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Education and Thinking in Continental Philosophy
Thinking against the Current in Adorno Arendt Deleuze Derrida and Rancière 1st Edition Itay Snir
‘Nicholas Tate enthusiastically and cogently exposes the harmfulness of liberalism in education and offers an alternative – conservatism as advanced by four critical writers and theorists not often associated with it – T S Eliot, Michael Oakeshott, Hannah Arendt and E D Hirsch. The Conservative Case for Education is not an apology for conservatism; it is a provocation.’
– William G. Durden, President Emeritus, Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA, USA), Chief Global Engagement Officer, the International University Alliance (Boston, MA, USA) and Joint Appointment Professor (research), School of Education, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA)
The Conservative Case for Education argues that educational thinking in Englishspeaking countries over the last fifty years has been massively influenced by a dominant liberal ideology based on unchallenged assumptions. Conservative voices pushing against the current of this ideology have been few, but powerful and drawn from across the political spectrum. The book shows how these twentieth-century voices remain highly relevant today, using them to make a conservative case for education.
Written by a former government adviser and head teacher, the book focuses on four of the most powerful of these conservative voices: the poet and social critic T S Eliot, the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, the political thinker Hannah Arendt and the educationist E D Hirsch. In the case of each thinker, the book shows how their ideas throw fresh light on contemporary educational issues. These issues range widely across current educational practice and include: creativity, cultural literacy, mindfulness, the place of religion in schools, education for citizenship, the teaching of history and Classics, the authority of the teacher, the arguments for and against a national curriculum, the educational response to cultural diversity, and more. A concluding chapter sums up the conservative case for education in a set of Principles that would be acceptable to many from the Left, as well as the Right, of the political spectrum. The book should be of particular interest to educators and educational policy makers at a time when ‘conservative’ governments are in power in the UK and the USA, as well as to researchers, academics and postgraduate students engaged in the study of educational policy, or those studying educational issues from an ethical, philosophical and cultural standpoint.
Nicholas Tate was Chief Executive of England’s School Curriculum and Assessment Authority and its successor body the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, during the years 1994–2000. Since 2000 he has been Head of Winchester College (2000–2003) and The International School of Geneva (2003–2011), as well as of a global network of schools. He chaired the International Baccalaureate’s Education Committee for five years and served on the French Education Minister’s Haut Conseil de l’Évaluation de l’École. He has a doctorate in history and has written extensively on history and education.
Routledge Research in Education Policy and Politics
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
The Routledge Research in Education Policy and Politics series aims to enhance our understanding of key challenges and facilitate on-going academic debate within the influential and growing field of Education Policy and Politics.
Books in the series include:
Modernising School Governance
Corporate Planning and Expert Handling in State Education
Andrew Wilkins
UNESCO Without Borders
Educational Campaigns for International Understanding
Edited by Aigul Kulnazarova and Christian Ydesen
Education and Political Subjectivities in Neoliberal Times and Places
Emergences of Norms and Possibilities
Edited by Eva Reimers and Lena Martinsson
Local Citizenship in the Global Arena
Educating for Community Participation and Change
Sally Findlow
Using Shakespeare’s Plays to Explore Education Policy Today
Neoliberalism through the Lens of Renaissance Humanism
Sophie Ward
Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces
The Economics of Public Schooling and Globalized Education Reform
Emma E. Rowe
Education and the Production of Space
Political Pedagogy, Geography, and Urban Revolution
Derek R. Ford
The Conservative Case for Education
Against the Current
Nicholas Tate
First published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
The right of Nicholas Tate to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Acknowledgements
John Catt Educational is thanked for permission to reproduce text from Nicholas Tate’s What Is Education For? (2015) as part of the section ‘Preparation for political life’ in Chapter 17.
Introduction
Confronting education’s group think
It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes (Hirsch 1999: 1)
I grew up in houses whose small number of bookshelves contained the children’s history textbooks read by my parents during the first thirty years of the twentieth century. It was these that helped make me want to spend my life studying history and, in due course, teaching it. As well as telling good stories and giving one interesting facts these books also had the function of embedding in the minds of their young readers some of the dominant ideas of the day, those whose influence, more than anything else, shape our societies: the assumption that races and peoples have essential characteristics; pride in national identity; confidence about what is right and wrong; a belief in progress. Underlying these ideas were other assumptions about authority, acculturation and transmission as essential components of an education.
From the perspective of the doubting, self-conscious, pessimistic post-imperial 1960s I was eventually able to look back at these texts and see their world picture for the historically determined and time-limited set of constructs that it was, and to appreciate, in the world of education, the force of John Maynard Keynes’s dictum (above) about the power of ideas. I was not so quick, as a young teacher, to see the new set of constructs that had replaced the old ones and in which I myself was now enmeshed.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu saw education as a field of activity with its own schemata, concepts, language, rules, values and interests. For much of the time when talking about education, and without realising what one is doing, one does not ‘speak’, he argued, but is ‘spoken for’ through the dominant discourse of the field (Bourdieu 1984: 17). It is the argument of the current book that since the middle of the twentieth century education in much of the English-speaking world has been shaped by a discourse arising out of currents in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century European thought which, if not always dominant on the ground, has shown a remarkable intellectual dominance inside those circles within which educational theories are developed, educational policies decided and teachers trained. It is an ideology that is often defended with
self-righteous fervour and maintained regardless of the evidence (Hirsch 2006: 50–51, 53, 61, 172–179).
The French have a phrase for this kind of phenomenon: a pensée unique, or single way of thinking about things which is so all-encompassing that it is difficult to step outside it. In English one might call it ‘group think’ though this fails to convey the same sense of its oppressiveness. My purpose in this book is to explore how a number of writers and thinkers over the last hundred years have come to challenge this penseé unique.
My understanding of the power of the pensée unique in education has been deepened over the years by moving around some of the different ‘sub-fields’ of education in a number of different countries. Over the years I have worked in English state schools, English teacher education, Scottish teacher education, English educational assessment, English national educational administration, English independent education, international school education and, as an adviser, in French national educational administration. Involvement in international education also brought me into contact with the national education systems of Switzerland, South Africa, Hungary and the USA and with the highly distinctive educational ‘sub-field’ of the International Baccalaureate (IB).
Each of these, to varying degrees, had its own pensée unique. When I moved from Scotland to England no one, but no one, among my English colleagues had any interest in the developments in Scotland in which I had been involved. When ten years later I moved from a national role in state education to the headship of an English independent school I found a sector operating on lines akin to those of some corporate body in ancien régime France and in which fellow heads of my age had all known each other since they started teaching thirty years previously. The world of international school heads, in which everyone spoke the same educational language and had rotated round each other’s schools, turned out not dissimilar. Even the IB, I found, despite its wide global contacts, had difficulty in stepping outside its constructivist and internationalist mindset.
These experiences, together with those of living for many years outside my own country (in Spain, Scotland, Switzerland, France and, most strikingly in some ways, as a Northerner, in the English Home Counties) taught me the advantages of being the eternal outsider. This may help to explain my interest in thinkers who found themselves on the educational margins: T S Eliot, whose social and cultural views have repeatedly been treated with embarrassment even when not attracting outright hostility; Michael Oakeshott whose 1951 inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics put England’s left-wing political science establishment into a terrible tizzy from which his reputation within those circles never quite recovered (Oakeshott 1991: 43–69); E D Hirsch who declared ‘I’ve been a pariah for so long’; even Hannah Arendt who, although firmly within the western political mainstream of her times, never hesitated to confront the group think around her, whether that of fellow Zionists or the world of US school education. These are the main thinkers discussed in this book.
