Favorite Student Blunders and Bloopers 2023-24

 It's that time again--time to revel in the slips and the slops, the misunderstandings and the falling short, the errors and the mistakes. Here are my favorite moments from my students of the last school year--and if you don't get it, make sure you read it again! Enjoy, and don't forget to chuckle!

“Rage—sing, goddess, of the rage of Peleus’s son Achilles,/Murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,/Hurling down to the house of death so many sturdy souls,/Great fighter’s souls, but made their bodies carry-ons…”

“The storm eschewed rage, and the ship drowned in that rage.”

Love is Blind: A Review of Veritas Press' A Rhetoric of Love

Introduction 

Rhetoric is an ancient art, with a long and impressive history. Some of the most brilliant minds of any age—Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine—have practiced it and taught it. As classical schools have recovered the lost tools of learning, one of the rustiest has been rhetoric. Various approaches have been proposed to clean off that rust and return it to trusty service. These range from simply shoving the Ad Herrenium under a student’s nose to that put forward by authors Douglas Jones and Michael Collender, in Veritas Press’s A Rhetoric of Love, published in two volumes as the mainstay of a two-year high school course.

Rather than follow the traditional method of using the Greek and Roman pagans, A Rhetoric of Love (hereafter ROL) claims that it follows a distinctively Christian approach to rhetoric: one based on the Bible (and specifically Jesus as presented in the gospels). This allows them to move beyond the taint of power or manipulation, and instead focus on bringing the foundation of all believing activity—love—to bear on communication. It is an intriguing idea, reminiscent of Augustine’s claim that one could learn eloquence by merely studying the Scriptures. A thoroughly effective Christian reworking of classical rhetoric would be something to applaud. But I believe this ROL project, by poorly defining its terms, means, and genre, winds up with several significant issues that quickly bog it down. These issues group nicely under three major headings: first, definitional troubles and an unworkable antithesis between love and power—what we might call paradigm problems—mar the project’s scope and purpose. Second, practical issues would render the text difficult to use in actual high school classrooms. Third, ROL is not a “classical” textbook in most senses of the word, making it a poor choice for the intended audience: classical Christian schools. Though the text is graciously reasoned and wittily written, and has many praiseworthy points, I would not recommend it to any classical school trying to craft a high schooler into a rhetor; its flaws outweigh its foundations.

Benedict's Rule: Living Life by Worship

 The modern man lives his life by the clock--and his clock is married to the money. 

Modern time is usually measured simply by what we earn or don't earn. Think of any time measurement, and notice how it is tied to labor and pay: the work week, business hours, overtime, the school year (when the kids work), etc. Most of the remainder are tied to labor's absence: the weekend, after hours, vacation, sick leave, summer, overtime. Even our holy-days have become little more than days where, for some long-forgotten reason, most people don't work. We've taken the saying "Time is money" to ultimate perfection.

The Christian may notice all this and smell something rotten. We may mutter about "bad for human flourishing" and "modern idols" and "burnout." But few of us would have the courage to walk away from our own system, to live live by some other beat and drum. Suppose someone walked up to you and suggested that you should pray more; you would nod energetically. Quite a good idea. You really need to pray more.

Then he suggests you start with about five hours per day.

But, but...I can't do that! you think. I have...work...

Learn Latin: A Manifesto

“You study Latin? When on earth are you ever going to use that?”

Every student going to a classical school has heard this gibe at one point or another. It is inevitable, like running into someone who thinks pineapple on pizza is a good idea. In our economic and outcome-centered age, learning a language of no immediate, practical use seems like a colossal waste of time, money, and effort. A student should spend hard-earned hours on doing something advantageous, like Spanish; something that will give a return on the investment. (It’s rather essential if you want to manage a fast-food restaurant in the Southwest, after all.) Latin will only give you a career if you somehow make the one-in-a-million shot of working for the Vatican, or if you teach it to some other poor saps. The “useless subject” ad hominem goes double for Latin teachers—they have all the day-to-day relevance of a gender studies professor, without nearly as much street cred. “Not only is your subject useless,” runs the popular thought, “but worse, you have somehow conned people into paying for it.” Classical school administrators face a barrage of objections from parents whose children find Latin boring as well as useless; this, in a subject that is often seen as the sine qua non of classical schools. In the face of this triad of objections—Latin is impractical, a bad substitute for a modern language, and boring to boot—what is the importance of studying it in the 21st century?

