Saving Western civilization one student at a time.
Summer 2019
Gravitas The Lost Art of Taking School Seriously
by Cheryl Lowe
Quality Education Is Not Rocket Science by Anthony Esolen Phenomenology of the Hand by Mark Bauerlein
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
The Living Order of Education by Martin Cothran
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ne of the many benefits of k now i ng Lat i n i s t hat it g ives you t he ability to know what English words mean even when you have never seen them before. But just as important is the ability it gives you to better understand a word you have seen a thousand times. I was walking through the L o s A nge le s I nt e r n at io n a l Airport recently, and someone was wearing a t-shirt that bore the word "destruction." It was part of a slogan for a gym, as I recall, but I cannot remember what t he rest of t he sloga n was. What I do remember is that in that instant I had a new u ndersta ndi ng of what t he word "destruction" means. The word "destruction" is made up of two Latin words: the prefix de, which in this instance means "undo," and struo ("to build"), from which we get our English word "structure." So the word "destruction" expresses the idea of "an undoing of structure." I had always thought of destruction in more dramatic terms—as the shattering, or crushing, or explosion of something. Perhaps it is just my overactive imagination. But all of a sudden, this Latininduced epiphany brought a very different idea to my mind. It made me realize that destruction can be much less dramatic, more banal than I had always thought. To destroy something is to take away its structure, its intrinsic organization, its order. When we destroy, say, a building, how do we do it? We can detonate a bomb underneath it and blow it sky-high. Or we can take it apart slowly, piece by piece. Either way, the more pieces we reduce it to the more thoroughly we destroy it. This is also the way our institutions can be destroyed. Our governmental institutions would be destroyed 2
Letter from the Editor
if we were to confound their organized way of working; our society would be destroyed if we took away the order that the family and other societal institutions give it. And many contend that this is happening in education: If we take away order and organization—if we de-structure it—we will destroy it. This urge to destructure has been the origin of much of modern education theory. Efforts to dispense with the orderly operation of the classroom, prescriptions for education reform that involve the avoidance of an orderly approach to academic subjects, and anything else that detracts from the ordering of the mind of the student: These are the things that can bring destruction to the education enterprise—and have. The whole modern world is at war with order—the order of nature, the order of society, the order of learning. In education, the prejudice against order takes two primary forms: First, the disordering of the classroom, and secondly, the disordering of the curriculum—both of which contribute to the disordering of the mind. It would be far better, modern theories assert, if students were given "choices" as to what they study and were allowed to roam the classroom freely. Teachers, too, should be given free rein and allowed to teach what they want. This hostility toward order is what is behind the aversion to using phonics to teach reading; it is what is behind the refusal to use drill and memorization to teach arithmetic; and it is what is behind the opposition to teaching formal grammar in many schools. And the end result of this hostility is gradual, inevitable destruction. MemoriaPress.com
Summer 2019
FEATURED ARTICLES
Letter from the Editor by Martin Cothran...................................................... 2 The Language of Learning Interview with Martin Cothran .................................... 4 Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? by Martin Cothran...................................................... 6 Quality Education Is Not Rocket Science by Anthony Esolen........................ 8 Gravitas: The Lost Art of Taking School Seriously by Cheryl Lowe............. 10 The Futility of Facilitating by Cheryl Swope............................................... 14 Wait and Hope by Paul Schaeffer............................................................... 16 Formal Structure in Music by Dr. Carol Reynolds.......................................... 18 Phenomenology of the Hand by Mark Bauerlein.......................................... 20
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LATIN
THE LANGUAGE OF LEARNING Interview with Martin Cothran
Can you discuss progressive, pragmatic, and classical education and why classical education is a valuable option? Each of these sees the purpose of education differently. Progressivism is the idea that education is a means to accomplish the end of changing a culture. Pragmatism does not want to change culture by using students, like progressivism; rather, it wants to change students to fit the current culture. The current stress on vocationalism in schools is an example of pragmatism. Classical education differs from both of these in that it sees as its purpose the passing on of a particular culture, namely Western culture. According to the classical Western view, education is the cultivation of wisdom, the inculcation of virtue, and the training of the affections through meditation on the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is composed of a set of intellectual skills, called the "liberal arts," and a body of cultural knowledge, called "Western civilization." Generally, when you talk about Western civilization in presentations you mention something called the "Three Cultures." What are the Three Cultures? I point out that Western civilization, as that term has traditionally been used, is the study of three cultures: Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric. This interview was originally published in The Old Schoolhouse®.
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The Language of Learning
Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. These are the cultures that have attempted to give answers to the question "What is the good, the true, and the beautiful?" By "Athens," I mean the study of Greek culture. The Greeks are speculative man in miniature. Practically every great idea—good and bad—can be traced to some ancient Greek thinker. The Greeks asked the great questions. They didn't always get the right answer— and they did not have access to the Revelation of God— but they asked a lot of the right questions. By "Rome," I mean the culture of ancient Rome. The Romans were political man in miniature. They were the great administrators and road-builders of ancient times. They were concerned with the practical. The American Founders, in fact, who had a justifiably low regard for the government of the Greeks, looked to the old Roman republic as an organizational model. And by "Jerusalem," I mean the history and culture of the Hebrews. The Hebrews were spiritual man in miniature. By studying the record of their culture we learn how God deals with individuals and nations. If you look at history, you discover that classical culture—the culture of the Greeks and Romans—was dumped into the laps of the early Christians (many of whom were Jews) when the empire of Rome was falling apart. So it was sort of like having an old member of the family pass away and having to go through their attic trying to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. MemoriaPress.com
The church found some things in the attic of the dead classical culture that it threw away. But there were a lot of things that it found useful and kept. The part that it kept and passed on to us—and what it added to and refined—is what we call Western civilization.
specialty that you might want to engage in later in life; the guess is likely to be wrong anyway. Who could have predicted the computer revolution, for example? Instead it teaches you a set of academic skills, called the liberal arts, and a body of cultural knowledge, called Western civilization, that prepare you for anything you might do in life.