Almost two-thirds of the book is devoted to the first two thinkers: T S Eliot and Michael Oakeshott. Both wrote extensively about education, although
Confronting education’s group think 3 in neither case was education ever their main concern. Both were thinkers whose educational conservatism emerged out of a wider philosophy which was either wholeheartedly conservative, in the case of Eliot, or partially so, in the case of Oakeshott. Examining the educational issues raised by these two thinkers prepares the way for a discussion of the two other thinkers – Arendt and Hirsch – whose views on non-educational issues cannot easily be labelled ‘conservative’ but whose educational views show parallels to those of Eliot and Oakeshott. This convergence in educational views among these four thinkers helps us, I will argue, to define better a ‘conservative case for education’ and to make a case for its relevance across the full range of the contemporary political spectrum.
Some characteristics of the pensée unique
But what is this pensée unique that Eliot, Oakeshott, Arendt and Hirsch were all attacking in their very different ways? Let me begin to answer this question by giving you some examples taken largely at random from the mission statement aims of contemporary English schools as recorded on their websites.
• To provide an enjoyable, creative, relevant and evolving curriculum.
• To uphold the right of every individual to happiness
• To create confident, rounded and resilient global citizens of the future.
• To develop a culture in which difference is not only respected but celebrated
• To develop non-judgmental attitudes between people as individuals and groups.
• To ensure that equality at our school permeates all aspects of school life.
• To help pupils to choose their own cultural and religious values and to respect those of others regardless of their own preferences.
• To make learning fun, fulfilling and for everyone.
While each of these statements contains elements of an aim to which no one could possibly object, they nonetheless reflect a distinctive view of the world – so pervasive that it can pass unnoticed – which promotes a number of fundamental assumptions none of which can or should be taken for granted. Implied or in some cases stated within these aims are the following.
• Education should be directly relevant to the individual child and his or her circumstances, and not primarily a body of knowledge about the world, with its own rules and structures, which needs to be transmitted to everyone.
• Education is as much about pupil-centred activity which involves creating new things as it is about learning to understand the world as it is.
• The development of values, attitudes and dispositions, and the promotion of a particular kind of society, is more central to school education than the acquisition of knowledge or the studying of subjects (which are often not mentioned or downplayed in school mission statements).
• School should be about fun and the achievement of happiness, with endurance, persistence and delayed gratification under-emphasised as essential elements of learning.
• There is no hierarchy of cultures, therefore all cultures should be celebrated, whatever they contain, and the culture of one’s own society not be allowed to predominate within the school curriculum.
• There are no objective values, therefore other people’s values should be respected, indeed celebrated, in schools, whatever they are.
• Equality in all areas is the dominant value, with the removal of educational inequalities of all kinds taking precedence over all other considerations.
• The school’s duty is to promote loyalty to the world community, not primarily to the national one.
These characteristics of the western educational pensée unique are not of course confined to England or the UK, as our discussion of Arendt and Hirsch, whose writings focused on the USA, will show. Nor are they just to be found in Englishspeaking countries, though this is where they are most in evidence.
In France the philosopher of education Laurent Fedi has not just shown how the term pensée unique is an appropriate description of the set of beliefs about education currently dominant within a country but, even more disturbingly, of the worldview that an education system grounded in these beliefs is successfully inculcating into the minds of its pupils (Fedi 2011: 133, 191–209). Fedi argues that educational approaches which formerly promoted a pensée unique based on tradition and authority have simply been replaced by a new pensée unique which claims to be emancipatory, anti-authoritarian, anti-conformist, ‘modern’, ‘democratic’, tolerant, respectful of difference and the Other, but which in most respects is equally tyrannical. It is indeed worse than what preceded it because it pretends to be helping young people to become reflective and self-critical while doing precisely the opposite, the only self-criticism in this regime that is permitted being in relation to the extent to which one falls short of the dominant ‘politically correct’ pieties promoted by the school, the media and the cultural and political elite.1
In arguing ‘against the current’ in this way, Fedi, like other thinkers discussed in this book, is far from being an archetypal ‘conservative’. His argument against the pensée unique of contemporary education is that it is promoting – as something not open to question – ‘a new man’ (un nouveau homme), a particular model of a human being, one who is both ‘competent’, with the skills and mindset enabling him to take his place in a flexible, nomadic global marketplace, but also ‘cooperative’ and conformist, accepting this place without protest, adaptable, capable of living in a diverse society and free from strong opinions and attachments (especially national ones). The drive behind this kind of education is partly a wish to strengthen the bonds of solidarity in a broken and alienating society but also, and primarily, the pressures coming from the global economy. The mission of the contemporary school, says Fedi, is to create this ‘new man’.
In order to do this it has abandoned its prime duty to instruct in favour of social engineering. As a result it is not just failing to arm its pupils against the propaganda which surrounds them, but subjecting them to it.2
Some origins of the pensée unique
If these are some of the characteristics and manifestations of the pensée unique with which this book is concerned what are its origins? Arendt traced them to a ‘complex of modern educational theories which originated in Middle Europe and consist of an astounding hodgepodge of sense and nonsense’ (Arendt 1961: 178). Hirsch attributed them to ‘European romanticism’ and ‘American pragmatism’, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau largely responsible for the former and John Dewey for the latter (Hirsch 1987: xiv–xv, 31, 119). From Rousseau’s Émile comes the notion that adults should be careful not to ‘impose’ adult ideas on children until they both need them and are able to understand them together with the recommendation that children should therefore learn by doing, through exploration and enquiry, and not through traditional approaches deemed to be didactic and oppressive. From Dewey comes the specific emphasis on enabling children to construct themselves and their understanding of the world through a process of enquiry, the stress on collaborative learning, and an attitude towards truths and values that prioritises their practical consequences and social utility rather than their intrinsic rightness. Out of this complex of ideas emerged a dislike of whole class instruction, a downplaying of the role of knowledge, distaste for traditional subjects, and a rejection of the very idea of a prescribed curriculum.
Rousseau and Dewey, however, cannot be held solely accountable for the set of views against which Eliot, Oakeshott, Arendt and Hirsch were all reacting. They are, at least in part, a reflection of a wider ‘ideological syndrome’ covering a range of characteristics – feelings, attitudes and values as well as principles and doctrines – whose links with each other are sometimes loose and whose socioeconomic roots can be found in industrialisation, urbanisation and the weakening of traditional social and religious authorities. It is an ideological syndrome ultimately traceable to strands within the West’s eighteenth-century Enlightenment: its belief in freedom, its rationalism, universalism, individualism and egalitarianism, and its optimism about the possibility of progress. It is a syndrome that helps to put into a wider context the aims Rousseauite and Deweyan educators have both for their students and for the kind of society and world that, through the education they are providing, they are setting out to promote.
The main components of this ideological syndrome are also closely linked to the version of liberalism deriving from the Enlightenment which has been the dominant ideology of those western societies within which the twentieth-century educational progressivism criticised by our four thinkers took deepest root. It is a version of liberalism that has changed a great deal over the last hundred and fifty years, moving increasingly away from its libertarian ‘small government’ roots towards an ever greater emphasis on state intervention, distributive justice and
the creation of a new social order. It is a version of liberalism that has dug particularly deep roots in the academic institutions of English-speaking countries and among the personnel of national education systems. The political philosopher John Gray has seen it as ‘so ubiquitously pervasive . . . in American intellectual life’, and in educational practice, ‘that it sometimes seems barely possible to formulate a thought that is not liberal, let alone to express it freely’ (Burnham 1965: 160–162, 220, 243; Scruton 2014: 65; Gray 1993: 249).
The proponents of this version of liberalism, according to the philosopher and political theorist James Burnham subscribe, by and large, to the following beliefs.
• Human beings are innately good.
• Human beings are perfectible.
• There is no innate obstacle to the realisation of a society of peace, freedom, justice and well-being.
• The obstacles to progress and the achievement of a good society are ignorance and faulty social institutions.
• There are solutions to every social problem and these can be found through the use of reason and science.
• One must continually question authority, prejudice and the merely traditional, customary or habitual (especially within one’s own society and in western civilisation).
• The task of education is not to uphold, but to destroy contentment with the status quo.
• The right sort of education will produce good citizens. Good citizens will produce a good society.
