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The Law Is Above the Lawyers
October 2, 2012 | 38 comments
Special Report
To Educate in the Permanent Things
Could there be an education proposal more straightforward than assigning the Great Works?
In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama proposed changes to preschool, high school, and college education, respectively. His proposals generated praise and condemnation from the predictable cheerleaders and naysayers. Some celebrated his efforts to expand early childhood education; others suggested that he should have focused more on the student loan crisis; still others, not to be outdone, pointed to school funding, teacher salaries, grading, standardized testing, technology, and foreign study as the pressing issues that he neglected to address with sufficient detail.
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about how to improve American education from the top down. But positive change rarely happens through centralized design; it arises spontaneously through the interaction of human agents operating within and among social groups. The State cannot plan and then promulgate a proper education, and legislative enactments cannot reflect the mores and traditions of local groups with differing standards and expectations. The most prudent and humble proposals for improving education are not couched in statist, Platonic terms about civic education and human perfection; instead, they approach learning modestly, on the individual level. They entail the everyday interactions between teachers and students. They are not stamped with the approval of politicians, unions, think tanks, or interest groups. They take place in the classroom, not the public square. A teacher anywhere, whatever his station, school, or background, can implement them in his course without disrupting the pace or provoking the ire of the educational establishment. The best of these, because it is so easily executed, is simply to teach what T.S. Eliot, and Russell Kirk after him, called “permanent things.”
The permanent things are the inherited principles, mores, customs, and traditions that sustain humane thinking and preserve civilized existence for future generations; their canonization in literary, philosophical, religious, and historical texts happened and is happening in slow degrees. We can trace the permanent things through curricula that emphasize the ultimate values of prosperous societies. An informed, laborious study of the perennial themes and archetypal patterns in what are variously denominated as the Great Works, the Western Canon, or the Classics can help us to organize and make sense of the permanent things. There are those who would object that this approach seems too hopeful and ideal. But no one has suggested it as a panacea, of which there are none, and anyway, is there a proposal that could be simpler, more straightforward, and more workable than assigning and discussing the Great Works?
As early as 1948, Eliot remarked that “there is no doubt that in our headlong rush to educate everybody, we are lowering our standards, and more and more abandoning the study of those subjects by which the essentials of our culture—of that part of it which is transmittable by education—are transmitted; destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in their mechanized caravans.” It might be asked just who these barbarian nomads are and why we ought not to welcome their cultural practices and assumptions. The barbarian nomads could be, I think, any group lacking in historical perspective and mostly ignorant of the illuminating continuities that have guided our weightiest and most imaginative thinkers. The practices and assumptions of these nomads are not grounded in lived experience but aimed at utopian projects such as ensuring equality, creating fundamental rights, or eliminating poverty, and, to the extent that these practices and assumptions deviate from enduring norms, they cannot be said to have flourished ever.
To study the permanent things, on the other hand, is to consider the prevailing and profound ideas from certain times and schools in relation to other such ideas from various times and schools throughout successive eras. It is to map the course of perennial ideas to examine how they apply to different settings and generations. It is both sequential and diachronic in its approach. Its chief benefit is to put ideas into context, which is to say that it is to make us aware of our own presuppositions and perspectives that necessarily arise from our social, cultural, and historical situation. Each thinker lives in his own specific era and place and cannot gain knowledge in a vacuum outside of time; our era and place shape the manner in which we think and restrict our ability to imagine conditions beyond our immediate and tangible experience.
This is not to submit that our ideas are determined for us, only that we enter into experience with certain perceptions that we have no control over. They are there because of the conditions present at the time and space in which we exist. A sustained study of the permanent things will show us that our perceptions are not totally alien from those of our predecessors, although the respective perceptions are different. It also teaches us to compensate for our prejudices and to avoid thinking that our necessarily limited perspectives are unconditionally true and universally acceptable, even if they have verifiable antecedents. It reveals, as well, that schools of thought cannot simply be deemed later versions of earlier schools just because the two are in agreement about certain points. Finally, although we cannot escape those presuppositions that are embedded in our thought and culture, being alert to their probable existence can counteract their possible effect.
