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From the historic campus of Hillsdale College.
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In Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured.
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And honored, this is the Radio Free.
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Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
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If there is one way we can define American art, certainly ambition is one of those words that we all agreed upon, which there were not too many that we all agreed upon, but that was definitely one.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Christina Lamb Chekolova, assistant professor of art at Hillsdale College. We'll talk more later in the program with Christina about the history of American art. First, we will listen to excerpts from a recent National Leadership Seminar lecture in Phoenix, Arizona for Hillsdale College by Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA and nationally syndicated radio host. His lecture is titled Hitting the Ground the Trump Transition and Early Priorities. You can find this full lecture at Hillsdale's Freedom Library at freedomlibrary hillsdale.edu. charlie Kirk begins by asking the question, how many branches of the government are there?
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Most people on TV are missing what's really going on here. They're missing what is going to be the republic determining element of this entire thing. And it comes down to three major questions, big questions that are being debated in the media, but they're not getting down to the meat of the matter, the first of which is so simple. And you can ask my daughter, who's two and a half years old and she knows the answer to this question, how many branches of government are there? Pretty simple. We all know. Three. Yes, thank you. That's right. Good answer. And yes, there's seven articles of the Constitution. And yes, we go through all that, but yes, there's three branches of government. Oh, easy answer. Is it really that Easy? Are there three branches of the government? What Dr. Arne has been saying for longer than I have been alive and has been trying to get the American public to realize and recognize that there has been an invisible, unelected, unknown branch of government that has been operating unconstitutionally post Woodrow Wilson, and no one has had the moral clarity, the mandate or the gusto to even mention it, let alone challenge it, let alone deconstruct it. And we can call that the administrative state. We can call that the shadow government, the deep state. All of those are correct answers, by the way. But understand the profundity of President Donald Trump saying, okay, JFK started USAID by an executive order. I can end USAID by An executive order, you serve at the pleasure of the President. And then they say, well, no, you can't do that. Hold on. Which branch of the three does that fall under? It falls under Article two, which goes into one of the other more fundamental questions. You see, what's been grown like a cancer over the last hundred years is this fourth branch of government. And you can see this in some of the reporting on the Department of Justice and the FBI in particular. Anytime you hear this, you should press pause and tell your friend, no. And you should cancel this out of your thought when they say, oh, that's an independent agency. No, it's not. Actually, there's no such thing as an independent agency. Answers to the pleasure of the president, Period. End of story. The FBI is not independent. Now, the president could be as provocative. He'd get impeached if he does this. But it would be perfectly constitutional if he asked the FBI director to look at every pending case the FBI is looking into. Perfectly constitutional. If he looked at everything the DOJ is doing, it's perfectly constitutional. The DOJ does not operate on a special island. I must have missed that in the Hillsdale online course, Federalist Papers course, where Alexander Hamilton was going on talking about, well, the Attorney General's kind of its own president and the FBI kind of does its own thing. And guess what? President Trump does not know this. He knows this philosophically, but he knows it personally because that fourth a branch of government destroyed his first term was the reason he did not get reelected in 2020 and is the reason why he faced 700 years in federal prison. President Donald Trump is counter attacking the fourth branch of government that tried to stop him over the last decade.
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Kirk continues by discussing the question, who is the sovereign? Who is in charge? And what it's like to fire executive branch employees.
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Do you notice that when we fire a federal worker, it's like we're going to fire like, the Archbishop of Phoenix or something. Like, it's like unbelievable. Like, they're totally untouchable. Like, you can't do that. Why? Who made them that they. They are in some sort of holy realm, that we can't ask the question, well, what do you do here? Why do you exist? What is your job? You can't say that. No, instead, we have to act as if they're the untouchables, literally. And if you listen to the media coverage carefully, it's like, we work for them. No, it's not done that way. They work for us because our document starts morally clear. We, the people of The United States, not the we, the usaid, you know, purple haired jihadis that are sending money to Kazakhstan to trans the kids. Right. That's not how it works actually. And these sound like such fundamental basic questions. But we're about to get down to the root of the matter. You know why? Because our leaders have prolonged the inevitable for decades. George W. Bush did not have the moral clarity or the gusto to pick this fight. In fact, he grew the leviathan and grew the administrative state. We have new agencies because of Republican presidents. So this has been a fight that has been delayed for far too long. And this is where it is all heading. And so when it comes down to who is the sovereign, it comes down to, well, we the American people elected a president to be able to do the job. And it still baffles the mind where I hear in some of these meetings when I'm in D.C. well you can't fire these federal workers. You could put them on administrative leave. And how many of you guys in your corporate career or you run a business, what could ever operate that way? Nothing. And yet we put the federal government in a completely different bucket for no good constitutional reason.
