Stanley Fish on Classical Education

by | Jun 9, 2010 | Articles

You might not expect the controversial English literary theorist Stanley Fish to endorse a return to classical education, but that is exactly what he has done in a recent New York Times editorial, entitled “A Classical Education: Back to The Future” (June 7, 2010). Stanley Fish is known for his subjectivist or communal theory of literary interpretation–he suggests that the interpretation of texts is dependent on our subjective experience in a particular community that gives us a particular way of reading a text. Fish, therefore, has been critical of “universals” or absolute, objective notions of truth, fairness and reasonableness.

In his editorial, Fish recounts his own classical education at Classical High School in Rhode Island (founded in 1843) where he was required to take “four years of Latin, three years of French, two years of German, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, English, history, civics, in addition to extra-curricular activities, and clubs…” Though Fish attended Yale and taught at Johns Hopkins, U.C. Berkeley and Duke, he says that the Classical High School “is the best and most demanding educational institution” he has ever been a part of.

In his article (well worth the quick read), Fish reviews three books on classical education from three authors, who though quite unlike each other, share a common interest in renewing classical education. They are Leigh Bortins, an engineer and founder of Classical Conversations, Martha Nussbaum a classicist and law professor and Diane Ravitch, a renowned historian of education. All three authors advocate the cultivating of the human via the liberal arts for the benefit of humanity.

Classical educators and leaders in the growing renewal of K-12 classical education might find Fish a surprising ally. But an ally he is–at least of a general sort. His high school alma mater touts the motto “certare, petere, repirere neque cedere,” (to struggle, to seek, to discover and never to withdraw). Apparently a classical education has led Dr. Fish to struggle well, for he has attracted his share of critics from those inside and out of the study of English literature and theory, and he shows no sign of withdrawing from combat after over 70 years on this earth. A classical education often produces men and women with sharpened minds who will cut their own paths, and not always the paths we would hope for. The French skeptic Voltaire, for example, was classically educated by the Jesuits. He thanked the Jesuits for his rigorous education even as he rigorously worked to undermine many of their cherished convictions and beliefs.

Now Fish did not attend a Christian school as Voltaire did, so Fish has no Christian heritage to betray or undermine. Instead Fish embodies the secular classicist, who trained by the liberal arts wields an incisive mind and pen, but does not display a character formed by faith, hope and love and some of their associated intellectual virtues. Christian classical educators must note secular classical training as lacking just one thing: an anchor in the love of Christ, the world’s creator and redeemer, who provides coherence to the entire educational enterprise–an enterprise that is cracking up each passing decade. Still, Christian classical educators share Fish’s admiration and appreciation for rigorous training in the classical liberal arts. Still, we can admire his obvious skill even as he writes and cuts where we would not. We can admire him the way Chesterton admired George Bernard Shaw–an ideological opponent with enviable training, skill and an expansive mind. And we can join him in his call to revive and renew training in the classical liberal arts–for our common humanity is at stake.

Colson Center for Christian Worldview

by | May 10, 2010 | Articles

Those of you interested in thinking through the construction and implementation of a Christian worldview will be interested in the goings-on at Chuck Colson’s Center for Christian Worldview. I have joined an diverse group of writers at this site who contribute various essays relating the development of a Christian worldview. You can see my latest article (Augustine for Troubled Times) there at:


Augustine for Troubled Times Essay

Marco Polo and Classical Education: How the Seven Liberal Arts Almost Came to China

by | May 10, 2010 | Articles

Perhaps you have played the game “Marco Polo” in the swimming pool as a kid. This pool game is an aquatic version of tag, except the person who is “it” must keep his eyes closed as he thrashes around the pool seeking to make someone else “it.” And there is another twist: he who is “it” may call out “Marco” to which all other players are obliged to respond “Polo.” Swim quickly towards a “Polo” and you might just tag a friend–but keep your eyes closed.

Marco Polo is of course famous for being one of the first Europeans to travel to China. He didn’t merely take a two-week tour–he lived there for over twenty years and served Kublai Khan as an emissary. After his father and uncle (Niccolo and Maffeo) had traveled to China (from 1260-1269), Marco followed in their footsteps and was in China from 1271 to 1295. Marco set out at age 17 accompanied by his father. We know all about Marco’s travels and exploits because he was kind enough to dictate a book of his experiences while in prison for a time when he returned to Italy. We know his dictations as The Travels of Marco Polo.

So how did the pool game acquire the name “Marco Polo”? I don’t know. It does, however, testify to Marco’s fame throughout the centuries. Certainly his name has a poetic ring appropriate to call and response game. Once one says “Marco” someone else surely must say “Polo.” But perhaps the blind tagger in the pool game bears some resemblance to Marco as he traveled to lands never before seen by Europeans, where he encountered languages and practices inscrutable to the Western mind. If Marco began his travels “blind” he did not end them so; he learned several Asian languages over the course of his twenty years in China. Eventually he could see and understand what was at first sight a bewildering confusion. Marco reminds us that to become multicultural requires more than having a taco on Cinco de Mayo. It requires learning a language, learning a people.