• In the name of equality social reform should be designed to correct existing inequalities and to equalise the conditions, including those of nurture and schooling, which produce them.
• Equality also applies to matters of culture. There is no intrinsic superiority in western civilisation, which indeed has much to feel ashamed about.
• The goal of social and political life is secular: to increase the material well-being of humanity.
• National sovereignty is an outworn concept. One’s duty is to humankind. (Burnham 1965: 125–131, 49–50, 53, 56–57, 62, 65, 79)
There are of course many varieties of liberalism. These differ in their degrees of individualism, egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism and in their attitudes towards multiculturalism, religion and the role of the state.3 The term ‘liberal’ is also popularly used in very different ways, often in the USA synonymously with ‘leftwing’ while also, both in the USA and the UK, to describe more narrowly those who adopt a Hayekian free-market attitude to economics.
It is the kind of liberalism, as broadly defined above by Burnham, however, which has been most prominent and most powerful in its impact within western societies. Given the continuing prevalence of this ideology it is not surprising
Confronting education’s group think 7
that the educational ideas of people such as Rousseau and Dewey, which are very much in harmony with it and which in Dewey’s case emerge directly from it, should have proved so attractive and still shape our educational discourse as profoundly as they do today. The attractiveness of this ideology, with its emphasis on cultural relativism, its downplaying of the national and its need for a ‘new man’, can also be seen to have been enhanced, as Laurent Fedi suggests, by the expansion of global capitalism and the whole process of globalisation as experienced during the last half century.
Critiquing the pensée unique
It is equally unsurprising that some thinkers should have reacted both against these educational ideas and against their ideological underpinnings: because they were themselves anti-liberal, as Eliot very explicitly was during the early part of his life; because of a wider anti-rationalism, in Oakeshott’s case; because these ideas were contrary to ingrained features of ‘the human condition’, in the case of Arendt; because of the alarm he felt at the individual and social consequences of adopting these approaches to education, in the case of Hirsch.
While disagreeing fundamentally on many matters all of these thinkers felt able, in their different ways and to varying degrees, to reassert the idea of education for its own sake, the authority of the teacher and the importance of the transmission through education of what Matthew Arnold called ‘the best which has been thought and said in the world’ (Arnold 1932: 6). Most of them, again in their different ways and in varying degrees, challenged education’s implicit cultural and ethical relativism, its emphasis on contemporary relevance, its ill-considered interpretation of egalitarianism and its narrow obsession with economic utility. At times the differences between the four thinkers are greater than the similarities, but all shared a profound unease with the pensée unique as I have tried to define it, though not necessarily with all of the liberal ideological underpinnings on which it is based or with other features of liberalism such as its concern with human autonomy or belief in freedom of expression. All four fought against what they saw to be the main currents of educational thought in their time and were highly self-conscious with regard to their role in doing so.
Conservatism
It is tempting to label this group of educational thinkers as ‘conservative’. In strictly educational terms they were all reacting against a set of contemporary assumptions and advocating a return to some of the assumptions that these had recently replaced and which they felt had been both educationally and socially more valuable. In this sense they are all both ‘reactionary’ and, insofar as their stance includes a reasoned commitment to continuity and tradition, ‘conservative’. As indicating a set of educational views that emerge out of a wider response to the world, both words, however, would be misleading.
In his discussion of the ‘conservative’ critique of liberalism John Skorupski identifies three strains of ‘conservatism’: ‘practical conservatism’, which avoids abstract claims and focuses on what works in particular societies, times and places; ‘neo-liberalism’, which stresses free markets and a strong but small state; and a ‘conservatism’ centred on continuity, community, tradition and hierarchy and which sees these as the organic elements of a good society (Skorupski 2015: 401). Kieron O’Hara refuses the name ‘conservatism’ to the neo-liberal strain, seeing this as a mistaken identification arising from the way in which neo-liberals and small c conservatives often find themselves in alliance within big C Conservative Parties against the common enemies of egalitarianism and socialism, as has happened over the years in both the UK Conservative and the US Republican parties. He also qualifies the third strain by arguing that whereas conservatives start from the general assumption that continuity is essential and tradition normally a good thing their main concern, in a modern world that is rapidly changing whether one likes it or not, is not to oppose all change, but to ensure that it is undertaken cautiously, sensibly managed and fully evaluated (O’Hara 2011: 88, 202). This attitude would also characterise the first strain of ‘conservatism’ and these two strains would be likely, in addition, to have in common a respect for the role of authority and order, a sense of the importance of the moral foundations of society, a distrust of a too powerful state, a commitment to individual liberty and an aversion to endless innovation. Both strains are also likely normally to have in common a privileging of liberty over all forms of equality other than the basic moral equality of human beings, and a distaste for egalitarianism as an expression of envy and a device to enhance the power of the state (Vincent 2016: 34, 40–42, 96–97, 105–106).
If one tries to apply these features to our four thinkers one could not easily link any of them to Skorupski’s second, neo-liberal, strain. Oakeshott fits firmly into the first strain, but not into the other two, Eliot into both the first and the third; and Arendt and Hirsch, except in ways that would feel very uncomfortable, into none of them.4 Eliot is the most ‘conservative’ of the four, illustrating most of the characteristics of English conservative thought – belief in the imperfection of humankind, distrust of theory, attachment to established customs – but even here it is a term that requires considerable qualification (Quinton 1978: 12–13, 16). Although in some areas there are distant family resemblances between the four thinkers they should be approached as a group of individuals, taking into account all the distinctive nuances and subtleties that each of them brings to the matters under discussion, and not as any kind of school of thought. It will also become clear that an individual’s views on education do not necessarily or neatly follow from his or her broader political views.
Labels such as ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ are even more unhelpful. ‘Conservative’, being a ‘positional ideology’ rather than a universalist one, is just as accessible to the ‘left’ as to the ‘right’ (the post-Stalinist USSR was as deeply concerned to conserve its existing order as Burke had been with that of late eighteenthcentury Britain). Those frequently described as being on ‘the Right’ are also more likely in the contemporary world to be moral and intellectual ‘radicals’,
Confronting education’s group think 9 even ‘revolutionaries’, given the dominance of the pensée unique of the allegedly more subversive ‘Left’ (Gray 1993: 39).
The book nonetheless argues a case for describing all four of the thinkers, as far as their educational views are concerned, as at least in part ‘conservative’. JeanPhilippe Vincent, in a wide-ranging analysis of ‘conservative’ thought, which covers many thinkers beyond the usual British and American ones, sees ‘conservatism’ as a ‘style of thought’ and ‘habits of thought’ as much as a doctrine, and it is in this sense of the term that the current book aims to develop a distinctively ‘conservative case for education’. It is a style of thought Vincent sees as shared by many writers – Tacitus, St Augustine, Montaigne, Jane Austen, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Flaubert, Walter Scott, Proust, Solzhenitsyn, among others – as well as one that characterises certain political thinkers, actors and regimes (Vincent 2016: 92, 116). It is marked by a sense of the fallibility of human endeavours, a belief in original sin (or its secular equivalent), a distrust of abstract ideas and of any over-reliance on Reason to solve the world’s problems, deep scepticism about the notion of unlimited progress in human affairs, and an allergic reaction to all forms of utopianism and millenarianism.
‘Conservatives’ with these habits of thought are distinguished by their prudence and the modesty of their claims to understanding. For ‘conservatives’ the present moment is the culmination of past developments, to be carefully interrogated with a view to determining what the next best steps might be. For the liberal progressivist it is the launching pad for some radiant future which it is one’s duty to embrace. ‘Conservatives’ are neither reactionaries nor revolutionaries, but reformers. They pay attention to tradition and appreciate the importance of roots and of the legacy of History. They value links between generations and have a strong sense of the importance in people’s lives of deeply embedded and well-established communities such as family, locality, religious group and nation (as opposed to the contemporary factitious communities of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and lifestyle). Their preferences are always for the concrete and the local over the abstract and the universal (Vincent 2016: passim).
