Norms and Nobility ch 1 Virtue is the Fruit of Learning

Part I - The Idea of a Classical Education

1 - Virtue is the Fruit of Learning (another four part-er)

In Victorian England, only the wealthy received some version of a 'classical education,' so classical education and privilege came to be seen as the same thing. By 1900, others started coming up with various theories (mostly utilitarian) to educate the less privileged, and their models were far removed from classical and its stigma of luxury. But real classical education, which is based on "inquiry" that involves curiosity and imagination, isn't limited to any one time or place or class. It trains the mind to keep asking so that a classically trained student never stops learning, and is able to follow a concept to its logical conclusion and pronounce it good or bad. Since "nature doesn't tolerate a void," the young mind is first filled with a core of knowledge using a set curriculum. That way his mind has raw material to inquire about. The curriculum should encourage logical reasoning and spark curiosity and inquiry. The student will probably be taught the right thing to do according to his culture's highest ideals (which might be considered dogma), but he will be invited to test whether it really is right against alternative viewpoints.

Aristotle is "our best introduction to the idea of a classical education." He thought that the goal of education was to produce "happy, well-adjusted individuals" with leisure time to enjoy a good life, and he saw this happening in state-run schools so that it wouldn't be limited only to the privileged classes. Learning and knowing must result in right actions, because knowing isn't passively collecting data, but actively doing. Happiness comes from recognizing good, loving beauty and pursuing excellence and moderation -- harmony with the laws of the land, and virtue. The community's political system is obligated to provide this kind of education to ensure this happiness for the sake of the community's corporate good, but not for utilitarian uses (utilitarian: making productive workers). The state owes the individual a good life of harmony. It's not the other way around: the individual is not a cog in the wheel of the state to be trained/indoctrinated to be its servant or slave.

Cultures down the ages have always taken it for granted that virtue is something that can and should be learned at school. That was never questioned or doubted. Everything else (math, science, language) was secondary. Today, that's reversed: teaching virtue is pushed aside to make room for facts and disciplines. We tell students that they can have luxuries that will buy them happiness by learning technical skills that will result in a good job. In so doing, society has shot itself in the foot -- virtue and constant self-improvement have given way to practical utilitarianism, and the result is greedy, selfish people who don't care about charitable works that benefit the community. The only virtue we demand and teach anymore is basic reasonable civility so as not to be an annoyance to society.

Ancients cultures debated whether virtue was inherent in man and only needed saving out of flawed society and bringing out the virtue within him, or whether man lacked virtue and needed it to be taught and developed in him. Technology might develop more virtue in man if it's already there, but technology could be dangerous in the hands of men who have no inherent virtue. Plato's dialectic method of questioning was supposed to bring out the wisdom already in men, and it was only the man living the unexamined life, no longer questioning and analyzing his own motives, who unwittingly did evil acts because he was ignoring the virtue inside him. Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that right actions were what developed goodness in man. Just thinking about goodness does nothing; it's the bodily behavior that makes a person good. That debate kept everyone focused on the nature of virtue and how best to produce virtuous people. Today, we no longer debate it. We just ignore virtue altogether and teach uniformity -- everyone the same.