There is an answer to that question, but before we reach it, it is worthwhile to note that this same friend, acquaintance, or worried parent never raises the same question about basketball. Sports are seen as a universal positive. But are they really all that different? Compare for a second: basketball will only provide you with a steady career—a return on all that time investment—if you are either the one-in-a-million who can play professionally in the NBA or you coach a team somewhere at a high school (where you rub shoulders with that Latin teacher at staff meetings). It is of virtually no “practical use” other than fat prevention; there are far easier and less involved ways to keep off the pounds. And standing on a court dribbling or shooting yet another free throw, for hours on end, cannot be categorized as anything besides boring—and that leaves out warming the bench! Why are administrators never pestered about why their child has to play basketball? The answer has to do with the philosophy of education: what is a school, and school work, for? We raise no furor over basketball because around the end of the 19th century the idea of mens sana in corpore sano (“a sound mind in a sound body”) and the innate character-building qualities of genteel collegiate athleticism gained traction, and now they are commonplace. It is accepted that part of a school’s job is to care for the body, and so sports are expected and often required. But what is the point of a child’s mental development?

Here is where the “useless” or “impractical” objection really stems from. Underlying it (and providing it with all its impetus, as well as snark) is the assumption that education exists to provide the student with career opportunities. This mindset is most prevalent around colleges, but exists in primary and secondary schools as well. If the purpose of schooling is to load a child’s brain with usable, easily marketable data that transfers easily to a career path, then Latin does not meet those criteria. Simple enough; that is why it fell out of favor in the first place. But this particular assumption about education is increasingly challenged in the modern day—particularly by the very classical schools that make Latin such a centerpiece of their curricula. They posit that education is about developing far more than career skills—it involves likes and dislikes, character, truth, reason, tastes, goodness, skills, beauty, etc.; in short, all of life. What benefit does studying Latin give in such a scheme of study? The usual arguments in favor of learning the language (boiled down to their essence) generally fall into three categories: first, acquiring Latin is immensely useful in dealing with other languages, particularly English. Second, it works the brain in ways other subjects usually do not, as well as building character through hard work. Third, it allows access to a myriad of original sources. We will examine each of these points individually, noting strengths and weaknesses of each in an educational environment in the 21st century, to show that Latin truly is a worthwhile endeavor.

The First Claim: learning Latin is worthwhile because it is immensely useful in dealing with other languages, particularly English.

This claim is most often made by those trying to defend against the attack on Latin as “useless”; they can refute their opponents by showing a measurable, practical benefit to spending some time in a classroom trying to conjugate all those persnickety verbs. First, they point to the advantages of working on Latin before moving on to another language; of mastering the concepts of subject, person, case, gender, neuter, etc. in the Roman tongue before attempting, say, Greek or French. This is actually a fairly good point for their side, because Latin (unlike virtually every other currently spoken language) is highly regular in form. The men who created and enriched it were engineers without equal; hard, practical men who often had little time for philosophy and nuance. Generally, Latin actually follows its own rules. Anyone who finds this point underwhelming obviously never had to learn to pronounce the word slough (not to mention cough and bough, and dough) around fifth grade! Therefore, it takes comparatively less time and effort to master the basics (since there are few exceptions), which makes it an ideal commencement to second language acquisition.

Even better, because Latin is a “museum language” there is no changing idiomatic context to confuse with the classroom version; that is, a student will never have to figure out how to switch between “proper” Latin and “real-world” Latin the way he would using a modern language, and he does not have to worry about a word changing meanings.[1] As a point of comparison, consider the poor student sweating through learning English in a classroom. His teacher may tell him that the proper way to ask his friends a question is, “Would any of you care to proceed to the movie theater?” and as far as it goes, she’s right. But asking the question that way instantly marks him as an outsider. Additionally, as soon as the question changes to the far more common “Y’all wanna go see a movie?” he is forced to deal with slang, bad pronunciation, synedoche, a missing conjunction, and an uncommon 2nd-person plural…on top of an accent, if he’s far enough South. This is why modern languages, to be mastered, must usually be learned by immersion—speaking the language as it is actually spoken, under mental pressure, for large amounts of time. It is not practical for most high schools (and even some colleges) to do this with Spanish or Arabic. But they can do it with Latin, because it is a regular, largely unchanging tongue--it can be learned in the tight parameters of a classroom, in five hours per week.

The second part of the first point is that it aids in manipulating English. This is true as far as it goes; English has been heavily influenced by Latin (and by languages that came from Latin) and a student who has mastered some basic Latin words will probably do quite well on the vocabulary portion of the SAT. A student reading this essay (for instance) who has never taken any of the language might stumble over some of the earlier inclusions that have grown common in English such as sine qua non or et cetera. A Latin vocabulary can be helpful in English vocabulary; a quick survey of the first paragraph of this piece discloses around twenty words with Latin roots that even a casual Latin student would have no problem spotting, like immediate or practical. The obvious flaw with this point is that a student with a dictionary can acquire exactly the same vocabulary, with far less labor; there is no inherent benefit from Latin itself. [2] The manipulation argument grows slightly stronger if the student intends to venture into English from an earlier era: works from two or three hundred years ago are Latinate not only in vocabulary, but also in structure. A reader used to relative clauses and out-of-sequence sentences will have a much easier time than the one who has only dealt with modern English (because he was too busy learning to order a taco over in Spanish I). But since both of these can occur outside of any study of Latin, and possibly more rapidly without it, I am skeptical of their value in persuading study in the modern day.

