would not
have enough time to attain such a level of proficiency at the harp. Christians have also
understood their responsibility to develop all of the talents that God has given us. If we
do not set ourselves to developing the many faculties that God has given us, we are
wastefully burying our talents in the earth.
Even though a conventional school can carry the vision of a well rounded education for its
students, the purpose of the conventional school is often to abandon this vision for the
faculty. Usually the main purpose of a conventional school is to give teachers the
opportunity to specialize and avoid the work of having to develop mastery in all areas of
study. Even though students are expected to follow a course of study that demands they be
well rounded, at a conventional school they often study under those who have abandoned
that quest. In order to avoid this weakness, some classically oriented schools, like St.
John’s College, have not allowed their faculties members to be limited to particular
areas of curriculum. Avoiding specialization not only shows greater allegiance to a
unified conception of knowledge, but practically you find that to understand Shakespeare,
you need to understand history and to understand history, you need understand philosophy
and to understand philosophy, you need to understand mathematics and round and round you
go until you find that you cannot truly understand anything without knowing a little about
everything.
The homeschool parent overseeing her child’s education in all areas is actually
closer to the classical ideal than the professional education specialist. Certainly one of
the most ironic aspects of homeschooling is the fact that often it is the parents as well
as the children who end up getting educated. Parents often are forced to become the
well-rounded learners they desire their children to be.
Homeschool parents often feel guilty that they are not able to lead their children by the
nose through the subjects they are studying; however, if the parents have given their
children the tools of learning, they should count it a sign of their success that their
children are able to learn independently. To become educated is to come to know how to
learn. In the words of Dorothy Sayers, “The sole true end of education is simply
this; to teach men how to learn for them selves; and whatever in struction fails
to do this is effort spent in vain.” The perpetual student syndrome is the exact
opposite of the classical ideal. Continual reliance on educational institutions does not
show a dedication to learning, but the fact that one has never really acquired the skills
of learning, but just an amalgamation of subjects. It is shocking how often you see people
traipsing off to the local community college to learn some subject they could very easily
acquire by spending a couple of evenings with the right books. If a teacher has not taught
his students to learn for themselves, he can only be seen as a failure. Sadly, we tend to
equate the level of someone’s education with the amount of time they have spent in
the academic institutions, rather than by how quickly they come to be free of the need for
those institutions.
With the advent of inexpensive videos (see my PHS review of the Great Authors of the
Western Literary Tradition series), educational CD-ROMs, and the Internet there are more
resources than ever for acquiring the information we need. If being an educated man means
to be able to teach oneself, then the classical ideal should be more attainable than ever.
A serious drawback to homeschooling (and unfortunately conventional education) is the need
for an educational community in which to pursue learning. Now educational community is not
just a large number of warm bodies crammed into a dorm, but a close nit group of
individuals who share a mutual desire for further education. Aristotle was correct when he
said that to pursue the intellectual life, one must have friends. We cannot be completely
self-sufficient; we need others who will test our ideas and spur us on to further thought
and probing. Where to find these “friends” is a difficult question indeed;
however, even conventional schools are often a poor source for these friendships. The fact
of the matter is that there will never be many students who are ready to form these types
of friendships and often we will be left to resorting to the Internet and other forms of
distance communicating to bring such children together.
The home is the ultimate “generalist” institution. Few homes have departments
where one can retreat into a narrow specialty and merely focus on their own particular
area of strength. A conventional school is simply a large factory with its division of
labor. The homeschool is the workshop of the individual craftsman who guides his work from
start to finish. He is not fast, he is not well structured, but his work always shows the
signs of his love and attention.
A student who has been given a classical education should have the tools to learn. They
should no longer be dependent on the educational institutions, but be ready to seriously
begin their own labors to become completed educated. But you might ask, “Don’t
they need teachers?” Yes they do, but do not forget that books are teachers and great
books are great teachers. To be truly educated is to be able to learn from these teachers
rather than having another “teacher” lecture to you about what the real teachers
have written. A student who is ready to learn from books can be the ideal homeschool
student. No longer in the need of the hand holding that the institutions provide, he is
ready to establish his own intellectual muscle. Sadly, we have come to see education as
simply a sequence of courses at the completion of which you are deemed
“educated”. If we were willing to see education as a reflection of content
acquired rather than courses completed, we would be free to make educational excellence
our aim and homeschooling our means.
