The Fredösphere

Soundbites looks at the state of music education and cannot find much cause for optimism.  He makes a variety of observations, but I was especially struck by his mention of home schoolers.  We are homeschooling our kids, and the culture of our church and community is such that I expect we will reach the state soon whereby none of our close friends will be sending their kids to public schools.  The trend toward homeschooling is reaching the famous tipping point, and I wonder how many people will be surprised by it when it happens.  (In case you needed a reason to home school your kids, see Roger Simon from yesterday.)

We are fascinated by the trend toward classical education.  (And yes, I now duly note the irony of "trendy classicism.")  What does classical education mean?

Ideally, classical education includes learning Latin and Greek, but that's not really the heart of it.  That's a good thing, since only with a lot of luck will our children learn the modern languages we would like them to learn; ancient languages are toward the bottom of the list.

Those who promote classical education emphasize placing all subjects in historical context.  Even math and science can be taught while referring to the time and place each discovery was made.  The historical context is a critical, but not quite the central, component of classical education.

I think this passage by Camille Paglia from Arion Magazine gets at the heart of the thing:

The grand sequence of the classical tradition, which extends in various strands through the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the scientific Enlightenment and modern era, is actually a master paradigm for how to structure an authentically multicultural curriculum on a global scale. All students abroad as well as in the US need to learn the general contours of the world’s major artistic and cultural traditions. These long channels of lineage can best be understood as streams—mighty rivers that are fed by tributaries and that are a confluence of mixed and varied material. The great rivers of cultural tradition are nearly always powered by religion, even when they slow down and spread out in the secular delta of modern life.

Thus my premise in understanding art and culture is always continuity. From Egyptian and Greek sculpture to Hollywood movies and rock music, I believe in creative influence over time. I categorically reject the view of culture as disconnected fragments or as the breakage of meaning—an insular fiction fostered by depressive intellectuals who lack the long view and whose ability to weigh or negotiate historical evidence is questionable. The modernist delusion of fragmentation can be traced to T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” published in 1922 in the aftermath of the disaster of World War I. Its use in the chic postmodernism of the closing decades of the twentieth century descended from European writers and intellectuals in crisis after World War II. Lamentably, this outdated and provincial point of view has been given canonical status by those who evidently cannot see the patterns in culture and who have imposed their own limitations on hapless students.

I know what is on your mind right now:  you are thinking about underpants!  I see civilization as a grand project which every generation is called to maintain and expand.  Parents have an obligation to involve their children in this project.  I don't understand the passivity of some parents in the face of advertising and fashion; instead of allowing Captain Underpants to train their children in disrespect, they should remember Hannah Arendt's warning:

Every generation, western civilization is invaded by barbarians.  We call them "children."

(By the way, for an alternate take on le capitaine des pantalons de le sous, see Guys Read, an excellent site by Jon Scieszka.)

Assuming a call to love and nurture your culture will save us from all kinds of mistakes, especially the twin evils of worshiping or demonizing the New.  It's sad that a magazine like The New Criterion can be casually mislabeled as anti-modern. (See this editorial review at the amazon.com page for Paul Johnson's Art:  A New History, for example.  In fact, TNC criticized Johnson for his wholesale rejection of the 20th century.)  It seems to me they can rise above various fads when critiquing the New because they are rooted in a classicist's view of the whole 3000-year-old stream.  Yet anyone who reads the magazine knows they don't reject modern art.

I hope this helps answer the question Stefan Beck asked at the end of this post.