The Second Claim: Latin is worth studying because it works the brain in a way other subjects usually do not. 

My own experience and the testimony of a number of Latin teachers lends support to this theory. [3]Unlike history, which tends to confine itself to memorizing facts; or math, which tends to focus on sustained process reasoning; the subject of Latin combines both memory (vocabulary) and regular processes (cases, conjugations, and modification) with the key additional factor of translation. In order to describe one thing in terms of another, a student must know both on a far deeper level than the superficial. This becomes even more the case if the school’s program includes speaking as well as a written element. All of us have dealt with the situation where we know the material in the notes but cannot verbalize it at a question from another; Latin, as a language (unlike math, for instance) is a splendid opportunity to force the brain to bridge that gap. The resulting mental development is perhaps comparable only to achieving fluency in music. Of course, any translation-heavy language course would give this result; but since most modern language classes are focused on safely functioning in that language’s society, they tend to avoid the impact Latin can have. “Where’s the bathroom?” only becomes a valuable piece of information to the brain if you actually happen to need to find one in a foreign language. But figuring out the beautiful variety of ways to say quod scis, nihil prodest; quod nescis, multum obest in English (and comparing them with classmates’) is a challenge far more like a group puzzle than a boring question, and therefore ultimately more memorable. [4] So the mental agility mastering it can create is a valuable contribution of learning Latin in our day and age.

On a charitable reading, this is what is actually meant by some other proponents when they state that Latin is “a mental workout” or “intellectual discipline” and is therefore valuable solely on that account. [5] This approach is usually advanced against the “boring” argument noted earlier—even if students do not manage to learn much of the language, the mere effort involved is beneficial. To put it another way, Latin offers all the benefits of sustained brain teasers, but with the added advantage that you might get an additional language to throw on your resume, too (if you’re lucky). The problem with stating the issue like this is that Latin seems to become the classical equivalent of hauling rocks from one side of the yard to the other—sure, it’s boring and useless, but look at the muscles students develop! This particularly becomes the case when the teacher is using the grammar-translation method of memorizing bare rules and endings and charts. All the students come out the other side with fast mental muscles (they’ll remember amo, amas, amat until the day they die) but no ability in Latin itself. Students have a right to complain if this is actually what is being done to them—they are being asked to devote a significant portion of their short lives to something (mental agility) that can be developed in far more entertaining ways; say, the daily New York Times crossword. So by itself, the brain argument seems to be insufficient to drive the study of Latin, though it is a great supplement to the next argument of fluency.

The Third Claim: Latin is worth studying in order to access the original sources. 

This is the strongest and most obvious of the three, and the whole reason the language was part of the original “classical” (that is, medieval and Renaissance) education in the first place. European scholars long needed to be able to do two things: access the wisdom of Cicero, Boethius, or Livy in their own words, and communicate what they uncovered there to other scholars. In the days long before television and mass media largely standardized language, the amount and variety of dialect scattered over Europe must have been bewildering. Latin provided the answer: a universal tongue of learning that joined the educated across the continent. Even after the rise of the vernaculars it remained important; Francis Bacon insisted on having his Essays and other works translated and published in Latin as late as 1625, “for these modern languages will, at one time or another, play the bankrupt with books” and he wanted them preserved for posterity! [6] Though English fulfils the universal language role for us, there is still something to the argument of reading so many great works in their original format. The objection that there are many excellent translations is the objection of someone who has never learned enough of two different languages to realize what a yawning gap there is between them. A translation is an excellent telescope to look at the other side, but it is no substitute for walking there yourself. And for the effort involved, Latin probably unlocks far more original works than any other language, since it was the tongue of the educated of an entire continent for over a thousand years (including a multitude of ecclesiastical tomes for the Christian). When the ad fontes argument is combined with the other two reasons for studying Latin, it becomes nearly unbeatable.

