← Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Contrasting Classical and Progressive Education
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- [00:03]
A
You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed Podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamedforhillsdale.com and enroll today. That's unashamedforhillsdale dot com to experience the Genesis story alongside the Robert.
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B
Welcome to The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, bringing you insight into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula and teacher led classrooms. Now your host, Scott Bertram.
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A
Thanks for listening. The Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast is part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio. You also can find more information on topics and ideas discussed on this show at our website, k12 hillsdale.edu. we're joined by Joshua Villareal. He is a teacher support lead at Hill K12 education office. Joshua, thanks so much for joining us.
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B
Hey, thanks Scott. Good to be here.
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A
Conversation today about progressive versus Classical education. Joshua when you hear placed in that way progressive versus classical education, what tension, what big ideas come to mind?
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B
Yeah, that's a great question, Scott. And actually, if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'd like to talk about the modern American cinematic masterpiece Die Hard.
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A
Oh yeah, of course.
- [02:19]
B
To kind of start this way. Yeah, it's a great movie in and of itself. But there's this, there's this moment in the film that stuck out to me for a long time as a classical educator. Hans Gruber, the villain of the story, for anybody who hasn't seen this movie, claims to quote Plutarch, the great Roman historian, when he confidently compares himself to Alexander the Great after storming Nakatomi Plaza. You know, he's up in the big table, I think he's about to get the money. And he says, and Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Which, by the way, is a misquote. That's not a real quote in Plutarch, but it's attributed to Plutarch. And then almost winking at the modern classical education movement, he then says, benefits of a classical education. His ability to quote Plutarch is from a classical education for much of America's history. I think that we were trained to think of what could be perceived as European with some disdain, unless it was related to Britain under Churchill. But even the movie Die Hard overall sort of shows the triumph of like a New York working class police officer for the more effeminate and weak Europeans. He's got all this practical skill, he's physically excellent and he's got this intuitive knowledge that helps him single handedly dominate these well armed but poorly trained Europeans who rely too much on technology. You know, I mean, he even loses his shoes. It shows that even when he's shoeless and glasses in his feet, he's a better fighter than all these guys. Yeah, kind of. For all intents and purposes, though John McLean is presented as a virtuous man. You know, he ignores Argyle's invitation to meet some girls at the beginning of the movie. He opts to preserve the integrity of his marriage and feels threatened by what seems to be Mrs. McLean's loss of integrity to the marriage there. Maybe he's a little prideful, he's kind of surprised that his wife's career has taken off. But this doesn't really strike the audience as extraordinary over the top vice in any way. But John McLean has had an education of a particular kind. He's virtuous and he's a warrior. But it's an education that disregards what's done for its own sake and largely values practicality. There's something about this that's still good. Not everybody needs to be a Shakespeare scholar. But at the same time, education that lacks a focus on some of these higher ideals is going to be an education that's lacking. And this movie itself doesn't cause a suspicion of classical. Classical education. I think it's a. It's a moment where we see this sort of American cultural belief that is very much filled with this idea that we've moved past or progressed past whatever a classical education was, that we are now in this kind of epoch of civilization. We can just sort of forget all that and focus on practical.
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A
So then how would you define education itself? What is education supposed to do? What is its role for a human being?
- [05:13]
B
Yeah, a great question. The word itself comes from the Latin educatio, which means to mold or to train or to bring up. And it corresponds to the Greek word paideia. And in Greece this connotated more than simply learning practical subjects or particular subjects, but it referred to the total moral, physical and intellectual formation of a child. That these things weren't existing in separate spheres, that they were all sort of talking to Each other, that one affected the other. And really, whatever an education is, you know, if there's something about an education that is. It's formative, we can see that it's moving from one state to another, that whatever it is, even a progressive or in a classical education, that it needs to encompass the development of knowledge and skills. We know that it needs to. That it presumes that the students start in one place and ends in another. You know, from being uneducated to being educated, from being molded to. I am molded now. From developing to developed. And we also know that an education needs to be a lifelong process. It's not complete. Right. And institutional education needs to prepare students for a life of learning. But we also, at the same time, sort of hope that in progressive and classical education that the students are prepared for the world, that there is a world out there that requires a certain kind of person, you know, a person that doesn't lose themselves in whatever is. Is out there. And I think progressive and classicists or a classical education have tried to answer that question in particular ways. And I'd start to sort of say that the progressive answered that question by accepting that the changing realities of man are the only true, given that things change and that we need to educate students towards the changing elements in the world rather than any kind of transcendent principle, which would probably be the principal component of a classical education.
