Hillsdale College Podcast Network: “Norms & Nobility” Panel

Date: March 16, 2026
Host: Hillsdale College
Panelists: Dr. John Peterson, Dr. Jonathan Gregg, Dr. Kevin Gary (all Hillsdale College), Ryan Hamill (Ancient Language Institute)
Theme: A deep-dive panel discussion on David Hicks's influential book Norms & Nobility: A Treatise on Education, examining its relevance for classical school leaders and teachers, its treatment of virtue, dogma, democracy, elitism, and modern challenges.

Episode Overview

This episode presents a recording of a panel discussion from the Hillsdale Classical Education Job Forum, focusing on Norms & Nobility. The panelists explore core questions raised in Hicks's book, from the relationship between classical education and democracy, to the roles of norms, dogma, and nobility, and the tension between forming and empowering students. The episode is a thorough guide both to Hicks's arguments and to perennial questions of education, aiming to equip classical educators to better understand and implement the book’s ideals in today’s schools.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction to Hicks and Context

• Dr. John Peterson [01:57]:
  Introduces the panel composition and agenda:
  • Explores questions of democracy in classical education, the aims of student formation vs. empowerment, challenges brought by modernity, and why Norms & Nobility remains essential reading for educators.
  • Explains the historical significance of Hicks’s book at the beginning of the modern classical education movement.

1. The Book’s Purpose, Title, and Initial Tensions

• Dr. Jonathan Gregg on “Norms & Nobility” Title and Early Chapters [03:03]:
  • Describes Norms & Nobility as “the best and most serious book in this field,” uniquely both passionate and youthful.
  • The Ampersand: Queries why Hicks insists on “Norms & Nobility”—with the ampersand—as the title:
    • Wonders if it signals a persistent tension: “Is it meant to indicate that… in addition to the ancient focus, there’s also a concern with the unleisurely punctuated and modern in it?”
    • Notes Hicks’s dissatisfaction with the elitism of Victorian England’s classical schools, emphasizing these “perverted classical education by teaching a hereditary aristocratic ideal intended to serve the ambitions of empire and to preserve the status quo.”
  • Raises core questions:
    • “Doesn’t classical education need something like elite institutions in order to be perpetuated? And doesn’t it lose its character when popularized?”
    • “For Hicks, is the democratic character of modernity inherently desirable, or is it something that classical education accommodates itself to as the spirit of the time?”
  • Summarizes Hicks’s position: Classical education is fundamentally human and ordinary.
    • “It rests on ordinary human activity. It doesn’t rest on accepting expertise from somebody or a method which is not intuitive to a normal, average human being.”
    • The method: beginning with curiosity, imaginative hypotheses, tested by various methods—a contrast to the dehumanizing, non-intuitive approaches of Baconian and Cartesian science.
  • Tension: Highlights the need for balance: “You need to maintain a tension between these things, between a dogmatic account and a logical account, between story and dialectic.”

2. Formation vs. Empowerment: The Fundamental Divide in Education

• Ryan Hamill on Chapters 3 and 4 [09:46]:
  • Uses Steinbeck’s Lenny from Of Mice and Men to illustrate a key educational dilemma:
    • “You can love something so much that you can literally hold it too tightly and destroy the very thing that you love.”
    • Relates to the “formation” (classical) vs. “empowerment” (progressive) models in schooling.
  • “There are two real types of visions for schooling… a vision of formation versus a vision of empowerment.”
    • Formation: The school shapes the student to an “ideal,” focusing on virtue and tested curricula.
    • Empowerment: The school’s goal is to let students become “whoever they want to be,” supporting their existing personality.
  • Student-Centered Pitfalls:
    • “Consequently, his child-centered education produces the exact opposite of an educated person, a self-centered adult.” [Quoting Hicks]
    • Quotes John Stuart Mill: “A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded, which he cannot do, never does all he can.”
    • Paradox: Attempting to empower students without formation “actually choke[s] the life out of the personality of the student.”
  • Classical Quest:
    • The classical model “launches [students] on this quest… in pursuit of a self-transcendent ideal: a golden fleece, a promised land, a holy grail.”
    • Formation demands much, but affirms student dignity by challenging them to transcend themselves.
    • The past provides “the impassioned debate of many great figures of myth and history concerning what is beautiful, excellent and good in man.”
    • “It is in some ways the most student-centered thing we can do: this formation side of things.”