Marco traveled as a Christian in a land of idolaters. He did encounter some Nestorian Christians, and the record of these encounters leads me to think of “what might have been.” The Nestorians believed that the human and divine natures of Christ were so distinct as to be two persons, rather than two natures unified in one person. Their Christological doctrines were declared heretical at the Councils of Ephesus (430 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD). What might have happened if the eastern church (for the Nestorians went east) had been retained as part of the orthodox western church with its full support?

Kublia Khan himself represents another “what might have been.” Having met Niccolo and Maffeo, Kublia Khan shows great interest in Christianity, and over time indicates his preference for the Christian faith. The Great Khan (as Marco calls him) also wanted to import the learning of the west represented in the liberal arts. Kublia Khan requests that Niccolo and Maffeo go back to Italy, greet and petition the pope that they might bring back one hundred scholars to the Khan’s court. Consider this passage from Marco:

You must know that the purport of his letters and his mission was this: he sent word to the Pope that he should send up to a hundred men learned in the Christian religion, well versed in the seven arts, and skilled to argue and demonstrate plainly to idolaters and those of other persuasions that their religion is utterly mistaken and that all the idols which they keep in their houses and worship are things of the Devi.—men able to show by clear reasoning that the Christian religion is better than theirs. Furthermore the great Khan directed the brothers to bring oil from the lamp that burns above the sepulcher of God in Jerusalem. Such then was the purport of their mission.

Kublia Khan wanted the Christian scholarship of the West to make its debut in his court, to see if perhaps he and his kingdoms might adopt both Christianity and the learning that accompanied it. Marco writes that the Khan himself was inclined to convert to Christianity but needed to witness the public triumph of Christian learning in order to convert. His request for one hundred Christian scholars never materialized. Instead only two Dominican scholars were dispatched, and these grew faint of heart during their travels east, encountering some local warfare. Both turned back, while Niccolo and Maffeo pressed on. Unfortunately, Kublia Khan never gets to meet any Christian scholars, nor any in his court. Was this a lost opportunity? Marco seems to indicate it was:

Someone may well ask why, since he regards the Christian faith as the best, he does not embrace it and become a Christian. The reason may be gathered from what he said to Messer Niccolo and Maffeo when he sent them as emissaries to the Pope. They used from time to time to raise this matter with him; but he would reply: ‘On what grounds do you desire me to become a Christian? You see that the Christians who live in these parts are so ignorant that they accomplish nothing and are powerless. And you see that these idolaters do whatever they will; and when I sit at table the cups in the middle of the hall come tom me full of wine or other beverages without anyone touching them, and I drink from them. They banish bad weather in any direction they choose and perform many marvels. And, as you know their idols speak and give them such predictions as they ask. But, if I am converted to the faith of Christ and become a Christian, then my barons and others who do not embrace the faith of Christ will say to me: ‘What has induced you to undergo baptism and adopt the faith of Christ? What virtues or what miracles have you seen to his credit? For these idolaters declare what they do they do by their holiness and by virtue of their idols. Then I should not know what to answer, which would be a grave error in their eyes. And these idolaters, who by their arts and sciences achieve such great results, could easily compass my death. But do you go to your Pope and ask him on my behalf to send me a hundred men learned in your religion, who in the case of these idolaters will have the knowledge to condemn their performances and tell them that they too can do such things but will not because they are done by diabolic art and evil spirits, and will show their mastery by making the idolaters powerless to perform these marvels in their presence. On the day when we see this, I too will condemn them and their religion. Then I will be baptized, and all my barons and magnates will do likewise, and their subjects in turn will undergo baptism. So there will be more Christians here than there are in your part of the world.’ And if, as was said at the beginning, men had really been sent by the Pope with the ability to preach our faith to the Great Khan, then assuredly he would have become a Christian. For it was known for a fact that he was most desirous to be converted.

So with the help of Marco Polo, I have indulged in a bit of historical speculation this week. What if one hundred scholars had made it to Kublia Khan’s court? What if he had converted to Christianity and adopted the learning embodied in the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry and music)? Well, it may be an interesting thought experiment, but is probably of little value unless it informs our present work. What invitations exist now for faith and learning to move north, south, east and west? What great or small Khans are asking for aid? Where are the Christian scholars and to where should they be sent?

Finally, we ought not only to ask what might have been. Those of us who have been blessed because someone was sent to us should also revel in the question of what might not have been. Freely we have received, freely we must give.

The Trivial Trivium… or The Trivium at The Crossroads

by | Mar 31, 2010 | Articles, Uncategorized

For a while now I have been amused at the contrast between the two words “trivium” and “trivial.” Now I am an ardent advocate of the renewal of “Trivium-Based Education” and consider such a renewal greatly needed and far from trivial. So in what sense could the trivium be trivial? How could one of these words be so serious and the other so…well, trivial?

