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This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to podcast hillsdale.edu subscribe that's podcast hillsdale.edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
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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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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.
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hello, I'm Michael Berndt, Director of Curriculum for K12 Education at Hillsdale College. The following is a recording of a panel held during the Forum, a small program preceding the Classical Education Job Fair that is hosted by the College each February. This panel was a discussion of the virtue of ambition, a character trait once widely held to be a moral excellence among the ancient Greeks, but which has since fallen under suspicion. To modern ears, ambition can sound too grasping or self serving, and democratic culture sits uneasily with the idea that some people ought to aim higher than others. The Christian tradition, too, has often identified ambition with the vice of pride, and the result is that a trait which many of the ancients saw as honorable has come to be discarded or disparaged. This tension between ancient affirmation and modern suspicion is what the members of this panel sought to explore. The panel features myself, Dr. Allison Postel, Assistant professor of Philosophy at Hillsdale College, Dr. Paul Rea, professor of History at Hillsdale College and Joshua Gibbs, Director of the Classical Teaching Institute, whose prepared remarks were read by Ryan Hamill. The question posed to the panel in advance was how ought we to understand the virtue of ambition today and what ought classical schools do to cultivate it, both in students and in teachers? We hope you enjoy this discussion.
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Good morning everyone. Welcome back to our second panel of the day, which is on the Virtue of Ambition. I'm going to begin by explaining the purpose and giving a little bit of context for the topic of this panel. Then I'll introduce our panelists who join me here this morning, and then we'll Go ahead and get started. First of all, just a bit of context. The cultivation of virtue is, of course, one of the primary concerns of classical schools. It's one of the features that most obviously distinguishes the contemporary classical education movement. From other educational models. Those that aim at college readiness, training and skills and so on. But I think there's a tendency, perhaps, when we talk about virtue in classical schools. To gravitate towards a certain set of qualities. Even to the point that we exclude or cover up some of the dispositions. That were most admired in the classical world. So we talk quite comfortably about prudence, temperance, justice. We encourage our students in kindness, patience, cooperation, empathy. Those are surely good things on the whole. And our schools, I don't think, are wrong to cultivate them. But it's worth noticing that many of the virtues that we emphasize most naturally. Are what you might call social or even commercial virtues. They're qualities of character that make people agreeable, that make institutions run smoothly, that make communities feel safe. And some of them, if we're being honest with ourselves. Aren't really virtues at all in the classical sense. They seem rather thin, sentimental substitutes for the real thing. Some of the virtues that we rarely emphasize. Are the old Aristotelian virtues concerned with greatness. Aristotle, of course, devotes serious attention in the Nicomachean ethics to liberality, to magnificence, to what's sometimes translated as ambition or love of honor. And above all, he devotes his attention to magnanimity, a greatness of soul. Which he regards as a kind of crown of the virtues. Those virtues have to do not with fitting in right but with standing out. These are virtues that are not about being agreeable, but they're about being excellent. They don't aim to make others feel comfortable. They seek what's genuinely noble. Together with a just recognition of true excellence. So these virtues are what we might call in some way aristocratic virtues. Now, the words aristocratic and democracy, after the last panel, have a very heavy weight to them. But I mean them in the conventional sense. And I think that aristocratic value makes us uncomfortable. We live in a democratic age in some way. In addition, many of our schools are, at least culturally shaped by Christian commitments. That place a high value on humility and service and self denial. And so I think there's a tendency to pass quickly over virtues like ambition and magnanimity. And when we recognize them at all, we might be inclined to treat them more as historical curiosities. Interesting things that Aristotle maybe believed. Rather than as live possibilities for our students and our teachers. But that cultural tendency, a cultural bias maybe, is probably unreflective at best. I think we could be anxious in the first place about whether or not we can honestly call ourselves classical if we resist or overlook a central concern of classical ethics. More importantly, I think we should worry whether we might not be cultivating an incomplete or unbalanced character in our students, a character that may not, in fact, have a necessary component for human flourishing. So the question that I would put to our panelists this morning is simply this. How ought we to understand the virtue of ambition today, and what ought classical schools do to cultivate it, both