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We're hearing excerpts from a national leadership seminar lecture by Charlie Kirk. Kirk says now we actually have a chance to make real change.
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The reason they're fighting so hard on Doge and on what we are experiencing is we actually have a chance to do the thing that people thought that could never get done, which is we actually have a chance to reorient the ship back to the founders intent to restore the three branches of government, to articulate what Article 2 actually is. And I think we have a shot at doing it. Article one is the hardest because Congress is a disaster. But I think the Supreme Court is actually willing to hear this out. For the first time in a generation. I think the Supreme Court is now willing to hear the arguments. What do you mean? You're an independent agency? No, you're not an independent agency. You serve under Article 2. And we've seen with some decisions, the Chevron deference decision, the EPA decision, the courts are signaling that they're ready for these monumental type cases. And what that means everybody is that the administrative state leviathan, this regime that has been swallowing our freedom and liberty post Woodrow Wilson for the first time, we can reverse it. We can go back to where we came from. But it's not just going to happen because of one election. It will only happen with a free citizenry demanding it out of your leaders with vocal support on a daily basis, educating the masses of what's really going on. And I believe we have a shot at doing it because we're able to communicate to millions of people in a moment's notice without having to go to the Washington Post.
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Charlie Kirk concludes by discussing the importance of Donald Trump's second term in the Oval Office and the hopes of beating back the administrative states.
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That's the true revolution that's occurring, is that we are taking the bold and courageous move that is going to put a lot of people's lives and fortunes and sacred honors at risk to say subject no more citizen, because we have lived as subjects for the last couple of years, whether we realize that or not, we have not been citizens, which is co rulers or co authorities of our own nation. And that's where the Trump thing gets way bigger than Trump. And honestly, God bless this guy for being the man in the arena that Teddy Roosevelt has always talked about having the courage and the stamina to. God bless him for not taking the deal where they said, you know, don't run for president, just being kingmaker and doubling down, getting shot, his whole business empire nearly taken from him and now getting into what is the most high stakes fight constitutionally, morally and civilizationally. And you guys know this. Europe is not going to save a free society. Europe is gone. It's a husk of its former self. We got the Chinese Communist Party rising up. If it's not us, it's nobody. As Dr. Arnis said, it is the last best hope and it's only us. If we can actually win the domestic war first, if we can restrain this beast that has been slowly taking over every one of our ways of life over the last couple decades and especially the last 100 years.
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That was Charlie Kirk. Those excerpts from a national leadership seminar lecture in Phoenix in February. Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point usa, also nationally syndicated radio host. His lecture Hitting the Ground the Trump Transition and Early Priorities, available in full @FreedomLibrary hillsdale.edu. up next, we're joined by Christina Lamb Chekolova from Hillsdale's art department. We talk about the history of American art. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Great books, great people, great, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths and they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hills Hillsdale. Edu that's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your audio.
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On the new episode of the Larry Arn Show, Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arn sits down with pastor, professor and author Kevin DeYoung for a one on one conversation. They saw that you might say reason and revelation coming together in the American founding and that they didn't have to be yet and that there was this groundwork. And it's interesting you talk about in the Hillsdale founding documents because Witherspoon gives a famous sermon in May 1776 leading to the independence, and he says that very civil liberty and religious liberty have always stood or fallen together. Listen to this exclusive interview with Kevin DeYoung right now, only available on the Larry Arn Show. Find it on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu also at Apple podcasts Spotify and YouTube and subscribe to receive new episodes delivered right to your device. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Eduardo welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Be sure to check out the Hillsdale College podcast network@podcast.hillsdale.edu. we're joined by Dr. Christina Lamb Chekaleva. She is assistant professor of art here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Chakaleva, thanks for joining us.
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Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here.
