How is Classics related to Classical Education?

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Classics is the academic field devoted to the study of the Greco-Roman world. One of the amazing things about studying classics and, I have found this, being a classicist myself, is the immersive quality of classics. When a person studies classics, they become immersed in languages, philosophy, politics, economics, mathematics, rhetoric, art, architecture, religions, cults, and scores of great and awful men and women. Students who climb this stair come to see how many little decisions create both the big picture and all the subtle flavors of a civilization.

Classical antiquity, both because it is fundamental to our civilization’s history and because it is so far removed from us, makes it uniquely suited for educational purposes. I don’t need to rehearse all the ways that the Mediterranean ancient world is relevant today. Here we find breakthroughs in philosophy and science, the spread of Judeo-Christian religion, democracy and republican government, challenging and stunning literature and rhetoric, and two languages which ground the technical and scientific vocabulary of today. But in addition to their relevance, the distance between us and the Greeks liberates our assessment of them, making us more impartial and thus better judges. To study politics and government in the Greek and Roman world gives students and teachers enough distance from contemporary issues that teachers can host and truly foster civil debate and discussion in a low stakes environment. Since we want to teach students how to think about life in society, we must offer them the opportunity to critique and debate, to defend propositions and attack policies, employing reason to its fullest extent without anyone’s identity being on the line. In this way classical studies becomes a sandbox for learning how to reason about hundreds of elements within society, offering grand riches from which to draw.

Classical antiquity serves an essential role in classical education. It is our first step, not our last. In most schools 9th grade is the classical year: Ancient Literature, Ancient History, Geometry, and Scripture. History, literature, and religion march through time arm in arm, and these courses constantly reinforce and cast new light upon each other. Humanity did not cease in 500 A.D. and so classical education continues its historical progression while preserving a coherent curriculum. By keeping the course of study coherent, we bring the same level of seriousness and depth to the study of the other civilizations in our curriculum.

Hybrid Schools and Teaching Staff

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Maintaining a core teaching staff at a hybrid school requires a unique political economy. While in practice, hybrid schools have low tuitions because they only hire teacher for 3-days of instruction and rent space for three-days at a time, teachers are still putting in many hours of prep work, prep work which seems to scale nonlinearly according to how many classes are taught.

For example: 1 class might require 5 hours per week from a teacher. 2 classes – 12 hours. 3 classes – 14 hours. 4 classes – 20 hours. Of course, these figures largely depend on the individual teacher but based upon my small dataset, all teachers experience weird nonlinear effects in time-expenditure by class – each in their own way.

For myself, this manifests most when I turn my attention to lesson planning. In that mode, there is basically always more time I could spend on honing my lessons, not just in terms of content, but in terms of delivery, and fostering an ever better learning environment to maximally affect students’ minds, hearts, and educational culture.

Being paid by instructional hours doesn’t take into account these effects, and it keeps the administration in the dark about how much time teachers are spending. When the administration doesn’t know what is happening with the teachers’ time, teachers will feel undervalued. Value-added payment structures at hybrid schools should be developed and tested. We might get useful results.

Advantages of the 3-Day Model for High School Students

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Here are some observations about the advantages of home-day work in a 3-day model.

  1. Students have 67 days each year to iteratively improve time-management skills.
  2. Students have more time to read and write than they otherwise have, which perhaps means our students have read and written more than similar students.
  3. The school environment is not a totalizing force in the students’ lives. They and their parents have more options to create their own schedules, choose their extracurriculars, and join groups which are composed of people other than their peers in school.

There are some tradeoffs too. But these are some effects I have seen in the past five years.

To be continued…

Books Read 2018

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1. Order of the Phoenix by Rowling.
2. Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel
3. A Very Short Introduction to Microeconomics by Avinash Dixit
4. Tribe by Sebastian Junger
5. Sunset in a Spider Web by Korean Poets
6. Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson
7. Demopolis by Josiah Ober
8. Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
9. LLibre Dels Fets by James I of Aragon
10. Medieval Omnibus by Clifford Backman
11. A Mediterranean Emporium by David Abulafia
12. Inadequate Equilibrium by Eliezer Yudkowsky
13. Unsong by Scott Alexander
14. The Dark Tower 2 by Stephen King
15. A Very Short Introduction to Military Strategy by Antulio J. Echevarria

About About 2014

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[In 2014, my about page read as follows.]

Hello, my name is Sebastian Garren. At the beginning of March I was awarded a Fulbright Grant to do research in Finland. My project is to complete a Masters Degree in Education at the University of Turku. The official line of my research prospectus asks: what do administrators, teachers, and students tell each other about their goals and rationales, what goals and rationales require no justification and are simply understood through social cues, and how does this differ from American educational discourse?

A little about my intellectual history. I graduated high school with strong literary leanings. My high school English teacher cracked opened the world of ideas for me through literature. I attended Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana with the intention of becoming an English major. In the end, I became a Latin major – writing my senior thesis on the poetry of Horace – and a philosophy minor. I molded an area of concentration in Medieval Studies, studied some ancient Greek, and took other worthwhile classes outside of these fields. I studied ancient art and archaeology in Rome for one whole semester in my junior year. That fantastic experience left on me an indelible mark, something akin to a renewed awareness of the world, a re-enchantment.