in our students and in our teachers? So to help us think through that question, we have three panelists who bring very different but complementary perspectives, I think I guess we'll see. So first of all, to my Left, we have Dr. Allison Postel. Dr. Postel is an assistant professor of philosophy at Hillsdale College, where she teaches courses in medieval philosophy, ancient philosophy and bioethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Hillsdale, she taught for a decade in the philosophy department of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where she also directed the Classics minor. Dr. Postel specializes in virtue ethics, especially in the writings of aristotle and the 20th century philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. She's the author of the New Optimal Work Student Workbook. Second, we have Dr. Paul Rey. Dr. Ray received his BA in History from Yale University and went on to read Literae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship. He also received his PhD in history from Yale University, and he's taught at Yale, at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Tulsa. He's currently a professor of history here at Hillsdale College. He's married to the lovely Laura Ray, who is a lawyer and the author of a book on courtship and marriage. And then finally, we have again Mr. Ryan Hamill, the executive director and co founder of the Ancient Language Institute. You'll recognize him from our panel this morning on norms and nobility. Mr. Hamill has graciously agreed to read remarks that were prepared by Mr. Joshua Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs, well known teacher, author and consultant in the classical education world, is unfortunately unable to be with us this morning because of a sudden medical emergency in his family. But we're grateful that Mr. Gibbs can be with his family in a difficult time and that we are still able to hear his remarks, and grateful to Mr. Hamill for stepping in in the final hour here. So we're going to proceed in a similar way to the last panel. Each of our panelists will have about 10 minutes to offer their own remarks on the virtue of ambition. Dr. Postel will come to the podium first, followed by Dr. Ray and then Mr. Hamill. After that, I'll spend 10 to 15 minutes putting some further questions to the panelists and then we'll open the floor to questions for the audience. All right, so Dr. Postel,
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Good morning. We're here to understand the virtue of ambition for this panel and how we can cultivate it. And on the one hand, ambition may not seem like a virtue. It might sound like somebody who is solely motivated by self advancement and that's not good. On the other hand, you might wish that your most apathetic students had higher doses of ambition. And so what then is ambition rightly understood? Aristotle thinks ambition is essential to one of the most important ethical virtues. In his book the Nicomachean Ethics, I'm going to sketch what he says and end by discussing how to cultivate virtuous ambition. Aristotle discusses ambition in connection with a virtue called greatness of soul. Greatness of soul is a virtue of ambitiously pursuing the highest kinds of activities out of a love for their nobility. In this context, ambition means energetically pursuing noble virtue. In other words, ambition is directed towards a particular kind of end. Greatness of soul. The appropriate prize for greatness of soul, says Aristotle, is honorable. Even so, Aristotle is clear. There's no honor that can match the worth of greatness itself. Any person who gains honor without being great is unworthy. From this account, we can observe three notable things about virtuous ambition. First, the person with greatness of soul is ambitious for internal excellence and the social goods that flow from it. At its core, greatness of soul is ambition to act excellently for the highest reasons. Second, honor, while good, is only an external reward, it is secondary to the internal virtue of greatness. Greatness itself is something pursued for its own sake and not for some further end like attaining notoriety. Third, and most importantly, virtuous ambition is involves an unquenchable desire to grow in virtue skills and right relationships with other people. Given that for any person it's always possible to grow more virtuous ambition is thereby also tied to the possibility of endless growth. For this reason, let's say that virtuous ambition aims at growth goals, by which we mean it aims at endlessly growing a in virtue skills, mastery and bonds with other people. So, like that's the theoretical account of virtuous ambition, how does this account apply to your students? Virtuous ambition is different from what often motivates students. Students commonly are Motivated by a desire for a particular outcome, like a certain test score, their class rank, or an athletic award. Rather than aiming at growth goals, these students ambitiously pursue outcome goals like pleasing their are getting a good grade. Some of them will work really hard to get these outcomes. Their high motivation might tempt us to say that they have virtuous ambition. After all, what they want is good, and they're really motivated to get it. But if we did say that, I think we'd be wrong. The problem is that outcome goals are very different from growth goals, and a host of problems that come with outcome goals do not come with virtuous ambition, which always has a growth goal at its core. Let's look at some of the differences between growth and outcome goals, and then at some of the problems that come with fundamentally chasing