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You recently taught a course, History of American Art, which I thought would be an interesting conversation for our listeners. And so we'll spend a couple of segments talking about history, how we define American art, what it looks like, some changes throughout time. I think it'll be interesting and you do too, so listeners certainly will too. We start with that definitional part and this is a big question. You spend almost an entire term trying to answer this question, but how would you define, or how should we define American art?
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So it's a really great question. It's also a really challenging question. And I made this primary goal of the course that I taught last fall, and by the end of the semester we realized that there's no monolithic definition to this answer. We considered everything from Native American art forms and architecture, art, art during the colonial period all the way up to the modern day. And again we concluded that this is so difficult to define because on the one hand, art is art, just like science is science. It's just universal. It's part of human nature. But what we did realize about American art is that it's very much part of the Western artistic tradition. It engages in the same art forms in the same questions as most Western art engages in. And what really sets it apart then, from other Western art forms is ambition. That's really the one thing that we all kind of unilaterally agreed upon by the very last day of the semester, when we had a discussion about, you know, what is American about American art. And there were lots of things that we came up with. Diversity of materials, forms, subjects, et cetera. But certainly ambition was really important. And we found that a lot of American artists will engage in traditional mediums and in traditional subjects, but in new and exciting ways. And one of the reasons for that is because unlike, for example, Europe, where we have hundreds of years of patrons of art, the church, nobles, kings and queens, then we have the formation of art academies. A lot of that was missing in America. And so where did art come in then? Why did it become so ambitious? Because it was communicating perhaps more directly with the general public. And so it needed to stand out in some ways. And it's ambitious in that regard because of the fact that it needed to stand out either commercially or for its beauty or for its interest or for the subject matter. It had to draw people to it. Which is different than, again, in these European contexts, where it's the church or it's the king or it's an art academy, where this work has a venue for display. American artists kind of had to pave their. And so we felt that if there is one way we can define American art, certainly ambition is one of those words that we all agreed upon, which there were not too many that we all agreed upon, but that was definitely one.
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What kind of cultural influences do you believe, and the class, perhaps believe contributed to the distinctiveness of American art?
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Well, cultural influences here? Well, when it comes to Native American art forms, we felt that. That there was a lot of kind of cultural continuity in the types of materials and approaches. For example, using natural materials very innovatively, basket weaving, ceramics, you know, these are things that require you to be very tuned into the environment. And so we felt that, especially with Native American art, it's very, very tuned into the American landscape. And that's actually not quite different, actually, from perhaps some of the most prominent American art form forms that are quite distinct. Which made me think then of, like, landscape painting, for example. Whereas in Europe in the late 18th century, landscape painting really finally is accepted as an outstanding medium in the United States. At the same time, Americans were really in tuned to the American landscape. Manifest Destiny. The country is expanding. And in America, landscape painting became such an important and appreciated art form in a way that was like unprecedented compared to in Europe, where it was beloved and beautiful, but just couldn't necessarily compete with other genres and mediums like history painting, you know, a huge painting of ancient Roman history, something that's a noble subject matter that would have been preferenced in Europe at the same time over American art forms like landscape painting, which I think is certainly distinct. So I think that the American landscape is incredibly influential. That leads to a kind of distinctness in certain art styles that are popular amongst the American public, or even art styles that are preferenced by Native Americans, which have a deeper cultural kind of spiritual meaning, perhaps. And I also thought about some of the distinctness of the earliest days of American art, like in the colonial period. You know, what is one of the most important cultural influences at that time? Certainly a kind of like neoclassical style. I just went to a wedding in Virginia in Charlottesville, and I got to go to Monticello and the University of Virginia campuses there. And I, you know, thinking of cultural influences, for Thomas Jefferson, it was so important in those early days of our country to create an architectural style that is reflecting the greatest cultural influences of the Western world in America. And that was certainly like a Greco Roman style. He also studied intensely like Renaissance architectural treatises, like Andrea Palladio, who studied ancient Roman architecture. And anyway, he tried to kind of bring this to the United States. So if something is culturally distinct about American art, whether indigenous art forms or some of the greatest art of America, generally it's the landscape. But also certainly European influence is very, very strong. And I think that's one of the reasons why we also had trouble defining American art is because it does engage in the ideas and the trad of the Europeans who came first. But then it does take on its own American ambitious flavor.
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Talking with Dr. Christina Lamb Chicoliba, she is assistant professor of art here at Hillsdale College. On the history of American art, how we define it, what are some ways that American artists have challenged or perhaps reinforced some prevailing stereotypes or narratives about American identity?