A rigorous study of the permanent things provides a lodestar for evaluating particular ideas against that which has been tested and tried before. Ideas that seem new always have traceable antecedents, and individuals equipped with a fundamental knowledge of the permanent things are able to situate purportedly novel ideas alongside their forerunners. These individuals recognize that change is not always progress; sometimes it is decline, deterioration, or decay. Only a sense of the continuities of history and thought can demonstrate the difference. Our political pedants in general and President Obama in particular insist on recognizing and implementing new institutions—homosexual marriage is only one example—as if a radical departure from historic standards and established customs is itself the mark of good and lasting policy. Yet the permanent things show that even the most exceptional thinkers, those who represent the spirit of their age, whatever that might have been or might be, are part of a greater tradition.
It may be true that to study a particular thinker’s cultural milieu and biography is requisite to placing his ideas into their proper context and to highlighting the unacceptable premises of his philosophy; nevertheless, cautious interpreters ought to consider whether his thoughts necessarily lead to certain consequences, or whether the events that seem related to his thoughts arose accidentally, apart from his philosophy. Put another way, the cautious interpreter must carefully consider causation: whether theories actually generate particular circumstances, or whether those circumstances would have come to pass regardless of what the thinker spoke or wrote. Mussolini, for instance, praised William James, but it does not follow that anything James said or wrote endorses or enables fascism. He who would suggest otherwise betrays an ignorance of James’s work. The permanent things can help us to distinguish the true forms and implications of an individual’s thought from their appropriations by hostile forces.
By studying the permanent things, moreover, we learn that we cannot achieve the proper education through mere funding; nor does the solution to schooling gridlock and setbacks come from student aid, dress codes, student evaluations, tuition, or whatever. These issues begin to seem fleeting and trivial to one with an historical sense. They are at most temporary struggles, and although they are important, as all struggles are important, we are not to subordinate liberal learning to them. The best way to achieve the liberal learning necessary to make important and meaningful distinctions about our complex world is, as I have suggested and as it bears repeating, through a holistic, painstaking exploration of the permanent things. This means not only reading the Great Works for their content, but analyzing them in light of their place in history.
The beauty of this approach is that anyone can carry it out; the wisdom of it lies in its civilizing effects. Whether one is a homeschooling parent, a public school teacher, the leader of a local book club, or simply a curious-minded autodidact, the permanent things are available to him in texts, waiting to be sifted through and analyzed. It is true that there is disagreement as to what constitutes a Great Work and by what criteria, but it does not take more than research and commonsense empiricism to discern which pre-twentieth century texts have withstood the test of time. Teaching the permanent things does not require a large-scale, bureaucratic, administrative overhaul. It does not demand central planning or the implementation of mass, curricular programs; it can be accomplished through decentralized networks of concerned individuals. If parents would teach their children, friends their friends, colleagues their colleagues, and so on, we would in the aggregate become a more literate, astute, and informed society. And as our politicians lecture us about our duties even as they demand our money, we can take comfort in the proverb that these things too shall pass.
Photo: Arnoldius (Creative Commons 2.0).
About the Author
Allen Mendenhall is a Staff Attorney to Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Supreme Court of Alabama, the managing editor of Southern Literary Review, and a doctoral candidate in English at Auburn University. Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.
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Appleby| 3.5.13 @ 7:04AM
The best way to teach is still by example. Don't give your kids books about sex-starved vampires; give them "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and if you haven't read it, read it with them and talk about it. I refused to take my nephews to the Disneyfied "Hunchback of Notre Dame" but I did buy them the book -- and their response was "Why didn't they make a movie out of THIS?" I even got a girl in our Science Fiction Book Club to read the Bible by telling her a few of the stories you don't hear in Bible School, and showing her where to find them. (The Old Testament is a pretty good competitor for Vampire World if you know where to read.) Finally, you as a parent or relative of children, let them see you read, read to them until they can read for themselves, and enlighten them when they protest that the Kewl Kidz are all reading garbage and they don't want to be left behind. When that argument comes up, it's time to get them a copy of Brave New World. And likely it's time you read it yourself. The whole big mess that Obama is creating is all right there on the pages of Brave New World.
AlanAnti-RoveCheneyBrooks | 3.6.13 @ 6:02PM
Appleby,
Brave New World began in the '80s with the technological orientation of that era rejecting the counterculture-- which was backward.
What concerns me more 'n more is how Rightists think we can change the physical world yet expect spirituality to flourish.
cicero| 3.5.13 @ 8:09AM
First things first. Shut off all government backed student loans. It is time to close the 5 year romper rooms that call themselves "colleges" today. If a young person is really interested in educating himself, he will find the means to pay for it. This silly notion that all young people need a bachelors degree to proceed in life is nothing more than an excuse to pay the useless prof class more money than they would ever warrant in the real world.