You also mentioned the "liberal arts," a term a lot of people have heard but can't define. What are the liberal What role does Latin play in classical education? Why arts, and what role do they play in classical education? is it considered so important in classical education? Traditionally, there were considered to be seven Up until the first two decades of the twentieth liberal arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, century, if you went to a good school you had to geometry, astronomy, and music. The first three of learn Latin and Greek at a fairly early age. The these—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—were called the reason for this was that there was a great stress on trivium (Latin for "the three ways"). The last four— grammar, the first trivium skill. That's why arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—were schools for the elementary grades were called the quadrivium (or, "the four ways"). called "grammar schools." The trivium skills were language The reason for learning Latin and skills, and the quadrivium skills were Greek was that it was considered math skills. The liberal arts were The reason for the best way to learn grammar. the generalized academic skills— Learning grammar in your linguistic and mathematical— learning Latin own language is very hard. that every learned person was and Greek was that But when you study another expected to know. it was considered language, grammar all of a sudden becomes very important. Piggybacking on the pragmatic the best way to This is particularly true with aspect you mentioned, could you learn grammar. Latin because, unlike modern discuss how receiving a classical languages like Spanish and French, education is, indeed, helpful and it is a highly grammatical language. useful for a student's future? It is also very regular: The rules almost I would say that classical education is always apply, so you can see the grammatical the best preparation to do anything. Vocational structure of language—any language—in clear relief. training—which is different from education— When most people think of the benefits of Latin, trains a person to do certain things well. If you are they think of the vocabulary benefits. That's true also. going into carpentry, then working with a hammer Latin is the root of about sixty percent of academic and a saw are going to help you do that. If you're English, and it's still the language of the sciences. It's going to be an accountant, you're going to have to still the language of learning. master debits and credits. What classical education does is something What do you say to homeschooling parents who don't very different from vocational training. Whereas have any background in subjects like Latin and logic? vocational training teaches you to do one thing well If you don't have access to someone who can teach (and woe be unto you if it's not the thing that you end this, then you can teach it to your own children even up doing with your life), classical education trains though you don't know it yourself. Of course, that you to do anything well. Mortimer Adler, the late requires having a program that assumes the teacher executive editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, once doesn't know the material and teaches the teacher said something to the effect that, although everyone as it goes along. That's what Memoria Press Latin is not a scientist and everyone is not an accountant, programs do. They are designed for homeschool everyone is a citizen and everyone is a philosopher. mothers (and teachers) who don't know the material. We might add that we are all made in the image of This is the case for our logic programs, too, but since God as well. We all operate in a social and political logic is taught to an older child (seventh grade and culture, and we all must ask the great questions about up), it can also be used as a self-instructed course life and reality—and about our relationship to God. for the student. The book effectively becomes the That's what classical education is about. teacher. And of course, we have DVDs for all of our Classical education doesn't try to guess what Latin and logic courses. That helps too. specific set of skills you are going to need for a 1-877-862-1097
The Language of Learning
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LOGIC
LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC? C. S. Lewis' Trilemma by Martin Cothran
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The argument appears in Lewis' Mere Christianity. ome of the most interesting things to study Lewis introduces the argument by observing how when it comes to logic are the arguments for most people who don't believe that Jesus is God are still the existence of God. They come in all shapes attracted to Him as a moral teacher. While He is not God, and sizes. There is the Ontological Argument, which these people say, He was a great moral teacher. argues from the very idea of God to His real existence. Lewis presents the argument as a sort of There is the Cosmological Argument, which minor digression, a throw off. Here it is, argues from the fact that everything in the in one paragraph: world is dependent upon something else for its existence to the fact of a being I am trying here to prevent anyone saying who makes sense of it all. And there the really foolish thing that people often That Jesus is merely is also the Teleological Argument, say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I the Moral Argument, and others. don't accept His claim to be God." a great human moral But there are other arguments That is the one thing we must not say. t hat never ma ke it i nto t he A man who was merely a man and teacher is, literally, not said the sort of things Jesus said would pantheon of the so-called "classic" not be a great moral teacher. He would arguments for God's existence, logically possible. either be a lunatic—on the level with even t hough t hey are just as the man who says he is a poached egg— or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You interesting and, some of us would must make your choice. Either this man was, say, just as effective logically. and is, the Son of God: or else a madman One of these is C. S. Lewis' so-called or something worse. You can shut Him up for a "Trilemma," or "Lord, liar, lunatic" argument. fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but This argument is not a straightforward argument let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His for the existence of God. It approaches the issue of being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to God's existence indirectly. us. He did not intend to …. Now it seems to me obvious Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?
that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
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Stated a little more formally, the argument goes like this: Jesus claimed to be God. His claim is either true or false. If it is true, then, ipso facto, He is God. If the claim is false, then either He said it knowing it was false, in which case He is a liar, or He said it not knowing it was false, in which case He was mad. Therefore, we are left with three logical options: He is either God, or a liar, or a lunatic.
To say Jesus was a liar will seem quite a stretch for most people (even unbelievers), particularly if they think He was a great moral teacher. A great moral teacher would not, by definition, lie, and certainly not tell a lie of such magnitude as to claim to be God when He wasn't. To say Jesus was a lunatic is also a stretch, since His teaching would appear to be the quintessence of sanity—and, of course, a great moral teacher is, again by definition, sane. So if He was not a liar and not a lunatic, the only other logically possible conclusion is that He is God. Notice that, among the three logical possibilities, great human moral teacher is not one of them. That Jesus was merely a great human moral teacher is, literally, not logically possible. It is, though, logically possible to hold that Jesus was dishonest or insane. But for the vast majority of people these are just not acceptable options. This argument doesn't logically force anyone to accept that Jesus is God, but its logic forces those who don't want to believe He is God to reject the idea that He was a great moral teacher. Lewis constructs the argument in such a way as to either force atheists to accept Jesus is Lord, or to accept that this moral teacher is either mad or mendacious, insane or insidious, demented or duplicitous.
An unbeliever must say, well, then Jesus must be either mad or a liar. But it won't sit easy with him. It is important to note that, although the argument is called "Trilemma," such a title is a little misleading. It seems to suggest that the argument is just a dilemma, an argument with two lemmas (two propositions used to prove other propositions), with an additional lemma. A dilemma looks like this: If P, then Q; and if R, then S Either P or R Therefore, either Q or S
This is not strictly the structure of the Trilemma. The structure of the Trilemma is more like this: Either P or Q or R Not Q or R Therefore, P
P being Jesus is God, Q that He was a madman, and R that He was insane. The Trilemma is really a disjunctive syllogism with three disjuncts (P, Q, and R). However, what this Trijunctive argument does is put the unbeliever in a dilemma: If Jesus claims to be God and the claim is true, then He is God; and if He claims to be God and the claim is false, then He was a liar or a lunatic Either His claim is true or false Therefore, either Jesus is God, or He was a liar or a lunatic.
Does the Trilemma logically prove God's existence? No. But what it does is to cancel out the possibility that Jesus was simply a great moral teacher, and put the person who denies His deity in a dilemma from which there is no easy escape.