outcomes. Unlike growth goals, attaining an outcome can be an all or nothing affair like either you get the grade or you don't. Either you get into your top college or you don't, and the verdict is final. It's success or failure. There's no way to grow. Moreover, unlike growth goals, achievements aren't always in your control. Sometimes the conference honor goes to a less worthy player. Sometimes the grade doesn't quite reflect the quality of the work. Students who care most about achievements also end up facing a host of problems. And I mean students who care most fundamentally about achievements. They face a host of problems. Problems. If they don't get a particular outcome that they really want, they can be crushed. When success is defined only by a particular outcome, not getting it can feel like abject failure. And this kind of black or white vision of success quickly leads to anxiety. It's also a helpful it also gives the student no helpful way of processing failure. Moreover, students who measure their success fundamentally by achievements are prone to comparisons, constantly worrying about whether they measure up. They can be toxically competitive, wanting to beat their peers simply to feel the security of being on top. They also feel insecure when they're not on top. Their deep desire for the outcome above all else can sometimes even lead to a willingness to do anything to get it, including cheating less egregiously, but still problematically, they're more willing to take shortcuts than that undermine deep learning, so long as they get the desired outcome like a good grade. Thankfully, virtuous ambition doesn't fundamentally aim at achievements, which is the source of these problems. At root, virtuous ambition is about setting growth goals that aim at increasing greatness of soul. Upon reflection, you'll notice that virtuous ambition isn't prone to the problems that come from making an achievement while one's ultimate goal. Students who are ambitious to grow in excellence most fundamentally direct their competitiveness internally by tackling challenges that will help them transcend their present limitations. When they're placed in competitive environments with other people, like sports contests or placement exams, the environment is welcome because it provides them with the opportunity to bring out their best in the face of a challenge. What's more, students with virtuous ambition are motivated by a love of what is noble, not a fear of failure. Their motivation comes from an interest in growing, not a fear of failing. As a result, they engage challenge rather than avoid it. Their growth mindset makes them resilient and they look for growth lessons even in failure. They also know that life has vast reserves of meaning and and their happiness never hangs on getting any one particular outcome. This general orientation makes them less prone to anxiety. We get anxious over challenges that we view as threats. Those with virtuous ambition, though, see opportunity in challenge. This inoculates them from anxiety. They're also less prone to self destructive comparisons with their peers since their deepest goal is internal growth. And in cases where they find a peer who clearly exceeds their present ability, they're happy to have found a model as their guide. Now they know what it looks like to do this well, which helps them to grow. People with virtuous ambition are also great servants. As they grow in greatness, they become most capable of doing good for others. They become habituated to make the good of others their own and to act in order to attain those goods. I hope you see the difference between virtuous ambition and fundamentally chasing achievements. How do we cultivate virtuous ambition in students? I have five suggestions. 1. Teach students why growth goals are the proper end of ambition. 2. As a practical matter, teach them how to set growth goals and have a growth mindset. Help them see that their particular achievements are less fundamental than their growth trajectories. For example, their growth in content mastery is more important than a particular grade. 3. When they do set outcome goals, help them to see how that outcome goal can serve a growth goal. For example, how's the goal of getting an A in a class a challenge to grow in content mastery? What does the outcome goal reveal about where that student needs to grow? By doing this, you'll help them build the skill of seeing outcome goals in certain service to growth goals, not the other way around. And this will free them to work for big achievements since the achievement itself is seen in a wider context of growth. 4. Help students articulate specific images of what greatness of soul looks like for them in a non abstract way. Like what for this student, as a ninth grader, does aiming for greatness look like? If they can feel form a clear image of what this excellence looks like for them, then they'll have a reason to embrace challenge for the sake of growth towards that ideal. 5. Help them develop a positive relationship to challenge. Teach them why doing hard things that stretch their present ability is precisely what's needed to stay on a growth trajectory. Talk with them about their challenges. Help them discover the opportunity in them. Model doing it yourself, and by doing so you'll cultivate in them a love of leaning into a challenge. Students who see these things will be on their way to having virtuous ambition for greatness of soul, and upon graduation, they'll have the strength of character and love for high things that will lead them to serve their society out of a wellspring of love rather than selfishness, desire for approval, or vanity.
