Classical education

“ I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of a classical education consists in the check it gives to originality, and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of people from using their own eyes. ”

“ The claim put forward by public schools concerning the 'classical education' they provide seems to be more an awkward evasion than anything else; it is used whenever there is any question raised as to the competency of the public schools to impart culture and to educate. Classical education, indeed! ”

“ Can any student, who looks upon the universe with vision thus unobscured, fail to find in his studies the truest æsthetic culture?
Theoretically, then, we may conclude that the study of science, with modern languages, literatures, and philosophies as aids, does all for the mind that the old classical education ever did, and more. A higher discipline, a higher utility, and a higher culture, are its natural results. It trains memory, intellect, the perceptive faculties, and the sense of the beautiful simultaneously, insuring a symmetrical development. ”

“ Let me first say a few words on the great controversy of the present day with regard to the higher education, the difference which most broadly divides educational reformers and conservatives; the vexed question between the ancient languages and the modern sciences and arts; whether general education should be classical let me use a wider expression, and say literary—or scientific. ”

“ The representatives of the Humanists, in the nineteenth century, take their stand upon classical education as the sole avenue to culture, as firmly us if we were still in the age of Renascence. Yet, surely, the present intellectual relations of the modern and the ancient worlds are profoundly different from those which obtained three centuries ago. ”

“ The question, What is education? was nearly as hard to answer as the question of which we have seen so much, What is a church? The rival claims of old classical training and the acquisition of modern knowledge were matters of vivacious contest. What is the true place of classical learning in the human culture of our own age? ”

“ I go further, and, if the classics are still proposed as the stem of a liberal education, to be imposed upon every student who seeks a university training, I argue that classical culture has distinct and mischievous limitations. The same may no doubt be said of any other special culture, and whenever any other culture is put forward as possessing some exclusive or paramount value, it will be in order to show that fact. I do not doubt that I gained great profit from a classical training. ”

“ In the first place, I recommend a better classical education. Classical knowledge gives the foundation both of particular and universal grammar. While it gives the acquisition of the dead languages, it is the root, and thereforce facilitates the acquisition of many of the living. As most of the technical terms in the professions and sciences are borrowed from these languages, it renders them easily understood. The study of the structure and combination of words and sentences calls forth the reflecting powers of youth, and expands their genius. ”

“ But for those who mean to make science their serious occupation; or who intend to follow the profession of medicine; or who have to enter early upon the business of life; for all these, in my opinion, classical education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see "mere literary education and instruction" shut out from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's College, seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering of Latin and Greek. ”

“ The revolt against the predominance of classical education in favor of that of science is a noteworthy sign of the times. Greek and Latin literatures used to be held to furnish a mental training obtainable by no other studies. Now the dominion of words is passing away. In technical schools and colleges students are brought into direct contact with the facts of Nature, and are taught how to interpret these facts into principles. ”

“ And so it was natural that he should think a classical education the best education that could be offered to boys, and should desire to see classics, taught in a literary and not a pedantic spirit, the staple of instruction in all those Public Schools, whether of ancient or of modPg 95ern foundation, to which the Upper and Middle Classes should resort. He was perfectly ready to make composition in Greek and Latin the luxury of the few who had a special aptitude for it, therein following the doctrine of Dr. ”

“ Let us rule out the enemies of the classics—those ignorant of them or prejudiced against them—and appeal to men whose sympathies and predilections are on the other side, but who have had large opportunities of observing the results of classical study eminent educators, college presidents, experienced teachers, and professors of Latin and Greek, and those who have systematically and under responsibility inquired into the general working of this kind of education. ”

“ For I hold very strongly by two convictions--The first is, that neither the discipline nor the subject-matter of classical education is of such direct value to the student of physical science as to justify the expenditure of valuable time upon either; and the second is, that for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education. ”

“ But the same reasons which vindicate the place of classical studies in general education, shew also the proper limitation of them. They should be carried as far as is sufficient to enable the pupil, in after life, to read the great works of ancient literature with ease. ”

“ With this, we return to the thought already expressed elsewhere, that for the education of those who are to be given a higher culture (for the boys, at least, and probably also for their mothers and governesses and women teachers) the so-called classical education is indispensable, and on the whole to be preferred to the ordinary religious and moral instruction. Christianity then comes easily of itself, later on, if any one has honestly traversed this stage of instruction in the classical philosophy (which can not and should not be the final stage) ”

“ I have recognized in teaching you a fact but too little known, that a classical education, properly understood, is the foundation of all learning. There is little that is worth saying which has not already been beautifully said by the ancients, little that is worthy of meditation on which they have not already profoundly reflected, save, indeed, the one great subject of Christian meditation. This foundation, my dear Angela, you possess to an eminent degree. ”

“ We plead for the preservation of literature, especially classical literature, as the staple of education in the name of beauty and understanding: but no less do we demand science in the name of truth and advancement. ”

“ Again, while scientific education is yet inchoate and tentative, classical education is thoroughly well organised upon the practical experience of generations of teachers. So that, given ample time for learning and destination for ordinary life, or for a literary career, I do not think that a young Englishman in search of culture can do better than follow the course usually marked out for him, supplementing its deficiencies by his own efforts. ”

