One of the more challenging aspects of explaining classical education to a curious inquirer or neophyte is in identifying precisely how it deviates from the progressive model we’ve all been brought up with. Although there are many differences between the two, what best encapsulates the essence of classical learning simply and concisely?
You might say the contrast lies in the foundational pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty, and while there’s a strong case here, it can’t be denied that even the most impoverished classroom today attempts to steer students towards some form of the transcendentals (in fact, as humans, we can’t help it). Perhaps studying the “great books” – those repositories of human wisdom and creativity – distinguishes one from the other? If so, this focuses too much on curriculum over pedagogy (and your interlocutor is likely to confuse “classical education” with learning classics). It’s the trivium! Certainly, those three pillars stand proudly as the buttress of classical education; however, this answer commits the opposite mistake of preferencing teaching method over content. Additionally, one would then need to raise the quadrivium and by the time you’re trying to defend astronomy as an immensely important subject or how music is about number relations, the eyes of your friend have glazed over and she’s wishing she’d just kept her mouth shut.
Though the answers above are quite good, I would rather suggest that one uncomplicated yet significant difference between classical and progressive education is the tonal shift in why (and, subsequently, how) a student learns. By tonal, I mean here the attitude or disposition with which we approach any subject. It is the ethos, the why of education. Whether this involves reading Aesop’s fables, memorising algebraic formulae, conducting research on chemical compositions or carefully touching up an oil landscape, the persistent question at the back of the learner’s mind is: Why am I doing this? One can imagine Our Lord giving the sage advice: Seek ye first the why of learning and the how will naturally follow; however, for far too long the West has fanatically pursued the educational how and either ignored the why or hoped it would incidentally reveal itself – and this has not happened. Without a satisfactory answer to the reason behind learning, education for both teachers and students becomes a mercenary activity at the whim of market and socio-political forces.
Such a tonal shift was likely not planned and due more to the expediencies of history than to any single thinker or philosophical movement. (While we can look to John Dewey as an influential figure defending a more practical, experiential form of learning, the scope of his pedagogy was never fully embraced and, when compared to much of what we have today, would appear enlightened even to the most traditionalist mindset.) Historically, education of the academic or scholastic kind was the domain of the wealthy or, publicly, found within institutional religion. The “liberal arts” are so called because, as Aquinas puts it, we can “distinguish them from those arts that are ordained to works done by the body, which arts are, in a fashion, servile”.1 The farmer, blacksmith, carpenter, cooper, domestic servant… – in short, the vast majority of people – have had a predominantly practical education necessary for survival, without the free time to pursue more intellectual studies.
The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Urban working classes and petit bourgeoisie, employed in increasingly sophisticated and technological economies, required more specialised if practical education and that meant schools, operated by governments and private institutions. Couple this with the success of the physical sciences and growth in technology, which inclines a culture to pursue them and favour utility, and a more mechanistic view of man governs society, seeking to “feed the machine” before enlightening it (think Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”), and schooling becomes the training ground for giving a young person the requirements to fulfill the basic necessities of life (get a job). This is a sure responsibility of any society – its citizens must be able to feed themselves – but to build a house on a utilitarian foundation is woefully insecure.
Instead, Maslow should be correctly countered by Frankl: “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” – quoting Nietzsche, who put it more profoundly (if, perhaps, sarcastically): “If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it can take care of itself.”2
How does this tonal shift manifest itself, that is, why do we learn? Classical education responds that students seek knowledge as understanding (intellectus) while contemporary schooling is primarily driven by knowledge as use (utilitas). The intellectus form of knowledge (something like the Greek ἐπίγνωσις or French connaissance) is intimate and changes the soul so that as we learn we become different people; its goal is wisdom, virtue and contentment. Utilitas (something like the Greek τέχνη or French savoir-faire), on the hand, pursues skills and facts (as opposed to knowledge) to primarily change the outside world through technique and have mastery over it.
A simple illustration is in our use of computers today. Computers are a ubiquitous reality we live with, and we know how to manipulate them fairly effectively: browse the internet, type using a word processor, make online purchases, play video games – and for those more advanced than I – design websites, apps and sometimes amazingly unbelievable things with AI. We easily pick up the requisite skills to use computers and then… our education stops there. How many of us actually know how computers work? Very few, I’d wager.
We could apply this principle of utility over understanding to any subject studied in the classroom. I doubt, for instance, that many maths teachers have ever deeply contemplated the philosophy of mathematics or the ontological status of numbers, let alone encouraging their students to do so. In an excellent article on the topic, Dan Murphy summarises the contemporary maths classroom:
“What you will rarely find is the contemplative study of number itself: the profound patterns that emerge when we examine odd and even numbers, the mysterious properties of primes, or the elegant relationships between deficient, perfect, and abundant numbers. We have reduced the mathematical arts to mere computation, trading the wonder of arithmetike for the utility of logistike.”
No faculty is truly immune to this change in perspective. History is not learned to gain wisdom, purpose or moral example from the centuries of the human story but instead to memorise facts and develop analytical skills that can be reproduced in an exam. Likewise, the decline in reading and writing standards, though prompting an increased emphasis on literacy in Australian schools of late, has done so not because an understanding of language itself is valued but because young people need to become more proficient communicators. Does science tell us about God’s creation for our good, and the order and beauty underlying it? No, its main purpose is technical: we ourselves create for our own good.
Perhaps fewer subjects have suffered more from this utilitarian attitude than philosophy and religion. Neither are suited to production nor are they creative or worthwhile from the viewpoint of market forces. The Humanities in its entirety falls under the curse of being “pointless”, and this myopic situation isn’t helped when educators try to sell the liberal arts to students and their families based on marketable skills and how learning them is attractive to potential employers.
Classical education is part of the solution to shift our societal view of learning and provide a distinct outlook. It will do this through three interconnected virtues: curiosity, knowledge and love. To be curious, a mind needs to be teased and tempted along a path. Mere technique cannot inspire such open-mindedness. Instead, the promises of deeper truth, greater goodness or ever-more beauty, are what instil curiosity because they respond to our innate God-directed inner desires.
Curiosity, once aroused, moves the soul towards achieving knowledge, and knowledge transforms the self. The student is not simply the repository of facts or skills, which can be retrieved when required to fulfill a particular task. Rather, knowledge of the subject provides a revelation of truth – and, ultimately, some revelation of God – which changes the student. To say, "I know x" is to say that "x" has in however positive or negative, large or small, a capacity changed the kind of person you are.
Lastly, as the American historian David McCullough astutely noted: “You can’t love what you don’t know much about.” This truism applies to people as much as it applies to whatever the human mind studies. The deep intimacy classical learning provides of the subject engenders an increased love for it, and this, ultimately for lifelong learning.
A tonal shift has occurred in Western education and not for the better. By preferencing utility and how over understanding and why, generations of young people are being deprived of true learning and the opportunity to grow as curious, knowledgeable and loving mature human beings. Although nobody is directly to blame, by doing nothing to redress this problem, we all become increasingly culpable. Classical education offers a viable and venerable ethos towards learning, which, if allowed to flourish in our society, will in time not only help solve the educational crisis we face but will provide a more hopeful and more purposeful future.
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1. Summa Theologica II:I, Q. 57, Art. 3, R. 3.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Missiles”, 12.