The great objection to this third reason is, of course, that very few students emerge from a Latin program able to actually read a primary text, which would render the third point moot and the other two points suspect. How can all that time studying be vindicated if only one or two ever manages to actually pick up and enjoy the Aeneid? My response is twofold. First, the normal alternative (modern languages) has a track record just as bad—how many students of high school Spanish or French remember more than a few oddball phrases a decade later? Second, this is looking at the problem through the wrong lens. Think back to basketball again. No one brings up this problem about the school sports team, though the odds that someone will be a star basketball player are far lower than someone learning to read Virgil! The key point is to give the students the opportunity to bounce a ball, and then see if they have the skills and the wish to chase that dream even further. It is true that out of any given class, only about 75% may have the capability to master any subject, and only 25% have the drive to be able to do so. But that is no excuse for not giving the top quarter the tools needed to grasp Latin, since the benefits (as above) are so great. It is no more elitist than the NBA. The lower part of the class will develop due to the first two reasons: language competence and brain work. The higher will achieve all three, and be able to revel in primary texts. We should do all we can to increase the latter percentage, but in the same way short people will never be basketball stars, it is unrealistic to expect every single student to achieve fluency, since many lack either desire or capability.

The problem is also artificially magnified by the paucity and quality of instruction. We must recall that the educational goal of reading Latin has been neglected long enough to die out of living memory—no one already knows how to do it well anymore. Most current Latin students learn from a teacher who can barely read primary texts himself, if at all. How do they expect him to take them where he cannot go? Latin has only been a newly-desirable school subject for about thirty or forty years—about three possible generations of teachers. The first generation knew very little Latin and admitted it, the second benefitted from their mistakes and has created some much better resources and techniques than existed when they were students. It is to the third generation, as they enter the educational world, that we should look to truly start producing aptitude. Until then, griping about lack of competence is merely noticing where we are in the recovery process.

In Conclusio  

So rather than being boring, useless, or impractical, Latin has a number of advantages. It is a tangible link to the past, opening innumerable pages of material from the West and Christendom. It is a scholastic exercise that, pound for pound, produces more mental agility than most other subjects, particularly if it is taught well. And even if neither of these occurs, it will still produce a marked improvement in cognition and comprehension of English, which is certainly practical, useful, and interesting (at least until a politician starts using it). Why should you study Latin in our modern, 21st century schools? Because if you don’t bother, Cicero said it best: quod scis, nihil prodest; quod nescis, multum obest.


NOTES

[1] At least, not in classical Latin, which is the version most schools are worrying about in the 21st century. Throwing in medieval and ecclesiastical Latin might give some bumps here.

[2] See, for instance, Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Education (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003) 141-44, or Cheryl Lowe, “Top 10 Reasons for Studying Latin” at https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/top-10-reasons-studying-latin (accessed 8/26/2022) where it forms the substance of half of her ten points, with “mental discipline” covering the other five! This argument seems to be advanced most often by those who came to Latin late in life and never learned it in depth; the fact that it was helpful for their vocabulary (and a lot of hard work) does not mean that Latin is worthy of study on those grounds alone. There are better ways to do either.

[3] Jonathan Roberts, “Classical Schools are Not Really Classical” at https://ancientlanguage.com/classical-schools-not-classical/ as well as various personal conversations.

[4] Cicero, Orator xlix. Roughly, “That which you know does not help; that which you do not know is an obstacle.” This says nothing of all the possible historical and philosophical tie-ins that can accompany the study of Latin—icing on the cake one might say.

[5] Wilson, The Case for Classical Education 139-40 and Lowe, Top Ten Reasons.

[6] Francis Bacon, Essays (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1884) xviii.

Favorite Student Bloopers of 2021-2022

 It's that time again--time to revel in the hasty misspelling, the overlooked word, or the unconscious alteration. Not to mention a few good old fashioned instances of ignorance...

“In my opinion the writer obviously tried to make the point of Roland being a brave worrier with strength and might.”

“Solomon was led astray by his desire to worship idles.”

“She has climbed great and risky hills and braved some deranged and treacherous rivers.”

“The Apocrypha was written in Greek because the land it was written in was concurred by Alexander."

“Shakespeare wrote in iambic pintometer.”

“Promises to futile lords were what the entire economy was built on.”

“In the Medical Catholic Church, the Bible was kept in Latin.”

“Fabian Tactics are a form of Gorilla Warfare where instead of attacking your enemy head on, you wear them down.”

“The Jewish Temple furnishings were carved into the Archer Titus.”

(Or, alternatively) “The Temple furnishings can still be seen on the italics.”

“The Pax Romana was a piece of Rome."

And my personal favorite from last year, as an honorable mention:

In answer to the question, “What was the name of the famous speech Cicero delivered against Mark Antony?” a Canadian student answered, “The 2nd Amendment.”

A Crumb of Chreia

[A chreia is an ancient Greek rhetorical exercise, in which a student was required to expand on a well-known saying or action of a famous person by using certain methods or "headings." This one was composed for a rhetoric course final.]

