Beez (@Beez ) and I discuss the value of past, learned knowledge, especially through the classical education system. We also think about its caveats and ideas for improved integration today.
@Beez :
"I've been meditating on the value of a classical education throughout the semester while studying the core literacies that fuel adolescent development. I think the ideal adolescent education pays serious attention to historical philosophies and the actions, movements, and cultures they inspired. This is useful for three reasons:
"Our cultural ancestors were probably no wiser than us, on average, but the ideas we inherit from them have undergone a filtration process. We mostly learn of ideas that a succession of generations thought were worth passing on. That doesn’t mean these ideas are always right, but it does mean that they are more likely to be valuable, in the long run, than most content generated within the past month." – Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell (The Dark Psychology of Social Networks)
@Jenny Liu Zhang:
"It seems like classical education is a wonderful case study for your points 1 and 2, though for 2, I wonder if there are better contemporary, non-classical (therefore, more relatable?) examples that could inspire those same movements in a person. The filter process the authors in The Atlantic discuss is exactly what isn't replicated quickly enough to keep up with today's philosophies. We witness so many changes in our zeitgeist daily and we lack a common anthropological language for it, which is why I also wonder about your 3rd point. How relevant is exposure to classical terms to understanding how those same ideologies manifest today? If we are to invent new language anyway, the most important skill gained from this exposure would be the ability to compare unlike ideas, which could be developed through a classical curriculum, but also in highly creative spaces, even when learners have less context.
I've also struggled the last four years in university, though, because I lacked the same exposures to anything classical. As a product of many different systems and methods of learning, I'm missing a lot of the classical, articulate metaphors for the big ideas I do internally meditate on. I am neither as well-read nor book-hungry as some of my peers, though I am very particular about what I do consume and dwell heavily on the value of that content. The poor choices of teachers past, for example, have affected me a lot, so the filtering process of a classical education seems very appealing as long as it's also taken with a grain of salt—because the granularity of such study isn't just limited to a classical curriculum.
In other words, it's hard for me to communicate or analogize ideas with some more well-read peers in conversation. I wonder about this problem for people on the spectrum as well—the experiences they explore in other settings are missing some sort of language, too."
@Beez :
"I went to a traditional classical school in fifth grade, but in sixth grade, I attended a school that maintained a heavily classical slate while orienting the classroom around dialogue. I think you ask the right question: are there better contemporary, non-classical examples that could inspire those same movements in a person?
I also think that 'relatable' is an interesting term to use—my inability to relate to the content in fifth grade produced a very begrudging 10 year-old in me. I chose to value the subject matter in sixth grade because it became very clear that the ideas we were discussing were suddenly relevant in modern times.
I think that classical is one of the most relatable studies when you're open to it. You're studying humanity throughout time and recognizing yourself in antiquity. It's such a beautiful, human act—and very forgotten and inaccessible. The pitfalls of poorly executed classical education are grave: sexism, because women were not documented for most of history; and cultures of rote learning and recitation.
Because of these things I know that my ideal education is a dialogue-centered, exploration-driven, project-based curriculum steeped deeply in the study of history and the world around us.
We don't have a common anthropological language for the changes we experience in our zeitgeist, and I think that classical education doesn't necessarily provide solutions to that. I do think that understanding history intimately, understanding old schools of thought and existing works is helpful when you want to push the edges of a new idea—it's usually true that someone's thought critically about what you're thinking about, and understanding the landscape means seeing the boundaries to push.
Classical is not the only way to introduce students to disparate ideas, but part of what might make an idea disparate is how old it is! It's helpful to expose people to existing forms of argument too so they can develop rhetorical skills at an early age—it's inherent in some kids, but not in most.