The notion that we should be teaching the tried and true values of the West sounds great. However, that went out the window in the 60s, when it was decided that all thought had an equivalence. We got rid of the courses teaching the thoughts of dead old white men, remember. Also, those who now control academe also took to the streets to challenge all authority, and were quite successful. Now that the insane run the asylums, you expect them to give up the power and money? The only solution is to just shut the system down. If a student wants an education, he/she should be willing to pay for it. The marketplace always works. No one would pay for what goes as higher education out of their own pockets today.
Petronius| 3.5.13 @ 12:31PM
But all Purp's friends would starve. How cruel can you get?
c. j. acworth| 3.5.13 @ 8:18AM
If you want your children versed in the classics you will have to do it yourself. No way are the publik skools gonna teach from the works of a bunch of Dead White Guys.
Von Mises Jr| 3.5.13 @ 9:53AM
It depends on which "Dead White Guys" they are. Rousseau, Hegel, Comte, Nietzsche and Marx ideas are embedded in the liberal culture although I suspect 99% of the drones never read more than an isolated quote from perhaps the first and last of those cited. Keynes is revered even though 100% of liberals could not provide one example of "demand side" economics actually working.
Rush often touts that he knows liberals better then they know them. It is actually true in that liberals will claim the Enlightenment "Age of Reason" philosophers mentioned or Keynes without realizing that these were the outliers compared to Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Kant, Schopenhauer, Mach or Adam Smith, David Hume, Bastiat, Schumpeter, Mises or Hayek.
But ignorance is bliss. The difference is that many conservatives not only know the history of liberal dogma, but we also know the classical liberals or what today are called conservative or libertarian great works and ideas.
That is the foundation of critical thinking. Lack of a foundation results in no more than liberal dogma.
Petronius| 3.5.13 @ 12:34PM
The "Dead (white guy?) liberals follow closest is B. F. Skinner. He is the father of Determinism and the theory that people move in whatever direction they are pushed.
Stormzeye| 3.5.13 @ 8:37AM
Bravo Mr Mendenhall. You have, better than anyone, elucidated the difference between Conservative thought and Liberal emotion as it relates to this society's approach to education. I was privileged to attend university during the sixties (during the last years of traditional education) and before our educational system was corrupted by the baby boomers. Analysis, logical argument and intellectual rigor were commonplace.
Pedagogical education has suffered from Schools of Education that are regarded as intellectually vacuous and philosophically liberal just as Journalism has suffered from the same lack of intellectual rigor... a deadly combination which has weakened childhood and adult education.
Mike G| 3.5.13 @ 8:43AM
But if we start educating our children, who will the politicians fool?
jaytrain| 3.5.13 @ 9:16AM
Eliot was very much on point in 1948 , but by 1968 the war was over and lost . And it was my generation , Class of '70 , which did the killing . My professors were came out of the universities in the 30's and 40's and they were real scholars . Moreover , they got your attention and your respect . ( Here's lookin at you , Howard Comfort ) What came in after them was driven by the student eval's that went into tenure decisions and academic rigor was lost . The slippery slope to the ' studies' curricula was in place . So where we are now reminds me of a cross between Iona and Fahrenheit 451 , the lamp of learning has already been pretty much extinguished save a few flickers, St, John's and Hillsdale . There are no instructers who themselves are versed in these Great Books. An anecdote with which to close : several years ago a colleague picked up a copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther which I was teaching , he did not know the work and skimmed it for a few minutes and offhandedly announced that it was not anything he would teach .This fellow now chairs the English dept at one of the nation's most highly regarded prep schools . Sorry the battle was lost on or about May 1968 .
C. Vernon Crisler | 3.5.13 @ 9:39AM
I think there should be more online education for K-12. The fact is, our schools -- especially our high schools -- provide too many distractions. Kids basically get the message the "x" (sports, social clubism, McJobs, etc.) are more important than academics. Online classes help refocus the mind on the important things.
Colleges already do this but there's not enough of it. Only older people with day jobs tend to take the online courses, but it needs to expand to include at least half of a regular student's course load.