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So this was one of the challenges that was one of my favorite. So I kind of divided the course up into different challenges. How American art engages in nature or in identity, or challenges like adversity or commemoration. And I feel like this was one of the most interesting ideas to think about this question about American identity, how art engages in it, especially at the time of our nation's founding. And so here I have a kind of like, interesting example. John Singleton Copley did a very famous portrait of Paul Revere, who happened to be a silversmith. He was very successful in Boston. I think most of us know who Paul Revere is. And it's such an interesting portrait because of the way that Paul Revere is depicted, not in his best clothes, but in work attire. He's holding a silver object on the table. He's not looking at the artist who's painting, painting him, but he's looking at the object that he has created before him. And it's a work of art. That's all about this idea that Americans are hard working people who are self made individuals. And it's not about his status, it's not about his clothing or the setting. It's unprecedentedly casual for a portrait of the time period that doesn't want to emphasize his social status or his family's wealth or political authority, religious authority, none of that. It's just an emphasis on Paul Revere and his accomplishments as an individual. And so I think, especially in the earliest days of our country, portraiture became so important to Americans. And why? Because of the way that portraiture can kind of show off essentially what somebody has accomplished without kind of digging into those visual tropes that you would expect perhaps more of a contemporary European portrait. So in this way, I feel like it's also culturally distinct because again, it's emphasizing not your station in life and what you were born into, but like what you have accomplished. So I think that's a really interesting work of art, a portrait that accomplishes that. And another artwork that I thought about is about this idea of American identity takes me to Benjamin West. So he painted a work of art in 1783 called the Treaty of Paris. And his idea, well, the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783. It's the official end to the American Revolution. It's the document that everyone signs that says, okay, we agree, America is its own country now. So delegates from the US came to France to sign it, delegates from England came to sign it. And Benjamin west, who was an American artist who had his career in London at the Royal Academy, he decided for profit that he was going to ask these signers of the Treaty of Paris to kind of come together. He was going to paint a port portrait of them to be displayed at the Royal Academy of Art, but then also to be engraved and put into newspaper and then widely published that this event had happened. And I Think it's so interesting that, you know, this project had the goal of remembrance. The Americans were happy to sit for this because normally when you paint a portrait, it's a lengthy affair. The sitter has to show up multiple times so you get their likeness just correct. So he got the Americans to sit, with the exception of Ben Franklin, he was too busy. But he had sat for Benjamin west before, so he was okay with that. He was going to use other drawings. But the Brits, they absolutely would not sit for this because it casted legitimacy on the American experiment, which for the Brits was an act of high treason. But for the Americans, their identity was no. We are civilized, intellectual men who have just accomplished one of the greatest feats in human history, which is to establish a republic free of kings, free of the church, you know, free of any kind of authority, which at the time would have repressed the goal of the individuals. And so I think it's a very fascinating work of art because it's unfinished. And it's all about that point about American identity as being one that's, you know, self made, proud of your accomplishments. But again, the Brits didn't want to sit for that picture because they weren't ready to commemorate the American identity in that way.
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How has American art been received or interpreted by international audiences, outsiders? How has it shaped perceptions of American culture abroad?
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You know, I think that also takes me back to. It's a very good question that also makes me think about the time of our nation's founding. And I would bring in here another example which is very famous and perhaps most viewers have seen or at least know about, by Trumbull, the Declaration of Independence. The famous. This picture that's in the rotunda of the Capitol building, where everybody is kind of signing this work of art. And here too, men who are technically engaged in an act of high treason, but they're being depicted by the artist as very civilized individuals. They are shown like gentlemen who are standing around and debating important American ideals. And this is a work of art that ended up in the rotunda along with three other very important paintings. They were installed in 1826 to kind of reinforce these ideas about an American identity and challenge British stereotypes about Americans who were these kind of crazy people who broke away from the crown, but of course accomplished something outstanding. And so I think that works of art like that did intend to shape European audiences about, you know, thinking about the American experiment as being one of the greatest intellectual endeavors of the time and should not be painted with the broad brush of Treason. Because, of course, that was not the goal. The goal was to, you know, like a new human experiment, in essence. Certainly, though, American art has also shaped perceptions of American culture abroad at other points in history. So I don't intend to just focus on that time period, but I also thought a little bit about the Civil War period when especially African American artists went abroad. One interesting person is named Edmonia Lewis. So she was a female sculptor who was educated at Oberlin College. And then she also had a lot of sculptural training in Boston. She was Roman Catholic. And she became this kind of face for the abolitionist movement about, you know, look at everything that one can accomplish with the right education, with the right financial social support and backing. And so she did actually make a name for herself here. And then she actually went over to Rome as well, where she felt that she could be a little bit more successful, perhaps, than in the United States, because while she was an outstanding sculptor, but there was a lot of focus on her race in the United States, whereas when she got to Rome, there was just more focus on her Catholicism and her accomplishments as a sculptor, perhaps even in spite of her race. I can think of another artist who had a very similar situation, Henry, also a Tanner, who was an American impressionist working in and around Philadelphia. And he, too, he went to France. That's where he had kind of the greatest part of his career. And he helped to kind of shape some of those perceptions about American culture abroad and also the merits of African Americans in the artistic sphere, which is really something that became more important after the Civil War period.
