Towards an incomplete, contaminated, ambitious education
This was originally published on my Substack, the Journal of Embarrassing Catholic Studies. (Caveat: some of the language is a bit Catholic inside baseball!)
In describing the “ideal school,” the first question is, why send your kid to school at all? There is, of course, the obvious efficiency involved in educating children communally: there’s an economy of scale in conveying skills and information to children when you put them together. There are the “social benefits” involved in having your child spend time with other children. A school also helps domestic life by providing childcare and creating a source of predictability and routine. However, if a school simply views itself as a provider of these services, it will cultivate an attitude towards education which is excessively individualistic, even selfish.
A good school must recognize that the parents are primary educators; however, it will not simply view itself as an instrument of the parents’ will, a way of conveying pre-specified goods to the child. Instead, it will be a place where the child (and the parents) develop somewhat open-ended relationships which are serious enough to have their own claims on the child and on the family. These relationships should not, of course, supersede the authority of the parents over the child—a school should not expose the child to things which the parents have forbidden, nor should it make such extensive demands on the child that the parental relationship is an afterthought—but the best education occurs in the contexts of relationships which make their own demands.
In this sense, a school’s relationship to the child will be analogous to the grandparents’ relationship to the child. Grandparents must accept that the parents’ relationship with the child is more fundamental than their own—they shouldn’t violate the express wishes of the parents, undermine the parents, or try to become the dominant influence in the child’s life—but they shouldn’t be micromanaged either, nor should they constantly ask the parents “what are your goals for the time that I spend with little Cecilia?” This isn’t simply because the relationship will be less “effective” in nurturing the child if it’s micromanaged (though this is true); it’s because the relationship has its own dignity, and requires that each party have freedom to exercise creative agency.
Aristotle correctly described man as a political, rational animal. Our vocation takes this into account: each side of the great commandment is an I-and-thou affair. Because we are rational and relational, we are able to love; this requires freedom. One aspect of this love is the simple “fiat!” but this love also frequently involves a more creative form of human agency[1]: speaking with a friend, creating a work of art, raising a child—these tasks are not mostly made up of us saying “okay, I’ll execute the commands you’ve given me because I love you”; they typically involve us directly perceiving that a word, a brushstroke, an action is good, and choosing it.[2]
Our education will focally occur in the contexts of relationships which teach us to pursue the good more fully. In these relationships, there’s a dialectic between love-of-the-other and love-of-the-end-pursued. “Friendship” is perhaps the best example of this kind of free relationship. Many friendships are formed over a common pursuit (social justice, soccer, philosophical discussion, putting on a play), and common pursuits will often continue to structure the friendship. But over time the friendship itself takes on a certain priority. It isn’t that pursuits have ceased to matter; because of the friendship, they actually matter more. But the friendship matters yet more still.
Life within a school should be like this: the students should have the opportunity to cultivate friendships and pursue intellectual and artistic projects in a dialectical fashion, structured by love.
Learning and working in this context of love is revolutionary. In a theological context, we think of St Josemaria’s description of sanctified work. In a romantic context, we think of the attention that lovers put into their letters and their efforts at self-improvement; romantic love can catalyze all sorts of other good ambitions. In a domestic context, we think of Charlotte Mason’s description of the child narrating a story to an attentive parent.
Perhaps it is unrealistic to think of a school as this sort of context, at least most of the time. But many people have had communitarian experiences where their activity took on a new light. Perhaps it was a summer camp, a play, a particular group of friends, a sports team, an extended family or tight knit neighborhood; in any case, there was a sense that what you did mattered, and that it mattered precisely because it was part of the story that you were all living and witnessing together. (This can be true even if there are rivalries, factions, drama, even if you wouldn’t necessarily have become close friends with any of the people individually in another context.) The goal of a school should be to provide its members with this sort of local “public” life, and a context for more specific relationships.
