Today is the first of the Back to Basics series where I attempt to share the knowledge and insights I've gained from nearly a decade of asking over and over again 'what is classical education actually?' And I've decided to start with A Hot Take.
One of the very first pithy descriptions I heard about the modern classical education movement was that it was the way everyone was taught until a hundred years ago. This definition has some very clear benefits: It's intriguing, it brings the weight of tradition and historicity to bear on the mind, and best of all, it's short. Another one I heard recently along the same lines was that classical education was not a new trend. Even shorter! Unfortunately, both of these definitions fall short, mostly because they're not super-duper true. They're a little bit true, but the direct ties they claim to have between the ancient past and the present are... overstated.
I think that this might be one of the more controversial takes I have within the classical community. The idea that classical education is not just participating or continuing an ancient idea of education, but actually is that idea of education reborn is pretty ingrained in some parts of the community (you didn't know that there was a classical community, but boy is there. Remind me to do a series one day on all the different kinds of classical education and how they fight each other.). I don't think, however, that there's really an honest way to truly claim that classical education is anything other than a uniquely modern educational movement that began truly in the 1950s.
I tried to write up the history of western education and realized that there's no real way to do that in a single blog post. If I'm devoted to one thing it's not getting too long or academical. So, I'm going to cheat a bit. I think that understanding how education and our understanding of education have evolved over the past two millennia has been incredibly helpful for me as a classical educator. It helped me understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. So I think diving into what education was in those eras is really important. However, I think that a summary of the goals of education in those eras will be enough to show for now that classical education is a fundamentally different enterprise than education was in the distant past.
I think that looking at who education was for in the past is almost enough to support my claim. For example, in the ancient Greek and Roman world education was almost solely the purview of wealthy freemen. In medieval Europe, it was almost solely reserved for the clergy class in the early middle ages, the aristocrats, and the clergy as the centuries rolled on, and finally, by the time you inch toward the Renaissance education has certainly expanded its scope but is still reserved for the clergy, aristocrats, and nuvo riche middle-class professionals. The Enlightenment era stayed pretty much the same, offering education mainly to those who could afford it, however, the increased availability of books allowed many men from lower classes to start sneaking into the educated elite. They had to really want it though. It's not until the late eighteenth century and really the nineteenth century that people felt like the lowest classes should maybe have the opportunity to learn anything in a formal educational setting, and it's not until the twentieth century that some countries, including the United States, made education compulsory for everyone regardless of class.
History shows us that there was a trend over time toward making educational opportunities increasingly available to all men regardless of class, station, income, etc. However, it's impossible to overstate how radical compulsory education is in the grand scheme of history. This is not the idea that educational opportunities should be available to everyone, which was the historical trend, but that everyone must receive the same basic education without reference to desire or necessity.
There's a point to all of this, though. Who education is for reveals a lot about what the goal of education is. The ancient world, ancient Greece and Rome, reserved education for the social elite because education was meant to create statesmen. A peasant farmer didn't need to know how to read or write. He didn't need to know any mathematics beyond the basics that are evident to reason and sense. He didn't need to know how to speak well in front of a crowd. He needed to know how to plow, how to sow and reap. (It is true that the Roman Republic prized itself on having a ruling class who were down-to-earth, think of the gentleman farmer Cincinnatus, but it's important to note that Cincinnatus was not a peasant farmer who became a politician, he was a wealthy elite who preferred farming to politicking.) Education to craft the small class of ruling elite does not sound like any educational goal one would hear today, even in a classical school.
Look then at the Middle Ages. Which class was the most educated? The clergy class. In the early Middle Ages, it would not have been at all unusual to find members of the nobility who were illiterate. As time went on, the noble classes would begin to educate their children, but if one looks at the conversations surrounding the purpose of education in the Middle Ages they have a decidedly religious flavor. Theology became the queen of all academic disciplines, all other areas of learning were her handmaidens. The purpose of education then? To better contemplate God and to better understand the Christian religion. This will probably strike a chord with those who work at Christian classical schools, but again it's important to remember that this view of education still very much existed within a class system. It was not for everyone, especially as the clergy became inundated with the second and third sons of noble families in an effort avoid inheritance issues.