The book explores the social, cultural and educational ideas of each of the four thinkers, both in themselves and for their relevance to contemporary educational issues, including ones (such as the implications for education of the emergence of a more culturally diverse society in the UK) that post-date their writings. At times this takes us a long way from the world on which they were commenting – Eliot said nothing about Islam, for example – but shows the continuing applicability of their thoughts to new situations. The concluding chapter identifies some common threads and suggests ways in which the collective contribution of these four thinkers has implications for education today. While avoiding the application of neat labels to the four thinkers under closest discussion it also re-examines the extent to which a distinctively ‘conservative’ approach to education is identifiable, insofar as it can be said to reflect some of the habits of thought mentioned above, concludes that it is, summarises its main features in the form of Fifteen Principles, and argues that it deserves greater attention than it has received.
This book was written during a period which saw a Conservative Party in power in the UK, first under David Cameron (from May 2015) and then under Theresa May (from July 2016), a Republican Party under Donald Trump come to power in the USA (from January 2017), and a number of parties sometimes described as ‘right-wing’ grow in importance in continental Europe. If the ‘conservative’ approach to education outlined in the book constitutes a coherent set of ideas about why and how we should educate the young, and my contention is that it does, it should help us to decide to what extent self-confessed ‘conservatives’ in these governments (all members of the UK Conservative Party by definition and many US Republicans) label themselves appropriately. Early indications suggest that test cases of the degree and nature of the ‘conservatism’ of the new governments may include Theresa May’s plans for a partial revival of grammar schools in England, Donald Trump’s distaste for the Common Core State Standards which one of our four ‘conservative’ thinkers (E D Hirsch) helped to shape, and the interest of US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in enhancing parental choice via the more widespread use of school vouchers.
The gestation of this book has also coincided with the UK’s decision, following a referendum in June 2016, to leave the European Union, the growth of continental European parties keen on the preservation and strengthening of nation states, and a strongly patriotic and at times nationalist tone to the 2016 Republican campaign for the US presidency. Another theme of the book will be the extent to which a ‘conservative’ approach to education privileges an induction into membership of the nation state, while also fostering a global perspective, or whether indeed it should eschew both in line with Hannah Arendt’s wish ‘not to instruct (children) in the art of living’ (Arendt 1961: 195).
One of the four thinkers (Oakeshott) was English by birth, two were American by birth (Eliot and Hirsch) and one (Hannah Arendt) was a naturalised American who spent the second half of her life in the USA. To offset the AngloAmerican focus of the book I have also at times tried to show how in France a not dissimilar current of opinion has been challenging the left liberal educational and cultural orthodoxies of our times. Chantal Delsol, Alain Finkielkraut, Philippe Muray and Renaud Camus are, if anything, even less of a school than Eliot, Oakeshott, Arendt and Hirsch, but in educational and cultural matters are similarly often on the margins and ranged against a dominant pensée unique. In the same way that counter-cultural currents of opinion within the English-speaking world throw fresh light on its dominant assumptions, so viewpoints from a different society help one to see things in one’s own experience that one might otherwise have missed.
Notes
1 One of many examples of the required mode of ‘self-reflection’, according to Fedi (2011: 207–208), was an exercise requiring baccalaureate candidates to comment on the highly political song ‘Lily’ by Pierre Perret and then to write an imaginative piece ‘denouncing the racism experienced by the Somalian girl (in the song) on her arrival in France’.
education’s group think
2 Fedi (2011: 202–203, 209) quotes Noam Chomsky’s views on humanistic education in support.
3 See chapters in Wall (2015) on: liberalism and equality, pp. 212–236, liberalism and religion, pp. 282–304, liberalism and multiculturalism, pp. 305–328, and liberalism and nationalism, pp. 329–351.
4 Even Oakeshott can be described as not ‘self-evidently conservative’, at least in relation to the English tradition of philosophical conservatism (Covell 1986: xi).
References
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Bourdieu, P (1984), Questions de sociologie, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
Burnham, J (1965), Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism, London: Jonathan Cape.
Covell, C (1986), The Redefinition of Conservatism: Politics and Doctrine, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan.
Fedi, L (2011), La Chouette et L’Encrier. Promenades dans les philosophies françaises de l’éducation, Paris: Éditions Kimé.
Gray, J (1993), Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought, New York and London: Routledge.
Hirsch, E D (1987), Cultural Literacy, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
——— (1999), The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, New York: Anchor Books.
——— (2006), The Making of Americans: Democracy and our Schools, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Oakeshott, M (1991), ‘Political education’, in Rationalism in politics and other essays, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
O’Hara, K (2011), Conservatism, London: Reaktion Books.
Quinton, A (1978), The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England From Hooker to Oakeshott, The 1976 T S Eliot Lectures, London and Boston: Faber and Faber.
Scruton, R (2014), How to Be a Conservative, London: Bloomsbury.
Skorupski, J (2015), ‘The Conservative Critique of Liberalism’, in Wall, S (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vincent, J-P (2016), Qu’est-ce que le conservatisme? Histoire intellectuelle d’une idée politique, Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Wall, S (ed.) (2015), The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Part 1
T S Eliot
Eliot as student and teacher 1
For much of his adult life T S Eliot (1888–1965) was widely regarded as one of the foremost living poets writing in the English language. Many critics still feel that his poetry, and especially its two highlights The Waste Land and Four Quartets, are among the major literary achievements of the first half of the twentieth century. Some of his best poems are complex, difficult and full of literary, historical and philosophical references. They also touch on themes to which everyone can respond: the search for meaning and purpose, the failure to live fully, the rejection of sentimentality and facile optimism, and what one of his critics has called his lifelong preoccupation with ‘cross-examin(ing) every careless claim to passion’ and ‘discovering what we really feel under the carapace of convention’ (Raine 2006: 40, 166). His literary impact has extended far beyond his birth country the USA and his adopted country the UK. He is still a source of inspiration for contemporary poets.
Eliot, in addition, was a distinguished and prolific literary critic, a social and cultural critic, and what these days might be called a ‘public intellectual’. In the 1920s and 1930s he edited the quarterly magazine Criterion, which played an important role in British and European literary and intellectual life. His writings, lectures and radio broadcasts, especially after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, earned him a global reputation: 14,000 people flocked to a baseball field in Minnesota to hear him talk on ‘The Frontiers of Criticism’; a large crowd greeted him at the dock when, at the beginning of a lecture tour, his ship arrived in South Africa; and three and a half million viewers watched his play The Cocktail Party on US television (Asher 1995: 110; Julius 2003: 4).
Eliot’s concerns as a literary, cultural and social critic led him to reflect deeply on education, its aims, content and contribution to cultural and social cohesion. These reflections are evident in writings throughout his career, but most notably in his 1932 essay Modern Education and the Classics (Eliot 1936), The Idea of a Christian Society (Eliot 1939), his 1948 work Notes towards the Definition of Culture (Eliot 1962) and in the lectures on The Aims of Education he gave at the University of Chicago in 1950 (Eliot 1965a). Although he disclaimed expertise in education – I have ‘no qualifications at all’ to talk on the matter, he said at the opening of his Chicago lectures – the depth and range of his educational thinking bears comparison with that of three other great literary figures who
since the Renaissance have also made major contributions to the development of western educational thought: Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Matthew Arnold.
The comparison with Arnold, with whom Eliot had a strong but ambivalent relationship – Craig Raine describes him as Eliot’s ‘powerful, repressed father figure’ – is particularly apt. The two men, whose ‘public intellectual’ roles were not dissimilar, shared concerns about the fundamental role of education in cultural transmission, while differing profoundly on other matters of education, religion and morals (Raine 2006: 143–145; Eliot 1964: 103–119; Cornell 1950).