Jesus claims to be God
Jesus' claim is true
Jesus is GOD
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Jesus' claim is false
Jesus knew his claim was false
Jesus did not know his claim was false
Jesus was a LIAR
Jesus was a LUNATIC
Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?
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E
very week it seems I receive three or four letters from people who are establishing new schools or reforming old ones. These letters are most encouraging, and all of the writers, without exception, are dedicated to restoring what is called a "classical" education. Sometimes that implies the study of the true classics, the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. More often it simply means a return to sanity, both in regard to what the children are to read and learn, and how they are to learn it. For example, since young children can commit things to memory as readily as a sponge soaks up water, the restorers are quite cheerful in their championing of that underused faculty. They know that a child can learn the basic single-digit operations of arithmetic—the addition and multiplication tables—without a lot of fuss, and learn them cold, acquiring mastery and making themselves ready for more complicated problems, including those they might solve in their minds. In the movie Sounder, an African-American boy living in the rural south goes on a search for his father, who has been sentenced to a year of hard labor in a tuckedaway prison camp. He finds himself in a schoolhouse, with about thirty black children and a young black schoolmistress. The children are answering arithmetic problems called out by the teacher. "Three sixes are!" she cries. "Eighteen!" the children reply as one. "Six sixes are!" "Thirty-six!" "Two twenty-fours are!" A moment of hesitation. Then a few voices, "Forty-eight!" "Two forty-eights are!" More hesitation. Then the voices chime in, here and there. "Ninety—ninety-six!" There is no reason to turn up our noses at this, to sneer at it as "mere" memorization. Actors commit hundreds and hundreds of lines to memory. Is that "passive"? Singers commit hundreds of songs to memory. Is that "uncritical"? One of my favorite professors in graduate school grew up on his grandfather's farm in Saskatchewan, back in the days when a wheat farmer would spend long hours behind the plow. He told us that his grandfather's neighbor sometimes spent those hazy hours reciting Milton's Paradise Lost. He had gotten it by heart. Notice what great difference there is between the phrases "learning by rote" and "getting something by heart"? You cannot do such a thing without considerable intelligence and love. One summer, then, I determined I'd do the same. I got into the middle of Book Five when September 8
came around and school started, and I set the cherished task aside. But it is still a wonderful t h i n g t o h ave s o muc h o f that splendid work in my mind, hearing its music, ready to assume form and tone and dramatic import as I cock my head, narrow my eyes, and say, Here at least We shall be free; the almighty hath not built. Here for his envy, shall not drive us hence; Here we shall reign supreme, and to my choice. To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
Ah, that is but one thing, the care and strengthening of the memory, that we all know is good and a worthy object for school, though for fifty years we have been cowed by the educational "experts" into believing that it is contemptible, simplistic, backward, and ineffectual. So we end up with sixth graders who are supposed to solve simultaneous linear equations, but who do not instantly see that fifty-four divided by six is nine, or that twelve percent of ninety-four is going to be a little less than twelve. What I'm trying to say here is simple enough. My advice to all of you who are building anew is this: Do not be played for chumps! This is not quantum physics. Children learn naturally, and if they are treated well they will learn most things with ease. What requires practice, requires practice, and though that is difficult in one sense— you have to do the math, you have to diagram the sentences, you have to commit t he declensions to m e m o r y—i t i s p e r f e c t l y s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d . Yo u k now how to do it, and you k now w h e n y o u' v e done it.
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I have similar advice for reading. Teachers ask, "What books shall we assign?" My answer to this is also simple. You don't have to develop some grand all-considering plan for producing scholars of Dostoyevsky. Read good books to the children, have them read them also to you, and have them read them on their own. What is a good book? John Senior came up with a fine list of the Thousand Good Books, and you could simply go to that list and pick your way about in it, like a kid exploring in the woods. Good Books are sometimes Great Books, and sometimes not. Some Great Books aren't for children or even adolescents. Would you show a group of teenagers the admittedly fine but disturbing and sometimes obscene movie Midnight Cowboy? No, you wouldn't; so why are they reading the sometimes obscene and nearly nihilistic Slaughterhouse-Five? The Good Books are food for a wholesome imagination. They are well written. They introduce young people to characters they will never forget. They soar beyond easy cynicism or nihilism. They soar beyond the sweaty halls of politics. They may well have villains in them, there may be warfare, but there will not be a creepy relish for bloodshed—no itch for the base, the sick, the bizarre, the filthy, the evil. We know where to find these Good Books. They are everywhere, or they used to be. It almost does not matter in what order the children read them, and many of them can be read again and again, and are as satisfying for grownups as they are for the wide-eyed little ones: Heidi, Treasure Island, The Wind in the Willows, The Jungle Book, The Secret Garden, The Yearling, David Copperfield, Silas Marner, Black Beauty, Kim,
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Little Women, Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer, Hans Brinker, and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and of Hans Christian Andersen. What about when the children are older? There is no lack of things to read. We have all the poetry of our British and American heritage: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Whittier, Dickinson, Frost, and many more. We have all the wonderful novels of Jane Austen and Dickens and Eliot and Mark Twain and Walter Scott. There is the great literature of the Western world—Virgil and Dante and Cervantes and Tolstoy. You cannot go wrong. Find textbooks written before 1950—grammar, history, even geography. Then surround young people with beauty and goodness. It is not like going to the moon. It is like looking up at the stars. But will your students be ambushed by the detestable standardized tests? Do not fear. Do not let the confidence men and elixir salesmen fool you. Homeschoolers regularly take those tests apart, and they do not spend a year preparing for them, nor do they use textbooks whose politically "progressive" content the tests reflect and reward. Think: Your students will know English grammar, as a coherent and fascinating whole. The others won't. Your students will have a quick sense of number. The others won't. Your students will have in their ears, their hearts, and their minds, and thus at their fingertips as they put pen to paper, the noble rhythms of great and good English writers, and none of the sublingual grunts of contemporary dabblers in the twisted and weird. The only rotten English they'll have read will be what they find in newspapers and on the internet; but you can do your best to make them aware of how bad that is. Your students will know that the Danube River flows into the Black Sea. The others will never have heard of a Danube River or a Black Sea. Your students will see in their minds' eye Hannibal mounted upon an elephant, making his way eastward towards the French Alps. The others will never have heard the name of Hannibal. Be bold, be bold! Remember Hans Christian Andersen! The superintendent has no clothes. The commissars of the Common Core have no clothes. The developers of curricula have no clothes. They are all a great big herd of balding and belly-sagging naked people, swaggering and blustering and ordering everybody around. Let some little boy cry out to any one of them, "Hey mister, diagram this sentence!" Go for it, and let the devil take the hindmost! Anthony Esolen is professor of English at Thomas More College, and the author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, and Ironies of Faith. He has translated Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered and Dante's The Divine Comedy.