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Talking with Dr. Christina Lam Chakalova. She is assistant professor of art here at Hillsdale College. You've talked about founding years. We're going to spend time on different themes in a future conversation. But I wanted to close this talk with a little more about the present and maybe the future emerging artists or emerging movements in American art that might be shaping the future of art.
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Well, this made me think about an artist named Jeff Koons, who is a contemporary artist. And I have to say that, you know, with the future of American art, we live in such a global world today, and we had trouble defining American art in the earlier days. I think I have even more trouble defining it in the here and now because we just live in such an international world. But one artist who is of American origin is Jeff Koons, who I think is probably definitely impacting the modern and contemporary art world. And an interesting way, he is the famous guy who makes the balloon dogs that are now made out of stainless steel. He's famous for the most expensive dog in the world, which some of his little balloon dogs also got shattered by gallery visitors who were not so careful. And I think his art is so interesting because he's thinking about nostalgic childhood experiences, turning those into works of art, because why not? It's postmodern art. You know, let's make everything art. And he really tries to think about art that makes the viewer unite visually and psychologically with what is presented before them, visually because, well, in the balloon dog, you'll see your reflections psychologically because you'll have nostalgic memories of your childhood. His art is pioneering in that way, but also for its commercialism. You know, some people say what he's doing is fascinating. Others say it's just done in bad taste. But what he's trying to do is challenge the very notion of, like, what art is, what it has to look like. So it's very postmodern in that way. And I think that's the current debate in the modern art world is, well, what is art at all?
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Dr. Christina Lamb Chicolova, she is assistant professor of art here at Hillsdale College. We'll spend more time at a future conversation on the history of American art and what is how do you define American art? Dr. Chakaleva, thanks so much for joining us.
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Thank you.
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Up next, Dr. Ellen Condit, a teacher at Hillsdale Academy, adjustment professor here at Hillsdale College, will talk to us about the importance of memorization. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College president Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale Eduardo. That's Podcast Hillsdale Edu. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your audio.
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This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.
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If you like what you hear, please.
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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 know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to Podcast Hillsdale Edu. Subscribe. That's Podcast Hillsdale.
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Edu.
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Subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
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Welcome welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. You can find older episodes of this program, plus other great Hillsdale College audio at podcast hillsdale.edu. we're joined by Dr. Ellen Condit. She is an English teacher at Hillsdale Academy, also an adjunct professor of education and English here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Condit, thanks so much for joining us.
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Glad to be here. Thank you.
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Talking today about a lecture you gave in defense of memorization. With texts available at our fingertips via phones, computers, why should we make it a point to memorize anything at all?
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It's a defense that we have to make now for exactly that reason. In previous decades and when our grandparents and great grandparents were being educated, memorization was just the standard. Everybody memorized poetry, everybody memorized hymns. They knew all of those things from memory. But we do have to find reasons to come back to this practice that has even pretty largely been vilified over again. We hear about the dangers and the, well, the stultifying and monotony of rote memorization, and it's always a critique, but it is a particular kind of learning that used to be held in high esteem. To know something by heart was to know it in a way that wasn't possible when you were reading words off of a page. Once it's written, written on the heart, in the heart, there's something, there's something different that happens. There's a kind of ownership that happens of the words. And those words can take on a sort of life of their own, can help to, to shape how we think, help to shape how, how we, we feel and inform our impressions and interpretations of things that happen around us. Got lots of great scriptural injunction for us to store up words and store up commandments and meditate on those things. And over again, we get the sense that there is something significant that's happening beyond just having a sort of photographic representation, a xerox of words that's planted in our brains that we can go back to, that this becomes a sort of indwelling reality that helps to form and shape us in ways that we're not going to understand until later in life.