Our word “trivium” is taken directly from the Latin word trivium which means the place “where three roads meet.” The word trivium is made from two other Latin words: tres (three) and via (road, way). The word trivium was employed by some medieval educators to describe the education rooted in the study of the three verbal arts of grammar, logic in rhetoric. The trivium described the “three fold way” consisting of the arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric. So the trivium is the path to mastering language and cultivating one’s humanity. That’s pretty serious. Our word “trivial” (and “trivia”) derives from a related Latin word–the adjective trivialis, which means “of the crossroads.” In Roman towns, crossroads where very busy streets where a lot of people gathered, making what was there, or what happened there, common. So gradually, what was “trivial” became that which was common, familiar and well-known.

In contemporary education, we surely cannot say that the trivium is common, familiar and well-known. Certainly trivum-based education is not on every street corner, not in this sense at the crossroads. But could the trivium be at the crossroads in another sense? For a crossroads also represents a decision that must be made. One must make one turn or another, take one path or another. As classical schools continue to grow and multiply, other schools will be presented with a choice: Should we adopt a classical curriculum and pedagogy? Many Christian schools are observing the growth of classical schools and asking themselves, if the classical approach would be a road worth taking. Several have said yes, a trend I am certainly watching carefully.

Classical schools themselves often find themselves at their own crossroads: Do we start a high school? Do we dilute the classical curriculum in order to attract more students? Do we help start another classical school in a city down the road?

Maybe you are at a crossroads. Will you educate your own children classically? Will you become an educator at a classical school or co-op? Will you give your talent and time to a classical school board? Start a new classical school? Let me know, I have been down that road before.

Has Classical Education Been Discredited?

by | Jan 20, 2010 | Articles

Objection: Classical Education was Discredited and Dismissed by the Educational Establishment Nearly 100 Years Ago

Indeed this is largely, if not completely true. And we must admit that American classical educators in the late 1800s and early 1900s had become calcified, provincial and ornery in the face of the rising criticisms coming from the emerging discipline of psychology. While we disagree with many of the assessments of these early 20th century critics, we admit that classical educators at that time made several wrong turns and that some of the criticism was just. Mortimer Adler aptly describes the reaction to the stuffy classicism at the end of the 20th century:

Classicism names the arid and empty formalism which dominated education at the end of the last century. It emphasized the study of the classics for historical or philological reasons. It was interested in the past for the past’s sake. It mistook drill for discipline. Against such classicism, the reaction [progressivism] which took place was genuinely motivated and sound in principle. Unhappily, as always the reaction went too far. (Adler, RE, 67)

Many classical educators at the time, from a position of strength and dominance, scoffed at their critics when they suggested that education should be differentiated to meet the needs of a diverse population, most of which would not have a practical use for the study of Latin, classical literature and history. Studies showed that less than 5% of the population would become teachers, lawyers, doctors and architects—why should the other 95% of the population be made to take these classical subjects? Why should college students be made to study one curriculum? Why not let them choose a course of study (a “major”) from among a collection of growing options? Many of the first psychologists began to suggest that education could be scientifically understood and modified as we learned more about how the mind actually worked. At this same time these new educational leaders suggested a differentiated curriculum for various kind of students, classified according to ability (via mental testing) in order to foster an efficient social order in America. Vocational education was urged as the right curriculum for many American students. A battle for changing the traditional classical curriculum began, and slowly the nascent progressive educators grew in strength and influence, emboldened by the work being done in psychology, mental testing, sociology and statistics. Education was becoming a science more than an art, and the classical educators found themselves isolated, defensive and increasingly out-of-date.

Perhaps the greatest blow against the classical educators was the claim of the progressives that research had shown that the study of classical languages like Latin and Greek had no value except for learning Latin and Greek—there was no “mental training” or “mental discipline” gained from language study that could transfer to other studies and academic work. The mind, they said, was not trained by studying Latin. This was a great blow, since this is precisely what defenders of Latin study had argued for years. Who could argue with what the latest research from the latest new science proved? As it turned, out the latest research turned out to be anything but certain and determinative, and is still contested today. While progressive educators did eventually emerge to be the leading force in American education , the traditional classical approach to education never really did die out—it retreated in some cases to smaller numbers of private schools that maintained the classical approach but also continued in limited ways in uneasy alliances with many public schools. For example Latin continued to be a popular subject well into the 1960s and after a dip of several decades is increasing in popularity once again.

Latin, of course, is not the full measure of classical education, but is one important indicator. Latin and the classical curriculum were severely criticized by a rising educational elite. The classical curriculum was dismissed by many but continued on with diminished strength, now growing. In the eyes of many it was discredited even if not destroyed. Classical education did not die, but slumbered, and now appears to be waking once again. The new versions of classical education that are emerging are not the reactionary, defensive and grumpy version of the classical educators who saw their dominance eroding in the early 20th century. The new version is young and energetic, flush with the thrill of discovery.