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Gravitas: The Lost Art of Taking School Seriously by Cheryl Lowe
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Heading Goes Here
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In
the early twentieth century, Dorothy Sayers gave birth to the modern classical education movement in a much-quoted speech at Oxford in which she cast the abstract concepts of the liberal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as stages of learning. These three stages have given structure and clarity to the long and somewhat inscrutable process of K-12 education, giving teachers and parents the confidence to start a revolution in education. Ms. Sayers also demonstrated the power of rhetoric: a simple truth expressed in an unforgettable way. While we are still in the process of figuring out exactly how to implement these three stages, and how to flesh out the true potential of classical education, I would like to suggest we think about the unthinkable: adding another stage before our trivium—the primary stage. The primary stage, K-2, has been traditional in education for many years, but it has not received the attention it deserves by classical educators. It has been more or less subsumed, mistakenly I think, into the grammar stage. We would do well to focus on the primary stage in order to see how we can improve instruction and build a better foundation for the trivium that follows. Having taught everything from phonics to Caesar, I can affirm that the skills acquired in the beginning years are of vital importance to the later years. If you are a high school teacher you probably experience every day the results of inattention to basic skills in K-2. Our students will not achieve the excellence we desire unless we come to a better appreciation of the primary school and recognize that life-long habits are formed there, good and bad. I realized from the beginning that the primary school was very important and deserved special attention, so when I started Highlands Latin School I divided it into three levels: not those of the trivium, but rather primary, grammar, and upper schools. The primary school is K-2, the grammar school is 3-6,
and the upper school combines the logic and rhetoric stages in grades 7-12. At each level students make an important transition, which at our school is made visible by an eagerly-anticipated uniform change. The classical curriculum begins in earnest in the grammar school, where students memorize the Latin grammar, followed by the logic stage in grades 7-8, where they study syntax and translation, and finally grades 9-12, where students read Latin literature. The trivium is a perfect fit for the study of Latin. But the primary years don't fit neatly in the trivium paradigm—and they shouldn't. At the time of the Renaissance, when classical education as we know it was born, students began their education at what was called a Dame School or Petty School, where students learned the rudiments of English before moving on to the Grammar School and the study of Latin and Greek. I think this is a good model for us today. Historically, the importance of this stage has been acknowledged by giving it a name, so let us follow suit and turn our attention to the content and goals of the primary school. The first question that faces us in the primary school is what to do about kindergarten, a transitional stage between preschool and real school. The five-yearold is not quite mature enough to sit still and focus at the level needed for real school. The solution for most schools has been to intersperse academics with lots of play and preschool activities to fill out the day. But a comment I overheard many years ago has always made this option unacceptable to me. I guess my ears have always been attuned to education, for I cannot account for why I should have noted, nor long remembered, a comment I overheard as a young child. A teacher, who had taught first grade for many years, complained to my mother that the introduction of kindergarten in her school was having a negative effect on her first grade class. The ears of this future teacher perked up. The teacher went on to give the reason: The children who had spent a year in kindergarten enter first grade thinking that school is play. As a result, teachers had to expend much time and energy in teaching children that school is not play, but serious work. She went on to explain that children used to come to first grade in
We would do well to focus on the primary stage in order to see how we can improve instruction and build a better foundation for the trivium that follows.
Cheryl Lowe was the founder of Memoria Press and the author of the Latin Forms Series, Classical Phonics, and many other books. She also founded Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky, where all Memoria Press materials are developed and tested.
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awe of school. Now they come, she said, with unrealistic expectations that school should be fun, and that first grade is not a big step in growing up but just another year of school which happily involves lots of things, only some of which are school work. Because of that voice of experience so many years ago, I have always thought that it is a good thing that young ones be in awe of the big step of going to school. So what to do about kindergarten? One solution would have been to just eliminate kindergarten in our school, but I didn't feel that I could overcome the expectation of this firmlyestablished tradition of modern American education. So I decided to compromise by designing an academics-only kindergarten, but in a reduced two-day schedule. The content is academic and age-appropriate, and the limited number of days makes allowance for the younger age and limited attention span of the five-year-old, who still has plenty of time for play at home. Kindergarten has introduced into our education culture a profound confusion between preschool methods of learning and formal methods of learning. Play and exploration are the way the pre-rational child learns. But the methods that are appropriate for the pre-school child, unfortunately, have been introduced up through the grades as if there is a cont i nuum bet ween preschool and school, and no difference in the proper learning activities of the two. The essence of the preschool learning model is the preschool explorer. The preschool child learns by play and random, non-systematic exploration of his surroundings. The essence of formal education, however, is just the opposite. Once the child is old enough to learn through reason, he is able to acquire the artificial, abstract tools of human learning: letters and numbers. The methods proper to formal education are not play, discovery, and exploration, but rather systematic instruction. This model of the happy preschool explorer eagerly investigating his surroundings and making discoveries through his own untrammeled curiosity is the rationale for the progressive discovery method of learning. The progressive educator tries to convince the unsuspecting parent that only through continuing with these methods can the joy of learning be maintained permanently in the education process.
This is the essence of progressive education and is the single most destructive influence in education today. It has infected the very air we breathe, and there are few, even among classical educators, who are immune to it. The romantic notion that the joy of learning that is characteristic of the preschool child is the model of learning for the formal education of the classroom is the siren song of progressive education. It is sheer nonsense. Until educators and parents realize this, we will never achieve excellence in education. Instead of the mistaken notion of learning as fun and exploration, we must return gravitas to the classroom. Gravitas is the element most lacking in the K-12 classroom today. American culture today is so shallow and pleasure-sodden that we don't really know what gravitas is anymore. It is not a word heard often. Gravitas is a sense of seriousness about what we are doing. Our work, in Christian terms, is a high calling from God. The Romans had gravitas. As Christians we should have it too, but with the added element of joy. What does gravitas look like in the primary classroom? Gravitas is not severe or grim, but it is serious. Our K-2 teachers are at the front of the classroom with a podium, like all of our teachers. The podium is not a place to lecture at this age, but rather a place to put curriculum materials so the teacher can be organized and teach effectively. All desks face the front of the classroom as all students, instructed by the teacher, are working on the same skills together. K-2 students do activities and games to practice skills, but the classroom is always quiet and orderly, because all are engaged in purposeful activity that is an efficient use of time. It is only with gravitas that we can return awe to education, and at the same time make our primary years—as well as all the years that follow—models of true excellence. Gravitas is concerned not only with a school's culture, but also with its curriculum. I believe that gravitas in the primary school means that we take very seriously those important foundational skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. I often tell my primary teachers that they are doing the most important work in our school, and that all that we accomplish in the higher grades depends on what they achieve in those first few years.
