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What
is "Classical" Education?
Since
the Angelicum Academy opened its doors,
it has been heartened and gratified by the
overwhelming favorable response and ever-increasing
popularity of The Angelicum's return to
the "Classical" approach to education.
The professors, teachers, educators, doctors,
lawyers and other professionals who founded
The Angelicum Academy did so with the express
intent to restore Classical Education--the
education of antiquity. Classical
education stands in stark contrast to Modern
education
which, unfortunately and unwittingly for
most parents, pervades every aspect of education
today whether in schools, colleges or the
home.
With the burgeoning
demand
for a "Classical" homeschooling program,
a number of homeschooling programs have
been quick to add the label "Classical"
to their program. In response to the
inquiries that we receive from parents seeking
a true Classical education, we offer
the following typical questions that we
receive from parents and educators seeking
guidance on what is a "classical" education,
and our response to them.
Dear Angelicum,
I have been reviewing other Catholic homeschool
programs. I noticed that on one web site,
Seton Home Study School offers the following:
"Seton offers a curriculum ...which is
classically Catholic and college preparatory.
We believe that the home schoolers of today
are the leaders of tomorrow, and our curriculum
reflects the belief that Catholics today
need to be fully formed in the Faith, while
not neglecting great secular works of Western
Civilization. We strive always to use Catholic
materials in our curriculum."
Here is the Seton home school literature
list for high school.
9th:
Lilies of the Field, Merchant
of Venice, Where the Red Fern Grows,
10th:
Animal Farm, Tale of Two Cities
11th:
Ballad of the White Horse, Bridge of
San Luis Rey, A Man for All Seasons,
Scarlet Letter, Screwtape Letters, Song
of the Scaffold
12th:
Pride and Prejudice, Murder in the Cathedral,
Robinson Crusoe, Mac Beth, Federalist
Papers, Quadregesimo Anno
Is
your program also classically Catholic?
Do you include these books in your program?
Thank you for your help.
Signed,
A Parent interested in "Classical" homeschooling
Dear
Parent interested in "Classical" homeschooling,
Thank you for your inquiry. It is a bit
difficult to answer your question for this
reason: "classical" as used in education
normally means having to do with the educational
approach ("paideia")
used in ancient Greece and Rome, hence prior
to Catholicism. Therefore we are uncertain
what the expression "classically Catholic"
means or even could mean. Perhaps you should
ask them what they mean by it.
The reading list you provided does not resolve
this as it includes not a single work of
classical antiquity.
Of the 17 works listed, three would certainly
be placed in the category of great
works, viz. The Merchant of Venice,
Mac Beth (both are Shakespeare
plays) and the Federalist Papers.
The other 14, excepting the one Papal encyclical
(Quadregesimo Anno), are certainly
good books, and most are "classics"
in the sense of having enduring and wide
audiences, but none are classical in the
sense mentioned above.
Some
of the 17 books are Catholic in content
or context, others are not. If one wanted
to have a program with only "Catholic materials"
as is mentioned, that is certainly possible
(though far from advisable) - there are
scads of Catholic books, both in content
and context - but Seton's list itself is
not exclusively Catholic (e.g. Animal
Farm, Robinson Crusoe). However, we
would certainly agree with Seton homeschool
in not restricting student's readings exclusively
to books of Catholic content and context.
For more on this point see The
Proper Role of the Study of Greek Literature,
St.
Basil the Great's Address To Young Men on
the Study of Greek Literature,
The
Study of Falsehoods East and West,
The
Good Books,
and related Articles
on this subject.
The Angelicum Academy advertises itself
as a Catholic, Great Books, Classical, homeschool
program. The meaning is this: we devote
two years (9th and 10th
grades) to the study of the great works
of classical antiquity (such as Homer's
Iliad an Odyssey, the plays
of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the
Dialogues of Plato, Virgil's Aeneid,
Caesar's Gallic Wars, and so on)
(Click
Here
for our high school Great Books reading
list). These works are classical works,
not Catholic. It is the study of these works
and the participation in the the Great Conversation
with their authors, our Faculty,
in part, that allows us properly to describe
our program as "classical". If no
classical works were studied in the manner
described then the program would not be
classical.
Another important component of our program
involves our return to the method of
antiquity or means of Classical
Education one of the key features of which
is the Socratic
Method.
As Mortimer Adler once explained: "The
Socratic, or dialectical, method is the
only way to avoid the substitution of verbal
memory for intellectual habit. It
always puts questions before answers. It
does not rest when a student gives a verbally
right answer, but always tries to undermined
the right answer to test it, for if it is
just parrotlike speech, the answer will
not stand the dialectical attack.
