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Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education
In part one of this book Hicks turns to Ancient Greece and to the idea of a Christian "paideia", the Greek word that means both culture and education and implies a sense of community and individual responsibility. He argues that virtue is the fruit of learning and that it should be taught in the classroom, challenging the reader to find one notable ancient who does not agree. The second part of the book includes a proposed curriculum, grades 7-12, with work in maths and sciences, art and languages, humane letters, physical education and in Grade 12, the problems of knowledge and faith.
176 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1981
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August 2, 2024
Sixteen years ago, I bought this book and took it to the hospital to read after giving birth to my youngest son. The hormones were not right. I came home and sold the book. I could not understand one sentence. Trusting all those smart people I followed around I dished out the $40.00 to re-buy it a couple years after that. I committed to blogging through my reading of the book and that helped tremendously. Since then I have read Norms and Nobility several times and modeled my high school after his models as best I could. In one of those unforeseen enchantments of life, I now count David Hicks as a personal friend. And now I have finished reading this book one more time. This time I understood much more than the time before. I have gone from babyhood in my understanding to twenty-something. Perhaps, I will never fully be grown-up enough to grasp it all. My own education has been left almost entirely in my own hands. I do wonder if there are any real schools following this model. It is a beautiful one which grasps so much of what is missing in the morass of ideas parading around as education.
"In fact, our modern educational establishment is expert at treating symptoms, at describing a disease exactly with its marvelous tools of analysis, while ignoring the invisible causes."
Think about that quote the next time you get in a debate over some issue or even when you start to grapple with an issue in your own mind. Your analysis is your problem. You are awash in too much information to clearly see any causes.
This one would do with yearly readings.
"In fact, our modern educational establishment is expert at treating symptoms, at describing a disease exactly with its marvelous tools of analysis, while ignoring the invisible causes."
Think about that quote the next time you get in a debate over some issue or even when you start to grapple with an issue in your own mind. Your analysis is your problem. You are awash in too much information to clearly see any causes.
This one would do with yearly readings.
November 29, 2011
This was another book that took me some time to read. Norms and Nobility is a 157 page book that costs $47. The price tag on such a small book will scare people off from reading it. However, I must commend it to anyone who can get their hands on it. Norms and Nobility is filled with wisdom and depth, there is no superfluity in the book, you will get every penny of your $47 out of this book.
The first two-thirds of the book is about the ideas behind classical education. The second one-third is a practical discussion of the implementation of classical education.
Author David Hicks hits on every point you could possibly think of in regards to classical education. He will challenge how you think of education; he will question your modern suppositions.
One of the main ways in which this book has challenged me is to change the way I approach teaching. My modern suppositions make me want to lecture my students, this comes naturally to me because it is the way I was taught. However, it is actually a quite unnatural way to teach and to learn. Hicks argues that we need to make myths of the truths we are learning. That to present data (or norms, more importantly) as a list of dos and don'ts is to teach unnaturally. Better, we create myths of the norms (as Homer did with heroism in The Iliad) or as God has done with the norms of the Bible (think of adultery being best taught through the story of David and Bathsheba). The real challenge is to learn to do that with those subjects that aren't naturally myths, the maths and sciences. Literature and history are naturally in myth form, making it easier to teach them that way. But the maths and sciences will take effort. This is our challenge.
A second way Hicks has challenged my thinking is to reconsider the democratic way in which classical education can be implemented. Many have argued that classical education is for the elite, that it isn't for everyone. But Hicks convincingly argues this is untrue. To Hicks, it is modern education that creates elites, although in many cases the elites have been redefined.
Finally, his practical implementation for classical education is well thought out and usable. He lists books that are to be examples of the types of books to use, not the exact books that would necessarily have to be used. This gives homes and schools the freedom to modify for their individual needs and tastes.
One striking note from the concluding section of the book, "Only the careless and unskilled teacher answers questions before they are asked. The teacher's chief task is to provoke the question, not to answer it; to cultivate in his students an active curiosity, not to inundate them in factual information."
If this quotation doesn't resonate with or make sense to you, I challenge you to read this book--it will.
This is a book that will require reading and re-reading. You will get your money's worth from this book.
The first two-thirds of the book is about the ideas behind classical education. The second one-third is a practical discussion of the implementation of classical education.
Author David Hicks hits on every point you could possibly think of in regards to classical education. He will challenge how you think of education; he will question your modern suppositions.
One of the main ways in which this book has challenged me is to change the way I approach teaching. My modern suppositions make me want to lecture my students, this comes naturally to me because it is the way I was taught. However, it is actually a quite unnatural way to teach and to learn. Hicks argues that we need to make myths of the truths we are learning. That to present data (or norms, more importantly) as a list of dos and don'ts is to teach unnaturally. Better, we create myths of the norms (as Homer did with heroism in The Iliad) or as God has done with the norms of the Bible (think of adultery being best taught through the story of David and Bathsheba). The real challenge is to learn to do that with those subjects that aren't naturally myths, the maths and sciences. Literature and history are naturally in myth form, making it easier to teach them that way. But the maths and sciences will take effort. This is our challenge.
