David Ferrero: Why reading, math, and science are not sufficient for a 21st century education
Interest in classical humanism, the “traditional” liberal arts, has fallen sharply over the past two decades, and nowhere more so than in American K-12 education.
Grounded in the worlds and ideas of the Greeks and Romans, and transmitted to us through the European Middle ages and the Renaissance, classical humanism aims to teach students about the ideas, arts, persons, and events that constitute the “Western tradition.” It’s a model for the liberal arts that engages students with the intellectual and cultural traditions that gave rise to the culture and society they take for granted today. Yet it is a model that, today, has everything going against it.
The intellectual tradition of classical humanism carries a whiff of elitism, not to mention Eurocentricism. It was developed, transmitted, and evolved through society’s upper strata, and undeniably centered in Europe and North America. Some of its most prominent modern advocates have died, such as Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, Jacques Maritain, and Paul Gagnon. Several of today’s most eloquent defenders, such as E. D. Hirsch, Jr. and Diane Ravitch, are nearing retirement. Unfortunately, there are precious few among the young generation of scholars to keep the classic liberal arts flame burning.
Other approaches to the liberal arts, of course, are blazing away. Three are especially vigorous: process inquiry, cosmopolitanism, and activist academicism.
At its core, Process Inquiry is the belief that what matters most are the disciplinary methods of inquiry, which lead to students being able to solve problems, be creative, adaptable and capable of learning new material quickly. Subject matter per se matters little— the process associated with it is what counts. The purest example of this view is Howard Gardner.
Cosmopolitanism rests on the belief that students should be subjected to a wide range of civilizations, cultures, and artistic and intellectual traditions. In other words, young people should be educated as citizens of the world, and limited to what western civilization has wrought. Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah are prominently associated with this line of thinking.
Activist Academicism advocates want to displace traditional liberal arts in favor of cutting edge research. So, they contend, the K-12 curriculum must constantly be updated with the very latest learning on the fringes of the liberal arts in fields such as labor history, ethnic studies, women’s studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, ethnomathematics, critical theory, and microhistory—just as one would do in the physical sciences. Gary Nash is a proponent of this view, but there are many, many others..
While classical humanism needs to reinforce its own place in the K-12 curriculum, those of us who support it should not look for fights to pick. These other approaches deserve respect. We should look to form alliances, not force schools to choose between traditional liberal arts and its competitors.
This is intellectually honest, because few partisans of rival views would deny that study of the Western tradition ought to be included in any conception of liberal education, and few classical humanists deny the importance of critical interrogation, the sympathetic exposure of students to other traditions, or the importance of inquiry and method.
In other words, at the level of broad essentials, consensus can be found among advocates of competing models of liberal learning. But plenty of deviltry lurks in the details, which is why alliances tend to break down.
How, then, might we accommodate reasonable differences among sophisticated and well-intentioned educators without watering everyone’s model down to the incoherent muddle that characterizes K-12 curriculum today? Fortunately, the introduction of charter schools and other forms of public school choice over the past 15 years has opened new possibilities. Entrepreneurial educators with strong educational convictions and deep concern for students and democracy have shown that there really are “multiple pathways” to becoming a reflective, productive, and empowered adult. As long as we can find ways to craft policies that ensure that all kids are schooled under some cogent and defensible conception of liberal learning, we can let a dozen flowers bloom. Done right, such policies could harness diverse talents in pursuit of broadly shared ends.
One way to accomplish this is to erect an accountability system for public schools that ensures that schools do more than teach the basics without attempting to determine the content or formats of assessments used to gauge their success at it. For example, establish national standardized testing requirements in reading and math (perhaps with additional requirements in American Constitutional law and government, advanced writing, and basic science), combined with requirements that schools teach a broad general curriculum that conforms to some legitimate conception of liberal learning without specifying which. Enforce this mandate with a combination of on-site inspections and locally developed (and state-certified) assessments in history, geography, arts and literature, civics, and foreign language. This “tight-loose” framework would provide a nice balance between pluribus and unum in educational practice.
These policies, while good for liberal education in general, will not ensure that traditional liberal arts grow stronger. Classical liberal arts advocacy also needs fresh voices and new inspiration. Currently the most prominent organizations pressing for liberal education are associated either with conservative politics or libertarianism. (Yes, it’s ironic that the most ardent proponents of this form of liberalism don’t much like other forms. And that few political liberals can be found in the camp of traditional liberal arts.)
America sorely needs a new organization that fills the void left by the demise of the Council on Basic Education, which closed in 2004, one that unifies those who support classical humanism without taking political sides. I suspect that every large high school and perhaps one in three elementary and middle schools in the country has at last one teacher with a passion for the traditional liberal arts. That represents a corps of thousands of educators laboring in isolation and dissatisfied with the national subject matter councils and other professional associations currently available to educators. Tap half of them, and you’ve got the beginnings of a new and potentially powerful professional network.
At the heart of the classical liberal arts are standards of excellence (of thought, aesthetic merit, etc) and the particular stories they embody about the evolution of the civilization that produced the societies that Western democracies enjoy today. Those standards and stories still hold up. They also inform the standards for other forms of liberal education, even when they’re mainly honored in the denial. It’s time for committed educators to relight the classical liberal arts flame.