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A
So a little history here. How did progressive education emerge historically and at least originally? What problem was it trying to solve?
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B
You know, I think we can largely locate progressivism with a system of American thought that begins in the late 19th century and is ultimately responsible for overhauling American government prior to and through the Second World War. And I think there are some noble intentions and philosophical assumptions in Progressivism. You know, a lot of big names are associated with them, like. Like Teddy Roosevelt. You know, they want to end poverty, they want to end corruption in government, and they want to end inequality. So a lot of these guys are civil rights activists. A lot of these guys are very religious, but they seek to end these things through. Through government action by, to quote Boromir, to use the one Ring to destroy the one Ring. And that perhaps is where it starts to have some. Some issues. It's important to remember that American progressivism was very much influenced by progressive movements that begin in Europe as well, that these conversations are very much a development of ideas coming from the Enlightenment. But in Europe, there was a shift in Germany, particularly in response to the rise of industry and modern science. The traditional school was called the gymnasium and students primarily studied grammar, logic and rhetoric in Latin with a little bit of Greek. But the goal was to enculturate them into a Western way of looking at the world. And there was a belief, though, that arose in the mid 19th century that schools needed to change to adapt to the circumstances created by industrialization. If modern chemistry and physics were the new paradigms, or if they seemed to provide a way of knowing that was more accurate than what's commonly called the humanities, shouldn't students just study physics and chemistry? And so a second form of school was set up with this scientific world in mind. It was called the Real Schulen. And instead of focusing on the nuances of language and replicating classical, stylistic and substantive forms, the school is divided into a series of subjects to teach them what was most appropriate to know in the modern era. So the school, the world was cut up, intended for specialization in arts that are useful and practical for the flourishing of basic human needs and desires. You know, the historian became. We have historians and scientists and literary expert. And all these fields are kind of separated and brought into these competing ideas about the. What the world looks like, but with this kind of awareness that what's going to tell us what's really true or real, it's going to be what's. Whatever's in the sciences, physics, chemistry and biology. And this subjectification of education in Germany had pretty serious consequences for. For the US
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A
how has that progressive vision shape the way that most Americans think and in particular, experience school today?
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B
Yeah, this perhaps progressive education begins in Germany, but we have a lot of people who move from Germany to the United States or move from Europe to the United States, like Montessori is one of these people. And then in America, we've also got John Dewey, famously as kind of one of the major proponents of this second term. So on the one hand, we have the. What I'm sort of calling the subjectification of education and really oriented towards the sciences. And the second phase is the turn to the individual, you know, towards subjective experience as a means to facilitate human growth and development. And this is a natural development, in my opinion, from the initial division of the school into subjects, the school was divided into subjects. The education needs to mostly be about how do students figure out which subjects they like the best. So let's expose students to a wide variety of things such that they'll discover their own interests and then make a career out of that sort of thing. And I think there's something in there that's sort of attractive to us. And so far as human beings long to be integrated, we long to do things that we want to do and we long to pursue things that our inclinations propel us towards. But there was a threefold problem with this form of education. The first, I would say is that it's education is reduced to subjective desire and experience. We know that students don't always know what's good for them, that they need adults to tell them, tell them what's good. There's a presumption that students desires and experiences are sure guides towards. Towards good. They're good. And that does not always lead them to the good. The second thing I'd like to say is that it creates a kind of, or it presumes a kind of gap between the individual and statesmanship. Aristotle has this idea that human beings form communities, form cities naturally. That it's part of the very natural makeup of human beings to live in common, to live in a polis. And much of the idea of the Enlightenment with something like social contract theory is that humans living together is not a natural act, that it's something that has to be forced. So you have something like social contract theory start to come through. And I'm kind of brushing over in broad strokes here. I'm sure there are some political philosophers that Hillsdale that would want me to be more specific here. But I think for the sake of creating a narrative, this is sort of helpful. And I'd even say that the last thing that kind of becomes a problem is that education becomes oriented towards the production of the worker and thus anti philosophic. It becomes too skill oriented. It doesn't teach man that he is the kind of creature that transcends the world of work, even despite the clear need for labor. That man actually is a very distinct thing amongst all the other animals that has some skills that drastically put a gap between us and the whatever animal is the most related to us genetically. I think the, I think the problem that the overarching problem is that education becomes an education and slavery from both ends of the spectrum. If oriented towards the world of change, institutional education will be forever subject to the rapidly changing interpretations and insights of the world afforded by modern modes of interpretation. And if it's overly oriented towards the child, we raise kids that are fundamentally self interested, materialistic and overly concerned with production. And so I think it's almost like a snake is eating its own tail. The child is raised self centered according to their fleeting passions and desires, without questioning whether or not something is good, whether it should be done that way. Or should be done at all. And then this leads to the creation of technology that itself is enslaved to meeting basic human needs without determining what those basic human needs actually are.