A second way Hicks has challenged my thinking is to reconsider the democratic way in which classical education can be implemented. Many have argued that classical education is for the elite, that it isn't for everyone. But Hicks convincingly argues this is untrue. To Hicks, it is modern education that creates elites, although in many cases the elites have been redefined.
Finally, his practical implementation for classical education is well thought out and usable. He lists books that are to be examples of the types of books to use, not the exact books that would necessarily have to be used. This gives homes and schools the freedom to modify for their individual needs and tastes.
One striking note from the concluding section of the book, "Only the careless and unskilled teacher answers questions before they are asked. The teacher's chief task is to provoke the question, not to answer it; to cultivate in his students an active curiosity, not to inundate them in factual information."
If this quotation doesn't resonate with or make sense to you, I challenge you to read this book--it will.
This is a book that will require reading and re-reading. You will get your money's worth from this book.
July 31, 2022
9.5/10.
What is wrong with today's educational system? Are the wrong things being taught? Are our students just stupid? Why cannot education have any moral influence on the life direction of our students, other than being a means to reach money?
Hicks has written an excellent answer to these questions. I fault him for nothing other than his modern faith in the miraculous powers of democracy to transform the mass man. The mass man — the mediocre, unreachable, indolent man — cannot be taught the higher values of life. His natural intelligence, willpower, and self-discipline do not allow that. He must be influenced by social pressure, the necessity of making a living, and rhetoric. Only through these will he become a functioning member of society.
But there is a naturally higher subset of mankind that can be educated. Alas, today they are not! Their problem begins with education, for their education is an education of means, not of ends. They are taught the techniques and scientific discoveries of manifold domains — physics, chemistry, biology, literary studies — and learn to become masters at dissection. They dissect philosophers' thoughts, poetic meters, and historical events. But what don't they do? Actually connect their learning to what it means to be a noble human.
Students learn of every particular in sight but never think about how one ought to live as a human being. Normative questions are shoved away due to them being labeled as "subjective". All "subjective" things become objects of scorn, which obliterates the meaning of all art, philosophy, literature, and classics. All disciplines become subject to mass analysis — the splitting of an infinite amount of hairs — until the student arrives at absolutely no meaning. Digging deep into the wells of the various disciplines, the student learns structure, rhyme, literary devices, random historical events, the workings of the cell, how the weather functions, but can never ask the question: "so what for me as man?"
The teacher, renouncing moral standards of the past and replacing them with an implicit morality of defeating traditional European "oppression", destroys their students' love for learning. Shakespeare is not taught to answer the difficult questions of life — authority/freedom, love/obligation, honor/exception, passion/reason, family/ambition — but instead to dissect his sentence structure. Or worse: to reveal his patriarchal, racist intentions. Thus the individual has no moral educational drive. He has no literary heroes to look up to — no Achilleses, no Don Quixotes, no Odysseuses — and thus is submerged into "popular culture" with no saving buoy. He drowns in the mediocrity of the masses and becomes an economic puppet for the "entertainment industry".
The student goes into the world thinking that it has magically progressed due to the wonders of science. Never reading the thoughts of the greats who came before him, he thinks them antiquated, quaint, and too reactionary to consider. His teachers never gave him a chance. Sympathizing with the mass man in the name of "equality", they thought that their students couldn't handle classic literature. Too hard. Too many big words. Better read those "diverse" LGBTPEDO childrens' books instead.
The student never thinks in the modern educational environment. He never makes an argument his own and passionately defends it in debate. Debate is too masculine, too "contentious" for this weak, effeminate world of ours. It's "toxic", as they say. But it is essential for the molding of self and idea, thus allowing the student to take a truly new viewpoint of the world. And that is the lesson of classical education: one must mold one's self to viewpoints to truly understand them. Only once one has passionately argued for them does one have the right to discard them. Most moderns just walk by them and scoff.
True education is not just thought, but living what one has learned. It is feeling the pressure to live up to the high principles that the ancients teach us. The true teacher should be a sage — that is, one who both teaches and lives what he teaches. The living abstractions that are today's educators cannot do that, for they don't even teach principles. That's "subjective", as they say. They renounce responsibility and upturn the natural order of teacher molding student, adult molding child. They discard the past's wisdom in favor of laissez faire, which inevitably turns into those oh-so-virtuous behaviors of getting drunk, smoking weed, and endlessly scrolling through Instagram.
What a generation our educators have left us. Forsaking any type of duty to a classical ideal, they destroy the individual consciences of our youth while implanting a new conscience of progressivism. The students are never explicitly told that they are having this new conscience implanted inside of them, but that is precisely the result of our modern schools. The intelligent students — the ones who have an inkling of the feeling that they have a duty to rise up — get their natural duty replaced by one that tells them to fight for the Blacks, gays, and womxn. They turn into upper-class fools. They run away from "diversity" while preaching about its great value. They never read enough literature to question democracy, but instead become preachers of its divinity.
They have no self-direction except for that gained through media osmosis. They never question whether "rising" in their careers and making more money is the greatest value in life. They never self-check themselves to some higher standard — their only moral compass is pleasure and pain. They only lose weight to feel better in this world and attract more sexual husks. Their free time consists in leisurely dissipation — no effort is expended to become more virtuous. Video games, social media, and parties will do.