Quintilian wrote that “Everybody prefers to have learned rather then to learn!” (Institutio Oratoria III.1)
This is a trustworthy saying, for Quintilian was not only a practitioner of rhetoric, but one of its great teachers; his entire work is dedicated to nothing else than the instruction and formation of a perfect orator. That is too immense a topic to praise here, but surely we can honor him for this bare bit of insight, spilled out(almost carelessly) from the great storehouse of his wisdom.
For he is saying that what students have already mastered is very hard to replace with later instruction, even if what they have learned originally is faulty or incomplete. The cause of this is not difficult to determine, since it lives in every man’s experience.
Who does not remember agonizing over some approaching final exam in his school days, knowing that mountains of effort and rivers of sweat had been used up in trying to anchor the needed facts in the memory? Every student knows that learning is tough, and often tedious. The raw clay of the mind is being pressed into a different mold; when it finally emerges bright, shining, and ready to be displayed to others, there is a genuine pride in the achievement.
But then another rushes up, secure in his own superior learning, and attacks the hard-won treasure with words of scorn! “They were poorly instructed, they were wrongly taught, they should instead listen to a newcomer and begin again.” Even if the newcomer is right and everything he says is as true as the face of God, the one being instructed instantly revolts. Admitting this new point means that all previous effort has been vain. Not only this, but it means he must own up to being wrong—worse, being a deceived fool in the presence of someone who knew even more about a subject. Pride, embarrassment, and anger combine to stifle the humility of confessing error.
On the contrary, a man who can be convinced of his own faults is rare—he has disciplined his wayward emotions and is prepared to do whatever needs to be done to arrive, not at mere knowledge, but at truth. What teacher would not travel many miles to find such a student? The very rarity of those who prefer to learn contributes to their worth, compared to those who prefer to have learned.
This saying proves that labor is hard and men are proud, and that once they have mined a bit of knowledge for themselves they are reluctant to throw it away, even if it is proved that what they clutch is nothing more than fool’s gold.
Consider with what reluctance Quintilian admits in a few places that he had changed some positions on pedagogy since his younger days! Here the one doing the correcting is not even another, but his own older, wiser self—the one person every human being on the earth will proclaim incontestably superior to who he used to be. And yet he is reluctant to admit even an improvement in his system before the sharp eyes of others, and defends his change of course with many reasons and proofs; afraid of appearing weak and inconstant as the wind.
Therefore, as Solomon has written, Wisdom calls to her children: “Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.” He joins his testimony to the orator’s: refusal to learn is not the path of the wise few. It is instead the path of the mulish multitude—but the pride of the foolish blinds them to which road they are traveling, leaving them in the dark even while they claim sight.
With all this in mind, it is quite clear that Quintilian has given us a great and memorable saying of education. May we always keep it as something we are learning rather than have learned.

On Distracted Students

Note: While the personages mentioned in this are fictional composites, the situation is, sadly, one I face often in online schooling.

Dear Mr. S—,

Thanks for reaching out. Far too many parents never even notice that their child is having trouble in my class until it is far too late to do something—I’m delighted to find that you are staying so involved.

You said in your email that John is having trouble staying focused, you’re not quite sure how to help with that, and you’d like any advice I can give. You’ve caught him multiple times during class with several windows open on the computer, chatting with friends, listening to music, or doing anything besides solely paying attention to me and his other teachers. You know this is occurring on a regular basis, but don’t want him to always do school directly under his parents’ eye, since “that would defeat the reason we put him in an online class in the first place.” You're considering switching to a more traditional schooling format to solve the problem. Does that seem an accurate summary?

I have noticed two major categories of student who struggle with staying focused in online classrooms; each tending to arise from opposite ends of the aptitude spectrum. The first is the student who is bored stiff—he thinks he knows everything (or at least quite enough to pass the quiz) and quite often he does. The slow plodding required for the slower students in the class causes him to disengage and seek more diverting material. If asked a direct question, it only takes a few seconds’ work to figure out the context and come up with a reasonably correct answer—easily covered by the excuse of “tech trouble.” He’s not being challenged, and no amount of lecturing from Mom and Dad will change that. After all, he will think, he’s making good grades—isn’t that the point of school?

The second student, instead of being bored, is overwhelmed--no matter what he does, he can't understand ninety percent of what the teacher is saying. He’s reading massive textbooks that don’t seem to make sense either, but all the other kids in class appear to somehow be getting this, particularly the four or five who always come up with those questions the teacher likes so much. Since no one likes to appear dumb (particularly in front of a bunch of cute girls) admitting he’s lost and asking for help is out of the question. So, he might as well do something fun—and comprehensible— instead of sit there and feel stupid. If the teacher asks him a point-blank question, he also can easily pretend tech trouble, and quickly slip back to his game. If lectured, he can semi-honestly assert he’s doing the best he can, but school’s “not really his thing.”