Ian Cognito | 3.5.13 @ 9:56AM
To expect "Educators" to know about the Classics and to have studied these material - is overly hopely and grossly ambitious. The Classics were removed from the standard curriculae in most locations two decades past. The Classics were largely scribed by White Men - save Shelley; et al. White Men are territorial, sexist, racist, and most acquired their standing by oppressing others-specifically today's sanctioned minorities. Exposing young minds to their thoughts and opinions borders on child abuse. Teaching the "works" of these men will propogate the very behaviors Progressives want to end. Thinking teaching the Classics will improve our nation's ills is an idea nearly as daft as those expected to teach the materials. The Educator Community is filled with people who failed at more rigorous disciplines. Certainly, there are some who sought teaching as profession, but the majority are failures in more lucrative disciplines. My experience in college revealed education majors were dullards who found their intellectual peers and soul mates in that department. Feelings and emotions were the requisite criterion for admission. A working knowlege of subject matter(s) was a secondary consideration. My recent interaction with Educators reinforced these suspicions-which I now consider more factual than conjecture. My assertions are further bolstered by the political actions of Educators as a group. They are terrified of competition that may expose their absence of acumen.
sickofit5| 3.5.13 @ 11:26AM
"White Men are territorial, sexist, racist, and most acquired their standing by oppressing others-specifically today's sanctioned minorities. Exposing young minds to their thoughts and opinions borders on child abuse. Teaching the "works" of these men will propogate the very behaviors Progressives want to end." So what "classics" have you been studying to lead you to that conclusion. BTW the only behaviour Progressives want to end is any behavior that is the result of someone exercising their freedom of choice, which does not include the their perceived right to kill an unborn child. You should sit down and rest now. That chip on your shoulder has got to be wearing you down.
sickofit5| 3.5.13 @ 11:26AM
To lessen the load I leave you with this, be careful when viewing the past through the prism of 21st century morality. Like everything else our morality evolves. That which seems horrific 15o years ago may have been considered normal when it actually occurred. Lastly, revisit the classics that you may have studied. Being territorial, sexist, racist, and acquiring riches through oppression is not uniquely caucasian male traits. These traits have been exhibited by many cultures and societies. How did the Nubians and Egyptians advance and build all those pyramids? answer: slaves (mostly white and jewish). The Japanese tried to conquer China in the 20th century. The Saracens invaded Europe during the middle ages. In Africa today there is still tribal warfare. The middle east and muslims still fight each other , shias v. sunnis. Look at what the Mexicans are doing to each other. The ruling class is still the ruling class and the narco trickers have killed 50k hispanic human beings. Just remember, oppression, sexism, racism is not just a white thing. Just take a trip to Southside of Chicago and the truth will set you free.
markenoff| 3.5.13 @ 11:51AM
Turn on your sarcasm meter.
Petronius| 3.5.13 @ 1:08PM
"Terrified of competition." They can't stand the FACT all life on this planet is based on Competition. That means some people LOSE. That's Not Fair! Maturity never sets in with those who refuse to realize that. They refused to read classics because those books weren't amusing. Literature requires thinking. Those rejecting it because they're allergic to both banish from their lives anything and everything not of Themselves. And the war to negate the unelectable vicissitudes of life began. The good news is, they can't possibly win. The bad news is, they don't care, regardless of the damage inflicted. So don't expect the incompetent to turn out competent adults. Teachers want conformity. And even though many of mine were competent adults, they told me, "you're not supposed to think. You're supposed to do as you're told!" Today kids lives get ruined over t shirts, pictures, and Poptarts due to teachers' cultural bigotry. Why listen to a teacher like that? Back in the 70's WSJ ran a story on a student in New York who Had to approach his high school English teacher secretly about studying classics so his class mates wouldn't find out. Now Literature in academia is like leprosy. And you better be texting, not reading old books, or else.
Burke| 3.5.13 @ 10:39AM
I have a cousin who graduated from a public high school in suburban Philadelphia last year. During a discussion with him, I laid out a list of historical figures and asked if he had read anything actually written by them. He had not. Think about this. Plato (Socrates), Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Boethius, St. Augustine, St. Paul, St. Thomas Aquinas, Petrarch, Dante, Erasmus, Locke, Mill, Jefferson, Adams. What was his school teaching for 14 years that was so important he couldn't be introduced to these people? If the schools actually taught this stuff and the kids were willfully ignorant of it, I would be fine with that. But our educators are choosing to throw out all foundational thought regarding western civilization, and mark my words, the kids notice this.
