Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
-1 Timothy 4:1-5
The West needs a resurgence of Catholic education, drawing on the traditions of the medieval period, but taking into account the realities of our modern world. Regulars at AATW all seem to share the conviction that our culture has been infected by a nihilism disguising itself as something positive and creative. There are good apologists out there who are fighting the prevailing culture – but we need more and we need to attack the philosophical roots of this nihilistic trend.
Artes liberales: trivium
The trivium comprised grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These areas of study are closely intertwined because the higher, conscious thinking we carry out is done verbally, whether mentally, orally, or in writing. Poor thinking and communication lead to a number of problems: inability to properly engage with meaningful metaphysical issues (for example, the claims of the Gospel); difficulty in obtaining higher paid jobs; and weakness to manipulation by unscrupulous people in both private and public life (e.g. workplace acquaintances and politicians).
Far from being abstract skills with no everyday application, grammar, logic, and rhetoric are essential for success in the modern, globalised world. Disrespect towards these endeavours is, in part, fostered by standardised teaching rules handed down from governments. It is, in fact, relatively easy to draw up lesson plans that will engage students in the study of rhetoric, provided teachers are free to be flexible according to the composition of a given class. Many students would be delighted at the prospect of sitting down to read actual State of the Union addresses, if the teachers could free up time for them by dispensing with the study literature that the state considers necessary for a child’s education. In a free market, the schools with the better teaching plans would rapidly rise to the top: children who are taught the trivium will be more likely to succeed in life and plan effectively for the future. Schools that continue to plough the field of leftist literature will soon disappear.
While synoptic teaching of these skills is inevitable and desirable, they each need their own dedicated time. This will not necessarily be in equal proportions in a given year, and schools should be free to develop longer-term courses that take account of this requirement. One of the problems with annual, state designed testing is that it forces a given school year to cover certain topics, when it might be desirable to leave certain things for later or to let individual students progress at their own pace. Time and again, we have seen that a one-size-fits-all approach is disastrous in education.
Philosophy is a good example to consider. Children are, in fact, implicitly taught philosophy all the while. In their early science lessons they are taught about the necessity of accurate observations and about conducting a “fair test” – but that is about as far as it goes. It is logical to delay the formal teaching of philosophy till later in a child’s development. Maths, so prized by Plato as a preparation for philosophy, is the main arena for teaching abstract thought to children. However, as each year in science comes on, with its annual test, the actual teaching of the philosophy of science gets further away: the specific continually drowns out the general. To make matters worse, those who pursue science at university are not necessarily taught philosophy of science there either: some courses do not offer it at all, while others only have it as an optional module, pursued by those who lean towards the arts.
This deficiency has impacted the poor presentation of science in the media, and the abysmal presentation of a perceived conflict between science and religion in low church diatribes and debates between atheists and theists. No one who is open-minded could think that a man like the late Father Frederick Charles Copleston was a bad philosopher or a bad Catholic – he was neither. He showed us that you can be a pious Christian and a first-rate thinker. But you cannot appreciate his work and the work of others unless you first appreciate that science is what it was originally called: natural philosophy. A Catholic, medieval-based education (that takes the student through the Enlightenment) will allow the student to see this. The average state-provided education in the US and UK does not.
All Along the Watchtower 
Of course, the trivium (and its later derivatives) up until the later part of the nineteenth century is a fair description of traditional English/British and American education. What we struggle with now is Prussian, devised by von Bismarck and designed to produce industrial and military automatons, which it does well.
But automatons are not fit to serve as free citizens, and you are correct, we need to go back to our own models, which were much more fit for purpose in our societies.
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Completely agree. I also think we need as little regulation as possible, because different schools will have different challenges. I’d like to see the government get out of the way. In the age of modern IT systems, we don’t need standardisation like we used to: a good candidate should be able to ask his school to send records to the firm he’s applying to if the firm needs more information about the subjects he studied and the way they were assessed. I’m not a fan of the A-levels in the UK because there are serious problems with markers, but people get the impression it’s all fine and they’re comparing like for like, when they’re not. Better to get rid of a lot of the standardisation and drop the pretence. You know a good candidate by hearing what comes out of his mouth, not by looking at a grade on a piece of paper.
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Yep, and you know, we never really did. But it made so-called educationalists rich and powerful. It also destroyed real education, but that wasn’t their problem.
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Indeed. A lot the educational theory stuff is really suspect; they keep throwing out ideas and trying new ones with little regard for time-honoured traditions that work.
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Very, very true.