Read entire article at Website of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (And Education Gadfly)
Grounded in the worlds and ideas of the Greeks and Romans, and transmitted to us through the European Middle ages and the Renaissance, classical humanism aims to teach students about the ideas, arts, persons, and events that constitute the “Western tradition.” It’s a model for the liberal arts that engages students with the intellectual and cultural traditions that gave rise to the culture and society they take for granted today. Yet it is a model that, today, has everything going against it.
The intellectual tradition of classical humanism carries a whiff of elitism, not to mention Eurocentricism. It was developed, transmitted, and evolved through society’s upper strata, and undeniably centered in Europe and North America. Some of its most prominent modern advocates have died, such as Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, Jacques Maritain, and Paul Gagnon. Several of today’s most eloquent defenders, such as E. D. Hirsch, Jr. and Diane Ravitch, are nearing retirement. Unfortunately, there are precious few among the young generation of scholars to keep the classic liberal arts flame burning.
Other approaches to the liberal arts, of course, are blazing away. Three are especially vigorous: process inquiry, cosmopolitanism, and activist academicism.
At its core, Process Inquiry is the belief that what matters most are the disciplinary methods of inquiry, which lead to students being able to solve problems, be creative, adaptable and capable of learning new material quickly. Subject matter per se matters little— the process associated with it is what counts. The purest example of this view is Howard Gardner.
Cosmopolitanism rests on the belief that students should be subjected to a wide range of civilizations, cultures, and artistic and intellectual traditions. In other words, young people should be educated as citizens of the world, and limited to what western civilization has wrought. Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah are prominently associated with this line of thinking.
Activist Academicism advocates want to displace traditional liberal arts in favor of cutting edge research. So, they contend, the K-12 curriculum must constantly be updated with the very latest learning on the fringes of the liberal arts in fields such as labor history, ethnic studies, women’s studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, ethnomathematics, critical theory, and microhistory—just as one would do in the physical sciences. Gary Nash is a proponent of this view, but there are many, many others..
While classical humanism needs to reinforce its own place in the K-12 curriculum, those of us who support it should not look for fights to pick. These other approaches deserve respect. We should look to form alliances, not force schools to choose between traditional liberal arts and its competitors.
This is intellectually honest, because few partisans of rival views would deny that study of the Western tradition ought to be included in any conception of liberal education, and few classical humanists deny the importance of critical interrogation, the sympathetic exposure of students to other traditions, or the importance of inquiry and method.
In other words, at the level of broad essentials, consensus can be found among advocates of competing models of liberal learning. But plenty of deviltry lurks in the details, which is why alliances tend to break down.
How, then, might we accommodate reasonable differences among sophisticated and well-intentioned educators without watering everyone’s model down to the incoherent muddle that characterizes K-12 curriculum today? Fortunately, the introduction of charter schools and other forms of public school choice over the past 15 years has opened new possibilities. Entrepreneurial educators with strong educational convictions and deep concern for students and democracy have shown that there really are “multiple pathways” to becoming a reflective, productive, and empowered adult. As long as we can find ways to craft policies that ensure that all kids are schooled under some cogent and defensible conception of liberal learning, we can let a dozen flowers bloom. Done right, such policies could harness diverse talents in pursuit of broadly shared ends.
One way to accomplish this is to erect an accountability system for public schools that ensures that schools do more than teach the basics without attempting to determine the content or formats of assessments used to gauge their success at it. For example, establish national standardized testing requirements in reading and math (perhaps with additional requirements in American Constitutional law and government, advanced writing, and basic science), combined with requirements that schools teach a broad general curriculum that conforms to some legitimate conception of liberal learning without specifying which. Enforce this mandate with a combination of on-site inspections and locally developed (and state-certified) assessments in history, geography, arts and literature, civics, and foreign language. This “tight-loose” framework would provide a nice balance between pluribus and unum in educational practice.
These policies, while good for liberal education in general, will not ensure that traditional liberal arts grow stronger. Classical liberal arts advocacy also needs fresh voices and new inspiration. Currently the most prominent organizations pressing for liberal education are associated either with conservative politics or libertarianism. (Yes, it’s ironic that the most ardent proponents of this form of liberalism don’t much like other forms. And that few political liberals can be found in the camp of traditional liberal arts.)
America sorely needs a new organization that fills the void left by the demise of the Council on Basic Education, which closed in 2004, one that unifies those who support classical humanism without taking political sides. I suspect that every large high school and perhaps one in three elementary and middle schools in the country has at last one teacher with a passion for the traditional liberal arts. That represents a corps of thousands of educators laboring in isolation and dissatisfied with the national subject matter councils and other professional associations currently available to educators. Tap half of them, and you’ve got the beginnings of a new and potentially powerful professional network.
At the heart of the classical liberal arts are standards of excellence (of thought, aesthetic merit, etc) and the particular stories they embody about the evolution of the civilization that produced the societies that Western democracies enjoy today. Those standards and stories still hold up. They also inform the standards for other forms of liberal education, even when they’re mainly honored in the denial. It’s time for committed educators to relight the classical liberal arts flame.