All of life is spent in the great haze of sensual pleasure. Coming into their mid-30s, with a decaying body and soon-to-be abhorrent looks, they question themselves. "What am I doing here? What is the purpose of life?". Confusion strikes their souls. The mid-life crisis happens. With no metaphysical values, no God, no conception of virtue, no knowledge of the wisdom of the ancients, they are left in a perenially infantile state. Unaware of their own ignorance, they think they can order their lives. If not, they can pay for an ordered life — the counselor, social worker, psychiatrist, and doctor are always available for a price.
Oh, what a horrid condition! Modern man is lost in a great delusion. Knowing nothing of his ancestors, he walks blindly into the future. He stumbles and falls over, again and again, yet thinks he can order himself. He cannot! If only someone could tell him of the greatness of Athens, the strength of Rome, the steadfastness of Christendom, the warrior spirit of the Vikings . . . but that knowledge has been lost. O Classical Tradition, buried in the muck of progressivist delusion, may thou be revived one day! May thy spirit come to modern man! May thy wisdom fill his mind, heart, and spirit! Without such a miracle, Man will only continue his great fall.
What is wrong with today's educational system? Are the wrong things being taught? Are our students just stupid? Why cannot education have any moral influence on the life direction of our students, other than being a means to reach money?
Hicks has written an excellent answer to these questions. I fault him for nothing other than his modern faith in the miraculous powers of democracy to transform the mass man. The mass man — the mediocre, unreachable, indolent man — cannot be taught the higher values of life. His natural intelligence, willpower, and self-discipline do not allow that. He must be influenced by social pressure, the necessity of making a living, and rhetoric. Only through these will he become a functioning member of society.
But there is a naturally higher subset of mankind that can be educated. Alas, today they are not! Their problem begins with education, for their education is an education of means, not of ends. They are taught the techniques and scientific discoveries of manifold domains — physics, chemistry, biology, literary studies — and learn to become masters at dissection. They dissect philosophers' thoughts, poetic meters, and historical events. But what don't they do? Actually connect their learning to what it means to be a noble human.
Students learn of every particular in sight but never think about how one ought to live as a human being. Normative questions are shoved away due to them being labeled as "subjective". All "subjective" things become objects of scorn, which obliterates the meaning of all art, philosophy, literature, and classics. All disciplines become subject to mass analysis — the splitting of an infinite amount of hairs — until the student arrives at absolutely no meaning. Digging deep into the wells of the various disciplines, the student learns structure, rhyme, literary devices, random historical events, the workings of the cell, how the weather functions, but can never ask the question: "so what for me as man?"
The teacher, renouncing moral standards of the past and replacing them with an implicit morality of defeating traditional European "oppression", destroys their students' love for learning. Shakespeare is not taught to answer the difficult questions of life — authority/freedom, love/obligation, honor/exception, passion/reason, family/ambition — but instead to dissect his sentence structure. Or worse: to reveal his patriarchal, racist intentions. Thus the individual has no moral educational drive. He has no literary heroes to look up to — no Achilleses, no Don Quixotes, no Odysseuses — and thus is submerged into "popular culture" with no saving buoy. He drowns in the mediocrity of the masses and becomes an economic puppet for the "entertainment industry".
The student goes into the world thinking that it has magically progressed due to the wonders of science. Never reading the thoughts of the greats who came before him, he thinks them antiquated, quaint, and too reactionary to consider. His teachers never gave him a chance. Sympathizing with the mass man in the name of "equality", they thought that their students couldn't handle classic literature. Too hard. Too many big words. Better read those "diverse" LGBTPEDO childrens' books instead.
The student never thinks in the modern educational environment. He never makes an argument his own and passionately defends it in debate. Debate is too masculine, too "contentious" for this weak, effeminate world of ours. It's "toxic", as they say. But it is essential for the molding of self and idea, thus allowing the student to take a truly new viewpoint of the world. And that is the lesson of classical education: one must mold one's self to viewpoints to truly understand them. Only once one has passionately argued for them does one have the right to discard them. Most moderns just walk by them and scoff.
True education is not just thought, but living what one has learned. It is feeling the pressure to live up to the high principles that the ancients teach us. The true teacher should be a sage — that is, one who both teaches and lives what he teaches. The living abstractions that are today's educators cannot do that, for they don't even teach principles. That's "subjective", as they say. They renounce responsibility and upturn the natural order of teacher molding student, adult molding child. They discard the past's wisdom in favor of laissez faire, which inevitably turns into those oh-so-virtuous behaviors of getting drunk, smoking weed, and endlessly scrolling through Instagram.
What a generation our educators have left us. Forsaking any type of duty to a classical ideal, they destroy the individual consciences of our youth while implanting a new conscience of progressivism. The students are never explicitly told that they are having this new conscience implanted inside of them, but that is precisely the result of our modern schools. The intelligent students — the ones who have an inkling of the feeling that they have a duty to rise up — get their natural duty replaced by one that tells them to fight for the Blacks, gays, and womxn. They turn into upper-class fools. They run away from "diversity" while preaching about its great value. They never read enough literature to question democracy, but instead become preachers of its divinity.