Of course, it’s a choice to send your child to school, so it’s impossible to avoid the thought of “optimizing” relationships. We should do everything we can to create a context for good relationships—in terms of the environment, time management, philosophy, etc.—and if a school becomes harmful it’s natural to leave. (This is less true with grandparents; they have to be really, really terrible before you should avoid them!) But there should be a certain kind of stickiness to a school. I’ve heard many Catholic families say as a form of encouragement “you just take education one year at a time.” This may be true, but it is certainly not the ideal. A much better situation is that you have an acceptable school and you send all your kids there, even when it isn’t optimized for a given child in a given year. Among other things, this teaches your children a correct lesson: life isn’t about optimizing their experience, their relationships, or even optimizing their educational progress. Rather, the child is a person who belongs in a particular communitarian context, and they should pursue various (good) ends within that context.
The “school as service-provider” model is, I think, connected to another educational error that many people today make (though the people are not all the same), which is to view the task of the parents as essentially being about “launching” the child to autonomous success. On the secular version of this view, the parents need to “give the child the tools of success.” The basic idea is that skills are even more useful than cash: you can use them anywhere to get what you need. Catholic parents sometimes take a related view about virtue, using similar language of investment. By “investing” in the child’s formation, the child will reap spiritual benefits. Well this is of course true, but it’s easy to get the order of priorities wrong. The reason to strive to grow in virtue today is first of all as an act of love. We are never to grow discouraged in our moral progress (or lack thereof) because the times that exist are “now” and “eternity,” and there are always acts of faith, hope and love that we can do now. (I realize I’ve probably just stated some sort of theological/metaphysical error, but something close to this is true.) Of course we need to be realistic about how habit formation works, to act prudently today in light of how our actions are likely to affect things tomorrow, etc. But the sort of capitalist/investment-based version of virtue ethics is suspect, at least when it is dominant. (We need to remember the parable of the workers, and not just the parable of the talents.) If your child grows up to be a drug addict, this does not mean your education of them was a “waste,” or that it “didn’t work.” You should be educating them (and loving them) in a way that is worth doing even in the event that their life is a terrible failure in human terms.
What I have said creates a difficulty for describing a school in advance. Because I want to recognize the legitimate demands of relationships within the school, and the rights of teachers to educate with a relatively high degree of freedom, I can’t say “it will look exactly like this.” My hope is that people at the school would spend some good time arguing with one another about how things should be. Arguing about stuff is an important part of communal life. So here are some things that I would argue for:
Division of subject matter into “necessary” and “unnecessary”
Everyone learns the necessary subject matter, and they learn it together
E.g. civics, reading/writing, basic math
Sometimes they’d learn it in a large group (as in the case of civics, Greek myths, Shakespeare, singing, etc.) to cultivate the sense that everybody knows this
For subjects like reading/math, students would study relatively independently and in small groups, working on a a modest and fixed time per day
These subjects would take up a relatively small time in the day, e.g. 30 minutes math, 30 minutes reading (until kids really know how to read), 30-60 minutes “common communal subjects.”
Students are forced to do this as a demand of justice: you need to know this much stuff to be a functional member of society and also a functional member of this particular community, to be properly publicly spirited
This ensures that the kids get what they really need to get, and will be able to pursue these fields farther if the develop interests
Everyone has a lot of time for pursuing other subjects
The math kid might spend three hours a day learning math
Mentorship would play a big role here, especially in helping the students manage their own time
The students would have further instruction available from adults
Teaches the students a sense of responsibility and the right kind of ambition: learn math because it’s beautiful! Play soccer for the glory of your school! Cook because it’s delicious and an act of service! Recite Shakespeare because it’s something to do with your friends.
By having the right sort of people at the school (i.e., adults who have serious academic ambitions and who have loving relationships within the school; kids who come from families where this is normal) you can set the right “tone” at the school: everyone will be motivated to pursue their work in a somewhat ambitious way.