As a quasi-third option, there is also the student who has simply developed a systemic lack of discipline (which shows up most pointedly when surrounded by bright, shiny objects like screens). He wants to pay attention, and sometimes can when the topic is interesting enough, but his default state is to chase the latest impulse. With so many pleasurable options a click away, that impulse is easy to gratify. This type feeds into our first two options quite regularly: the brilliant student can indulge his curiosity, the slow one his apathy.

You will be better able than I to judge where John falls. A few questions for a week straight at the dinner table about “what he learned that day” should provide a pretty easy diagnostic tool. As far as solutions go, I haven't been a parent myself yet, but here are a few educated guesses:

If you think John’s the smart-and-bored type, then I suggest you tie something he actually does value—time with friends, reading, sports, whatever—back to his grades. If he doesn't meet a certain grade in the class at any given time, he doesn't get that privilege that week and must spend it on school instead. Don't be afraid to set the bar high! Since this type of student is motivated more by laziness, if you can make him sufficiently uncomfortable, he will move. And if he's making straight A's and still goofing off half of class, then he just needs more responsibilities (because he can obviously still handle it). Make him go get a job, join a club, start learning a trade, play a sport. When the grades finally start to drop, ease off about an hour’s worth of tasks a a week, and watch him go.

If you think John’s the overwhelmed type, you might require him to attempt asking or answering at least one question in class every day—and then check up on him. If he does that I will hear from him often, and he will usually be wrong, since he doesn’t know what is going on anyway. That will be both humbling and discouraging at first, but it will have the long-term affect of both forcing him to pay strict attention and to recognize exactly what he doesn't know. Since he’ll be getting daily personal explanations of his mistakes from me, it should also boost his understanding. Eventually, that should build into a fair amount of confidence--thus solving the problem. It's also helpful if you can ask this sort of student to synopsize what he learned that day at the dinner table. Roll out a whiteboard or something and ask for a 5-minute demonstration and summary. If he can't do it, then you know some extra study time is in order and he should, too. (Actually, this exercise is one of the most valuable things a parent can do for any type of student, period.)

If you suspect it is merely lack of discipline, the counterintuitive solution here is to pursue that discipline outside of class time rather than inside it. Does your son always make his bed? Write legibly even on homework no one will ever see? Complete chores on time and well? A kid who regularly does all that and more probably won't give you much trouble in class itself. This is arguably the hardest problem of the three to fix, because it requires both a lot of attention and a whole new set of habits, but it has the biggest payoff, as well. Your son is always going to be living in a digital world, and the sooner he masters it, the less it will rule over him. One of the drawbacks of online schooling compared to traditional homeschooling is that kids often spend a significant portion of the day away from their parent’s direct oversight. As you note, that’s a feature, but often it becomes a bug: the student develops some bad habits before parents can even notice. If that's where John is, then all you can do is thank God you noticed now, do some heavy-duty praying, and try to do some retraining. It will be unpleasant for both of you, but the harvest will be joyful.

If you truly think the only way to solve this is pulling him from school, I understand. Some kids just can't handle the manifold temptations and distractions that come with distance learning. I would far rather John learn self-discipline in another school than merely stick with me. But since you’re here now, I hope the above advice is useful.

May God grant you wisdom.

Kuyper on Public School "Neutrality"

 "[By the public schools] our people have been cast into the arms of materialism...For a long time the public school was a veiled image to our people--its essence hidden, its true visage invisible. It just stood there, covered by a garment in which the misleading term "toleration"...was woven in shiny gold thread. Misled by appearances, our people did not believe what some trustworthy individuals told them about the heinous form that would become apparent as soon as the veil fell off and the garment was removed. In the meantime, they had grown to love the public school and became accustomed to it as an integral part of our national life.

It's just math and reading...

And now, it is finally clear at last that everything said about the school understates the appalling truth now revealed. The mask is finally thrown off, and the school is displayed in all its naked barrenness. The dissembling about faith is gone and has been replaced with active efforts to silence God and eternal life. Yet still they dare to call out to our people: "You must send your children to me, you will entrust to me your baptized sons and daughters, although the name of Christ may not be heard within our walls and no talk about God or immortality will be permitted." And the nation as a whole is silent while thousands and tens of thousands send their children. There is still present an unholy desire to fight for the public school as one does for one's idol. Where are we headed? Do you not sense that going down this path will mean the end of your immortality as a nation?--Abraham Kuyper, "Teaching Immortality in the Public Schools" 1870, reprinted in Collected Works in Public Theology: On Education, pg. 28.