How did this lead to Finland, education, and beyond? I suspect to an outside observer there is an incongruity. Where, you might ask, is the intersection of English literature, classical civilization, philosophy, education, empirical research, and ourselves (readers and learners)? I think these all do have some thing in common: they are important. They tell us where we are going, where we have been, and what we could do next. These disparate fields provide unique ways to approach the world. Finland, I believe, can do the same.

—–

So I was ready for the above research and academic practice when my boat capsized, so to speak. The University of Turku did not accept me into the program and the Finland Fulbright people threw me overboard. The American Fulbright people think I’m still on the boat, despite my protests. Illigimiti non carborundum.

So what does one do, when one adventure turns into another? I woke one day with a ticket to Finland and few prospects. A friend reminded me of an important lesson, “In chess, the failure of one plan is a dangerous moment, because the player feels like momentum has shifted, and he may lose morale or become rash, even if he is actually still ahead and well-positioned. Your path may have been turned, but has not led over a cliff.”

The narrative of a life is not always what we expect and every twist must be incorporated gracefully. Now I will venture to Finland to practice the language and write as I will.

Promenade Into Heavy Rain

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Realize the triumphal beauty of entering a new city, how each new site demands to be seen, like lightning time passes. Special notice is due to each detail, the clouds, the old and elegant mansions, the way the sun makes the water look like a cream, how the old people on a cruise ship either enjoy a laugh or sit fixedly on their own, how a storm in violet blue is garbed in the north and other ships big and small pass around the bay, how this group of four in their late 50’s enjoy a last round of cards, the young text, the announcer makes ETAs and information about the lost & found. Stockholm approaches. It feels like a European city. Good architectural choices in the mid-late 19th century were not levelled by modernization in the mid-late 20th. Believe-it-or-not there was even an aesthetically pleasing tower constructed in the early 90’s. Well done, Sweden!

The nation of Sweden, once an empire (but it lost all its wars), now a prospering northern nation with hardly a military. See the construction cranes, towers, apartments, hills, trees, and spires rise to meet you: blue, black, green, and yellow. “Welcome,” says the sun as it winks out into the storm clouds, “Good luck finding your hostel.”

Burt Reynolds on a Ship

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I highly recommend the boat from Turku to Stockholm. It was only 18 euros. Blue waters and little isles pass by for hours and hours and hours. The food aboard ship is good, and the alcohol prices are competitive (but compared to mainland Finland, what isn’t?). I have spent the majority of my time writing in the smoking room. It looks out on the water nicely, and the coming and going of faces for the fix make it a kind of sanctuary, a vestige of proper ritual.

However when I assumed a position overlooking the water, I became more exposed. And sensing my anxiety, a Burt-Reynolds of a Finn sat down next to me and asked what I was writing. He was one of those good-natured guys who would never take a serious thing seriously. He refused to speak any English, and would only explain himself in more Finnish. I appreciated his humor. He bade me luck that the bulb go off in my mind, and he took for the buffet room.

Lunch was good; at first, I lamented the expense. Then seeing how there was an open tap of wine and beer, my spirit was relieved. I drank and toasted, and ate as much as possible, salmon and sauces, lox and mosses, salad, and cheese, and bread, and dessert. The conversational company could have been better. But such is drinking alone, you have to imagine your people around and have the recitation with yourself.

I saw the Burt-Reynolds Finn as he walked out. He stopped and asked skeptically if the food was any good. “It is good, good.” I was the last one in the dining room. They closed, but I still had more to eat and drink. This has been my lot since high school. To be the last one sitting at table, others cleaning up, I wonder, “Why has everyone left so soon? What’s all the rush? There is no where better to go! Yo-ho-ho-ho! Where is MY civilization? If I were king…”

I took the train from Rovaniemi last night. I have not taken an overnight train in many years. Now I remember what is so miserable about it. It is not the seats. The seats are bad; they are as bad as Amtrack (maybe worse). They leave a terrible crick in your back, and generally, unless you are totally beat already, sleep will be difficult. But the fundamental problem is that as soon as you fall asleep to the rhythmic rocking of the train, it stops. It sits motionless for 15 minutes, then moves 50 feet then sits again. It is like the terrible sensation of being at a traffic light which lasts too long. It is easy to sit for an hour doing nothing. It is hard to sit for 10 minutes waiting for the train to move so you can go back to sleep.

The train stopped at the dock station (30 minute time window) and I walked one block to the titanic Viking cruise ship. I didn’t realize I was taking a full blown cruise. I’ll take a hostel tonight (settled that ten minutes ago). My flight leaves early Wednesday morning. I’ll see how Stockholm is until then. If my return journey somehow included swimming, cycling, and canoeing it would be better. Turku by train, Stockholm by boat, Chicago through some bizarrely complicated flight pattern, and I have a return ticket to Stockholm for September 11th which I do not plan on using. The cheapest flight just happened to require I buy a return journey.