If you enjoyed Ken Robinson’s presentation mentioned in the previous post, you may want to listen to an interview with him here. A transcript of the interview is available at the same link.
Robinson never mentions classical education, but he does express his frustration with the industrial model of education that replaced classical education in the nineteenth century. His emphasis on developing creativity and individual gifts is refreshing.
Sir Ken Robinson gave a humorous and thought-provoking talk at the 2006 TED Conference entitled “Do schools kill creativity?” See a video of the 20-minute talk here.
The following excerpt comes from a commencement address by David Hicks.
Create something beautiful every day. A poem, a song, a love letter, an arrangement of flowers or a garden, a painting or a stone wall, a bird house or a lace curtain, an invitation or a thank you note. Beauty matters. Don’t assume you know anything about beauty. You probably know much less than you think you do. … Everything beautiful comes from the hand of God and has His signature on it. This is the beauty that speaks the truth. … Don’t put your head on the pillow without asking yourself: What beautiful thing have I offered in thanksgiving to my Creator this day?
Delivered at Westminster Schools, Augusta, Georgia, May 14, 2005.
At this week’s classical education conference David Hicks explained that one of the church fathers (Origen?) compared Christian use of classical learning to the Jews plundering the Egyptians just before the Exodus. God told the Jews to ask their Egyptian neighbors to give them gold and silver jewelry and the Egyptians complied (Exodus 11:2-3). These precious metals were later used in furnishing the tabernacle. The materials of a pagan culture were redeemed and used to God’s glory. The church fathers believed they were participating in a similar enterprise, appropriating the best of Greek culture for the church. Sometimes the use of Greek culture was abstract, such as applying principles learned from Aristotle. Sometimes it was quite concrete, such as turning pagan temples into Christian churches.
Andrew Kern added a sober warning: the Jews also used the gold from the Egyptians to build the golden calf (Exodus 32).
Classical education emphasizes dialog rather than lecture. What’s so great about dialog? Here are some thoughts based on David Hicks’ lecture mentioned in the previous post.
Dialog implies that students are important. It gives the teacher the opportunity to model showing respect for a subordinate. It conveys a sense that what you’re talking about is important and worth exploring carefully.
Dialog is not an easy option. It is not simply letting students talk. As David Hicks put it, the trick to great teaching is to get the students to ask the questions you want them to ask. That takes hard work. It’s much easier to lecture.
Hicks challenged us to read through the gospels noticing the ratio of questions to statements in Jesus’ teaching. If Jesus asked a lot of questions while teaching, shouldn’t we?
Last night David Hicks gave the keynote address at the classical education forum “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” hosted at Our Savior Lutheran Church & School. Hicks argued that not only should we study and apply the content of Christ’s teaching, we should also the methods He used in teaching. Hicks asked “Why do we embrace His message but dismiss His methods?”
Hicks discussed seven aspects of Christ’s approach to teaching that follow a classical education model.
The 2008 CiRCE Conference on Christian Classical Education is entitled “A Contemplation of Humor: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Classical Education.” The conference will be in Houston, Texas July 24-26. For more information, see the conference web site.
At Covenant Academy, we hold to the classical values of truth, goodness, and beauty. Christians in general understand the importance of truth and goodness, but beauty is often under-valued. Beauty is suspect, partly because it is viewed as subjective.
Gene Edward Veith recently published an article entitled Acquired taste in which he defends objective standards of beauty. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder to some extent, but not entirely. And the beholder can train his eye to appreciate what is objectively good. Veith gives this definition of beauty.
A work is beautiful to the extent that it displays at the same time both complexity and unity.
He goes on to explain how some examples of modern art fail to meet this definition.
In painting a black canvas has unity, but it has no complexity. A canvas of random paint splatterings has complexity, but it has no unity.
Beautiful painting shows subtle detail and over-arching order. Beautiful music has a balance of repetition and variation at multiple levels. Beautiful mathematics has complexity and simplicity.
Francis Schaeffer had similar thoughts regarding beauty. He spoke of “freakishness in the arts” as a symptom of cultural decline. Freakishness is complexity without unity. It is arbitrary, disconnected from the created order. Schaeffer taught that the Christian worldview has room for both unity and diversity, ultimately rooted in the unity and diversity of God Himself in the Trinity. Other worldviews, and the art they inspire, have a more difficult time embracing both unity and diversity and often grab hold of one but not the other.
Beauty is vital. Works that combine both unity and complexity invite us to reflect, however indirectly, on profound truth regarding creation and our Creator.
David Hicks, Andrew Kern, and Wes Callihan will be speaking at Our Savior Lutheran School on February 17 and 18. The conference is entitled “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” echoing Tertullian’s question regarding the role of Greek classics in Christian education.
For more information, see the CCLE site.
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