Part One of the book explores, first, briefly in this chapter, Eliot’s background as student and teacher, second, in Chapter Two, his visions of society and culture and, third, in Chapters Three to Ten, the ways in which these visions shaped his views on a number of specific educational issues of contemporary relevance.
Eliot as student
Eliot came from a New England family, of English origin, which had settled in St Louis, Missouri, in the Midwest, and which was strongly involved in education and the Unitarian Church. His grandfather had been a co-founder of Washington University in St Louis, of which Eliot’s own father, a businessman, was also a director for forty years; two uncles joined the ministry; and a cousin Charles William Eliot was President of Harvard during part of Eliot’s own time at that university. He was brought up, he said, amidst ‘the symbols of Religion, the Community and Education’, those three elements of the conservative order that he was to write so much about in his social criticism.
He attended the preparatory department of Washington University called Smith Academy where, in his own words, he had an exemplary grounding in ‘the essentials’: ‘Latin and Greek, together with Greek and Roman history, English and American history, elementary mathematics, French and German . . . and English composition (which) was still called Rhetoric’. Looking back on that period of his life he saw it as ‘the most important part’ of his education, more important by implication than what followed at Harvard (Eliot 1965b: 45; Kojecký 1971: 199; Holt 2011: 9–15; Bantock 1970: 14–15). The fact that he was able to name seven of his teachers at fifty years’ distance – a feat not all of us are able to perform – is perhaps an endorsement of the extent to which, as he put it, he had been ‘well taught’. One can trace back to his schooldays the origins of the numerous classical references that contribute so much to the images and themes of his poetry and plays. One can also see in that early classical grounding the origins of his later sense of the dependence of English literature on that of Greece and Rome and of his robust defence of the place of Classics in education (Sullivan 2011: 169–179; Eliot 1957a).
After graduating from Smith Academy Eliot spent a preparatory year at Milton Academy in Massachusetts before going on to Harvard where, following graduation in 1909, he remained as an Assistant in Philosophy pursuing a doctorate in that subject. Apart from the year 1910–11, which he spent in Paris, taking
Eliot as student and teacher 17 classes at the Sorbonne, he remained at Harvard until 1914, seemingly on track for an academic career in philosophy. His studies during this period, which as well as philosophy included the social sciences, Buddhism, oriental languages and a range of literatures, find echoes in numerous places in both his criticism and poetry. His involvement in philosophy left a distinctive legacy, in his fondness for painstaking analysis and carefully drawn distinctions, but also for abstract nouns, dogmatic generalisations and occasional long-windedness.
Also traceable in his social and cultural thinking is the influence of some of his teachers at Harvard, and especially Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. In the case of Irving Babbitt the influence was profound, though with attraction and repulsion in fairly even balance (Eliot 1951a; Eliot 1951b). Eliot’s year in Paris probably had an even greater impact, in perfecting his French, giving him French Symbolist models such as Laforgue and Mallarmé to draw on in the poetry he was beginning to write, and introducing him to strands of French social and cultural criticism traces of which can be found in all his major prose writings. Eliot’s French improved sufficiently to enable him to start writing poems in that language and, later in life, he translated French texts for publication in Criterion.
The summer of 1914 found Eliot attending a summer programme at Marburg in Germany, prematurely interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, which compelled him to move quickly to England where he had been granted a scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford. It was in England where he decided to stay, get married and launch himself as poet and critic. Despite abandoning thoughts of an academic career he continued to work on his thesis, which he submitted in 1916 but for which, through a failure to arrange a viva voce examination, he was never awarded a doctorate.
Building on sound legacies of family and schooling, his time at Harvard, the Sorbonne and Oxford helped to give Eliot an impressive c.v. According to the biographer of his early years Robert Crawford, ‘no other major twentieth-century poet was so thoroughly and strenuously educated’ (Crawford 2015: 172). It was a wide-ranging education qualifying him for lifetime membership of the kind of cultured class he felt to be essential for the sake of the transmission of civilisation from one generation to another. Eliot’s cultural and social criticism offers a rationale for such a class and for the type of education that would feed it. It is a rationale which implies a vision of society light years away from the egalitarian West of the early twenty-first century. That does not make Eliot’s vision unworthy of consideration, as later chapters attempt to show.
Eliot as teacher
As well as taking weekly tutorial groups as an Assistant in Philosophy at Harvard, Eliot had other direct experience of teaching. After leaving Oxford he taught French and Latin for a year at Highgate School, a North London prep school, where his pupils included the young John Betjeman, the future Poet Laureate. Betjeman recalled being taught by ‘the American master, Mr Eliot . . . long, lean and pale’ in his verse autobiography Summoned by Bells (Betjeman 1960: 29–30).
Eliot’s spell at Highgate was followed by a term at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. From 1916 to 1919, once a week, he also ran an adult education course for the University of London which brought him into contact with people outside his usual social circle. Although his letters home suggest a degree of condescension towards his adult students they also impressed him by their intellectual enthusiasm and social conservatism. Later in life he ran a course for undergraduates on contemporary English literature.
He clearly did not find school teaching easy and in this context queried, in his Chicago lectures on education, whether teachers were being adequately paid. Working in a bank from 9:15 to 5:30 Monday to Friday, and the whole of a Saturday once a month, with two weeks’ holiday a year, he argued, ‘was a rest cure compared with teaching in a school’. His classroom experiences also left him with strong views on class sizes and the need to give priority to reducing them: under fifteen he felt was ideal, twenty was the absolute maximum, much less could be done with thirty, and once numbers were over thirty all the teacher could do was try to keep order, leaving ‘the clever children (to) creep at the pace of the backward’ (Eliot 1965a: 62, 101; Trexler 2011: 275–276). His strong sense of the reality of schools helps to explain his reluctance to turn his later general prescriptions for education into specific recommendations about pedagogy.
References
Asher, K (1995), T.S. Eliot and Ideology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bantock, G H (1970), T.S. Eliot and Education, London: Faber and Faber. Betjeman, J (1960), Summoned by Bells, London: John Murray.
Cornell, W F (1950), The Educational Thought and Influence of Matthew Arnold, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Crawford, R (2015), Young Eliot: From St Louis to The Waste Land, London: Jonathan Cape.
Eliot, T S (1936), ‘Modern Education and the Classics’, in Essays Ancient and Modern, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1939), The Idea of a Christian Society, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1951a), ‘The Humanism of Irving Babbitt’ (1928), in Selected Essays, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1951b), ‘Second Thoughts About Humanism’ (1929), in Selected Essays, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1957a), ‘What Is a Classic?’ (1944), in On Poetry and Poets, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1957b), ‘Virgil and the Christian World’ (1951), in On Poetry and Poets, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1962), Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, London: Faber and Faber.
———(1964) ‘Matthew Arnold’, in The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism, London: Faber and Faber.
——— (1965a), ‘The Aims of Education’, in To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
——— (1965b), ‘American Literature and the American Language’, in To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
as student and teacher 19
Holt E K III (2011), ‘St Louis’, in Harding, J (ed.), T.S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Julius, A (2003), T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form, London: Thames and Hudson.
Kojecký, R (1971), T S Eliot’s Social Criticism, London: Faber and Faber.
Raine, C (2006), T.S. Eliot, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sullivan, H (2011), ‘Classics’, in Harding, J (ed.), T.S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trexler, A (2011), ‘Economics’, in Harding, J (ed.), T.S. Eliot in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Changing definitions of culture and society – Eliot as social and cultural critic
Eliot’s cultural and social criticism: French and other influences
Eliot’s views on education need to be seen in the context of his vision of society and culture. This is true of everyone’s views on education, including those of politicians and educators, even when their vision may not be fully articulated. In Eliot’s case his vision of society and culture was one he tried hard to define throughout his life and it is from this vision that his thoughts on education emerge. As he said in his Chicago lectures, education cannot be discussed in isolation. It must have ‘a social purpose’ and beyond this take into account ‘the whole nature of man’ (Eliot 1965: 104–105).
