What is "Classical Education"?
What are Classics? How do they become education?
Traditionally, the discipline known as "Classics" has centered on both the study of ancient Greece and Rome via their history, language, literature, as well as material culture.
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When someone has received a "Classical education" their education is generally based on a selection of primary readings from these ancient Greek and Roman texts as well as selected literary works from other cultures that received these ancient texts and augment them into their own literature. However, there is far more to the story here...
"Benefits of a classical education..." - Hans Gruber, Die Hard
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The definition of “Classical education” has expanded substantially since the end of the 19th century, especially in the United States and United Kingdom.
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In many ways, these innovations were a result of necessity. Following the Second World War, the university systems needed to adapt to a new audience, one that was shifting its focus from the texts of the “Old World” to the expanding horizons of the New.
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Reactions to these new approaches were varied.
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On the one hand, there was skepticism of the old autocratic systems that relied upon texts from an archaic, largely European, patriarchal, and aristocratic population, and taught within a narrative framework that supported a particular political and social agenda.
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On the other hand, there was also a suspicion of the new, largely psychological and sociological approaches based on theories handed down from a “scientific elite” upon populations that are not entirely equipped to understand the principles that they are expected to employ in a classroom, or to discuss with their children when they return home from school.
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Both attitudes have found their ways into the discipline both US and UK schools call “Classics”, and in thus into the subsequent conversations surrounding “Classical education”.
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These discussions largely split into two camps: 1) “Classical education” is the only way to preserve the texts of the ancient Greek and Roman traditions that inform our modern societies, 2) “Classical education” is only an outdated modality that limits readers perspectives to those of the upper-class, European men who wrote them.
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Both of these stances have their nuances. But the conversation between these two is required for “Classics” and “Classical education” to survive to the next generation.
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Quintilian and his Institutio Oratoria brings together many of the ideas of both camps in this dialogue.
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He is an educator himself, using observation and extensive classroom diagnostic experience to inform his readers of best teaching practices. He is also a literary scholar, bringing his students into the literary conversation and tradition that was handed down to him from the ancients.
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So what are the benefits of a “Classical education”?
By its very nature, it forces students and teachers into a dialogue about the nature and purpose of their learning.
It forces readers to engage with both the best and worst of their world in order to make sense of both the beauty and strangeness of the world they live in.
It forces humility.
It teaches patience.
And, perhaps, it will lead us to hope.
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