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Thank you.
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I'm at least initially going to emphasize the negative element in ambition. The word ambition comes from the Latin ambitio, which is related to the Latin word ambitus, which is bribery. And ambitio is about canvassing for office. And it was looked down upon by the Romans. And if you trace the history of the word ambition in English from say the 14th to the 17th century, it is negative in its connotation throughout. And here's the reason. Ambition can very easily be a greedy desire for status. And in the Roman republic, especially the late Roman Republic, that's exactly what it became. So if the proconsuls pillage the empire, it's to get the money to bribe people back home so that they can hold another consulship or praetorship or whatever. It can be extremely ugly. The opposite of ambition from a Roman perspective is cincinnatus. Cincinnatus, who is summoned from his plow by the Senate to lead the armies in an emergency. And of course, the man who modeled his own career on Cincinnatus, at least his later career, who had been very greedy for fame early in his career, was George Washington. Your students may not know this, some of you may not know this, but George Washington became famous in 1762 when he was captured by the French, and that's what set off the French and Indian War. So George III knew about George Washington long before the Declaration of Independence. But George Washington, who led the armies during the Revolutionary war, resigns in 1783 at the time of the Peace of Paris. And he does it deliberately to set an example for going back to your plow. That is to say, he is thinking about Cincinnatus. And he goes back and he does come out of his retirement under pressure from James Madison to come to the Constitutional Convention. Doesn't say very much at the Constitutional Convention, presides over it, agrees to be president, and then limits himself to two terms. So there's a kind of self limitation in light of the common good. So what I'm suggesting to you is there is an ignoble ambition and there's a noble ambition. And I'm afraid in American politics today we see an awful lot of ignoble ambition. Vote harvesting, ballot box stuffing, corruption. That ends up part of it in the hands of a political party. An awful lot is going on that isn't very pretty. And Washington in some ways has always been like that. Something you might have your students read. There's a section in Willa Cather's wonderful novel the Professor's House. There's a novel within the novel. And in the novel within the novel there is a description of the discovery of Mesa Verde called the Blue Mesa, and people going to Washington to contact the Smithsonian to make them aware of the riches that are there in Mesa Verde. It is the most acid account of. Of ambition in Washington D.C. where everyone is trying to climb the greasy pole and shove everybody else down. And that's a long time ago. It's even worse now. Noble ambition. I've mentioned George Washington. Let me mention another example. Abraham Lincoln. He served one term in Congress and then he retired to Illinois. He did not re enter American politics until 1854 after the passage of the Kansas Nebraska act, which embodied a repeal of the Missouri Compromise. At that point he thought there was an emergency. And so he re entered politics and of course ran for the Senate, lost, but became famous because of the debates. And that catapulted him into the presidency. Now, what's the difference between ignomal ambition and noble ambition? Now, no one was as ambitious as the ancient Greeks. Many of your students will have been brought up on the Jewish Bible and the Christian New Testament. The Christian New Testament does not preach ambition. It preaches a kind of humility. And if you turn to someone like Augustine, he'll say there's no nobility in politics at all. And the only real function of politics is to defend the peace and not persecute the Christians. So there is a suspicion of ambition because ambition attaches you to this world. And from the perspective