Exploring ‘the whole nature of man’ may be said to sum up what Eliot was doing in his poetry and criticism. It is for this reason that his thoughts on education, arising from these reflections, remain so interesting today in a society in need of a social and cultural vision on which to base not just its education but its wider sense of identity and purpose. This chapter summarises the main themes of Eliot’s social and cultural criticism. Chapters Three to Ten examine the ways in which these themes are reflected through the different aspects of Eliot’s thoughts on education and how they illuminate a range of contemporary educational issues.
Critics and biographers have tried to show how and why the radical, sceptical, anguished young poet of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, published in 1915, should have turned into the arch-conservative defender of religious orthodoxy and social hierarchy who in 1928 described himself as ‘classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion’ (Eliot 1970: 7) Some have seen a disjunction between two different Eliots; others, while not under-estimating the changes in his views, have interpreted earlier poems such as The Waste Land as ‘the dark night of the soul’ that is merely a step on the path to conversion. Eliot himself rejected the idea that he had experienced any kind of sudden ‘conversion’ and some critics, not least by examining his poetry, have drawn attention to the marked continuities in his writing and thought (Spurr 2017: 188–189).
One writer, Kenneth Asher, whose study focuses on Eliot’s ‘ideology’, sees a greater unity in Eliot’s thought. He traces this to the early influence of a brand of
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[659] H., la cabeça.
[660] G , que H , como
[661] G., arrastrandolas.
[662] H , de la casa
[663] H., de este.
[664] G., vn.
[665] H., guarnescido.
[666] G., plateada.
[667] H., cubiertas.
[668] H., capirotes.
[669] G., çinco H., quatro.
[670] H., lobas de luto.
[671] H , en las cabeças
[672] H., marques, que aya gloria.
[673] G , derredor
[674] G., gasto.
[675] H , del señor marques, que aya gloria
[676] G., subi.
[677] G , Bien se puede eso presumir, avnque era comun opinion ser honbre cruel, y que ansi mató muchos capitanes, alferez y gentiles honbres haziendoles degollar
[678] G., motines.
[679] G , aun
[680] G., desçendido.
[681] G , condenados
ARGUMENTO DEL DUODEÇIMO CANTO DEL GALLO[684]
En el canto doze[685] que se sigue el auctor imitando a Luçiano en el dialogo que intituló Icaro Menipo, finge subir al cielo y descriue lo mucho que vio allá[686] .
G —Ayer te prometi, Miçilo, de tratar oy materia no qualquiera ni vulgar, pero la mas alta y mas encumbrada[687] que humano ingenio puede conçebir. No de la tierra ni de las cosas bajas y suezes de por acá: mas de aquellas que por su estrañeza el juizio humano no las basta conprehender. Tengo de cantar oy cómo siendo Icaro Menipo subi al
çielo morada y habitaçion propria de Dios; oy tienes neçesidad de nueuo entendimiento y nueua atençion, porque te tengo oy de dezir cosas que ni nunca las vieron ojos, ni orejas las oyeron, ni en entendimiento humano pudo nunca caber lo que tiene allá Dios aparejado para los que le desean seruir Despierta bien: ronpe esos ojos del alma y mirame acá, que quiero dezir las cosas marauillosas que en el çielo vi, oy, hablé y miré. La estançia, asiento, lugar de los Santos y de Dios. Dezirte he la dispusiçion, mouimiento, camino, distançia que tienen los çielos, estrellas, nubes, luna y sol entre sí allá. Las quales si oydas no creyeres, esto solo me sera gloria a mi, y señal de mi mayor feliçidad, pues por mis ojos vi, y con todos mis sentidos gusté cosas tan altas que a todos los honbres causan admiraçion, y passan a lo que pueden creer.
M .—Yo te ruego, mi gallo, que oy con intimo affecto te esfuerçes a me conplazer, porque me tienes suspenso de lo que has de hablar. Que avn si te plaze dexaré el offiçio por mostrarte la atençion que te tengo, pues con los ojos ternia los sentidos y entendimiento todo en ti. Espeçie me pareçeria ser de infidelidad si
vn honbre tan bajo y tan suez como yo no creyesse a vn honbre çelestial y diuino como tú.
G .—No quiero, Miçilo, que dexes de trabajar: no demos ocasion a morir de hanbre, pues todo se puede hazer. Prinçipalmente quando de ti tengo entendido que cuelgas con tus orejas de mi lengua, como hizieron los françeses de la lengua de Hercules Ogomio admirable orador. Agora, pues, oyeme y sabras que como yo considerasse en el mundo con gran cuydado todas las cosas que hay entre los mortales, y hallasse ser todas dignas de risa, bajas y pereçederas, las riquezas, los inperios, los offiçios de Republica y mandos, menospreçiando todo esto, con gran deseo me esforçé a emplear mi entendimiento y affiçion en aquellas cosas que de su cogeta son buenas a la verdad; y ansi cobdiçié passar destas cosas tenebrosas y obscuras y volar hasta la naturaleza y criador de todas, y a este desseo me mouio y ençendio más la consideraçion deste que los philosophos llaman mundo. Porque nunca pude en esta vida hallar de qué manera fuesse hecho, ni quién le hizo: donde tubo principio y fin. Despues desto quando en particular le
deçendia a contemplar mucho más me causaua admiraçion y dubda: quando via las estrellas ser arroxadas con gran furia por el çielo yr huyendo. Tanbien deseaua saber qué cosa fuesse el sol, y sobre todo deseaua conoçer los açidentes de la luna, porque me pareçian cosas increybles y marauillosas, y pensaua que algun gran secreto que no se podia declarar causaua en ella tanta mudança de espeçies, formas y figuras. Aquella braueza con que el rayo sale con aquel resplandor, tronido espantoso y ronpimiento de nube, y el agua, la nieue, el graniço enbiada[688] de lo alto. Pareçianme ser todas estas cosas difiçiles al entendimiento, en tanta manera que por ninguna fuerça de nuestra naturaleza se podian por algun honbre conprehender acá. Pero con todo esto quise saber qué era lo que destas cosas los nuestros philosophos sentian: porque oya dezir a todos, que ellos enseñauan toda verdad. Tanbien reçebia gran confusion considerando aquella sublimidad y alteza de los çielos: prinçipalmente del empireo y de su perpetuidad. El trono de Dios; el asiento de los santos, y la manera de su premiar y
beatificaçion. El orden que ay en la muchedunbre de todos los coros angelicales. Pues primero quisse sujetarme a la disçiplina destos nuestros maestros, los quales no poco estan inchados y presumptuosos con estos titulos, diziendo que enhastiados de las cosas de la tierra volan a alcançar la alteza de las cosas çelestiales: lo qual no seria en ellos poco de estimar si ello fuesse ansi. Pero quando en aquellas comunes academias entré y miré todos los que en la manera de disputa y liçion mostrauan enseñar, entre todos vi el habito y rostro muy particular en algunos, que sin preguntar lo conoçieras auerse leuantado con el titulo de çelestiales. Porque todos los otros avnque platicauan profesion de saber, debajo de un vniuersal baptismo y fe trayan vn vestido no differente del comun. Pero estos otros mostrauan ser de vna particular religion, por estar vestidos de una cuculla y[689] habito y traxe particular, y avn entre ellos differian en el color; y aunque en su presunçion, arogançia, obstentaçion, desden y sobreçejo mostrassen ser los que yo vuscaua, quise preguntar por me satisfazer, y ansi me llegué a vno de aquellos que a aprender concurrian alli, y a lo que le
pregunté me respondio señalandomelos con el dedo: estos son maestros de la philosophia y theologia natural y çelestial; y ansi con el deseo que lleuaua de saber, con gran obediençia me deposité a su disçiplina, proponiendo de no salir de su escuela hasta que huuiesse satisfecho a mi dubda y confusion[690] . ¡O Dios inmortal qué martirio passé alli!: que començando por vno de aquellos maestros segun el orden que ellos tenian entre sí, a cabo de vn año que me tenía quebrada la cabeça con solo difinir terminos cathegorematicos y sincathegorimaticos, analogos, absolutos y conotatiuos, contradiçiones y contrariedades, solo me hallé en vn laberinto de confusion. Quise adelante ver si en el otro auria algo más que gustar: y en todo vn año nunca se acabó de enseñar vna demostraçion: ni nunca colegi cosa que pudiesse entender.