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Sadly, if parents and peers do not convey the importance of education and the desire to learn some children will act as a wet blanket on the desire of others to learn.
We have, institutionalized learning by the state: it is law that they must attend school until a certain age. Sadly, the intentions are good but the results are abysmal. A few trouble makers can stunt the learning of a large number of students in the public schools. So what we see is a dumbing down or lowest common denominator education emerging; rather than a sifting out of the trouble makers into classes or training that might be more useful for the troublesome children and a path for the gifted as well. So neither are served very well in the long term.
The one size fits all is what we get and unless trades are given respect and unless we give up this egalitarian mindset that all kids are the same and deserve the same treatment it will continue. Some are fit for different paths but instead of finding that path many end up dropping out or turning to crime and drugs as their alternative without finding any use at all for what they didn’t learn in the classroom.
And if this is not bad enough the introduction of a new set of moral taboos and political taboos has poisoned the playing field. One is invariably taught a new morality and a new political outlook that is held by the school and those who design the teaching materials.
Lastly, simply telling kids that no matter what they do or believe in morally is OK. Self-esteem became the new educators primary function in the classroom. So we had a bunch of graduates emerging with very anti-social behavior and/or ideas or ideological bents which were considered just fine and worthy of our respect. In fact it has produced a society that is more uncivil than the imaginary utopia that they thought they were constructing: if they had good intentions in the first place. I’m no longer sure that the educator’s who designed our schools did not have an ulterior motive to undermine society as it existed and to tear down the traditions developed over centuries.
Private school and home schools seem the only place a parent might protect their children from the indoctrination of their children into the new think of this age.
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Indeed. The teacher training facilities indoctrinate the teachers as well, and, if you want to work in the state sector, you have to go to them, so we’ve got generations of teachers poisoning the next ones. I don’t know if you ever watched the sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle”, but it had a great trope of this guy who taught the smart class. He was a genius who had been convicted of insider trading, vel sim, and he was the only teacher on the show who told the kids like it is. I fear even a lot of the Catholic educators are against us because of the infiltration of the Jesuits and Franciscans. Not a pretty picture. We need more chapel services for students where they get homilies on virtue ethics for students (and virtue epistemology).
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It certainly wouldn’t hurt.
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The last good Jesuit’s are basically gone sadly! As Hans Urs von Balthasar, who left it, well before he died! And even in today’s Protestantism, how many even read a line of Karl Barth, or P.T. Forsyth, perhaps really a Barthian before Barth?
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You mean there are good Jesuits? Jesuits took an oath to wipe me and my kind off the planet.
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Blaise Pascal simply but profoundly outsmarted the Jesuits of his day, for him it was always God, Principle and the Ultimate End! See his The Provinciales. And he was of course something of a Jansenist.
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And btw bb, there are “regenerate” Roman Catholics! GOD and His mercy & grace are bigger than all of us, and even our mistakes and errors! And I am certainly Reformational & Reformed myself, as an Anglican!
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Hello Fr. Robert. Im going to guess Fr. means father. Well, anyway, I simply love the Anglican church. Love love love.;
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Yes, “father” is simply a pastoral term for the Christian pastor-teacher. See Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 4: 14-15. This should be the Anglican presbyter use anyway.
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write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.
15 For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.
16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.
17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church.
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People have sons and fathers. Jesus didn’t say not to use the word father….he said not to call any man father….but he had holymen in mind, if one bothers to read the passage where jesus said that. We have one father, in heaven.
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What is a catholic education? You mean catholic schools? The people who I know who went to catholics schools came out with superior reading and math skills than public educated folks. Discipline is enforced in catholic schools. My parents used to threaten me with catholic schools if I didn’t pull my grades up.
“giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats,”
Then in his next breath, good brother Nicholas says this….”The West needs a resurgence of Catholic education”
I usually advise people to wait til after they write a post to start guzzling the Glenlivet. Hes gives us a passage that takes dead square aim at the CC and then says we need catholic education. We are all aware of the main charges against the CC in that passage , but abstaining from meats is one that I haven’t gotten around to exposing. Fridays and or good Fridays , catholics are told not to ea tmeat. Ive never harped on that because its so small. My grandmother even fell for that line. I didn tmind because I like fried fish.
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The goal of the modern philosophies have been to destroy the family and murder those who can think for themselves. In the short run this has proved false. So, what they’ve done is infiltrated the institutions creating pupils from inside to erode the foundation like a slow acting acid. It’s strange in a way because those who began the process haven’t lived to see the fruits—albeit rotten—and yet they’re materialist, who live nothing more for the here and now.
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