Her recommendations are realistic and practical; she understands that what isn’t manageable isn’t sustainable.

What do you think of this claim? Is it true? Is it true enough? What makes it true?

Image via Wikipedia

It all began with a conversation, an article in The Atlantic, and Downton Abbey. At Christmas, James, a history education major, and I were discussing history and like Pilate we asked, “What is truth?” Can we know the truth of history by stating dates and facts? Is it possible that when we have assembled our skeleton of factual history we are unable to get the thing right like the blind men describing the parts of an elephant? Could it be there is more truth in the sometimes not-quite-correct stories from history rather than from just-the-facts?

Classical educators are well aware of this controversy. It all began with Herodotus, that debunked teller of tales. A man who thought that “custom was king,” that what we needed from history was a guide to moral choices. Not too many years later the seeds of modernity were planted in the historian Thucydides, that politico of war and stratagems. The Peloponnesian War is no Iliad, its strategy is not balanced with story.

After our conversation James sent me a link to Robert D Kaplan’s 2007 defense of Herodotus in The Atlantic:

“If we have learned anything during this age of speedier and increasingly numerous interactions between peoples with different historical experiences, it is that facts matter less than perceptions, especially perceptions informed by raw emotions. It is what people believe that is crucial, not what they actually know. What is needed, therefore, beyond guiding philosophical principles, is a vivid appreciation of just what’s out there, in the form of the myths, passions, and irrationalities that in any age are central to decision making and, in a larger sense, to the human spirit itself. Romance, rather than being antithetical to realism, is a necessary component of it.”

Enter Downton Abbey and a renewed interest in World War I: Herodotus in the form of the lovely men of Oxford against Thucydides and the machine of war. You could almost say that WWI was Herodotus’s last stand.  The Proud Tower of classical education, western civilization, and ordered society was falling in Britain but before it fell it left us with a body of romantic history unrivaled since a blind poet listened to his muse.

Paul Fussell has written a history of WWI, The Great War and Modern Memory, which is a perfect balance of fact and romance. Fussell often uses those famous Oxford (etc.) poets to illustrate the facts of WWI in his respected history. Fussell’s history can remind Christian classical educators, who have been enjoying Downton Abbey, why stories are the flesh of history.

By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening’s benison,
By the last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills when day was done,
By beauty lavishly outpoured
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make me a soldier, Lord.
(William Noel Hodgson)

 

Robert D Kaplan ends his article with an apology for the marriage of fact to romance:

“It would be naive to think that our world is not, in its own way, just as fantastic, just as unreasonable. Given the adversaries we have fought, and are likely to fight still; given the mirages that cloud our own judgment about distant places about which we think we know much, but in fact know little; given all of that, the dreamlike delusions and psychoses revealed in the stories of Herodotus provide a richer insight into what we are up against than does much contemporary analysis. Coping with the world of the coming decades will require an arresting imagination. Leaders who cannot mentally escape their own narrow slots of existence will fail. Herodotus will be as valuable as Thucydides.”

Where is the truth of history? Most moderns would confidently affirm that truth is not found in romance and yet, the facts without romance can never supply it either. Sadly, we are more likely to be deceived by facts and never even know what hit us, than by story. World War I is a great place to start untangling ourselves, for the sake of our children.

For example, much has been said lately about the savagery of God in His instructions to the Israelites to conduct genocide. One of the better, more thoughtful responses I’ve seen comes from this post at Alastair’s Adversaria.

Worried about Phillip Pullman and J.K. Rowling (she who “almost killed Ron Weasley”)? Take a look at this insightful response.

And I am happy to announce that my friend Aaron Taylor has begun blogging again. This is one for every vocation loving teacher to meditate on. Caveat emptor: he mentions CiRCE, but the post survives that dip.

None of these are short, punchy posts. In fact, if you track one of them to their 2/7 post, you’ll see that he writes about the dangers of internet social interaction and the way people seek out controversy and raw emotion. Take my title, for instance. I confess: it was a ploy; ironically suggestive and likely to stimulate a reaction.

But what am I referring to? And what am I saying, really? Who knows? It’s the internet.

If only, I mourn, we were purposeful and respectful, lovers of wisdom and virtue, how great a tool the internet would be – and how much good it might have done.

Alas. How very like conversation.

I lay on my back, starring at the sky with my feet above me on the hill. My bike flew overhead – that much I knew – but where it landed was a mystery. The ditch crept up on me, as tends to happen on unfamiliar roads, while I was trying my best to keep up with my friend Michael. He knew the curve like the back of his hand, but I approached it way too fast and hit the embankment, flipped over my handlebars, and landed with a considerable thud.