Consolauame pensando que el tiempo, avnque no el arte, me traeria a estado y preçetor que sin perdida de más edad[691] me llegaria[692] a mi fin; y ansi entré ya a oyr los prinçipios de la philosophia natural; y esto solo te quiero hazer saber: que a cabo de
muchos dias solo me faltaua ser libre de aquella neçedad y ignoraba con que vine alli. Porque fueron tantas las opiniones y diuersidad de no sé que prinçipios de naturaleza: insecables atomos: inumerables formas; diuersidad de materias; ideas primeras y segundas intençiones; tantas questiones de vacuo y infinito que quanto más alli estaua más me enboscaua en el laberinto de confusion; y esto solo entre todas las otras cosas no podia sufrir; que como en ninguna cosa entre si ellos conueniessen, mas antes en todo se contradezian, y contra todo quanto affirmaban arguian, pero con todo esto me mandaban que los creyesse dezir la verdad, y cada vno dellos me forçaua persuadir y atraer con su razon.
M .—Cosa marauillosa me cuentas; que siendo esos hombres tan santos y religiosos y de conçiençia no sacassen en breue la suma de sus sçiençias, y solo aquello enseñassen que no se pudiesse contradezir. O a lo menos que se enseñasse lo que en suma tuuiesse más verdad, dexados aparte tantos argumentos y questiones tan inpertinentes al proposito de lo que se pretende saber
G —Pues en verdad mucho más te reyrias, Miçilo, si los viesses con la arogançia y confiança que hablan, no tratando cosa de verdad, ni que avn tenga en si sustançia ni ser. Porque como quiera que ellos huellan esta tierra que nosotros hollamos, que en esto ninguna ventaja nos llevan, ni en el sentido del viso son mas perspicaçes que nosotros, mas antes ay muchos dellos que casi estan çiegos y torpes por la vejez. Y con todo esto afirman ver y conoçer los terminos del çielo, y se atreuen a medir el sol, y determinar la naturaleza de la luna y todo lo que sobre ella está; y como si huuieran deçendido de las mesmas estrellas señalan su figura y grandeza de cada qual; y ellos que puede ser que no sepan quantas leguas ay de Valladolid a Cabezon, determinan la distançia que ay de çielo a çielo, y quantos cobdos ay del çielo de la luna al del sol; y ansi difinen la altura del ayre, y la redondez de la tierra, y la profundidad del mar; y para estas sus vanidades pintan no sé que çirculos, triangulos y quadrangulos, y hazen vnas figuras de espheras con las quales sueñan medir el ambitu y magnitud del çielo; y lo que es peor y mayor señal de presunçion
y arogançia, que hablando de cosas tan inçiertas como estas, y que tan lexos estan de la aueriguaçion, no hablan palabra ni la proponen debajo de conjecturas, ni de maneras de dezir que muestren dubdar. Pero con tanta çertidumbre lo afirman y bozean que no dan lugar a que otro alguno lo pueda disputar ni contradezir. Pues si tratamos de lo alto del çielo tanto se atreuen los theologos deste tienpo a difinir las cosas reseruadas al pecho de Dios como si cada dia sobre el gouierno del mundo vniuersal comunicassen con él. Pues de la dispusiçion y orden de allá ninguna cosa dizen que no quieran[693] que sea aueriguada conclusion, o oraculo que de su mano escriuio Dios como las tablas que dio a Moysen. Pues como yo no pudiesse de la dotrina destos colegir algo que me sacasse de mi ignorançia, mas antes sus opiniones y variedades mas me confundian, dime a pensar qué medio abria para satisfazer a mi deseo, porque çierto de cada dia más me atormentauan. Como suele aconteçer al natural del honbre, que si alguna cosa se le antoja y en el alma le encaxa, quanto mas le priban della mas el apetito le soliçita. Prinçipalmente porque se
me encaxó en el alma que no podia alcançar satisfaçion de mi deseo aca en el mundo si no subia al çielo y a la comunicaçion de los bienauenturados; y avnque en este pensamiento me reya de mi, el gran cuydado me mostró la via como me suçedio. Porque viendome mi genio (digo el angel de mi guarda) en tanto aflito comouido por piedad y tanbien por se gloriar entre todos los otros genios auer impetrado de Dios este priuillejio para su clientulo, ansi se fue a los pies de su magestad con gran inportunidad diziendo que no se leuantaria de alli hasta que le otorgase vn don; le pidio liçençia para me poder subir a los çielos y pudiesse gozar de todo lo que ay allá; y como el mi genio era muy pribado suyo se lo concedio con tal que fuesse en vn breue termino y[694] no me quedasse allá; y ansi venido a mi, como me halló en aquella agonia casi fuera de mi juizio, sin exerçitar ningun sentido su officio me arrebató y volo comigo por los ayres arriba. ¡O soberano Dios! ¿por donde començaré, Micilo, lo mucho que se me ofreçe dezir? Quiero que ante todas cosas sepas que desde el punto que mi buen genio de la tierra me desapegó y començamos por los ayres a subir fue dotado de vna
agilidad, de vna ligereza con que façilmente y sin sentir pesadunbre volaua por donde queria sin que alguna cosa, ni elemento, ni çielo me lo estoruase; fue con esto doctado de vna perspicaçidad y agudeça de entendimiento y habilidad de sentidos que juzgaua estar todos en su perfeçion. Porque quanto quiera que muy alto subiamos no dexaua de ver y oyr todas las cosas tan en particular como si estuuiera en aquella distançia que acá en el mundo estos sentidos acostunbran sentir.
M .—Pues yo te ruego agora, gallo, porque mas bienauenturada y apazible me sea tu narraçion, me cuentes en particular lo que espero de ti saber, y es que no sientas molestia en me notar aquellos secretos que proçediendo en tu peregrinaçion de la tierra, del mar, de los ayres, çielos, luna y sol y de los otros elementos, pudiste entender y de lo alto especular.
G .—Por çierto, Miçilo, bien me dizes. Por lo qual tú yendo comigo con atençion, si de algo me descuydare despertarme has, porque ninguna cosa reseruaré para mí por te conplazer. Penetramos todos los ayres y esphera del fuego sin alguna
lision, y no paramos hasta el çielo de la luna, que es el çielo primero y más inferior, donde me asenté y començe de alli a mirar y contenplar todas las cosas; y lo primero que miré fue la tierra que me pareçio muy pequeña y muy menor sin conparaçion que la luna. Mirela muy en particular y holgué mucho en ver sus tres partes prinçipales: Europa, Assia y Africa. La braueza del mar, los deleitosos xardines, huertas, florestas, y las fuentes y caudalosos rios que la riegan, con sus apaçibles riberas. Aquellas altas y brauas montañas y graçiosos valles que la dan tanto deleyte.
M .—Dime, gallo, ¿cómo llaman los philosophos a la tierra redonda, pues vemos por la esperiençia ser gibosa y por muchas partes prolongada por la muchedumbre de montañas que en ella ay?