They have no self-direction except for that gained through media osmosis. They never question whether "rising" in their careers and making more money is the greatest value in life. They never self-check themselves to some higher standard — their only moral compass is pleasure and pain. They only lose weight to feel better in this world and attract more sexual husks. Their free time consists in leisurely dissipation — no effort is expended to become more virtuous. Video games, social media, and parties will do.
All of life is spent in the great haze of sensual pleasure. Coming into their mid-30s, with a decaying body and soon-to-be abhorrent looks, they question themselves. "What am I doing here? What is the purpose of life?". Confusion strikes their souls. The mid-life crisis happens. With no metaphysical values, no God, no conception of virtue, no knowledge of the wisdom of the ancients, they are left in a perenially infantile state. Unaware of their own ignorance, they think they can order their lives. If not, they can pay for an ordered life — the counselor, social worker, psychiatrist, and doctor are always available for a price.
Oh, what a horrid condition! Modern man is lost in a great delusion. Knowing nothing of his ancestors, he walks blindly into the future. He stumbles and falls over, again and again, yet thinks he can order himself. He cannot! If only someone could tell him of the greatness of Athens, the strength of Rome, the steadfastness of Christendom, the warrior spirit of the Vikings . . . but that knowledge has been lost. O Classical Tradition, buried in the muck of progressivist delusion, may thou be revived one day! May thy spirit come to modern man! May thy wisdom fill his mind, heart, and spirit! Without such a miracle, Man will only continue his great fall.
January 2, 2025
So grateful that the Circe Institute has finally reissued this book for a reasonable price—it is essential content for the shelves to be referenced time and again. It is yet another diagnostic-with-solution book written during the 1980s that assesses the dire direction of the American project with visionary accuracy (The Closing of the American Mind, After Virtue, and Amusing Ourselves to Death also belong in that category). There is an incredible amount of insight on each page, even if Hicks repeats a lot of points to an occasionally wearisome degree. Naturally, I don't agree with everything that Hicks says, but I have a tough time envisioning how anyone could respond to any of his main talking points. This is THE definitive critique of modern education, and it is worth reading if only for that. But I mainly treasure it for its unparalleled description of the education that brings humanity closest to what it is meant to be. This is a book to savor when you despair of the possibility of our culture's salvation—certainly, the apparent utter incompatibility of everything that I hold dear and valuable with American cultural stipulations has been on my mind lately, and this was a timely read due to that. Hicks is unashamedly optimistic that classical education can offer deliverance, but he never loses sight of the fact that our telos is of an altogether different aim than mere world citizenship. However, I think his greatest achievement is elucidating the harmony between classical and Christian conceptions of education, and his final vision is something like a mix between the Republic and the City of God. Though the topic of classical education will always provide fertile material for new books, everyone has to go through Hicks to get there; and to face up to his sui generis formulation. For the time being, it remains the finest brief historical and philosophical survey of what such an education means.
July 30, 2019
Own
The start date is only sort of tongue in cheek - Amazon tells me I purchased this March 10, 2009. Sounds about right. I started (again) in January 2018 and read slowly with friends over a year and a half. They finished in June, I finished today. It was worth my time.
The start date is only sort of tongue in cheek - Amazon tells me I purchased this March 10, 2009. Sounds about right. I started (again) in January 2018 and read slowly with friends over a year and a half. They finished in June, I finished today. It was worth my time.
June 13, 2020
Truly a mind-transforming book. Very challenging but worth the effort! One I will need to keep rereading, probably for the rest of my life. "True learning brings man to a full stature of his humanity in all his domains - the individual, the social and political, and the religious...True learning resolves the paradox between educating for the world's fight and for the soul's salvation in favor of the active life of virtue. Only a saved soul can fight the world's fight and know the cost of losing and the value of what it has won."
August 20, 2024
It is finished! I have owned this book for 10 years and have made it through halfway at various times in various group reads, but thanks to Cindy Rollins and her Patreon recordings and discussions this past year, I have arrived at the end.
Perhaps one day in my leisure I will return here and give a more thorough review of the book. Perhaps. Now I just need a nap.
Perhaps one day in my leisure I will return here and give a more thorough review of the book. Perhaps. Now I just need a nap.
January 19, 2023
This was a difficult read, but completely worth pushing through. Once I became accustomed to and understood his vocabulary, the book became easier. I'll be coming back to this book many times in the future, I'm sure.
Some ideas I have been pondering after my first read through:
1. Modern education is about what is possible/practical (utility). Classical education is about what is right (virtue). The pursuit of virtue is the highest goal in a classical education, and the way to do that is to hold up an ideal before the student of what he ought to be. Much of the best thought regarding these things can be found in old books where authors relentlessly raise – and ANSWER – questions such as “What is the meaning and purpose of man’s existence? What are man’s absolute rights and duties? What form of government and what way of life is best? What is good and what is evil?”
2. Modern education teaches analytically, breaking things into their minutest pieces. It misses the big picture and much of the synthesis of ideas that don't fit neatly into a single discipline. The success of the scientific method has tricked the modern world into believing that ALL questions can eventually be answered through that avenue. What has happened instead is that our educational institutions stop asking the questions that cannot be answered by analysis. Our youth miss out on an education that feeds their souls and instead get an education that merely prepares them for the job market.