“ Finally, modern theories of education, which have narrowed the stream of classical instruction only to deepen its channel and quicken its current, have caused more stress to be laid upon the points of contact between the ancient and the modern world. ”

“ I said that before I ended I would just touch on the question of classical education, and I will keep my word. Even if literature is to retain a large place in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of progress, will certainly have to go. ”

“ Thus, since all education is the acquisition of experiences that will render future action more efficient, the nature of the secondary education given must depend on the nature of the services to which the systems of knowledge are the means. A classical education may be a good preparation for the after-discharge of the duties of the theologian or the jurist ”

“ Now, however, the advocates of the old classical culture, ignoring or ignorant of all the change which has come over human knowledge and philosophy within fifty years, come forward to affirm that that culture still is the best possible training for our young men and the proper basis for the work of our colleges. How do they know it? How can anybody say that one thing or another is just what is needed for education? ”

“ The Professor's last branch of argument, I am obliged with all deference to say, contains no argument at all. It is that, in classical education, a close contact is established between the mind of the boy. and the mind of the master. He does not even attempt to show how the effect is peculiar to classical teaching. The whole of this part of the paper is, in fact, addressed, by way of remonstrance, to the writer's own friends, the classical teachers. ”

“ With all that has been said or written against making classical studies the most important element in a liberal education, or rather against retaining them in their time-honoured position, nothing has as yet been suggested to take their place. ”

“ The advantages of a classical education are so obvious that the present-day battle in its behalf seems a waste of energy. Frezzample, without a classical education how could you appreciate the fact that Mr. ”

“ What he had specially studied he knew, save in rare and exceptional cases, better than the working man; but while the student had been mastering his Greek and Latin, and expatiating in Natural Philosophy and the Mathematics, the working man, if of an inquiring mind, had been doing something else; and it is at least a fact, that all the great readers of my acquaintance at this time—the men most extensively acquainted with English literature—were not the men who had received the classical education. ”

“ But one is tempted to ask whether the advance of knowledge and the subdivision of the field have really made it impossible to obtain, in the education of University students, something nearer to that more comprehensive survey of classical antiquity at which the earlier humanists aimed. ”

“ What teachers ought to aim at is to communicate something of this enthusiasm, by devising a form of education which should appeal to the simpler forms of intellectual curiosity, instead of starving boys upon an ideal of inaccessible dignity. I do not for a moment deny that those who defend the old classical tradition have a high intellectual ideal. ”

“ Had your main purpose in the education of yourself (I do not say self-education, for you wisely accept all help from others) been the attainment of classical scholarship, I might have observed that as the received standard in that kind of learning is not a very elevated one, you might reasonably hope to reach it with a certain calculable quantity of effort. The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. ”

“ The domination of the classics is at an end; but any student who prefers the traditional path to culture, or whose parents choose that path for him, will find in several American universities much richer provisions of classical instruction than any university in the country offered sixty years ago. ”

“ But even when we take into account all the youths who receive a gymnasium education, however diverse their tendencies as regards branches of study, we do not find in them so quick an interest in classical studies as would justify us in seriously expecting from it a reaction in the idealistic sense. ”

“ But the higher education has been transformed, and mainly by the application of scientific methods, and of the philosophic spirit, to the study of history, economics, and the classics. When we are called to defend the pursuit of metaphysics or the study of the classics, either as indispensable to the discipline or to the enlargement of the mind, we are not called on to defend the methods of a generation ago. ”

“ What is the knowledge of the present school-boy, in what is called classical literature, when compared with a useful instruction 'in Chemistry and the laws of Nature? Of what use to society at large is a classical scholar? or one well versed in the ancient mythologies, for this, after all, is the chief part of classical knowledge? It neither gives a polish to manners nor teaches morality. ”

“ Science, history, philosophy, literature, must [43] no longer be the luxuries of the ‘educated’ classes; all classes must be educated and sit down to these things of the mind as they do to their daily bread. History must afford its pageants, science its wonders, literature its intimacies, philosophy its speculations, religion its assurances to every man, and his education must have prepared him for wanderings in these realms of gold. ”

“ But, in spite of all this clamor, it is open to question whether the present rising generation are well educated, or even educated, in the original and natural sense of the word, at all. The Latin word educo, from which our English word is derived, means simply to draw out or train. To strengthen the faculties, to sharpen the intelligence, and to form the character—are any of these objects attained, or even aimed at, in modern education? ”

“ The scope of that learning was comprised within the seven liberal arts and philosophy, on the secular side, together with some dogmatic instruction in the doctrines of the Church, the early fathers, and the Scriptures. Theology was as yet not organized into a philosophical system: that was the great work the middle ages had The medieval curriculum.to perform. The seven liberal arts (divided into the Trivium—grammar, dialectic, rhetoric; and the more advanced Quadrivium—geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy) were a legacy from old Roman education through the transition centuries. ”

“ Teaching, however is found to be increasingly necessary, especially to examination, and for this the main field left open is in our last column, that of People. Their lore of the past, whether of sacred or classical learning, their history, literature, and criticism, are already actively promoted, or at any rate adequately endowed at older seats of learning ”