G .—No dubdes Miçilo, ser redonda la tierra considerada segun su total y natural condiçion, puesto caso que en algunas partes esté alterada con montañas y bagios de valles; porque esto no la quita su redondez natural; y ansi considera el proueymiento del sumo Hazedor que la fundó para
el prouecho de los honbres. Que viendo auer en diuersas partes diuersos naturales y disposiçiones de yeruas, rayzes y arboles neçesarios para la conseruaçion de los honbres para cuyo fin los crió, dispuso las montañas altas para que alli con el demasiado calor y sequedad se crie vn genero de arboles y frutas que no naçerian en los valles hondos y sonbrios; y hizo los valles porque nasçiesen alli otros generos de frutas, mieses y pastos por causa de la humidad[695] , los quales no naçerian en lo alto de la montaña. Arriba en la montaña, en vnas ay grandes mineros de metales, maderas preçiosas y espeçias odoriferas; yeruas saludables; y en otras marauillosas[696] vestias y otros animales de admirable fiereza. Abajo en el valle naçen los panes, pastos abundantes y gruesos[697] para los ganados, y los vinos muy preçiados, y otras muy graçiosas frutas y arboledas. Ves aqui como todo lo dispuso Dios conforme a la vtilidad del vniuerso, como quien él es. Esta quiso que fuesse inmobil como çentro y medio del vniuersal mundo que crió; y hizo que elementos y çielos reboluyessen en torno della para la disponer mejor. Y despues que en estas sus partes contenplé la tierra
deçendí mas en particular a mirar la vida de los mortales, y no solo en comun, pero de particulares naçiones y çiudades, scithas, arabes, persas, indos, medos, partos, griegos, germanos, ytalos y hispanos; y despues desçendí a sus costunbres, leyes y vibiendas. Miré las ocupaçiones de todos, de los que nauegan, de los que van a la guerra, de los que labran los campos, de los que litigan en las audiençias forales, de las mugeres, y de todas las fieras y animalias[698] , y finalmente todo lo que está sobre la tierra; y no solamente alcançé a ver lo que hazen en publico, pero avn via muy claro lo que cada qual haria en secreto. Via los muy vedados y peligrosos adulterios que se hazian en camaras y retretes de prinçipes y señores del mundo; los hurtos, homiçidios, sacrilegios, inçendios, trayçiones, robos y engaños que entre hermanos y amigos passauan. De los quales si te huuiesse dezir en particular no abria lugar para lo que tengo en intençion[699] . Las ligas, los monipodios, passiones por proprios intereses; las vsuras, los canbios y los trafagos de merchanes y mercaderes en las[700] ferias y mercados.
M —Gran plazer me harias, gallo, si de todo me dixeses algo de lo mucho que viendolo te deleytó.
G .—Es inposible que tantas cosas te cuente, porque avn en mirar tanta variedad y muchedunbre causaua confusion. Pareçia aquello que cuenta Homero del escudo encantado de Achiles, en el qual pareçia la diuersidad de las cosas del mundo. En vna parte pareçian[701] hazerse bodas, en otra pleytos y juizios, en otra los tenplos y los que sacrifican, en otras batallas, y en otra plazeres y fiestas, y en otra los lloros de los defuntos. Pues piensa agora si de presente viessemos passar todo lo que aqui digo qué cosa abria semejante a esta confusion. No pareçia otra cosa, sino como si juntasses agora aqui con poderoso mando todos quantos musicos de quantos instrumentos y bozes hay en el mundo, juntamente con quantos saben de vaylar y dançar, en vn punto mandasses que juntos todos començassen su exerçiçio, y cada qual trabajasse por tañer y cantar aquella cançion que mas en su juizio estimasse, procurando con su boz, y instrumento sobrepujar al que tiene más çerca de sí.
Piensa agora por tu vida[702] , Miçilo, qué donosa sería esta vaylia y musica si tanbien los dançantes començassen a vaylar[703] .
M .—Por çierto en todo estremo seria confusa y digna de risa.
G .—Pues tal es la vida de los honbres, conçierto ny orden entre sí. Cada vno piensa, trata, habla y se exerçita segun su condiçion particular y pareçer mientra en el teatro deste mundo dura la representaçion desta farsa; y despues de acabada (que se acaba con la muerte) todas las cosas bueluen en silençio y quietud; y todos desnudos de sus disfraçes que se vestieron[704] para esta representaçion quedan iguales y semejantes entre sí, porque se acabó la comedia. Que mientra estuuieron en el teatro todo quanto representaron era vurla y risa; y lo que más me mouia a escarnio era ver los grandes animos de prinçipes y Reyes contender entre sí y poner en campo grandes exérçitos, y auenturar al peligro de muerte gran multitud de gentes por vna pequeña provincia, o por vn reyno, o por vna çiudad; que ay diez y seys estrellas en el çielo, sin otras muchas que ay de
admirable cantidad, que cada vna dellas es çiento y siete vezes mayor que toda la tierra; y toda junta la tierra es tan pequeña que si la mirassen de acá abajo fixa en el çielo no la verian, y escarneçerian de sí mesmos viendo por tan poca cosa como entre sí contienden; y lo que más de llorar es, el poco cuydado y arrisco que ponen por ganar aquel reyno celestial; vn reino tan grande que a vn solo punto del çielo corresponden diez mil leguas de la tierra. No me pareçia todo el reino de Nauarra vn paso de vn honbre pequeño. Alemaña no vn pie. Pues en toda la Ysla de Ingalaterra y en toda Françia no pareçia que auia que harar vn par de bueyes vn dia entero; y ansi miraua qué era lo que tanto haze ensoberueçer a estos ricos del mundo, y marauillauame porque ninguno posee tanta tierra como un pequeño atomo de los que los philosophos epicureos imaginan, que es la cosa más pequeña que el honbre puede ver. Pues quando bolui los ojos a la Ytalia y eché de ver la çiudad de Milan, que no es tan grande como vna lenteja; consideré con lágrimas por quán poca cosa tanto prinçipe y tanto cristiano como en vn dia se puso a riesgo. Pues qué diré de[705] Tunez y de Argel? ¿Pues
qué avn de toda la Turquia? Pues toda la India de la Nueva España y Peru, y lo que nueuamente hasta salir al mar del Sur se nauega no pareçe ser de dos dedos. Pues ¿qué, si trato de las minas del oro y plata y metales que hay en el vniuerso? Por çierto todas ellas desde el çielo no tienen cuerpo de vna hormiga.
M .—O bienauenturado tú, gallo, que de tan dichosa vista gozaste. Pero dime, ¿qué te pareçia desde lo alto la muchedumbre de los honbres que andaban en las çiudades?
G .—Pareçian vna gran multitud de hormigas que tienen la cueba junto a vnos campos de miesses, que todas andan en rebuelta y çirculo, salir y entrar en la cueba, y la que más se fatiga[706] con toda su diligençia trae[707] vn grano de mixo, ó cada vna medio grano de trigo; y con esta pobreza está cada qual muy hufana, soberuia y contenta. Semejantes son los trabajos de los honbres puestos en comun rebuelta y çirculo en audiençias, en ferias, en debates y pleytos; nunca tener sosiego; y en fin todo es por vn pobre y miserable mantenimiento. Como todo esto obe bien considerado dixe a mi genio que me lleuasse adelante,
porque ya no me sufria, anhelaua por entrar en el çielo empireo y ver a Dios; y ansi mi guia me tomó y subimos passando por el çielo de Mercurio al de Venus, y de allí passamos la casa del sol hasta la de Mars; y de alli subimos al çielo de Jupiter, y despues fuemos al de Saturno y al firmamento y çielo cristalino, y luego entramos en el çielo empireo, casa real de Dios.
M .—Antes que passes[708] adelante, gallo, querria que me dixesses: estos elementos, çielos, estrellas, luna y sol ¿de qué naturaleza, de qué masa son? ¿De qué materia son aquellos cuerpos en sí? que lo deseo mucho saber.
G .—Esa es la mayor bobedad que vuestros philosophos tienen acá; que dizen que todos esos cuerpos çelestiales son compuestos de materia y forma, como es cada vno de nos; y dizen muchos dellos que son animados; lo qual es deuanear[709]; por que no tienen materia ni composiçion. En suma, sabrás que todos ellos, los elementos puros, çielos, estrellas, luna y sol, no son otra cosa sino vnos cuerpos simples que Dios tiene formados con su infinito saber, por instrumentos de la
