I was reading the articles for the George Wythe Radio Hour and was especially affected by the one entitled, “Seven Reasons to Study the Classics”, by Oliver DeMille.

In the article he quotes extensively from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. In analyzing American education, Bloom’s book has three major points. First, societies are successful when people choose to be good. Second, people choose to be good when they are taught and believe in good. And third, the thing which determines how well they are taught is their national books.

A national book is something that almost everyone in the nation accepts as a central truth. This raises the question; does America today have a national book? Dr. DeMille concurs with Bloom that while America once held the Declaration of Independence and the Bible as national books this is no longer true.

“In fact, there is no true national book in America today. No national books means no culture; and this is very ominous for the future. Any society which loses its national book declines and collapses in ignorance, dwindles and perishes in unbelief. In Bloom’s own words: ‘The loss of the gripping inner life vouchsafed those who were nurtured by the Bible must be primarily attributed not to our schools or political life, but to the family, which, with all its rights to privacy, has proved unable to maintain any content of its own…The delicate fabric of the civilization into which the successive generations are woven has unraveled, and children are raised, not educated…

‘People sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interests of life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life.

‘The cause of this decay of the family’s traditional role as the transmitter of tradition is the same as that of the decay of the humanities: nobody believes that the old books do, or even could, contain the truth…In the United States, practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, one that united simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and provided access to the seriousness of books. With its gradual and inevitable disappearance, the very idea of such a total book and the possibility and necessity of world-explanation is disappearing. And fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise – as priest, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.”

These paragraphs were a shocking wake up call for me. I realized that my family has fallen into this trap. We eat together, play and travel together but we don’t think together. In my efforts to teach my children I am still holding specialized competence and success as my goal.
This past weekend I attended the Advanced TJEd Conference. At this conference I heard Dr. Andrew Groft speak on the Liberal Arts and the difference between Education and Training. He spoke of Education being related to Freedom and Specialization being related to Wealth. He emphasized that both are important and good. With Education we are Free to pursue Specialization and Wealth. With Wealth comes Security. You can have one without the other but he cautioned us to be careful not to give up Freedom for Security. As I struggle to find the way to use the Leadership Education model in my home I need to remember the difference between Education and Training. I need to help my children become educated rather than settling for “raising them right”.

This is the first reason Dr DeMille gives for studying classics, “We need a national book to maintain our morality and civilization; and a nation that doesn’t regularly read good books, think about important ideas, or consider the big picture, is not capable of adopting or following a national book.” While I am reading good books to my children we need to get to the point that we think about them and the important ideas that they introduce and consider how these ideas affect our big picture. “First we are caused to think about the characters in the story, then about ourselves, then about people we know and finally about humanity in general. At first reading the classics can be a chore, an assignment. If we persist, it eventually becomes entertainment. Then one day (after a few weeks for some, perhaps years for another) something clicks; all the exposure to greatness reaches critical mass. And you, the reader, awaken. Your exposure to greatness changes you: Your ideas are bigger, your dreams wilder, your plans more challenging, your faith more powerful.”

I’m excited to begin this new school year with a new goal, one that requires me to stretch and grow again. I will do my best to set the example for my family and lead out. It will take more time, more effort on my part to instigate the conversations, to find ways to get my family thinking together. But it is important, essential, if our family is to enjoy both Freedom and Security that we learn from good books, this in turn helping us make good choices, leading eventually to being part of a good society.

“I fear that modernity has come to mean ignoring what is important because we are too busy with what is immediate. Nietzsche said that the difference between modern and ancient times is that modern man substitutes that morning newspaper for morning prayer. Bloom adds that now we have replaced the newspaper with the television. Too often we focus on the mortal rather than the eternal: this is a disease of modern times.

“The classics are a remedy and can be a cure. They force us to turn off the TV and computer, to quietly study for hours and hours and hours-reading, pondering, thinking, asking, crying, laughing, struggling, and above all, feeling, changing, becoming. And then, because we are better, we must go out and serve.”

Tammy Smith

Seven Reasons to Study the Classics, Oliver DeMille, The Statesman, Volume 4, Issue 3, July 2000 http://newsletter.gw.edu/pre/july2000.pdf