On Classical Education in America

Acknowledging problems with how the “Western canon” has been taught and how it has been used to justify immoral systems is good for classical education and our society.

Dear Friends,

It’s been a busy week of travel, inventory acquisition, legal challenges, topped off by someone crashing into the back of our Kia Sorento while it was parked in the driveway. So let’s talk about classical education in America.

There was a Facebook post I saw about fusionism, the alliance between libertarians and conservatives during the Cold War against communism, and whether it was a good idea still or ever. I have opinions on fusionism, so this is the kind of post that grabs my attention. In the comments, I come across this:

This framing of conservatives and libertarians united against an amorphous “left” that seeks to destroy economic, civic, and classical education incites unity against a common enemy, appealing to tribal instincts that have been evolved over decades. I, a Libertarian, support economic, civic, and classical education. I want those things to be taught to our children, so they can continue to make this country the most free and prosperous that the world has ever seen. And of course “I would unite with anybody to do right” would apply to fighting against forces seeking to destroy those good and valuable things for our society.

See how well the framing works? Whenever something hits you viscerally like that, it’s worth examining more closely. Who are these attackers and what are their attacks, one wonders.

The original commenter declined to provide any examples of “the left” attacking those three pillars of our educational system, possibly because they don’t exist, but possibly because he was just busy or distracted by things more important than social media,¹ but someone jumped in to support the claim that classical education was under attack² for what it is.³

An aside on writing, legal and otherwise. Adverbs like “inarguably” or “absolutely” are usually a signal that the phrase they modify is weakly supported.⁴ “Clearly” is the one seen in legal writing most often, with the argument after it usually being the weakest point of an opponent’s brief.

The idea that white European studies shouldn’t exist because they study white Europeans is an absurd strawman of any position that actually exists in the discourse.

A request for examples yielded these four articles:

“Why Study Dead White Men?”

“I draw two lessons from my experience. First, many authors in the Western tradition are smart and worth engaging. Howard students benefit from wrestling with Plato’s rejection of democracy and Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism. This engagement is only harmful when it turns into unreflective reverence. Second, engaging with the Western tradition allows students to gain an understanding of their place in a country whose morality, political systems and evils are deeply indebted to Western philosophical thought. This knowledge is an essential component of social change. To be sure, Western thought is but one tool among many.

Howard students are ambitious, bold and mission-driven. They should engage all texts in relation to their larger aims. The future CEO should look to Kant as an example of a thinker who was able to resolve a seemingly intractable dispute between two theoretical camps.

Political science students should use Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to think about why we have governments at all. Aspiring doctors can use John Stuart Mill as a springboard for their own ideas about health disparities and the distribution of medical resources. In addition, Howard professors should continue to think about how to make course content relevant to students’ ultimate objectives. Effort from both sides is needed if Howard students are to continue to be leaders who think radical thoughts that others dare not to.”

“It’s time to take the curriculum back from dead white men”

We must acknowledge the power structures that have allowed some people to contribute to the canon while keeping others out. These structures have also preserved certain texts while ignoring others. We must also explain the role universities have played in this selection process.

“The Classical Roots of White Supremacy”

“Of course, no one is saying that we should not teach about ancient Greece and Rome or that classics should not play a role in students’ education. But it’s our responsibility to provide students ethical encounters with history. This involves recognizing the ways Greco-Roman antiquity has been exploited to establish and maintain white supremacy, naming that exploitation and interrupting it.”

“He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?”

“Classics had been embraced by the far right, whose members held up the ancient Greeks and Romans as the originators of so-called white culture. Marchers in Charlottesville, Va., carried flags bearing a symbol of the Roman state; online reactionaries adopted classical pseudonyms; the white-supremacist website Stormfront displayed an image of the Parthenon alongside the tagline “Every month is white history month.””

After reading all four of the examples provided, none of them are opposed to classical education, but all of them are opposed to classical education to the exclusion of non-Western sources or to the use of the classics to justify immoral or unethical systems like slavery and the superiority of the white race.

That seems like a good idea to me. And that’s really the point.

Sometimes bad people like white supremacists cherry pick certain phrases or writings in the classical canon and use them to support repugnant ideas like slavery or racial superiority. When that happens, it falls on the members of the academy as well as people in society to separate the sheep from the goats and be clear about the reality that many historical figures engaged in many immoral practices, practices that were immoral at the time they were practiced⁵ and should be abolished and reproved by all moral people.

The slave power in the South prior to the Civil War used the practice of slavery in the ancient world by venerated philosophers and political and military leaders as a justification for human chattel slavery in the United States.⁶ The Lost Cause movement as well as modern neoconfederate nullification advocates similarly place historic slave holders on pedestals to try to rehabilitate the morality of fighting a losing war for the power of government to enforce human chattel slavery with guns.

Historic figures are like chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream. If you love the flavor of vanilla, but hate the flavor of chocolate, there’s no way to enjoy the ice cream. The blending is not complete, but you can’t practically separate one from the other.

Some things Thomas Jefferson did were great. Some things Thomas Jefferson did were shitty. You can’t understand the person or their impact by pretending that either the chocolate or the vanilla aren’t part of the same ice cream. That’s history taught properly.

Historic figures grappling with their own hypocrisies can teach us something about how to approach our modern moral inconsistencies. A great industrialist’s full-throated antisemitism is important to understand the man, but it doesn’t detract from the improvements made to the economy or manufacturing.

Bad people do good work sometimes. Good people do bad work sometimes. Honest people tell the truth about it. Dishonest people refuse to speak ill of anyone on their own team, or to speak well of anyone on “the other side.”

How we teach is important and criticisms of how teaching is done now should not be dismissed just because they come from the opposite side of the political spectrum. Reject people who try to make you believe otherwise.

Yours truly,

Nick

P.S. Nobody in the social media exchanges is identified (other than myself) because who said the things is less important than the need to be careful about reactionary tribalism leading us to accept the unacceptable.

1. Nearly everything else in the world.

2. No examples of the left attacking civic or economic education were ever provided, probably because nearly everyone across the political spectrum supports civic and economic education.

3. Study of white Europeans.

4. If it’s supported at all.

5. Though that discernment of morality may have been uncommon at that place and time.

6. “If those heroic people did it, it must not be bad,” is the moral reasoning of a child caught doing something naughty and pointing at their friend saying, “She did it too!”