Welcome to Freedom Training--An Introduction for my Students

 

[An introductory lecture given to my humanities students at Logos Online]

Good morning, my students. If you were trying to get into Mr. Goode’s class, you are in the right place. If you were trying for someone else, you’re lost. Get out of here, and good luck on your hunting.

For the rest of y’all, you come here knowing at least one thing. You know where you are—you’re in my class. That is the sort of knowledge our age excels in—scientific knowledge. We like to observe the world around us and find out that water is wet, that Mars is in orbit around the sun, that cactus poke you if you touch them, and that seeing your surroundings actually tells you where you are. This is great news, because otherwise we couldn’t know much at all. But there is a danger to this type of knowledge: it is perilously easy to assume that if you know the scientific data about something, you know everything you need to know.

But I challenge you to begin our time together by pushing further and deeper than mere scientific knowledge. I want you to ask, “Why am I here in Mr. Goode’s class?”

Of course, some of you think you know the answer to this question. “I’m here because it’s the next course Logos Online requires in their degree plan.” “I’m here because I want to be able to get into a good college.” “I’m here because the course description sounded fun.” And of course, there is the ever-popular, “Because my parents made me.” These may all be true reasons, but I think they are weak, insufficient reasons. They are reasons that will not be enough to get you through the late nights, and the hard work, and the reading, and the writing, and the tough questions I am going to throw at you in this class.

Of course, some of you have already pushed this to the next level, past the mere scientific fact of hard school work. “Why,” you ask philosophically, “do we have to do all this? Isn’t there an easier way?”

The answer has to do with the liberal arts.

I asked many of you what the term “liberal arts” meant on the entrance survey. I got lots of answers:“The act of painting and playing music, but displaying the beliefs of mask-wearing liberals,” or “The study and practice of things outside of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, such as language, literature, history, rhetoric, theology, and music,” or “Something to do with literature or maybe college.” These are not quite right. Part of your confusion stems from the fact that these words mean something different in our day. Liberal is usually defined though politics, often as the opposite of conservative. Arts are what “creative types” do as personal expression—painting, theater, sculpture, etc. But long ago when the liberal arts were named, liberal came from the Latin word liber—literally, “a free man” which meant anyone who was not a slave. The arts were any skill or work produced well—a shoemaker or a baker had his “art” just as much as a painter did. So the “liberal arts” meant “the skills and work of a free man.”

To the Greek and Roman world, this was an important distinction. Slaves are people who just do what they are told, when they are told to do it. Most of the ancient necessaries of life—clothes, shoes, food, and the like—were made by slaves. In modern terms, slaves had all the jobs and had all the training (or education) they needed to be good at them. Free men, however, did not usually “make stuff.” Instead of makers, they were to be leaders throughout the various spheres of government—their family, their business, their city politics. A free man needed the type of education that would train him to be able to think, evaluate, implement, and persevere in his actions; he could not merely “do his job.” That type of education became the liberal arts. Eventually, they were divided into seven major categories. The first was the trivium of grammar (the study of words), rhetoric (the study of persuasion), and logic (the study of thinking). The second was the quadrivium of arithmetic (the study of mental numbers), music (mental numbers in time), geometry (numbers in space, what we could call “spatial” number), and astronomy (spatial number in motion). Thus you can see that the modern distinction between an “artsy” or “bookish” person and a “hard-science” person is rather new: a free man back in the ancient or medieval world had to both know books and how to use them for everything from building an aqueduct to drafting a new law.

Writing from that ancient world, in the book of Galatians, Paul notes several times that Christians are to be free men and women, not slaves to various things. 1^st Peter says in a similar fashion, “Live as people who are free” (2:16). So part of my job, as your Christian teacher at a Christian school, is to train you up into freedom. The rest of my job, as a classical teacher at a classical school, is to do it in a rather old-fashioned way. The liberal arts are how I’m going to grow you up into the Bible’s commands. If you need a modern catchphrase for this, we could call it “Freedom Training.” In short, I’m here to make you better human beings by learning about the things of humans, which is why this class is called humanities.

“Mr. Goode,” some of you are probably thinking, “this is boring. Please get to the point.”

Ah, but this is the point. If I’m here to make you a better, free human being, what should you have to do?

First, a good human being should have self-control and perseverance—which is why I will march you through long, dry books that are not at all what the modern world calls “fun” and I will expect you to actually pay attention to them. “No discipline is pleasant at the time,” teaches Paul, and I need to train you in intellectual discipline. When this class is difficult and perplexing, you’re going to be tempted to complain that something is wrong or unfair. Not at all—that is what this class is all about; not all of the time of course, but some of the time.