3. The way for a student to learn dialectically is to begin with myth/dogma (beliefs about ultimate Truth that cannot be tested scientifically), embracing the view fully to start, and then challenging the contradictions until he comes out on the other side either having rejected the original dogma or having come to a fuller understanding of its Truth.
Some favorite quotes:
“Man’s knowledge is without value to him unless he reaches it dialectically – unless it animates his body, indwells his mind, and possesses his soul.”
“Once he receives a dogma, the student of dialectic begins in his life and learning to verify it. At the same time, challenges and contradictions to the dogma occur, altering the original dogma, reformulating it. Conscience compels the student to act on these reformulations, to take responsibility for what he knows, and to be constantly renewing his dialectical quarrel with life and letters. Rather than prepare the student for the carefree outer life he wants, dialectical learning awakens him to the ‘quarrelsome’ inner life he must have if he is to preserve and enlarge his frail humanity.”
“Today we count quarks and pulverize DNA molecules instead of numbering demons on the heads of pins, but what has really changed? We still flounder in a shallow ocean of bits and pieces, of endless taxonomies. Can there be an end to dredging up the particles of the material universe? What is it that we are actually looking for? Do we seek a palpable divinity dancing under our microscopes? What does it all mean to man and to how he composes his life?
This last is the fundamental question of our times, yet it is a question that modern reductionist education refuses to address, since it lacks not only an answer, but even the most rudimentary methods for seeking an answer.”
“Only the careless and unskilled teacher answers questions before they are asked. The teacher’s chief task is to provoke the question, not to answer it; to cultivate in his students an active curiosity, not to inundate them in factual information. The teacher’s answers will not stimulate the formation of conscience and style in his student, nor will they impart paideia, if they are not in response to the student’s own questions.”
“The classical science teacher constantly asks himself; ‘How does this or that scientific truth touch my students’ lives and increase their understanding of themselves and their purposes?’”
“The decisive lesson of any first-hand study of history is that for almost every modern thought or innovation, there exists an historical precedent illuminating and sometimes outshining it.”
Some ideas I have been pondering after my first read through:
1. Modern education is about what is possible/practical (utility). Classical education is about what is right (virtue). The pursuit of virtue is the highest goal in a classical education, and the way to do that is to hold up an ideal before the student of what he ought to be. Much of the best thought regarding these things can be found in old books where authors relentlessly raise – and ANSWER – questions such as “What is the meaning and purpose of man’s existence? What are man’s absolute rights and duties? What form of government and what way of life is best? What is good and what is evil?”
2. Modern education teaches analytically, breaking things into their minutest pieces. It misses the big picture and much of the synthesis of ideas that don't fit neatly into a single discipline. The success of the scientific method has tricked the modern world into believing that ALL questions can eventually be answered through that avenue. What has happened instead is that our educational institutions stop asking the questions that cannot be answered by analysis. Our youth miss out on an education that feeds their souls and instead get an education that merely prepares them for the job market.
3. The way for a student to learn dialectically is to begin with myth/dogma (beliefs about ultimate Truth that cannot be tested scientifically), embracing the view fully to start, and then challenging the contradictions until he comes out on the other side either having rejected the original dogma or having come to a fuller understanding of its Truth.
Some favorite quotes:
“Man’s knowledge is without value to him unless he reaches it dialectically – unless it animates his body, indwells his mind, and possesses his soul.”
“Once he receives a dogma, the student of dialectic begins in his life and learning to verify it. At the same time, challenges and contradictions to the dogma occur, altering the original dogma, reformulating it. Conscience compels the student to act on these reformulations, to take responsibility for what he knows, and to be constantly renewing his dialectical quarrel with life and letters. Rather than prepare the student for the carefree outer life he wants, dialectical learning awakens him to the ‘quarrelsome’ inner life he must have if he is to preserve and enlarge his frail humanity.”
“Today we count quarks and pulverize DNA molecules instead of numbering demons on the heads of pins, but what has really changed? We still flounder in a shallow ocean of bits and pieces, of endless taxonomies. Can there be an end to dredging up the particles of the material universe? What is it that we are actually looking for? Do we seek a palpable divinity dancing under our microscopes? What does it all mean to man and to how he composes his life?
This last is the fundamental question of our times, yet it is a question that modern reductionist education refuses to address, since it lacks not only an answer, but even the most rudimentary methods for seeking an answer.”
“Only the careless and unskilled teacher answers questions before they are asked. The teacher’s chief task is to provoke the question, not to answer it; to cultivate in his students an active curiosity, not to inundate them in factual information. The teacher’s answers will not stimulate the formation of conscience and style in his student, nor will they impart paideia, if they are not in response to the student’s own questions.”
“The classical science teacher constantly asks himself; ‘How does this or that scientific truth touch my students’ lives and increase their understanding of themselves and their purposes?’”
“The decisive lesson of any first-hand study of history is that for almost every modern thought or innovation, there exists an historical precedent illuminating and sometimes outshining it.”
August 21, 2010
Here is an essay that digs deep into the roots and purposes of classical education. This is not a replication exercise, i.e. how can we re-create the educative methodology of the ancient world, plonked down in our school or classroom. Rather it is a thought-out application of classical and Biblical principles from a seasoned practioner. Replete with quotable insights, the main threads are clear:-
The teacher is a model not just a conveyer belt for data;
Analysis is not the method of a classical approach. Analysis has too much of a scientific skew. Rather we want to learn how to ask the right questions, not supply a photocopy of the correct responses. How to think, not what to think.
