…if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages.
- Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”
I’ve had my head wrapped in Clive Staples Lewis for the past couple months (as I’ve been teaching this class), and the most notable feature of my study thus far is probably the sort of education he received and delivered. This, by and large, was “Classics” – but it was remarkably thorough in that he studied not just the history and language of Latin or Greek (the definition of “Classics” that I’d learned in school); his course of study applied such a wide range of disciplines to whatever he read. So, of course modern thought was important and fit for study, but the foundation of these modern questions was (and remains to be) found in antiquity. That is, all good and truthful ideas are really just old ideas – found in old books, written by old thinkers, and now (probably at an ever-diminishing rate) only taught by old dinosaurs of teachers (as Lewis might say).
My friend Dan recently recommended Dorothy Sayers’ article “The Lost Tools of Learning” – it’s really her set of suggestions about how to teach young people – from childhood to adolescence. She laments keeping kids in school too long, thus extending that adolescence; she prescribes a Scholastic model, based on Medieval practices (yes, there was a lively educational institution in those “Dark Ages”). You should learn Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric all by 16.
And honestly, the “Scholastic School of Sayers” is something I would have shuddered at as a kid. But now the only shuddering I’m doing is based on the fact that I have read only too little of ancient thought and history. Better late than never, or so they say.
So, how does a 26-year-old catch up? Or a 30 something or older, for that matter? Its tough advice, since the learning curve is so steep – but I think we need to take Lewis’ advice for ourselves and READ OLD BOOKS, and we need to take Sayers’ advice for our children and TURN BACK THE WHEEL.
Aching for the dear reader’s thoughts on this.