Montessori ideas:
2.5-3 hour work periods
Tactile stuff as needed
Mixed age classrooms!
caveats:
Be clear about what is required and what’s optional, using a standard of justice
At a certain age children should be required to learn hand washing
If a child doesn’t want to do bean spooning or pasting, this shouldn’t be required unless he needs to be able to do these things to carry out his duties (which is unlikely)
(In my experience, Montessori classrooms sometimes pretend they are giving the child a choice, when they are actually strongly pressuring the child to act in the way that “the good children act.” If sitting out for an activity is an option, the teacher shouldn’t act disappointed that the child chooses it; if it isn’t an option to sit out for an activity, the teacher should be prepared to force the child--and to give the child a punishment, rather than a consequence (although these have their place, too)--if the child disobeys. To be clear, I think that very few activities should be required!)
Don’t fetishize work!
A university model: teachers are working in their fields (the English teacher writing poetry, the history teacher writing op-eds, the math teacher studying higher math for herself, etc.) They are bringing the students into this.
School as a place for engaging in the worthwhile-for-their-own-sake activities. E.g., a school newspaper that publishes all sorts of things (poetry, reviews of school plays, arguments about current events, argument about school policy) and which parents—and other people!—can also participate in
Classical ideas:
Trivium: have the kids learn lots of facts at a young age! Teach logic and rhetoric at age-appropriate times; have a context for rhetoric
Teach Latin, Greek, Ancient Hebrew!
Read great books! But:
don’t fetishize the canon! Great books are useful partly because they tend to be pretty good (and sometimes even great) but largely because they are the books from our particular culture
A concern for our particular culture should also lead to engagement with contemporary, non-canonical works that are culturally important today
Don’t think of the canon as something you can “complete”
The more you’ve read, the more you should realize that you haven’t read everything you should read
Our sense of melancholy and incompleteness should grow with time, rather than shrinking
Don’t cultivate the following attitude in students when they go out into the world: “because I’ve read Aquinas and Dante and you never have, we have nothing to talk about.”
Language immersion from the youngest age (ideally German or French)
Music appreciation and singing from the youngest age
Lots of plays, especially Shakespeare
Learn social dancing
Uniforms, or a dress code that is simple and oriented around formality/beauty rather than modesty. (But really, a uniform would be best!)
Charlotte mason ideas:
Lots of outside time!
Young children do not need to be taught very much
Doing things attentively, but for short periods
Living books, rather than textbooks (at least for most things)
Education as relational!
Only:
Take a more public-spirited, communitarian route!
The sort of school I’m describing will provide an education that is partly non-transferable: a lot of the goods you’ve pursued matter precisely in relation to these people; you may have picked up some skills along the way, but the experience isn’t optimized for college admissions. It’s also ambitious: you are pursuing literature, math, theater, music, etc. for its own sake, and with intensity. The education is necessarily incomplete, and understands itself to be so; you should grow thirstier the more you drink. And the education will be contaminated: because it is relational, because people at the school are free, you will be exposed to their errors (and their bad taste!) alongside the good.
Key Texts for pedagogical philosophy:
The Gospel; Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness; Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition; Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues; all of GK Chesterton; Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought. (Also probably Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture but I haven’t actually read it.)
Footnotes:
[1] Just as love can call us to submit to a frightening demand (Abraham & Isaac, the Annunciation, Gethsemane), it can also lead us to acts of creativity. For instance, the Angel told Mary that Elizabeth was pregnant, but the Visitation wasn’t a micromanaged affair; it’s more appropriate to characterize Mary and Elizabeth’s words there as “inspired” than “obedient.”
[2] A good person in good circumstances will actively enjoy the fact that his actions are obedient, but he doesn’t need the concept of “obedience” to understand why the thing is worth doing; someone who is depressed, in a difficult circumstance, or vicious may need the concept to successfully complete things that he doesn’t directly perceive as desirable. The beatitudes are central to the Christian life, but our goal should never be to submit people to the difficulties which bring them about. (We don’t try to persecute people for righteousness sake, e.g.) So, although we should seek to be obedient in all things, and teach children to do likewise, we should use the concept of “obedience” only as needed, so as to avoid provoking our children (Ephesians 6:4) or burdening ourselves in the wrong way. (To be clear, the concept may be needed a lot, because the normal thing is for us to be vicious and for our circumstances to be hard!)