Method over data. Classical education inculcates a method life-long inquiry, not the mastering of a pile of information, or exam fodder.
Education is after virtue, not a fuller curriculum vitae.
There's loads more and it's all very good. It takes more than one read though..
The teacher is a model not just a conveyer belt for data;
Analysis is not the method of a classical approach. Analysis has too much of a scientific skew. Rather we want to learn how to ask the right questions, not supply a photocopy of the correct responses. How to think, not what to think.
Method over data. Classical education inculcates a method life-long inquiry, not the mastering of a pile of information, or exam fodder.
Education is after virtue, not a fuller curriculum vitae.
There's loads more and it's all very good. It takes more than one read though..
September 8, 2014
I decided to rate this book 5 stars, rather than 4, because it is a rare treat to find a book that has both excellent philosophical ideas, as well as practical application ideas.
The authors thoughts on The Ideal Type has changed my view of the world and education. It is through discovering what the Ideal Type is that we ourselves become virtuous human beings. And it is through reading and studying history and classics that we discover what the Ideal Type is and how that Ideal affected change in the world. I realize that this statement does not likely sound profound, but the way the author explained this idea gave me a greater depth of understanding this idea.
Another concept that struck me in this book was the comparison between what "can be done" with what "ought to be done". Modern man often focuses on what can be done, rather than what ought to be done. It is through the study of the Ideal Type that we are able to distinguish between these two ideas and make better choices for ourselves, our families and our communities.
The chapters on Ennobling the Masses and The Necessity of Dogma were also excellent. And the Grade 7-12 education plan appears thorough and completely doable. I would highly recommend this book to all educators!
The authors thoughts on The Ideal Type has changed my view of the world and education. It is through discovering what the Ideal Type is that we ourselves become virtuous human beings. And it is through reading and studying history and classics that we discover what the Ideal Type is and how that Ideal affected change in the world. I realize that this statement does not likely sound profound, but the way the author explained this idea gave me a greater depth of understanding this idea.
Another concept that struck me in this book was the comparison between what "can be done" with what "ought to be done". Modern man often focuses on what can be done, rather than what ought to be done. It is through the study of the Ideal Type that we are able to distinguish between these two ideas and make better choices for ourselves, our families and our communities.
The chapters on Ennobling the Masses and The Necessity of Dogma were also excellent. And the Grade 7-12 education plan appears thorough and completely doable. I would highly recommend this book to all educators!
May 26, 2023
This time through I found the relentless attack of modern education a bit wearing and the writing style, well, overblown. ;) But I'll leave the rating at 5 stars because it is an important book that is even more relevant than it was 40 years ago. Here are a few favorite quotes:
"Schools are places where students learn because they are places where teachers learn. Only a school (and by extension a curriculum) that encourages teachers to be always learning will keep its teachers fresh and fearless and its students happy and motivated in their studies, ready to test their lessons against life." (Preface)
"Do we not understand that conflict which shares its purposes is good and that uniformity does not mean unity any more than conformity signifies independent and intelligent agreement?" (pg 26)
"Love is the principle of truth in philosophy and of beauty in art that draws the spirit of man off center to participate imaginatively in the object of beauty or truth." (pg 93)
"Schools are places where students learn because they are places where teachers learn. Only a school (and by extension a curriculum) that encourages teachers to be always learning will keep its teachers fresh and fearless and its students happy and motivated in their studies, ready to test their lessons against life." (Preface)
"Do we not understand that conflict which shares its purposes is good and that uniformity does not mean unity any more than conformity signifies independent and intelligent agreement?" (pg 26)
"Love is the principle of truth in philosophy and of beauty in art that draws the spirit of man off center to participate imaginatively in the object of beauty or truth." (pg 93)
December 21, 2025
Read this over the course of a whole year, and it was probably my most difficult read intellectually. It was good to go slow and digest it with the help of a book club. There was enough that went over my head that I’d probably benefit from a re-read in a couple of years, but also plenty of rich truths gleaned on the first go-round.
Main takeaway: education is for the purpose of pursuing a normative ideal type, found in the large body of classical literature over centuries, particularly the ideal given in a biblical worldview. Give children something to aspire to and aim for, rather than talking down to them. Technological advancements are only as great as the ends to which they are put.
Main takeaway: education is for the purpose of pursuing a normative ideal type, found in the large body of classical literature over centuries, particularly the ideal given in a biblical worldview. Give children something to aspire to and aim for, rather than talking down to them. Technological advancements are only as great as the ends to which they are put.
June 17, 2023
Ok. Brace yourself.
For years I have seen a footnote on Ambleside Online’s website with a special thanks to David V. Hicks and Norms and Nobility. I’ve always been curious, and I finally had the chance to read it. I have words.
First, I’m glad I waited until I had graduated a student before I read it. I think if I would have tried to read it any earlier I would have been overwhelmed. The amount of prereading I have done, especially worldview books, helped greatly in following the trail Hicks was leading us down. Then there is what I see in my daughter when I read about what true education does to a person. I can see her reflected in these words, just as I can see 18 year old me reflected in what he said about the results of modern education. I am thankful my second education has redeemed that.