Image courtesy the Art of Manliness

All of this happened in a flash, but I remember it in slow-motion.  Michael, at first unaware of my “encounter” with the ditch, finally made his way to me on the hill, where I still lay somewhat motionless. “Brian, are you alright?”  A smile crept over my face and I laughed. With my bike retrieved, off we went to the pool, as planned, with nothing more than temporary battle scars to show and war stories to tell.

My neighborhood friends and I never had to be dragged out of the house or sent outside to play. Sometimes, we amused ourselves with bicycle jousting – a simple tournament involving football helmets or catcher’s masks, wiffle ball bats or wooden boards, and our bikes. The rest, I assume, you can figure.

Or, we would go to the creek that ran through our neighborhood and “fish” for crawdads with our fingers. Not too bright, but still loads of fun. BB gun wars broke out sporadically as well, with a firm one-pump rule in place, mind you.  We wore goggles or glasses every time we didn’t forget. When our parents found out, peace came to the land with a permanent treaty in place. The great BB gun wars ceased, but we were all permitted to keep our arms, our dignity, and the camaraderie of our band of 10-year-old brothers.

We were boys. We were allowed and encouraged to be boys. And, we survived it. Where I veered into dangerous territory (see BB gun wars above), I was corrected, but never emasculated.

My collection of pocketknives grew by the year and, rather than being told to “put them away somewhere,” I was taught how to care for them, sharpen them, and use them in a way that preserved all my digits. I was taught how to build a fire, how to shoot, how to use a bow and arrow, and how to be safe and responsible. I was guided on hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and whitewater rafting trips; instructed every step of the way. But, I was also taught to be a gentleman and to love learning, reading, and study.

In other words, my boyhood was mentored and nurtured into manhood. My exuberance, energy, and daring were not squashed; they were blended with responsibility, self-control, and chivalry. I dare not claim mastery of those lessons; I remain an imperfect student. But, I recognize now that I was granted what so few are now allowed to have: boyhood.

Plato said, “Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” But rather than training our boys to be men – a discipleship task requiring both time and great effort – our culture refuses to let them be boys. And in doing so we do not make “safer” or “kinder” boys; we only ensure that we will eventually have no men. We chop down the saplings and mourn the loss of trees.

While I plan to continue this topic in next week’s post, allow me to leave you with a few questions to ponder…

• What is the difference between masculinity and machismo? 
• What role do fathers play in raising boys to be men?  Mothers?  Teachers?
• How can parents (and teachers) learn to balance legitimate safety concerns while encouraging boys to be boys?

To be continued…

Parents and teachers looking for slow, steady incremental improvement in their students will be frustrated and discouraged. Children—and adults for that matter—don’t learn “slow and steady.”

Try teaching a child to read. Faithfully, the teacher drills phonics flashcards every day. On Monday the student gets every flashcard correct. On Tuesday the student not only can’t remember the phoneme in question, but will often passionately argue that he has never seen it before in his life! By Wednesday, he is reading whole sentences flawlessly. But as soon as the teacher starts congratulating himself on little Johnny’s reading improvement Thursday rolls around and Johnny can’t remember half of his flashcards again. By Friday the teacher is convinced that either he is the worst reading teacher in the world or something is seriously wrong with little Johnny.

But nothing is wrong with Johnny or with the teaching. This is simply how kids learn. Little kids, big kids, it’s all the same.

Some days I wonder if my high school student is learning anything. He reads his books and I ask him questions and then torture myself that he just doesn’t seem to be “getting it.” A few days later he without prompting offers me his comparison of the current American political crisis and ancient Rome. I stare at him with my mouth open and wonder, Where has this kid been?

He’s been the hare. And he’s been asleep. But now he’s sprinting!

When it comes to learning, children are not tortoises. They are hares. They sprint and they nap and then they make mad dashes and leap ahead.  In education, the teacher is the tortoise, slowly and steadily teaching his students, persevering even when his students seem mentally asleep. But in this scenario the tortoise and the hare aren’t racing, they are travelling companions heading toward that same finish line.

On those days when we can’t wake up our hares, we need to keep plodding along toward that finish line, confident that they will catch up. And unlike Aesop’s fable, our hares will ultimately pass us and we will consider that our victory.

If I wanted to destroy a school (or any community for that matter) all I would do is politely require that from this time forward everything would be assessed by quantitative measurements. Oh, what fun it would be to watch the bewildered teachers lose control of their classrooms, to watch the confused students lose interest in their lessons, and to watch the parents fall into endless anxiety about their children’s futures.