3. Modernity, Science, and the Necessity of Dogma

• Dr. Kevin Gary on Chapters 5 and 6 [19:40]:
  • Praises Hicks’s youthful achievement (“remarkable that he wrote this when he was 27”), gives concise overviews:
  • Chapter 5 (Saving the Appearances):
    • Hicks critiques modern science’s “non-normativity”—nature becomes “material to be controlled and manipulated.”
    • Modern education prioritizes utilitarian aims (power, efficiency). Classical education, by contrast, pursues contemplation:
      • “Instead of power and efficiency as the ultimate justification… the true aim should be contemplation or coming to appreciate the intrinsic beauty of the world.”
  • Chapter 6 (The Necessity of Dogma):
    • Parallels Dorothy Sayers’s stages of learning:
      • Poll Parrot stage: Young children are immersed in dogma, receiving models of virtue, learning through stories and imitation.
      • Pert (dialectical) stage: Teenagers interrogate that dogma—ask “Why do we have to learn this?”
        • “The aim in the early years of education is to provide a rich heritage of examples that embody the ideal type… who don’t just preach the dogma but live it.”
    • Dogma (“get in the car”) is necessary; without it, teenagers lack an anchor when they start questioning.
  • Critique of Modern Justifications:
    • Modern educators shy from “because I said so,” instead appeal to practical outcomes: “it will get you a job, you will make money.”
    • But this, he argues, is too remote from what’s truly valuable:
      • “Here… Hicks is getting at why do we have to learn this? The answer is because it’s beautiful, because it’s good, because it’s true.”
    • Concludes with a call to invite students into expecting “enchantment” (quoting Francis Hsu):
      • “Teaching in a way so that students expect enchantment… they expect to appreciate and see the intrinsic beauty of the world.”
    • “Classical education is actually helping us to understand what true leisure is.”

4. Classical Education, Elitism, Democracy, and the Family

• Dr. John Peterson on Chapters 7 and 8 [26:44]:
  • Central Problem: Can classical education renew democracy without being elitist?
  • Hicks’s Position:
    • “To speak of classical education for the few is a contradiction in terms. For paideia is the inheritance of all men as individuals.”
    • The classical model is fundamentally universal and democratic—not elitist.
    • Democracy was born in Athens, “fulfilled in Christianity,” which made philosophical life accessible to all.
    • “Liberal learning is for all men. Self-government is for all men. The two go hand in hand.”
  • Historical Complications & Warnings:
    • Draws a contrast between Athenian democracy and subsequent revolutions, noting the French (Jacobin) Revolution’s use of “democracy” to justify tyranny.
    • “Are we Jacobins? Are we the heirs of Robespierre? Well, let’s turn back to Hicks. He is no Robespierre.”
    • Hicks says classical education “teaches a person to value the aims of government more than its forms. Democracy is only a means, not an end.”
    • Classical education must sometimes “offer a sort of dialectical negation of democratic society, educating aristocrats rather than democrats.”
    • Uses the example of Socrates, his notorious students, and the tragic aftermath for Athens as a caution about unintended consequences—but also the enduring value of forming “aristocrats” in character.
  • The Central Role of Family:
    • “The primary channel of transmission of culture is family.”
    • Asks school leaders to honestly reflect on the family as “first educator”—especially in cases where parents seem unfit.
    • Final Provocation:
      • “In our attempts at renewing culture and preserving democracy, we will inevitably come up against the question of family… who is the child’s first educator? And what can a classical school reasonably hope to accomplish in this grand vision?”
      • Returns to the critique of Victorian England: was emphasizing hereditary aristocracy a perversion of classical education, or something more complicated?

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dr. Jonathan Gregg [03:03]:
  “What are norms and nobility other than ideals of what is better, which you hope will rule—in other words, aristocratic?”

• Ryan Hamill [09:46]:
  “Consequently, his child-centered education produces the exact opposite of an educated person, a self-centered adult.” (Quoting Hicks)
  “When you’re an empowerment school, you sacrifice everything on the altar of the personality of the student, right? And yet by sacrificing everything on that altar, you actually choke the life out of the personality of the student.”

• Dr. Kevin Gary [19:40]:
  “With modern science we accrue technical know-how and power… But norms… are inescapable. We have them. There is no non-normative space.”
  “Hicks is getting at, why do we have to learn this? The answer is because it’s beautiful, because it’s good, because it’s true.”
  “Teaching in a way so that students expect enchantment, which is to say they expect to appreciate and see the intrinsic beauty of the world.”

• Dr. John Peterson [26:44]:
  “To speak of classical education for the few is a contradiction in terms. For paideia is the inheritance of all men as individuals.”
  “Classical education in a modern democracy teaches a person to value the aims of government more than its forms. In other words, democracy is only a means, not an end.”
  “The primary channel of transmission of culture is family.”

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction to Panel and Book: [01:57]
• Dr. Jonathan Gregg—Norms, Nobility, Democracy vs. Elitism: [03:03]
• Ryan Hamill—Formation vs. Empowerment, Critique of Student-Centered Models: [09:46]
• Dr. Kevin Gary—Modernity, Science, and Dogma in Education: [19:40]
• Dr. John Peterson—Democracy, Elitism, Family, and the Limits of School Reform: [26:44]

Conclusion

The panel offers a robust, wide-ranging discussion situating Norms & Nobility at the intersection of democracy, tradition, virtue, and educational philosophy. Panelists repeatedly urge classical educators to balance ideals of formation with the realities of family and democracy, to resist utilitarianism, and to preserve the truly human, universal, and noble aims of education. Hicks’s treatise serves as both diagnosis and call to higher purpose amid the challenges of modernity.

For further resources or to listen to more episodes, visit podcast.hillsdale.edu or k12.hillsdale.edu.