 Second, a good human being should be able to accurately state what he is thinking to others—which is why I will make you speak and write again and again and again, until you can say exactly what you want, no more, no less.

Third, a good human should be curious. Remember the “why” question I urged you to ask earlier. All of you with siblings in the toddler years know that this is one of the fundamental human questions. This class will encourage you to become askers of questions—both in school and out—in order to become richer, deeper people. “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making,” wrote John Milton in Aeropagitica. Do you believe him? You should.

Fourth, a good human being should know what other human beings have argued is right, good, and true—which is why I will make you deal with the modern assumption that “everything old/different is bad” by working you step-by-step through arguments thousands of years old, both stated and implicit. You will be forced to question their assumptions, and by doing that, you will hopefully be able to get a better look at your own ignorance. If you don’t know what people have already said, it is very easy to enter an ongoing conversation and appear an idiot. This, by the way, is one of the besetting sins of our time. Moderns like to act as though we have developed answers to everything. But some problems are just as old as people—and so are some of the answers. Which ones are right?

Finally and ultimately, a good human being must know God—which is why we will be evaluating all the ideas of this year through what God loves, and not just what we love. For “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”(Mic. 6:8)

Now, with such an ambitious program (the building of a good human being) there will be all sorts of places we can fall short. I may fail you, or you may fail me, or both. I will focus on three common ways students can fail their teacher; don’t worry, there are others who will evaluate if I fail you!

The first way to fail your teacher is not trying. Francis Bacon in “Of Seeming Wise” put it this way: “Some, when a thing is beyond their reach, will seem to despise or make light of it as impertinent or curious, and so would have their ignorance seem judgement.” This year we will study things out of your comfort zone. Scoffing and claiming “This is stupid,” or “I’m never going to need to know this stuff,” misses the point—we are making free people, not training for a job at a bank or a factory. Remember, be curious. In addition, the works we will read were written by men who have been judged much, much smarter than you. In two thousand years, every one of you will be long forgotten, but people will still be reading Plato. Do not be so quick to dismiss. Humility is also a virtue.

Another is stressing out over grades. Now, I am not telling you to ignore your grades, but there is a type of student that does everything with the grade in mind. This applies to both really good grades and really bad grades, and it misses the whole point. Grades serve a dual purpose of telling the teacher how well his students are catching what he is throwing, and of motivating students to actually do the work. Let us be honest, if I did not grade assignments, many of you would not do them. But “getting good grades” is not the point of this class—your life will not be graded once you get out of school! If you focus instead on loving what you learn, and learning what you should love, your grades will largely take care of themselves. And if you have done your absolute best and get a “C” that is nothing to be ashamed of—your best is your best. Just make sure it actually is your best! The question, “Will this be on the test?” is related to this. While tests are important in some ways, it is far more important for you to learn how to think well than how to test well. Loving Cicero or Beowulf or Aristotle will get you a lot farther than getting 100% on a test on Cicero, Beowulf, or Aristotle.

The last is particularly important to point out to you homeschoolers: You must learn to match your schedule to someone else’s. In the rest of your life, it will not matter if you somehow “forgot” to pay your taxes on time, or if you “had too many other things to do” to make it to your parent’s funeral, or if you are “already exhausted” when the baby starts crying. You will still be in trouble. In the same way, deadlines for assignment submissions are not “suggestions” to be completed when you feel like it. You must learn to discipline and manage your time to get done what must get done. Picture, for a moment, a fable about a man with a task, who knew everything he needed to do, and had all the equipment needed to do it, and was perfectly capable of doing it—but chose to do it later or not at all! Do you really want to be that person in a story?

Some of you will hear this and immediately start panicking, scared that I will fail you without a moment’s grace. Don’t be silly—I’m a teacher, not a slave driver. My job is to help you, not hunt you. I will be happy to give generous aid in the truly hard times. If you are faced with a situation you truly cannot help, then please, ask for an extension or anything else you hope will aid you. But I would not be doing my part in your training if I did not hold you to the standard—even if it is a standard that you feel you cannot meet. Would you respect a sports coach if he let you get away with just walking during wind sprints? In the same way, learn to push through to a higher standard, until you discover new things to love. Of course, if you are having trouble, ask for help—that is what a teacher is for. You do want me to do my job, right?

So I welcome you to Freedom Training—our journey of excellence. It will not be a journey you can finish in just a year, or even in a decade—we are aiming for bigger things than that. My hope is that maybe, in thirty years or so, you will be able to look back and say you finally know now why you had to be in this class, because each of you will have begun to learn how to be truly free in a moment that really mattered.