Second, wow. Many times I paused and had a Charlotte Mason quote pop in my mind that related to what I read. Miss Mason’s “higher life”, “the science of relations”, thoughts on books, history, a mother’s education, etc. Seeing the suggested classical curriculum was like finding all of the Hobbit characters in the Prose Edda: What are these familiar things doing in this strange book?
I get it, and I understand the fruit of it.
My favorite chapter was chapter 11. A little something from my commonplace: “A scholarly mind is characterized by an ability to make connections, to visualize the relatedness of sundry facts, ideas, and concepts. The scholar’s mind works like a person laboring over a jigsaw puzzle, grouping pieces by pattern, image, and color, while retaining in the mind an outline of the whole picture. The scholar derives his excitement and motivation at first from snapping discrete pieces together and, in time, from seeing the image of the whole puzzle begin to emerge. His excitement, as well as his chances for completing the puzzle, however, depend on his being given a sufficient number of pieces from the same puzzle.”
Immediately I thought, “It’s the science of relations and spreading the feast.” 🤓
I did get a little tired of the modern education bashing. We get it, it’s broken, been broken for decades. There’s no need to call people morons or ignoramuses. Don’t tell me education produces character and virtue at the same time as you’re calling people morons and ignoramuses. It’s not a good look. 🤷🏼♀️
For years I have seen a footnote on Ambleside Online’s website with a special thanks to David V. Hicks and Norms and Nobility. I’ve always been curious, and I finally had the chance to read it. I have words.
First, I’m glad I waited until I had graduated a student before I read it. I think if I would have tried to read it any earlier I would have been overwhelmed. The amount of prereading I have done, especially worldview books, helped greatly in following the trail Hicks was leading us down. Then there is what I see in my daughter when I read about what true education does to a person. I can see her reflected in these words, just as I can see 18 year old me reflected in what he said about the results of modern education. I am thankful my second education has redeemed that.
Second, wow. Many times I paused and had a Charlotte Mason quote pop in my mind that related to what I read. Miss Mason’s “higher life”, “the science of relations”, thoughts on books, history, a mother’s education, etc. Seeing the suggested classical curriculum was like finding all of the Hobbit characters in the Prose Edda: What are these familiar things doing in this strange book?
I get it, and I understand the fruit of it.
My favorite chapter was chapter 11. A little something from my commonplace: “A scholarly mind is characterized by an ability to make connections, to visualize the relatedness of sundry facts, ideas, and concepts. The scholar’s mind works like a person laboring over a jigsaw puzzle, grouping pieces by pattern, image, and color, while retaining in the mind an outline of the whole picture. The scholar derives his excitement and motivation at first from snapping discrete pieces together and, in time, from seeing the image of the whole puzzle begin to emerge. His excitement, as well as his chances for completing the puzzle, however, depend on his being given a sufficient number of pieces from the same puzzle.”
Immediately I thought, “It’s the science of relations and spreading the feast.” 🤓
I did get a little tired of the modern education bashing. We get it, it’s broken, been broken for decades. There’s no need to call people morons or ignoramuses. Don’t tell me education produces character and virtue at the same time as you’re calling people morons and ignoramuses. It’s not a good look. 🤷🏼♀️
September 24, 2024
This is such an important book. The absolute best book on classical education that I have read thus far with such a thorough explanation. Dense but accessible; this book should not be a quick read. It required all of my concentration and thought and I was rewarded by an expanded vision of education!
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May 14, 2025As I was reading I often came to many noteworthy passages, but alas public education and my own continued education has not readily prepared me for writing such as the author provides.
I will revisit this soon as I hope for better understanding in future readings, at which time my star rating may improve.
I will revisit this soon as I hope for better understanding in future readings, at which time my star rating may improve.
November 13, 2024
This may be the essential primer for classical education: insightful, comprehensive, idealistic, and practical all at once.
January 28, 2014
This book has altered my paradigm in regards to man and education more than any other book. I hesitated to mark it as read because I will really never be done reading this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who care that people are educated in a way that is actually consistent with who we are as human beings.
I just started a yahoo group dedicated to discussing this book. I would love to have any one interested join the conversation. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/normsan...
I just started a yahoo group dedicated to discussing this book. I would love to have any one interested join the conversation. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/normsan...
April 16, 2015
Really really good. It took me a long time to finish because its a book that needs to be pondered extensively. Its a challenging read but I would definitely recommend it for any homeschooling parent, especially those interested in classical, Charlotte Mason or just a good general Christian education (which I believe to all be the same thing :-) ) Worth the price!
May 25, 2015
Finally finished this book! I feel like I only scratched the surface though and I know I must read it again. I am inspired and wish I had read it at the beginning of my homeschooling journey rather than at the end.