Apparently, my friends over at Gutenberg are feeling something similar. Take a look here. 

Modern management theory follows Plato’s Sophist, Thrasymachus, demanding that everything be “certain and precise” and turning it into the demoralizing mantra, “What gets measured, gets done.” Plato gives us a better, more Biblical (yes, I just said that) alternative when he says, “what is honored is cultivated, and that which has no honor is neglected.”

Can’t measure it? Kill it. Especially if the reason you can’t measure it is because it is eternal or infinite.

Our curriculum is the seven liberal arts plus drawing, painting, and sculpture. Does that completely and totally answer your question? OK, I’ll make my answer even worse. We believe that classical education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty.

Here are the necessaries:

The ideal headmaster applicant should have a master’s degree with a liberal arts focus or an academic discipline that interfaces with classical learning, experience teaching, a strong, comprehensive vision of classical education and a versatility to move seamlessly from administrative to academic to school-growing tasks.

The ideal teaching candidates should have a passion for classical education and a bachelor’s degree. They should have experience in teaching Pre-K, Kindergarten, first, second or third grades and in creating sensory, highly engaging lesson plans.

 Applicants should send a letter of interest and resume to employment@christthesavioracademy.org.

I had a farm once. A horse. Some chickens.  A big giant garden full of bees, butterflies, and beetles. I read Tasha Tudor and Gladys Taber to recognize my life. I was living large.  Then one day I raised my hand and said, “I give up” and walked away from that farm. I made my way slowly from my 18^th century farmhouse (George Washington might have slept there), to a 19^th century manor house (said to be haunted), to a 20^th century Southern frame house (wrap around porch!), to a 21^st century suburban cutout (words fail). Yes, I did. These days I cultivate my deck but the bees, butterflies and beetles are still with me.  I started out as a true blue agrarian and ended up as a philosophical one, insects notwithstanding.  The journey has been bittersweet.

Someday I will move from my house in the suburbs. Where will I go? Sometimes I imagine myself in a city loft, walking to Whole Foods each morning to buy vegetables and flowers, sitting on the deck in the evenings watching the lights on Lookout Mountain twinkle, and the stars. More often, I imagine myself on one small acre in a small house, with a small porch, and a small garden (nine bean rows), offering my grandchildren lemonade and cookies. And I will have some peace there because small dreams are good.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

William Butler Yeats

In a couple of these books I ran across the following line of thinking: One book rebuked women for selfishly seeking “me” time.  Shockingly, the selfish act that was rebuked by the author was a woman’s desire to spend time daily alone in prayer and Bible study. The other book made the same basic statement, but presented the remarks as an encouragement instead of a rebuke.

Women, both authors argued, should neither selfishly crave alone time with the Lord nor feel discouraged and downcast that her domestic duties are so demanding that she doesn’t have time to pray and study Scripture. No, the authors explained, a woman’s job is to be a helpmeet to her husband and to keep the home well. When she does these things, she worships the Lord and therefore she has no need for private worship. Both books stop short of saying outright that a woman is saved through her work as a helpmeet, but the suggestion is nonetheless very strong.

Now let me say first that I agree that the Lord is pleased when a woman does her duty to her husband and her children and cares for her home well. Likewise, he is pleased when a man does his duty well and when children obey their parents. But to put a woman’s calling to her home and her obligation to worship the Lord in opposition with each other is not only madness but it borders on works-righteousness heresy.

Yes, women are instructed to be keepers of the home, but they are also commanded—as all human beings are—to work out their salvation with fear and trembling and to pray without ceasing and to be like the Bereans who study the Scriptures. These are commands for all of God’s people, regardless of gender.

The work of both men and women is hard. Because of sin our toil is cursed: frustrating and often futile. Not only do we need the Lord’s help and strength to accomplish our duties, but the only way our work can be pleasing to the Lord is if it is done in humility and reliance on Him rather than on our own strength.

And if a woman’s duties are so overwhelming that she truly has no time for private worship, then she needs to reprioritize her duties. She needs to put the first things first. She needs to remember that the laundry can wait for the eternal things are far more important. She does not need to be told that clean clothes please God more than prayer.

Even more importantly, a woman should never be rebuked for seeking the face of the Lord. The desire to worship the Lord is not selfish. It is a holy desire that should be encouraged and made a priority. It is the first duty from which all other duties must flow.

As the Lord Jesus himself said when Martha complained to Him that Mary was neglecting her domestic duty in order to be taught by Jesus, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

May we all choose the good portion and exhort one another to do the same.