of the Christians, were Pilgrims here just passing through, doing what little we can to help others. But the ancient Greeks were obsessed with it because they didn't have the New Testament, they had Homer. So let me read to you a passage from Theognos. To die, he says, my dear Curtis, is better for a poor man than to live worn out by an indigence hard to bear. Now you know no one likes poverty. But why doesn't he like poverty? It's not the way we wouldn't like poverty. Poverty does more to bring a good man or a brave man under the yoke than anything else. More kearns than grizzled age and the ague. To flee poverty, such a man must hurl himself from the high rocks into the vastness of the sea. For poverty will subdue any man, and he will be unable to say or do anything of note for his tongue will be tied. The hatred of poverty means you cannot compete with Achilles, who was taught action on the battlefield and speech in council, saying and doing something of note. Note. It's not about the suffering of the poor man, it's about what he is denied, which is the opportunity for eternal fame. Xenophon. All creatures seem in a similar fashion to take pleasure in food, drink, sleep and sex. But the love of honor does not grow up in animals lacking speech. Nor for that matter can it be found in all human beings. The eros for honor, and I don't translate it because it's stronger than love. And praise grows up only in those who are most fully distinguished from the beasts of the field. Which is to say that it grows up only in those judged to be real men and no longer mere human beings. Note the denigration of women. So what is ambition? Often it's ambition for fame, and in our world, ambition for celebrity. There's hardly anything uglier than the ambition for celebrity. But Theognos in another passage suggests what underpins noble ambition. What he says is reputation is. Is a great evil for human beings. Trial is best, for many who are untested nonetheless possess a reputation as good men. But when brought against the touchstone and rubbed on the black lead, gold that has been refined and is pure reveals its nobility to all. So the positive side of ambition is the aspiration to excellence, an aspiration that is independent of, though sometimes supported by the desire for fame. Where is it visible in the world that you encounter, I would say, first and foremost in your schools, and you might make something of this in your classes. Where do people seek excellence? And the answer is in sports. Think about it. We have affirmative action in almost all areas of American life. Can you imagine someone suggesting that professional football teams and college football teams should practice affirmative action? You know, put wimpy white guys like me on the team because we're lacking. In other words, there's an element in American life where everyone understands what matters is achievement, and there's a real emphasis on that. And I think coaches often understand that better than anyone else in schools. But think about that. The aspiration to excellence reaches into music and musical performance, both at the grand level. Isaac Perlman, but also at the level in which you experience it in the writing of literature. I mean, writing a book is a bear. I've written quite a few. And what drives you? The answer is to want to do something really good. It's certainly not the money that's in it, and it's rarely the fame, although sometimes that works. The same thing is true in the. In what philosophers do. And finally, it can be something important in politics. But ambition has to be tempered by other things that are truly virtues. See, I don't think ambition is a virtue. It might be necessary for virtue, but in and of itself, no. Prudence is a virtue. Justice is a virtue. Long suffering is a kind of virtue. And ambition has to be tempered by a concern for the common good. Stalin was an ambitious guy. Adolf Hitler was an ambitious guy. Mao was an ambitious guy. Fidel Castro was an ambitious guy. Pol Pot was an ambitious guy. A concern with the common good pushes ambition in the direction of an aspiration to excellence. Thank you.
