“Classical education” making a small comeback
This trend is of interest:
The future of the controversial classical education movement will be showcased later this month [it already has occurred] when Columbia University senior lecturer Roosevelt Montás is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at a national symposium hosted by Great Hearts, the biggest classical charter network.
The views of Montás, author of the widely praised memoir “Rescuing Socrates,” are well to the left of many in the classical charter movement, which is rooted in Christian conservatism. What makes Montás’ upcoming speech so notable, then, is the signal it sends about the movement’s effort to diversify its brand and project a welcoming attitude as it seeks to expand beyond conservative strongholds and suburbs where it began.
But not everyone is enamored of the effort, neither educational conservatives nor local school officials, unions, and progressive advocates. The latter liken classical charters to a Trojan Horse, sneaking quasi-Christian right-wing dogma into public education under the cover of liberal arts. …
In all, there are about 250 classical charters today, according to one study, making them a small niche within the broader charter sector of 8,000 schools and campuses …
By making common cause with a range of prominent black and Latino thinkers and educators like Montás, classical charter leaders hope to show that their style of moral education is valuable to students from all backgrounds and beliefs.
There is no reason a classical education would have to be tied to belief in a specific religion. As some in the movement have said:
“We base ourselves in the West, in the culture of freedom that produced the Magna Carta, the founding documents of this country, and the civil rights movement,” said Dan Scoggin, co-founder of Great Hearts and a Claremont alum. “We read Marx, Rousseau – writers who push back on the Christian tradition, but it’s also a big part of Western culture. To those who try to pigeonhole classical charters as pseudo-Christian, no, we are not.”
Here’s a website to promote classical education with a broader outreach.
I wish them luck. Education has been so destructive in recent years, and the rot so pervasive, that it’s hard to come up with something that could reverse it. Any movement that would do so would have to be able to appeal to a broad swath of people, and academic rigor can be a very tough sell.
NOTE: See also this.
“We base ourselves in the West, in the culture of freedom that produced the Magna Carta, the founding documents of this country…”
Wonder what “culture” that could have been?
I once read that Duane Allman “stole” licks off Miles Davis “Kind of Blue’ album.
I know that many jazz artists including Miles Davis “stole” licks from other artists including classical artists. All the jazz greats know their classical.
Im not a Jazz expert, but some of it is
well, listen
https://youtu.be/1MvCnQIAQNM
John Guilfoyle:
If you’re talking about Western civilization of the time, it was based on many foundations: Christianity, its earlier influence Judaism (see this for the limitations on the rights of kings in ancient Israel), the feudal system and its effects, the Enlightenment (later on), and the idea of the rule of law.
On the latter principle – the rule of law, as well as the allegation that it has divine underpinnings – please see this post, with particular attention to Noahide law #7.
I wish I could delete that. Guilty of skimming.
I only skimmed the article, because it does not correlate with my experience with the movement at all. I kept hoping the article would make sense.
There is a huge emphasis on the Greeks and Romans (spoiler alert, the Romans were no friends of the Christians) at such schools, to the extent that Latin and Classical Greek are taught.
It is literal, classical Liberalism. There were many Christian apologists and scholars who wrote great works on the subject, so those subjects are taught, but so is a wide breadth of other material. Even atheist philosophers and writers are taught.
Seems like a fear tactic to scare parents into thinking such schools are Christian and/or right wing indoctrination camps. Sad.
I taught a class for a year at just such a school, purpose built for Junior High aged boys from disadvantaged homes. All boys attend on 100% scholarship, paid by donors of many creeds and colors. Although bright, most all of the incoming sixth graders are a year behind their peers from less disadvantaged areas. At graduation, three years later, most are a year ahead of that same peer group. In other words, it works.
I’m pretty sure Vivek Ramaswamy attended such a school in Ohio. Vivek. Who is Hindu. While majority Christian, I know from first hand experience the schools in my area oriented on classic education have Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist students as well as many atheists.
I believe the now forming University of Austin is passed on these principals and is not associated with any faith, Christian or otherwise. Weren’t all of the Ivies founded as Christian colleges?
Every part, down to the last vestige of Caucasian civilization must be eliminated, especially it’s history.
The only way that the Caucasian race can atone for its ‘ancestral sins’ is through racial, cultural and national suicide.
“Shakespeare through a glass wokely, as new book accuses legendary writer of ‘white-people-making’”
https://nypost.com/2023/03/13/shakespeare-through-a-glass-wokely-as-new-book-accuses-legendary-writer-of-white-people-making/
I’ve used this word classical pretty near my whole life, bar the first six or seven years I suppose. To say a bit more, it isn’t as though I didn’t have an iintention in mind when doing so: I meant something by it, though the something surely varied from time to time; an epitome here, an excellence there, a shining by-god best of all there was or could ever be on yet another occasion, and over this way another, narrower category, a special time period of musical brethren in associated styling propounding a permanent beauty into the universe. There are probably other meanings I’m missing just now, but that’s ok, and not where I’m aiming anyhow.
It’s the origin of the thing that gets to, or puzzles me.
Of course for the longest time, as with so many other terms which seep unbeknownst into our lives and speech (I’m looking at you, CULTURE) without our having fashioned them, or determined their trajectories in any meaningful sense, this one, this classic, suddenly jumped out at me, demanding I find where it came from (and why? well maybe, one day). So I went looking.
And? Yeah, and. Apparently it’s from the Latin word for a marine, as in a naval infantryman. Jeez Louise. What the hell kinda thing is that?
its earlier influence Judaism (see this for the limitations on the rights of kings in ancient Israel)
A tenth doesn’t actually sound all that bad. That’s the rate in the lowest 2024 US tax bracket. UK’s lowest rate is 20%. Canada’s is 15%, Australia’s is 19%. So much for Israelite kingship vs common law. Though I suppose what Samuel was describing may have been more of a wealth tax really, though it did seem apply to each years’ harvest.
Niketas Choniates:
From the link:
The idea was that the law limits the king and is separate from the king.
Neo…precisely!
It was the Biblical worldview of Christendom which allowed the Archbishop of Canterbury to hand the King a document aimed at preserving peace & extending freedoms & rights beyond the throne.
That Dan Scoggin fellow can read Marx & Rousseau & pushback against Christianity all he wants & he’ll end up where we are now. Cut yourself adrift from that Biblical worldview & it’s a mighty rough ocean to sail. You don’t have to link yourself to a particular faith expression, but to pretend the foundation beneath your feet isn’t…
well one should be familiar with Rousseau and Marx, because ‘we’re soaking in it’
the Jacobin spirit of the former, inspired the Terror, and the anarchists like the so called Occupy and Antifa, like the squatters, again a euphemism for outright theft of property,
Socrates is an interesting character, he opposed the council of 300, which were the oligarchy that arose out of the ruins of Athens defeat, one of his lead pupils Plato’s solutions were the philosopher kings, because well the people had made a hash of it, IF Stone made a big deal of the Trial of Socrates, as if it made his point, in the wars against Civilization
well one should be familiar with Rousseau and Marx, because ‘we’re soaking in it’
FWIW, the Great Books set which grew out of of the U Chicago classical education project includes Rousseau and Marx.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
Related: Classics and the Public Sphere
https://ricochet.com/1260883/classics-and-the-public-sphere/
I’m amused that the critics of classical charters liken them to a Trojan Horse. How would they or their readers know that appellation without knowledge of the classics?