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A
On the other side, as we talk progressive versus classical education, let's define that. What's meant by classical education or liberal education or what's its fundamental aim?
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B
Yeah, and I think while it's easy to start to paint a picture that's sort of dour, I think, you know, the first thing I like to say about a classical education is that it's an education primarily oriented towards freedom, especially if progressive education is oriented towards slavery. We really love the word freedom in the city of God. St. Augustine writes, for peace is a good so great that even in this earthly and mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure, nothing we desire with such zest or find to be more thoroughly satisfying. And I'd like to say that peace, that freedom is also another one of those words. And we seem to kind of know that freedom and peace are mysteriously united to each other. So I'd say freedom is going to be the fundamental aim of a classical or a liberal education.
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A
And then what's the relationship between education and freedom? How does an older educational model understand freedom differently from more modern approaches?
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B
Yeah, I think the first thing to see is that we want to be free from the burdens of childhood, from a lack of self sufficiency. And this is going to be different from progressive education where we're moving away from needing and learning to provide for ourself and others. We're moving away from being controlled by childhood passions and getting one's own way. In ancient Rome, libertas, the root word for liberty and freedom meant freedom from childhood. It had that direct connotation that moving away from childhood, that it's a good thing for a boy to become a man and a girl to become a woman. Aristotle says a man is prior to a boy in being, even though a boy is prior to a man in time, that it's whenever someone is living and acting as a man or a woman, it actually is. There's something, a fullness and a richness to, to that life that is more worthy than simply, simply being a child. And even the Christians saw a deeper meaning to the beginning of this education, that part of one's education consisted in freedom, freedom from sin. And the Christians too weren't. Even though you've got the passage where, you know, let the children come to me, the Christians also saw that there was it's good to become an adult you know, St. Paul with when I was a child, I walked like a child. But when I became a man, I set aside childish things. And even St. Augustine has a moment in the Confessions, a very long moment where he apologizes for being a baby, basically apologizes for needing things from his mother. And in universally, the ancient expectation was that they would participate in the life of the community. That life in common, a political life, was the very space where they could become virtuous. So in education teaches students how to respond to their own desires and to put them in their proper place. All desires are good when they are ordered correctly. And freedom from personal desire is necessary to participate in a deeper level of freedom. So that's the first part. There would be a second part. If it's not just freedom from something, it's freedom for something else. And I've already kind of alluded to this. The Greek word Eleutheria commentated freedom for something, really freedom for rule. That's the second part of the classical education. And then freedom for contemplation, the third. For a long. We know this is. This is apart from our sort of modern sentiments, that a classical education in the past was an education for a class of people, the ruling class. We know that rule is a political term referring to the law determining action by a ruler. And if anybody needs to receive an education, it is the person or people whose decisions affect the most amount of people. Thus the need for an education shrinks or expands within a given regime. A democracy requires widespread education in the way a monarchy does, not to democracy. The expectation is that everybody participates in government. This means in America, we need an education for the American. An education that teaches Americans what this cultural and national identity means and is. America was formed with the expectation that it was the kind of regime where people could be free. That it created a government that provided a juridical apparatus that would prevent competing. That would permit competing worldviews to live alongside each other with their natural rights protected by that apparatus. And to participate in this new government vary depending on the particular office. So at the most general level, citizens could vote for their representatives at the federal and state level. And so in this way we can see that an education is political insofar as it involves a participation in government, but it's also not just political in a partisan way. You know, there weren't Republicans and Democrats in ancient Athens. Politics includes the very basic relationships that are most necessary to for human flourishing. It teaches students and the populace how to be good sons, good daughters, parents, good workers, patriots and Then it is involved with the religious life of some kind, does tend to be involved with the religious life of some kind. And then it really, if students are learning that there are nobler things than mere self preservation, that