I often tell my primary teachers that they are doing the most important work in our school, and that all that we accomplish in the higher grades depends on what they achieve in those first few years.
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Gravitas: The Lost Art of Taking School Seriously
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BOOK REVIEW
by Martin Cothran You know your country is in trouble when you have a hard time convincing the people responsible for running its schools that knowledge is important. And yet that is almost precisely the situation in which America finds itself. In his book, Why Knowledge Matters, E. D. Hirsch explains why this is so. He offers new evidence—from neuroscience and education research—that all children need a curriculum that teaches them a shared fund of knowledge, and that the failure to do this hampers educational success and equal opportunity, the very things modern educational progressivism touts. Hirsch acknowledges that teacher quality is a serious problem in the nation's schools, but he points out that even good teachers would be stymied by the lack of a coherent curriculum. If you were to go to most schools in America and ask, for example, what your student will learn in the fifth grade, you will find the answers confusing or widely varied. And if you were to get an answer, it might be an answer different from the
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one you might have gotten if you had asked the year before—or the year after. "Rather than blame the teachers," says Hirsch, "I propose blaming the ideas—and improving them." The takeaway from Hirsch's book is that schools need "a specific and coherent curriculum," and that they don't have it. Hirsch recommends that schools move away from the "child-centered" focus they have been pursuing since the reforms of John Dewey in the 1920s, reforms that now almost completely dominate teacher preparation and education reform rhetoric. Rather than a focus on "childcenteredness," he says, schools should focus on "community centeredness," and this can be done only with a substantive curriculum. Hirsch never mentions classical education, but his proposal to move away from emphasizing knowledgeneutral and out-of-context "thinking skills" and to move back to an emphasis on passing on a culture is at the heart of the classical education project.
Book Review
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SIMPLY CLASSICAL
THE FUTILITY OF FACILITATING by Cheryl Swope
IN
recent years I find I have begun serving on boards, task forces, and even in a Think Tank. Such appointments are an honor, and are idyllic in many ways. Dropped into the midst of brilliant, visionary people, I appreciate listening, learning, and contemplating ideas. However, I have learned that no matter the intelligence or wisdom of the participants, such groups can be crippled by one well-meaning invention: the Facilitator. Modeled after the notion put forth by progressive education that we should facilitate rather than lead or teach, a Facilitator's role is to "increase opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction" and "promote interpersonal intelligence." Though the process of facilitating may support the ubiquitous goal of socialization, its overarching interpersonal focus seems to detract from the stated purpose of these groups, namely, to accomplish something.
Diversions The mere notion of being led by someone whose role is to avoid leading should cause us to wonder at the popularity of this practice. When a good task force is assembled, members respect the collective wisdom and seek to work together to provide answers for problems not yet solved. Invariably, I begin my time in such a group eagerly anticipating the opportunity to dive with competent swimmers into the bluest, deepest end of the pool; to swim alongside individuals whose swift strokes are more eloquent than mine; and to witness an ease in the waters of ideas surpassing my own. Then a Facilitator jumps in, usually feet first. Tethering us to his artificial life jacket, he drags us with starts and stops to where he seems most comfortable: the shallow end. Cheryl Swope is the author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child and Memoria Press' Simply Classical Curriculum, as well as editor of the Simply Classical Journal.
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The Futility of Facilitating
I question only the practice, not the person. The professional Facilitator is often clever, smooth, and pleasant. He tells jokes, fills an hour or two, and guides people through planned social exercises akin to party games. If you love party games, you love the Facilitator. However, if you carved out time to devote yourself to accomplishing something, you will find these diversions onerous. So it was during a recent event. Asked to serve on both a Task Force and in a smaller Think Tank, I drove an hour to spend a Saturday with a benevolent group of individuals I admire. When I arrived, I sat with a woman whose company I enjoy. We introduced ourselves to the others at our table and chatted easily. As the starting time approached, we opened our notebooks, clicked our pens, and leaned forward in our seats. Tasked with strategic planning for the organization's future for the benefit of others, we had important work to do. Then our beloved host spoke words that made my heart sink: "Our time together will be led by a Facilitator." A confident stranger grabbed the microphone and, with a little too much familiarity, addressed us. His comments betrayed an unsettling lack of knowledge about the beliefs of those gathered, but he chatted at length. He then told us to line up against the back wall according to our birthdays. Perplexed (and possibly a little irritated) but obedient, we all gathered our things and made our way to the wall. He added that we must arrange ourselves without speaking. We all began awkwardly indicating our birth months to people we did not know (four fingers for April, seven for July). Middle-aged national leaders, published authors, high-ranking executives, pastors in clerical collars, and a dozen generous donors—mostly white-haired— dutifully dotted the wall. Like grade-school children we waited for our next instruction. MemoriaPress.com
While we waited I spotted an older gentleman, possibly the wisest in the room. Not far from my position as a June birthday he stood feebly in his designated July location on a grossly swollen foot. Such swelling was a reaction to his chemo treatments for end-stage cancer. He shifted his weight. The youthful, eager Facilitator, meanwhile, checked all of our birthday months and days out loud from January 1 to December 31 to ensure that we were lined up correctly. I glanced at the clock. "Now I will number the tables one to six." He numbered them. "I will also give each of you a number." He gave us numbers like a P.E. teacher assigning random teams. "One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two ‌." We all proceeded to our new tables, filled mostly with people we did not know. The professional Ice Breaker basked in his bliss. I re-opened my notebook. Now, I thought, we would begin the stated task of helping this organization. He spoke from the microphone: "Determine who at your table went to prom most recently." Sigh. We shared dates and it turned out I had attended prom most recently. My prize? I would be the one to write down my table's answers to questions and report them to the larger group. Pen re-clicked, I resolved not to let any of this deter me, hoping the afternoon could still be salvaged.
Getting Down to Business With hours evaporated, at last the Facilitator posed the first real question to the group. "What is the purpose of this organization?" He projected an enormous slide with this message: Thirty Seconds. After exactly thirty seconds to write an answer in my notebook, we then heard, "Time's up. Share your answers." Despite the process, some good discussion had ensued. I naively hoped we might finally be able to dive more deeply. "Next question. Which person at your table was born the farthest distance from where we are right now?"