Bob K| 3.5.13 @ 12:06PM
These historical figures were rarely, if at all, studied in the primary and secondary schools in our Republic since it's inception and then they were studied only briefly. The children of all but the very wealthy received a basic education. The intellectual cream floated to the top. Read, for instance, Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography where it tells about his early years growing up in Ohio's Western Reserve.
Bob K| 3.5.13 @ 12:22PM
What the primary school and secondary school children today are not getting is an unbiased and truthful education in American and World History.
This is a result of the bureaucratization of the Education Industry and this can only happen in a state which has central control of all aspects of American Life. This can only happen because the populace elected leaders who allowed it to happen. Congress has made laws and then handed them over to the Executive (Our Elective Monarch as Historian John Lukacs defines the American Presidency) to hire the people will write the regulations for them and hire the people who will enforce them. The elected leaders come and go but the bureaucrats remain forever. In the ancient world bureaucrats were usually eunuchs. Not so today. They enjoy their power and their first loyalty is to the bureaucracy.
Burke| 3.5.13 @ 12:48PM
By the early twentieth century and up to World War I these writers were an important, but not the only, part of the education for a quickly expanding, well-to-do middle class...an additional text that comes to mind would be George Bancroft's history of the United States.
However, an important note that I forgot to mention is the most important purpose of education. That is that the advent of recorded education coincides with the emergence of three great educators; Socrates, Ezra, and Confucius. We must note that these three men held that the ultimate purpose of teaching was the moral education of the soul. It is no coincidence that at least two of these men emerged at the end of a period a historical chaos. Today, morality has been driven out of the schools. Or rather, has been replaced with secular humanism. A cynic might wonder; "Are we creating a generation of barbarians?"
Albert Constantine Jr.| 3.5.13 @ 8:20PM
Many younger people are not only ignorant of the classics, they're ignorant of the popular culture of just a couple of decades ago.
I asked one of my staff today (age 27, state university graduate) if she was familiar with Jerry Lewis. Drawing a blank stare, I tried to use Dean Martin as a reference point. Failing there, I talked about the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy telephone without a reaction.
Eventually, when I brought up Eddie Murphy's "Nutty Professor" series of movies, I at last got a glimmer of recognition. I explained that Jerry Lewis originated the character first, and at last I found some common currency.
With that amount of effort necessary to reach those born in the latter half of the Reagan Administration, good luck finding young people familiar with Tom Sawyer, much less the works of Homer.
JP| 3.5.13 @ 10:44AM
I've never been a back fan of the Great Books methodology myself. First, to comprehend what many of the authors had to say, one first must be fluent of their language. And since few children are taught either Greek or Latin one must search carefully for a decent translation. The same is true for French (Rousseau, Flaubert), German (Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Nietzsche, Rielke,Weber, Heidegger, and Freud).
One could spend the better part of 4 years absorbing the works of Plato and Aristotle. However, without a decent historical and social backdrop, much of their writings would go over the student's head. Homer would have to be read as any first step. And the Roman writers are another story.
C. Vernon Crisler | 3.5.13 @ 11:50AM
The problem with the Great Books approach is that it concentrates on a few to the exclusion of many. It's sort of like expository preaching of the Bible: you learn a lot about one book, but not much about anything else.
There are different ways to teach, topical versus problem-oriented, Great Books vs thematic vs encyclopedic summarization, and so on. A balance of all these approaches -- breadth vs depth -- would provide variety.
More important than anything is iteration of material, that is, repetition. The latter is essential to learning, but is often bad-mouthed in our age of ignorance.
Al Adab| 3.5.13 @ 11:35AM
What is the purpose of the education system, the establishment? Is it to create citizens with an understanding of their culture, values and history? Is it to train a workforce into various skills and trades? Perhaps it is a combination of both.
This has been a question in Western Civilization for 2500 years, what is an educated person? When we follow trends, fashion and fads in our educational system we shortchange both the students and the taxpayers who fund the system. If we fail to create knowledgeable citizens do we not likewise shortchange the future and the ability of those persons to create, adapt and survive?
markenoff| 3.5.13 @ 11:52AM
To indoctrinate the young into the liberal mindset.
markenoff| 3.5.13 @ 11:49AM
"It might be asked just who these barbarian nomads are...."
They are the product of 50+ years of liberal social policies that have destroyed the inner city family structure and left no male authority figures to civilize the young males and protect the young females from the young males.
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