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Even I want to ask even about that phrase because we don't say generally, oh, I know that in my brain. We say, I know it by heart, or as you said previously, it's written on my heart, or something along those lines. Why do we say that why not? It's in my brain. No, no, no. It's in my heart.
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Yeah. The history of that phrase I haven't researched. I mean, it is in Scripture, in proverbs, that we're to write these commandments on the table of our hearts. And it comes up again in different places in the Bible. So I think that it's a scriptural metaphor that keeps coming around over again, even though we've largely forgotten that in our public consciousness. But there is something, especially in the Old Testament, the heart being the seat of the man, not the seat of emotions, Although. Yes, that as well. But the whole of the person is concentrated there. So instead of it being a pure intellectual exercise, it is part of the whole of our person. So it'd be an interesting thing to trace backwards and see how that phrase has been interpreted through centuries. But I know it's got roots back at least as far as Scripture.
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From an educational perspective or a classroom perspective, what are potential advantages for memorization? Whether it be language skills, memory training, what do we. What do we gain through memorization?
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I think it's one of those things where you can find the science that you want to find. When you're researching this myself, teaching in a classroom, I see benefits of it all the time in having that shared knowledge to go back to. I know what the students have memorized, and when I want to draw them back to a point, we recite the line or lines together and have a quick access to a valuable line or phrase or stanza that gets to an important philosophical point that I want to make easier than flipping back in books. It's really nice to have those things to hand and have beautiful words to go back to to remind us of this principle that helps to inform our new discussion or the new book that we're reading.
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So.
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So there is something about having a sort of treasure trove of valuable, you know, flowers of learning. Back in the Middle Ages, a sort of compendium of Florilegia is compounded together of beautiful quotations, sort of like Bartlett's Book of Quotations, which nobody uses anymore, but used to be sort of the standard graduation gift. So to have those things already in your mind and quick, easy access to them is a useful thing. Yes. But also helps us to make and different connections as we add more to that storehouse that we've got inside our heads. So, I mean, I find it useful in the classroom level, but we're not just thinking about usefulness. We practice memorization because we think it does have value for the brain. For how we remember, how we add things to memory, and how we figure out pathways to access memory as well. And then, and then I always want my students to be memorizing things that are going to have value for shaping character, shaping their perceptions of beauty, what kind of expectations I want them to have for how language should sound, how good poetry should sound. So we memorize a variety of things, but those are kind of the parameters for how I choose what I'm going to have my students memorize.
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Talking with Dr. Ellen Condit about in defense of memorization, does that also lead to building a specific culture inside of a school? And can that be that concept be applied outside of educational institutions?
- [38:38]
E
Yeah, it is a nice feature of being at a small school where for years I've taught all of the upper School students, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. And the students all do they have some choice, but they all have the same basic memorization pieces that they do. So every student has that same story house of basic works that we come back to. There is a sense of pride about that. They're proud of what they've memorized. It. It becomes a kind of shorthand when we're discussing things. They don't have to explain themselves. They go back to the line and everybody knows what it means. There's something incredibly useful in that, but also really, really lovely in the way we've got the shared common knowledge. And of course, it's not just in schools that we do this. Any liturgical church is doing the same, even team, where we're chanting the same things or coming back to the same maxims or credos. There's some kind of a cohesive unity and identity that comes from knowing the same phrases and holding them together to be true and being able to recite them back. I think that's always a helpful unifying thing for a group of people to have something to hold onto together and know it by heart, together in communication.
- [39:56]
B
There's something in the process too, right, where there are other lessons to learn. Self discipline, confidence, a sense of commitment that students get instead of just saying, oh, now I know this, but I'm also learning things along the way.