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All right, well, you're stuck with me again. But Josh Gibbs, he was very bummed he wasn't going to be able to make it. But he is practicing a higher virtue right now of love. And anybody who knows him or has seen a picture of him knows that just by beard alone, you're getting the dime store version of Josh Gibbs with me up here. But if you've heard him speak or you listen to his podcast, in the Trenches, he didn't pay me to advertise it, but I'm doing this at my own free will. You can just imagine these words. He sent his remarks to me that he prepared. He was really excited to share this with you. You can imagine it in his voice. And so if you like it, you. You really should subscribe to his podcast, in the Trenches. Really practical, really good storytelling, really good for classical educators. So here we go. This is Josh Gibbs. There's something a bit daring about the title of this panel, which is the Virtue of Ambition. The panel could not simply be called on ambition. Those who arranged the panel felt the need to nudge the speakers in the crowd toward their intent. And that is because ambition is no longer widely regarded as a virtue. Christians in America bear a far greater responsibility for this than the secularists. Secularists who denounce ambition are content to quote a few lines from Shelley's Ozymandias and recite fashionable platitudes about being yourself, whereas Christians theologize against ambition and condemn it as arrogant, narcissistic and vainglorious. A Christian shouldn't attempt to make something of himself, he should make something of others. He should be a servant who performs his good works with complete indifference to their results, which is the very opposite of ambition. Good works performed with an eye to earthly glory or heavenly treasure are nullified. Rather, we should labor diligently simply because we're saved. Ambition is for pagans, for people who think more highly of themselves than they ought, as St. Paul once put it, and you can see this rather clearly in the life of Julius Caesar, who is usually the first person Christians name when the subject of ambition comes up. Every form of ambition is more or less synonymous with setting yourself up as dictator for life. Before going further though, I should note that if any of my high school teachers or college teachers saw me, Josh Gibbs, delivering a talk on the virtue of ambition, they would laugh. I, Josh Gibbs, had no ambition in high school, and I, Josh Gibbs, dropped out of college for the first time after just a few months. I don't know that I had a shred of ambition until I was 24 when I met the woman I wanted to marry. Sorry, babe, this is Josh Gibbs wife that we're talking about. When we met, I had no money, no career, no diploma where she had all those things. And through sheer Wagnerian force of will, I somehow convinced her to marry me. Anyway, marrying her was the first ambitious thing I ever did. After we married, I lost £100 and I BSed my way into a job teaching literature at a classical Christian school. Ever since then, I've deeply enjoyed novels and films about people living on stolen identities. I threw myself into this teaching job. I had to. I hadn't read any of the books I was asked to teach and I had to keep the facade going. Having slacked off and wasted much of my life, I wasn't qualified for any other real job, let alone the one I had landed by luck. If I didn't make it as a classical literature teacher, I wasn't quite sure another respectable sounding job was going to come along. At the same time, I found the work of a literature teacher extremely satisfying and quite enjoyable. I settled deeply enough into my new Persona that I actually started taking umbrage with all the unambitious losers that populated my sophomore literature class. I'm referring to a certain kind of male student who never really does any of the reading, raises his hand once every couple days to ask if he can go to the bathroom, pronounces the names of the characters improperly during the fifth week a book has been in discussion and may be stirred to excitement for a moment in class only on occasions when he hears someone mention Wiz Khalifa. There is a euphemistic phrase for such people which is used often in Old Testament stories, especially in books like Judges and Kings. And that phrase is Some worthless fellows. Their mothers would probably vigorously dispute this term. God knows my mother would have, but it's still the term God inherently inspired in the authors of Scripture. So sorry. What these worthless fellows didn't seem to realize is that they weren't simply making the class worse for everyone else, they were making it worse for themselves. If you'd rather do something more fun than go to school, I get it. But even if you're a hedonist, and even if hedonism were the right way to live, there just aren't many hedons to be released in your brain by whining and dragging your heels from eight until three every day. Nothing takes as long as a job done half heartedly and incompetently. Worthless fellows pulling their shtick never say, wow, the day just flew by. I'm not saying that life is necessarily more pleasant the more ambitious you are, because like anything else, ambition has to be moderated. But I am saying there's a point where a lack of ambition is self defeating, even for the shallow people who only want pleasure. This problem I saw in my students was by no means limited to my students. I saw it in colleagues too. Students who lack ambition are about as common as teachers who lack ambition. You've all had unambitious teachers. I'm sure you've all taken classes either in