Any blossoming insights withered rapidly as we began to answer this question. I learned that the person to my right, whose name I still did not know, was born in the same St. Louis hospital as I was. How fun! We began chatting. Oh, wait. What are we doing? We tried to determine whether Boston, to my left, or Some Town, New York, across from me, was farther from our table. When we finally had an answer the Facilitor beamed. "Now that person will record your table's answers to the next question." I understood what was happening. For the rest of the afternoon every question would be recorded and reported by a different person. No person at any table would have a record of every thirty-second answer. No question could be explored deeply, except possibly the interpersonal ones determining who would record each answer. Uncertainty. Distraction. Randomness. Futility.
Common Sense The Saturday meeting reminded me why we do what we do in classical education. In classical education we believe that people with a given task need order. They need time to plunge into the depths of purposeful thought. Distractions and party tricks might be fun for a dorm mixer, but for achievement we need clarity, purpose, and an efficient use of time. One of our students agrees. In Myself & Others this student is learning Aesop's Fables. He says this is his favorite subject. He listens to the fable, reflects on wisdom, and copies the moral lesson in his illustrated Aesop Copybook. His mother now hears her son tell himself, "Let nothing stray you from your purpose." Like this student, let us not be distracted by needless antics posing as pedagogy. Let us teach well, give younger students time to practice and older students time to think deeply, and proceed with collaborative focus and persistence to accomplish any good purpose set before us.
Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child
REVISED EDITION
by Cheryl Swope | $24.95 Ready to be encouraged? We are now offering this second edition of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child with revised content, updated resources, and new information for classical schools and cottage schools. You will find more tips for teaching all children classically, more stories of real children, and more inspiration for your own journey.
LITER ATURE
Wait and Hope by Paul Schaeffer
M
any people see The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas as an amazing yarn, but not much more. And indeed, it boasts one of the most intricate, fascinating plots ever devised. But the tugof-war between free will and Providence, between justice and revenge, between despair and hope make The Count of Monte Cristo much more than a mere adventure story. Edmond Dantés, an eighteen-year-old sailor, arrives back in France after taking command of a merchant ship whose captain died en route. Another sailor anonymously informs the deputy crown prosecutor of Marseille, Gérard de Villefort, that Dantés is (unknowingly) delivering a message on behalf of the exiled Napoleon in the form of a letter he promised to carry for his late captain. Paul Schaeffer is a consultant for schools and homeschoolers and works as the assistant director of the Classical Latin School Association.
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Wait and Hope
When Villefort interrogates Dantés, he comes to the conclusion that if Dantés is guilty, "it is only of imprudence." But then Villefort finds out the letter is addressed to Villefort's own father. He fears that his career will be destroyed if this becomes known, so in order to protect himself, he sentences Dantés to life in prison. Initially, after everything he cares about has been ripped away from him and he is thrown in prison, Dantés thinks it is just a misunderstanding. Then, when he sees no man will help him, he turns to God. When he thinks he isn't heard, he turns from God to fury. And from fury to suicide. It is at this moment, at the very brink of brokenness, as he is intentionally starving himself to death, that he hears a fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, tunneling through his wall in an attempt to escape. The shocking hope of escape rekindles Dantés' desire for life and his openness to God. He turns back MemoriaPress.com
to God and prays, "God! Do not let me die in despair!" At this moment he and Faria first meet. But his newfound faith is still in its infancy, and he mistakes the nature of his relationship to God. Abbé Faria, a clergyman with a renaissance bent teaches Dantés everything he knows about high society, from languages to customs to the sciences. It is their first unusual meeting that plants a seed of faith in Edmond's soul, one that takes time to germinate and eventually to grow. Eventually, Faria tells Dantés where to retrieve an immense treasure once he is free. When the Abbé dies, Dantés exploits the prison's process of disposing bodies as a way to escape. Upon gaining his freedom, he collects the treasure. But when he searches for his family, he finds that his father has passed away and his former fiancée is now married to a man named Fernand who (unbeknownst to her) had been party to Dantés' denunciation. He feels that there is no one left l iv i ng who c a r e s for h i m, s o he transforms himself into an "avenging angel" and sets about orchestrating the downfall of all those who had betrayed him fourteen years before. Most men who escape from prison and acquire an extraordinary treasure would seek happiness for themselves. But once Edmond is free, he uses the treasure and what he learned from the Abbé to insert himself into the lives of those who betrayed him, all the while disguising his true identity. He intends to destroy them and their families through what means the most to each of them. He spends ten years in careful preparation. He thinks this patient waiting, this gaze towards the future in twisted hope, will bring him happiness. He is bent on vengeance, but it leads not to the freedom and satisfaction he is hoping for, but to empty, frustrating despair. He escapes prison only to confine himself in a hollow life of his own making. At the beginning of the story, we see that Dantés' view of himself is as someone blessed by Providence, and then as someone cursed by it. Now that he has escaped from prison, he sees himself as one who has risen from the grave: a man outside of the bounds of Providence and an agent of Providence itself. He waits and hopes, but only for and in his own plans. And as his planned
destruction comes to his enemies, he realizes events have slipped out of his control. He intended to drive Fernand's family to leave him; they do and, unforeseen by Dantés, Fernand commits suicide. He intended to drive Villefort to public ruin, but does not anticipate that it will drive him to insanity. At the moment that Dantés sees Villefort driven mad, he has his first doubts about whether he has the right to do as he has done. "Pray God that I have not already done too much," he pleads as he changes course and seeks to save the last victims of his machinations. He starts to see that his waiting should have been on the Lord and his hope should have been in the will of Providence. There will always be unplanned consequences: No matter how exactingly executed or well thought out our plans, no human has omnipotent control. But even after this epiphany, Dantés is still unhappy. He has achieved all that he ever dreamed of from the second he stepped foot out of prison, and yet, in the end he questions it all: "I have come from a planet called sorrow." Revenge, only justified by his delusions of being an agent of Providence, brings no happiness. He is returned to the despair he suffered in prison. But then he realizes that there is someone who loves him. He had been so focused on revenge as his way to happiness that he could not see anything in people beyond their use for his plans. A woman who has been devoted to him for years expresses her love to him and he cries, "God has sustained me in my struggle with my enemies, and has given me this reward; he will not let me end my triumph in suffering; I wished to punish myself, but he has pardoned me." Looking back on his campaign of vengeance, he realizes the cost of his revenge—for others and for himself. He will ever seek forgiveness from the Lord for the arrogance of thinking himself "for an instant equal to God"—a deputized agent of Providence instead of an instrument of the Almighty God. His last words exhort us to follow a different path than he did, a path of contentment in Providence:
His last words exhort us to follow a different path than he did, a path of contentment in Providence.