perhaps the greatest political act is to care for one's brethren, that creates a very, a very noble populace. But I'd love to, you know, sort of if you know, one end it's freedom from passions for rule and then for contemplation. An education can't just also be about learning about one's own place, time and culture. Even though I hope America lasts for another 500 years, it's possible that America won't continue in the same way in the future, just like that's happened. Or it's, you know, its identity might change over time in the same way that that's happened to most countries. And so an education also needs to be about something that goes beyond one's own time, place and culture. And education must also be about the things that don't change, the eternal things, the things that are subject to speculation, to reason and to contemplation. And an education should open up, open one up to the highest truths, to the goods that transcend the immediate needs and observations of our senses. We know that the world of humanity is contingent, that things don't always have to be one way or the other. And yet there appear to be laws and truths that exist and perhaps ground any given circumstance. And ancients and medievals, again speaking broadly here, saw these studies as grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, physics, music, geometry, metaphysics, and then some form of religion and theology. But these were the kinds of things that could exist apart from any particular, particular place and time.
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A
How does this classical vision then translate into actual classroom practices, actual curricular choices in an American context?
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B
Yeah, I think speaking as a member of the K12 office, Hillsdale has a very unique way of looking at classical education and trying to implement this thousands of year long history into, into a new context while respecting the sort of timeless truths of contemplation. And I think there's a couple of things that we do. We focus on tried and true teaching methods. So this means that at a Hillsdale K12 school there's going to be cursive, rote, memorization, sentence diagramming, and even like a Latin grammatical education, there's going to be a particular care and importance for a physical education. I really like the way that we at Hillsdale K12 school talk about, talk about the role that PE plays, that just as an ancient Athens or the ancient world Part of the formation of the person is to include a robust physical, physical education. There's going to be a focus on the fine arts, liberal arts and sciences. The fine arts, which aim directly at the imitation of the world in some way. Each of these teach what is most important for a given culture at a specific time. The liberal arts have already mentioned what the medieval formulation of that was. Grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. These things at our school actually have classes, except, yeah, all of them have their own classes at one point or another. There's going to be a study of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. There's going to be a study of the sciences, biology, chemistry and physics, and then some moral and political philosophy. I think one of the things that schools could start to consider is that there should be some kind of component of education that's oriented directly towards a virtuous citizenship. And so learning about how our government works. Then a senior thesis where students will take all the things that they learn and begin to participate in political life insofar as they have ideas about the world and that they can communicate those ideas effectively.
- [22:50]
A
We have just a minute or two. What do you see as the stakes for students, for families, even just for the culture in general, in choosing one of these educational models over the other? Progressive versus classical, as we've been discussing,
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B
I think we can see that a classical education, like a progressive education, doesn't exist apart from its modern circumstances. It doesn't exist apart from its particular historical and political situation. It doesn't teach towards those things, but it aspires to teach its students the kind of worldview that is capable of responding to the varying needs of history. So I think it speculates about and believes eternal things, both for its own sake, but also for. For helping others. There's a part of the Republic where Socrates Wright says that things that are good for their own sake are good. The things that are done for the sake of something else are also good. But the best things are both, are the things that are good for their own sake and helpful. And I think in this way we can say that a classical education is about freedom, freedom from vice, and for a life of virtue and contemplation.
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A
Joshua Villarreal is teacher support lead at Hillsdale College's K12 education office. Joshua, thanks so much for joining us here on the Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast.
- [24:05]
B
Yeah, great to be here, Scott. Appreciate it.
- [24:07]
A
I'm Scott Bertram. We invite you to like us on Facebook. Search for Hillsdale College K12 classical education. You also can follow us on Instagram hillsdalek12 that's hillsdalek12 on Instagram. Thank you for listening to The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More at Podcast Hillsdale Edu or wherever you get your audio.