- [40:10]
E
Yeah, definitely. One of the useful things about learning poetry the way we do, which is a few lines every day I practice through with students and I want them to. The temptation is at every level of schooling to pull an all nighter and write a paper the night before. I'm like, no, we're going to take this one piece at a time, one sentence at a time, and Memorizing in small bits instead of trying to cram things. And there's something that happens between short and long term memory, the amount of time that it takes to put it into our memories, the repetitions over and again. Eventually it's going to get stored in long term instead of just short term. So I've seen the difference with students who memorize. The younger the student, you and are way past this. But young people can memorize things readily and they can memorize vast quantities of things really quickly and then they dump it immediately afterwards. But putting into long term memory, if we do it a small piece at a time, I want them to see that as a figure for like, this is how we learn all things. Take a little bit at a time, work on it one piece at a time instead of trying to take in the whole thing all at once.
- [41:18]
B
On the subject of approach, is there a need to think about this or teach it in a way that that prevents it from being monotonous? You mentioned that term earlier in the conversation, that it's not something that is monotonous for the students.
- [41:32]
E
Yeah, I think it has to start with young children. They naturally enjoy reciting back. They enjoy poems, they enjoy fun poetry. And making it fun when they're young is tremendously helpful. By the time I get kids in high school, it can be a real slog. If they haven't already enjoyed memorization in the past, they need to be convinced of its value and find some kind of enjoyment in the process. I think that does come with time. Even students who've never done it before, they can eventually come around to an appreciation for it because it's a different kind of brain work. It doesn't take interpretation, it doesn't take deep thought. It is a sort of mechanical process that once they've done it a few times, they can see the rewards that come from. May take a little while to sink in, but it is a kind of mental. In our day, we do a lot of literary analysis and discussion, but this doesn't require real thought in the same way we do process the lines and talk about them. But the memorization itself, storing it in memory is something that's kind of restful in a way, in some ways easy once we get in the habit of it.
- [42:48]
B
Talking with Dr. Ellen Condit in defense of memorization, we talk a lot about the beautiful here around Hillsdale's campus. What. What is beautiful about memorization? What is beautiful about the ability many years later to know this poem by heart or know this piece of work, know the nuances without having to look it up or go into a search engine somewhere, right?
- [43:11]
E
Yeah, I guess it's a little bit macabre, but when I talk to older people who come to campus and give talks about memorization and about the poetry work that we do at the academy, every person in the audience is going to have a poem that they have memorized when they were in school 70 years ago, and they will be delighted to recite it back to me. And I love hearing them, but they've got shining lines that still stick with them. And, I mean, we can make the argument, of course, that most of the people in that age group don't have their smartphones with them and probably can't figure out how to do a Google search. That's true. True for my parents and sometimes even true for me. But even though our kids are going to be capable of it and we'll have the technology all around. Yeah. There is something beautiful in being able to contain that within ourselves and not have to rely on something external, the material itself. We try to choose beautiful things that are worthy of memorization. So I think that beauty is in two parts. The beauty of having something inside that you can reflect on and rely on yourself and your brain to produce so you can think about it at any time, at random times. But then the material itself and the riches that it provides, we want to. We want to commit things to memory that are. That are lovely and that are worth reflecting on later.
- [44:40]
B
Does that memorized content, the things that we memorize resonate differently the older we get, perhaps?
- [44:48]
E
Oh, absolutely. I only started memorizing maybe, maybe 20 years ago, and I find every once in a while, I mean, a revelation as I'm working through a poem with students, all of a sudden, wait a minute. Oh, that's what that means. And I think we've all had that experience with songs, right? Lyrics of songs that you loved when you were a kid, and all of a sudden you're singing along with your kids in the car. I'm like, oh, that's what that means. Oh, no. You have this horrifying realization. But it does sink in over time. And we have. With greater life experience, we suddenly understand things in a new way, or with the more reading we do, we suddenly get the illusions that we missed when we were younger. So it is the kind of thing that ripens with age and maturity and with greater knowledge of more literature and more aspects of life, suddenly things are going to be made clear to us later.
- [45:40]
B
Dr. Ellen Condit, in defense of memorization she's an English teacher at Hillsdale Academy, adjunct professor of education, education and English at Hillsdale College. Dr. Condit, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [45:53]
E
Thanks for having me.
- [45:55]
B
That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Charlie Kirk. We heard excerpts from his national leadership seminar lecture, Dr. Christina Lamb Chicolova from Hillsdale's art department, and Ellen Condit. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also you also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.