The later Middle Ages and the Renaissance took a bit more of a utilitarian approach. Machiavelli might be the best person to look at here. The clergy were educated, the nobles were educated, but an increasing number of former peasants (really skilled artisans and merchants) were becoming incredibly wealthy. This new 'middle class' latched onto education, forming the majority of lawyers and doctors. What was education for now? Power. Education served to divide those with means from those without. This is admitedly a necessary oversimplification of a complicated era, but the general point still holds - who education is for on a practical level tells us a lot about what many people thought it was for. Again, I don't think many classical educators would agree with the principle that the point of education is to maintain or gain social and political clout. Even if we look at the humanist movement, which would have claimed that education served to unlock human potential, it is important to remember that human potential is reserved for those who have the monetary means to attain it. There was not a lot of educational philanthropy going on before the 19th century.
As we move into the Enlightenment, education was meant to produce a gentleman. Class divides were just beginning to erode. A gentleman in this era could be self-made, and you have men like Jefferson writing about schools that would be populated by those with the most merit, regardless of class. These schools are still not for everyone. The idea of class based on historical title or wealth was becoming unpopular, but men like Jefferson weren't advocating for the abolition of class or even radical equality. They were pushing for a class-based society based on merit. A meritocracy. This is closer to what classical schools do, but it's still not really what the goal of most classical schools is. Most classical educators would push back at the idea that the best education should be reserved for the best.
That brings us almost to where we are now. More democratic minds prevailed. Education has become compulsory from ages five to sixteen. Why? What are we attempting to do? We're not attempting to craft a ruling class. Compulsory education makes that impossible. Ruling classes are small, and even in a country where even the children of former slaves can now and do sit in the highest courts of power, an educational system that serves all men cannot focus on creating political leaders. In the same vein, a public education system in a pluralistic society cannot focus on creating Christian clergy. Even if all students were practitioners of Christianity, education specifically designed to create a priest class would serve only the needs of the few for whom that is a calling.
In our society, you do see thinkers who view the educational system as a tool to wield power - political and social power. The proper educational training allows one to join an inner circle of our intellectual and political betters. Education itself is a tool to be wielded in the pursuit of this power. You see this in the progressive movement in the nineteenth century, with the communist takeover of the teacher schools in the 1960s, and in the leftist movements of the present day. Classical education usually unequivocably sets itself against this view of education.
So, where does this leave us? What is classical education? It's not the way everyone was taught until a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago everyone was not taught. It is new. It has to be. Classical education is not a useful enterprise in the way people typically mean useful. It certainly can and does provide an excellent education for those who will rule us, both politically and religiously, but the production of ruling classes is not its goal. It is a powerful education because it is centered on the pursuit of truth, but the seeking of power for its own sake is not its goal. Classical education is not old, but it is traditional. Because classical education exists in a world where education is compulsory its goal must be universal. At bottom, I think, if you speak to most classical educators and most people who think about what classical education is for, it comes to this: Classical education seeks to create rational and moral persons. Almost every person has the capacity to be rational to one degree or another. Almost every person has the capacity to be moral to one degree or another. A universal education's goal must be universal.
In some ways, modern classical education is superior to the historical kinds of education from which it stems. The idea that all persons are worthy of the opportunity of developing all aspects of their humanity is an excellent one. The recognition of the fact that all students are not just minds but also souls is not one that is unique to classical education, but classical education's synthesis of modern democratic notions with traditional morality is laudable. It's a kind of education created in a modern world to be used in modern schools which are fundamentally different from their ancient counterparts. Its form and its goals are modern (and we must be careful not to automatically equate modern with bad in a sort of reverse chronological snobbery), but it does retain a connection to the past through its understanding of what a good man is.
Classical education is, in a sense, the product of evolution. It is not ancient education but it is descended from historical impulses that have been working themselves out for over two thousand years. It retains vestiges from the older models that preceded it, but it has adapted itself for the world in which it finds itself.
So, what is classical education? It is the product of two thousand years of educational practice working itself out in the minds of educators long dead and in the policies of societies that have come and gone. It is an animal whose ancestors we can trace back in the fossil record, related to the dead, but better for living.