It places the highest value on questions,
rather than upon answers; for a question
in search of answers is an educational dynamo,
whereas an answer in search of the question
it answers is an educational dud."
Following the model of Socrates, those involved
in designing our program began with the
question of What is Education? The
answer to this question is critical as it
determines not only what we educate
but how we educate. Modern education
has corrupted the means of education
because it has a different end in view.
Sadly, many programs that call themselves
"Classical" have failed to perceive
that they have adopted the same educational
methods of modern education that Pius
XI condemned.
A program that calls itself classical but
uses modern teaching methods is a contradiction
unto itself. Classical education involves
both subject matter (based on the end of
education) and the means of education (the
educational method). As Mortimer Adler explained:
"The idea is fundamentally a Greek and
medieval idea. . . It is an idea that belongs
to all great traditions of Catholic education,
and yet Catholic institutions today do not
exemplify it in practice."
Pius
XI's
warning about modern education had as
much to do with the means as it
did the ends. Professor John
Senior highlighted the essential distinction
between the ends of classical and modern
education, and how the present day method
of education leads inevitably to the materialistic
end of modern education: "John
Meynard Keynes proclaimed the economic
gospel of the times when he said:
'Avarice and usury and precaution must
be our gods for a little longer still.
For only they can lead us out of the tunnel
of economic necessity into daylight.'.
. . By analogy, the Keynesian educationist
thinks the way to happiness of mind is
through gross multiplication of knowledge.
There will be no ignorance, he says, when
all men read books on every subject, and
the whole world becomes an experimental
laboratory; whereas Socrates said the
highest wisdom is to know that you know
nothing, and St. Paul that the wisdom
of the world is folly.
Every student wants a good education;
parents and taxpayers who pay the tuition
want colleges to give them one.
But is it only the aim of education to
teach youth how to be good scientists
and businessman? Have we forgotten the
long tradition of "the best that has been
thought and said," in Arnold's phrase,
that necessary corrective to the grossly
materialistic view that has become, against
the explicit command of the Constitution,
the established religion of the United
States? The long tradition of Western
civilization says that education is the
acquisition of not only a skill but a
discipline, which in turn means not the
exercise of the heart, soul, strength,
and mind in the service of our appetites,
but the subjection of our appetites to
the rule of intelligence. Perhaps the
purpose of science, business, and knowledge
itself is not the conquest of nature after
all, but rather that through understanding
nature we come to the conquest of ourselves."
For more on this topic, see Educational
Method on Trial: The Case of Socrates
v. Dewey.
Another key method of classical education
is the study of great literature. As Mortimer
Adler explained: "Right teaching must
be done either without any books, if the
teacher is a Socrates, or, if the teacher
is not a Socrates the only books he can
use to good effect are the very greatest
books, on a given subject that have ever
been written, for only such books will
be above both himself and his students;
only such books will stimulate him to
inquire and thus to lead his students;
only such books will pose both teacher
and students problems, rather than giving
them simply codified, and readily memorizable
answers."
Our high school program includes approximately
35 works per year (140 or so for all four
years of high school), of which the great
majority are widely considered to be great
works. In fact, nearly all are included
in Britannica's
Great Books of the Western World
set, edited by Mortimer
J. Adler,
himself a convert
to Catholicism.
Of those, about half are classical works
(i.e. from ancient Greece or Rome) and
the other half were written in medieval
or modern times. For a full list of authors
or the readings
click on the respective words. It is the
study of these Great Books that allows
us properly to describe our program as
a "Great
Books"
program.
So that our younger students will be prepared
for the study of the Great Books in high
school, we also include approximately
150 books in our elementary program, which
are classics in the same sense that the
17 selections of the Seton homeschool
program readings for high school are;
that is, they have enduring and wide audiences,
but are not "classical" (Click
Here
to see the full list of elementary books).
As with Seton's list, some are Catholic
in content or context, some are not. Unlike
many ad hoc lists of "good books",
however, each of these books comes from
the "Thousand
Good Books"
listed by Catholic Professor John Senior--a
list compiled after years of research
and study based on Catholic principles.
Finally, we are "Catholic"
in that we offer a complete course in
the Catholic faith, nursery through 12th
grade; and our Socratic seminars (grades
3-12) approach the study of the 150 classics
and the Great Books from a Catholic perspective,
loyal to the Magisterium of the Church.
For more on this subject, please Click
Here.
We hope this clarifies and answers your
questions
The Angelicum Academy
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