high school or college, and the teacher has been so dry, so dull. You've said, why is that guy even here? Does he know how much this class sucks? Even the good students think it sucks. I've met teachers who bore their students to death every day and they'll still complain in the break room. Man, teachers just don't make any money. And I think you're not doing your job in a way that is ever Going to inspire anyone to pay you more. It was around this time, when I was storing up all these thoughts about worthless fellows and slacker teachers in my heart, that I taught the Divine Comedy for the first time. And I encountered a passage from the Inferno where Dante sits to rest a minute and Virgil rebukes him with these words, put off this sloth for shame. Sitting on feather pillows, lying reclined beneath the blanket in is no way to fame. Fame without which man's life wastes out of mind, leaving on earth no more memorial than foam in water or smoke upon the wind. This is what I wanted to say to the boring teachers who recycled the same binder of lecture notes every year. What's wrong with you? Don't you want to be famous? If you spent your whole life slacking off and then you actually start trying and it starts paying, this is what everyone this is what you want to say to everyone who is still slacking off. Don't you want to be famous? Don't you want to be recognized as someone who knows what they're doing? Well, actually, no. Fame isn't something that I Look, everyone would learn more in your class if you did want to be famous. Everyone would like your class more, you'd accomplish more, and people would like you, and you'd generate a greater profit for the master. If you wanted to be famous. And the response to this is, I mean, I want to do my job well. Do you want to do it really well? Do you want to do it insanely well? Because if you do your job insanely well, you will be famous. There's fame to be had as a teacher. Not much, but it's there. Not as much fame as there is to be had as a senator or a fighter pilot. But yes, there's real glory to be had as a teacher. And if you are a teacher, you should want it. If you're a student, you should want all the glory possible in the life of a student, no matter what you do. The lives of everyone around you are so much easier if you seek the maximum amount of glory that can be obtained with that lot in life. If you claim to be a teacher, you owe the world the most glorious teacher you can muster. If you claim to be a baker, you owe the world the most glorious baker you can muster. It's hardly a choice. It's an obligation. It's a command. When you tell the universe, I'm going to be a teacher, the universe responds, well, make it good. It's for this reason that Solomon in Ecclesiastes says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all of your might. There's no work to do in the grave, which is where you're going. And St. Paul later follows this theme in the book of Ephesians when he says, be very careful how you live. Not like fools, but like the wise. Do everything you can to redeem your time for the days are evil. These aren't theological claims. There's no need to apply the quadraga to these passages to discern their anagogical meaning. Do everything you can to redeem your time are the frustrated words of a Carhartt dad to his anime obsessed teenage sons. The analogy of redeeming your time is particularly helpful in our culture. You can get a lot for your time or a little for your time, but you live in evil days. You live in an evil age, which is trying to get you to redeem your time for as little as possible. There's probably never been an age so adept at getting people to redeem their time for chaff, pocket, lint and pennies as ours. The average American spends 110 hours every year scrolling through video menus looking for something to watch. That's nearly 2% of your waking hours. And when you consider what we end up watching after spending 110 hours looking ours is a culture that is engineered to rob you of your ambition. It is supremely ironic that a culture as fat as ours, as bored as ours, as indebted as ours, has the gallery to condemn ambition. We hope ambition is a sin, because if it's not, we are all going to hell. Restoring ambition in our students begins with restoring ambition in our teachers. Headmasters at modestized private schools can see their salaries jump tens of thousands of dollars if enrollment grows. If you didn't know this, spend a little time on ProPublica. You can see what the headmasters at most Christian schools make. Headmasters definitely have incentive to do well. Students have incentive to do well too. They're making their way in the world. They're trying to secure letters of recommendation, the approval of their superiors. They need scholarships and grants. They can't rest on their laurels. Teachers are the only people in a school who are cut out of the reward economy for doing well if enrollment grows. Teachers only have to work harder. If you want to restore real ambition in students, and not just the carrot of scholarship money, you need to set ambitious men and women in front of them in the classroom. If you want to put ambitious men and women in front of your students, you've got to give teachers real incentives to strive for glory. You've got to pitch your school as a place for teachers who want to make a name for themselves. You have to put that in the job listing and you have to back it up with real rewards for teachers who bring glory to your school. Put teachers in the glory economy and your students will follow. Thank you.
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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.