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Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—'Wait and hope.'
Wait and Hope
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FINE ARTS
Formal Structure in Music by Dr. Carol Reynolds
Photograph by Michael Gabelmann (CC BY-NC 2.0)
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hen discussing the fine arts, we explore structure through the concept of "form." Sometimes it's best to envision form as a physical design. Other times, we perceive an artistic form as a multi-part narrative shaping a creative work. And while someone might forge a completely new form, generally an artist works with forms that have endured for centuries. Must we learn about artistic forms to enjoy the fine arts? Happily, we need not. Great art communicates its message whether or not a person has a technical understanding of a work's structure. Even if we can't read architectural blueprints, for example, we can still appreciate the beauty of a well-designed foyer. But learning about artistic forms allows us to approach works of art with increased confidence and understanding. Musical form comes into play both in large structures and in small details. At the most basic level, a concert Dr. Carol Reynolds is a widely acclaimed speaker and educator, and the author of Discovering Music (p. 63). She regularly leads arts tours throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, recently in partnership with the Smithsonian Institute.
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Formal Structure in Music
may be divided into a first and second half. The works performed have been arranged in a specific order for specific reasons. Musical dramas such as operas are divided into sections (acts) and those sections are subdivided into scenes. These scenes are further divided into individual pieces like arias, duets, and choruses. Each is interwoven into the substance of the drama and shaped by the work's specific musical style. The individual musical numbers have a definable form as well. In our traditional Western music, we perceive form primarily by listening for musical themes, most often stated in the melody. We hear (consciously or unconsciously) the ways in which that theme returns or is restated. One of the easiest musical forms to grasp is called "strophic" form. Here multiple verses of text are sung to a repeating melody. Strophic form permeates the musical styles of folk, blues, and jazz. Many hymns and patriotic songs employ strophic form as well (e.g., "Amazing Grace" and "My Country 'Tis of Thee"). Early on children learn to understand and love MemoriaPress.com
strophic form with songs like "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." Children also delight in learning rounds like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." The experience of singing a round is fascinating to the ear and to the mind. The overlapping melodic lines create what we call counterpoint. You can just as easily think of it as a musical conversation where everyone is saying the same thing, only with a delay! Composers in the Renaissance and the Baroque eras were particularly fascinated by imitative counterpoint. They created extensive structures in which separate voices or instruments (like the individual parts of a round) would imitate one another, singing or playing the same melody (sometimes with slight variations) at offset intervals. The acknowledged master of imitative counterpoint, Johann Sebastian Bach, crafted structures so mathematically complex, they boggle the mind. In fact, we think of the name Bach as synonymous with mastery of the most complex of all imitative forms: the Baroque fugue. A fugue follows certain well-established patterns. We still marvel at composers like Bach who proudly showcased their skills by writing magnificently intricate fugues. Despite the complexity of such fugues, listeners with just a little practice can learn to follow their designs relatively easily. So, the next time you light-heartedly sing a simple round at a camp gathering, realize that you are doing something musically sophisticated and, in fact, potentially quite complex. To take another form that is surprisingly instinctive for both composer and listener, let's consider "song form," also called ternary form or ABA form. Here an opening melody is followed by a contrasting middle section, which might express a new musical atmosphere or have words that express a different emotion. Then, the initial melody returns and the composition ends in a manner similar to the way it began. Stepping back, we can see why we label this design ABA form or ternary (three-part) form. However, why call it song form? The answer is simple: Across the centuries, many songs have been composed using this ABA design. If you think through songs you know, you may be surprised how many are cast in ternary form. Take for example the beautiful song "Yesterday," written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. As you think through the song, you'll note that it begins with a gentle, ascending melody setting the words, "Yesterday … all my troubles seemed so far away." On it goes, with some repetition, until you hear the words, "Why she had to go." Here the song has entered its middle (B) section. Not only has the melody changed; so too has the mood. Then the initial melody (A) returns to the same opening word, "Yesterday." 1-877-862-1097
If you keep listening you'll hear the middle section (B) come back again. Then, the A section returns for one last time. Thus, a three-part form is expanded to become a five-part song (ABABA). But, in its essence, "Yesterday" is a three-part composition. The repeat of the B section and the final return of the A section could be eliminated and the song would stand quite well. Let's take another familiar example: "Oh! Susanna," written by Stephen Foster. Here, the ternary form is expressed even more concisely. The opening melody starts with the words, "Oh, I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee." The middle (B) section of the song sets the famous words, "Oh! Susanna, don't you cry for me!" Then the opening melody returns with similar words about heading to Louisiana. Within the sections of ternary form you might find examples of a mini-form, the musical period. A period has two parts analogous to a question and answer. Let's go back to the opening of "Oh! Susanna" as an example: Oh I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee I'm going to Louisiana my true love for to see
The melody of the first sentence (a phrase we call the "antecedent") is repeated literally in the second sentence ("consequent") right up to the last two words. Sing it for yourself. At "my knee" the melody goes up one step, while at "to see" the melody goes down one step. This very slight melodic variation has a significant effect on the harmony. The antecedent phrase moves the harmony away from the home key (tonic) to what we call a "half cadence." The melody sounds incomplete—and it is! It's up to the second phrase to bring the melody back home to tonic, providing a sense of completion. This stylistic formula occurs in all types of music. Think of Beethoven's beloved "Ode to Joy." The first two melodic phrases form the same kind of period, the first ending on the second scale degree and the second phrase returning to end on the tonic. Taking our analysis of the form a step further, the opening two phrases are followed by contrasting material (B section). The music then returns to the original melody, creating a ternary form. After that, the whole ternary structure is repeated with new text, making the overall song strophic. Whether or not listeners perceive such details of form—as a trained musician must—musical structures do communicate effectively. The music sounds right in terms of melody, harmonies, and text. We absorb musical structures unawares, beginning with classic children's songs (which is why it is critical to teach such songs enthusiastically). Gradually, an instinctive understanding of musical form builds, preparing a child to embrace more readily the canon of great musical masterworks. Formal Structure in Music
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by Mark Bauerlein 20
Heading Goes Here
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IF
