Word of the day: 'Classicist'

"n. An advocate or the principles of classicism ... one who advocates the teaching of Greek and Latin in the schools."

I have a friend (you know who you are) who has recently converted to classicism, which is basically a different and more logical way to approach education than what is currently in place today. This friend sent me a link to an article written by Dorothy Sayers, whose name I recognized, but whose writing I had never read. Sayers was a contemporary of Lewis and Tolkien, and she argued--convincingly--in a 1947 essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning," that classical education should be revived, updated and implemented instead of the modern system of education. After 60 years, her words ring truer than ever. In this post, I will include a few snippets from her essay, which can be read in its entirety here.

"Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?"

(This happened to me on Sunday, as I was watching part of a debate among Democratic presidential candidates on C-SPAN.)

"Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected), but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? ... Do you often come across people for whom, all their lives, a 'subject' remains a 'subject,' divided by watertight bulkheads from all other 'subjects,' so that they experience very great difficulty in making an immediate mental connection between let us say, algebra and detective fiction, sewage disposal and the price of salmon--or, more generally, between such spheres of knowledge as philosophy and economics, or chemistry and art?"

Sayers' argument goes on and on, with ample evidence of the failure of modern education to do its job. She then proposes a return to classical education, under which we would teach kids the tools of learning before we start throwing information at them by the bucketful. I encourage you to read the entire essay. This last quote sums up what I have felt for a long time about public education in the U.S.

"Is not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned--that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils 'subjects,' we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning."

Please share your thoughts on this subject. I would love to explore educational philosophy in further depth, if my readers would be interested in participating.

Blogger's note: Books, and especially dictionaries, are full of good words. Feel free to leave a comment sharing one of your favorites, and keep watching for more of mine.