you teach high school or college students, or have kids who are passing through those places, and if your duties include grading papers, or you watch your kids struggle with writing assignments, I have a piece of advice. Tell them to try composing by hand, with pen and paper, not on the keyboard. I know, I know—this runs against most of what you and your students and children have been told. Every ad for the newest iPhone reinforces the supremacy of screens and obsolescence of paper. Many schools have gone all-digital all the time, such as Flint Hill in Oakton, Virginia, an Apple Distinguished School that gives every student an iPad or MacBook Air at an early age and whose dean of faculty told the Washington Post in 2012, "Tech is like oxygen. It's all around us, so why wouldn't we try to get our children started early?" That headlong approach has been going on for thirty years now. Computers arrived when I was in graduate school in the late 1980s. Reactions ranged from practical interest ("this will shorten my time to completion") to revolutionary fervor ("this is going to be as big as Gutenberg"). Office mates heavy into rhetoric and theory matched computers to cutting-edge cultural studies (a leading book back then was Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology). They warned us not to fall behind. A buddy of mine dropped books altogether and tried to get a computer to write verse— good stuff, not doggerel. You didn't have to be so intellectual about it, either. If you had two sections of freshman composition and papers to grade each week, not to mention a three-hundred-page dissertation to write, you looked for any magic that would reduce the comma splices and do away with carbon paper. That was the first promise: Revision and proofreading would take a great leap forward. Students would fix punctuation with a couple of strokes. No more grabbing the white-out to paint over a mistake, blowing it dry, relining the page in the typewriter, and hitting the proper keys. With new software programs, students could click on a word they had typed on the screen and a list of synonyms would appear from which they could find a sharper term. Spell-check would highlight every error. With corrections now simple and quick, students would turn in cleaner drafts and lighten a teacher's workload. ("A" papers take the least time to grade.) So where are we now? Worse off than we were before. Students write faster with keyboard and mouse, but would anybody say that student writing has improved in the last three decades? Certainly the test scores say no. The SAT added a writing component in 2005, and scores have gone down every year except two of them, when they were flat. The ACT college readiness scores in English have dropped six points in the last five years (sixty-seven percent of test takers reaching readiness in 2012, sixty-one percent in 2016). With all the tools available to amend grammar and diction and spelling, twenty-first-century students aren't gaining. They are writing more words than ever before, yes, because of social media, but more hasn't meant better. That's because they're doing more with the wrong tool. The keyboard isn't an advance on the pen. It's a step sideways, if not backward. Think about the process. To produce a letter on the screen requires nothing more than a tap with a finger. You don't make the letter; the
Mark Bauerlein is senior editor of First Things, a journal of religion and public life, and the author of The Dumbest Generation and other books. This article appeared in the February 2018 issue of First Things and is reprinted here with permission.
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computer does. You can't work on the words without which he devoted his energy and skill. That's alienating. going through the circuitry first. You have visual It happens, for instance, when a factory worker performs contact, but not direct tactile contact. To write another the same assigned task over and over. The automobile letter, you tap somewhere else with a different finger. In that emerges at the end of the assembly line, he feels, has a physical sense, it's not really writing, a tracing out of nothing to do with him. Manufacturers recognized this letters to make words. It's tapping. problem years ago and started to allow floor workers With a pen or pencil, you make the whole letter, the more initiative and input in the process. We want to have mind directing the hand to push, curl, pull, and lift a hand in our products, as it were. in a set pattern. On the keyboard, the making of each As Marx describes it, when a person's labor "congeals" letter is nearly indistinguishable. With the pen, every (his term) in an object that is handed off to the owner or letter is distinct. Making a "k" isn't like making an "o." delivered to the market, "it means that the life which he This is especially true for the process of revision, has conferred on the object confronts him as something which on paper is more craftsmanlike. You can cross hostile and alien." The language seems overdone, but out a weak verb with a flourish and inscribe another not if you've ever watched a sophomore look at his own term right above it. You don't just run the cursor over writing and try to revise it. His own words strike him as a paragraph. You sculpt it. On the screen, deletion and a foreign substance. "What exactly did you mean by that retyping feel like data input. We call it "word processing." phrase?" I ask. "Um, I'm not sure," he answers, squirming The pen moves more slowly, but that isn't a drawback. on the other side of my desk. Like other "slow" movements The computer edges youths (slow food, slow reading, slow closer to this alienated condition. art), slow writing aims for a They see the writing on the Like other "slow" fuller and tighter relation to the screen as their own, but not as object, a nearness of mind to the much as they do the writing movements (slow food, language it utters. The plodding on the page. The words have slow reading, slow art), process of "drawing" letters gone somewhere else. Though instead of tapping keys and you can change them with the slow writing aims for telling a computer to draw them computer's help, they belong to a fuller and tighter gives words greater intimacy and the device. The very fact that they presence. The handwritten word are out of your hands makes you relation to the object, a is closer, and that makes a writer regard them as less expressive of nearness of mind to the more deliberate with words. your self. Words, sentences, and Computer fans say that the flat paragraphs, cut and copied and language it utters. and swift actions of the fingers on pasted, are more commodity-like, a keyboard mark an advantage. If ready to be sent to the teacher they have had a course in theory, with a few clicks and taps. they add a Derridean jibe about the "metaphysics of And that's the best reason to go back to words presence." Real doings take place in the mind, they inscribed on a page. Words on the screen have the say, and a faster, less differentiated labor by the hands feel of finality before they should. The virtues of the enables the mind to realize its thoughts in print more computer—faster, easier, simpler—are vices when it immediately and pleasurably. How much better it comes to writing. The pen personalizes the labor of is when the mind wills a word to appear and the writing, reminding us that we are responsible for body only has to drop a few fingers before the word what we write. It tells eighteen-year-olds, "These are materializes in a special illuminated space instants your words—be careful with them." later. Creative intention works in higher gear. It Parents and teachers—I'm both—must reinforce the doesn't want to wait for a hand to scratch letters across habit of handwriting by providing noble tools. I mean the page. What does the physical exertion of writing a nifty mechanical pencil by Montblanc or a sleek out words have to do with the spark of imagination? Parker fountain pen, along with a notebook and paper The opposite is the case. Technical tools can lead not that encourage young people to imagine themselves to the empowerment of mind but to the alienation of men and women of letters, not "content providers." We labor. Marx famously identified alienation as resulting need to guide the rising generation to take writing when the things a man has made no longer seem to more seriously, which is to say, to take themselves belong to him. He faces the product of his labor as a more seriously as writers. "power independent of the producer." He gets money for Which, if we're really serious, means a restoration working, but cash isn't as meaningful as the product to of instruction in cursive. 22
Phenomenology of the Hand
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