June 27, 2020
I first read this book in 2010 as one new to classical education. It struck me as important then, but I didn’t know enough about what I was getting into as a teacher in the tradition as a whole, or the modern “movement” that has been reviving it. I read the book again this month and was struck by how many of the questions and concerns it addresses that have arisen for me in a decade of teaching in a classical and Christian school. The culture in which we live has very few people who consider education to be a legacy to be passed on or a heritage to be transferred, but rather they see it as a chip to be cashed in for successful career and comfortable consumption. Many classical schools compromise the high calling they cast in their vision by accommodating the utilitarian expectations of the culture: high test scores, good GPA, elite scholarships, and even aspects that appear classical, but are twisted to serve utilitarian motives. Moreover, teachers who receive classical content and classical pedagogy without understanding the norms of virtue and the Ideal Man offered by the great literature and pious aims of Classical education will teach according to the utilitarian aims they have imbibed as modern students. This book and others like it are indispensable to those who are involved or wish to be involved in Classical education—far more important than Dorothy Sayers’s address on Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, and more in the realm of Abolition of Man.
July 7, 2018
I'm always reading this book and always amazed by its insights and depths. Hicks sees the point at which education has broken down, and he discusses how it happened, what could have been, and how it can be fixed.
However, he wrote in 1980 and some of his predictions have been depressingly fulfilled already. If it is not too late, this book will help many of us find a path out of this dark wood we are lost in.
His comparison of normative with analytical education is mind expanding, humbling, and very, very wise.
However, he wrote in 1980 and some of his predictions have been depressingly fulfilled already. If it is not too late, this book will help many of us find a path out of this dark wood we are lost in.
His comparison of normative with analytical education is mind expanding, humbling, and very, very wise.
July 26, 2018
There’s absolutely no way to sum up how invaluable this book has been for me. I’m positive that I’ve only gleaned the bare minimum with this first reading; I hope to re-visit it to get deeper meaning in the future. It was also such a pleasure to work through this book and wrestle with its concepts with an enormously insightful group of ladies that I love. What an amazing life!!!
May 10, 2022
This book does indeed make my educator’s heart flutter. My life’s goal is to open/work in a school follow Hick’s model.
I do wish that Hicks would write a version of this that’s written to us who were educated in the modern education system. ;)
I do wish that Hicks would write a version of this that’s written to us who were educated in the modern education system. ;)
May 11, 2021
Why haven't you read this yet? Seriously.
October 19, 2024
"Education at every level reflects our primary assumptions about the nature of man, and for this reason, no education is innocent of an attitude toward man and his purposes. The writer on education... whether he wishes to or not, he presupposes an order of human values; his understanding of the nature and proper end of man determines the purposes and tasks that he assigns to education" (10).
"Hegel, Comte, Marx, Darwin, Freud--each in his own way identified the sources of evil in things outside man or beyond his control" (13).
"The modern school excludes the normative aspects of all knowledge (inquiry concerning what ought to be done) in favor of the operational (the inquiry concerning what can be done)" (14)
"It is my intention in this book to ponder the difference between the man who was educated to believe himself to be a little lower than the angels and the man whose education permits him to ignore both angels and God, to avoid knowledge not of the five senses, and to presume mastery over nature but not over himself" (17).
"Modern man's inveterate tendency to supplant the normative with the operational--to ask, What can be done? instead of, What ought to be done?--characterizes today's educational policies" (17).
"The educational establishment lacks the ruthless advantages of the military, where (at least theoretically) the white heat of battle forces error into the open and exposes the incompetence and unimaginativeness of those whose leadership amounts to no more than a vested interest" (18).
"Can there be true independence of thought without mastery of language?" (18)
"The good school does not just offer what the student or the parent or the state desires, but it says something about what these three ought to desire" (20).
"The student of myths is likewise transformed by participating in them through his imagination" (39).
"A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can" -J. S. Mill (49)
"Not all experience is equally meaningful; in fact, no experience in itself has any value whatsoever. What validates experience are the questions, assumptions, and attitudes one brings to it and takes from it" (75).
"An education limited to what is scientifically verifiable excludes huge tracts of human experience and sends students into the wilderness of this world without a map" (77).
"The teacher often becomes so caught up in getting his students to cover a body of material that he forgets why they are studying it" (87).
"Debate is a natural vehicle for achieving the goals of the classical academy: the cultivation of the conscience and style of a learned, graceful, inquisitive, just, self-aware world citizen" (177).
"Hegel, Comte, Marx, Darwin, Freud--each in his own way identified the sources of evil in things outside man or beyond his control" (13).
"The modern school excludes the normative aspects of all knowledge (inquiry concerning what ought to be done) in favor of the operational (the inquiry concerning what can be done)" (14)
"It is my intention in this book to ponder the difference between the man who was educated to believe himself to be a little lower than the angels and the man whose education permits him to ignore both angels and God, to avoid knowledge not of the five senses, and to presume mastery over nature but not over himself" (17).
"Modern man's inveterate tendency to supplant the normative with the operational--to ask, What can be done? instead of, What ought to be done?--characterizes today's educational policies" (17).
"The educational establishment lacks the ruthless advantages of the military, where (at least theoretically) the white heat of battle forces error into the open and exposes the incompetence and unimaginativeness of those whose leadership amounts to no more than a vested interest" (18).
"Can there be true independence of thought without mastery of language?" (18)
"The good school does not just offer what the student or the parent or the state desires, but it says something about what these three ought to desire" (20).
"The student of myths is likewise transformed by participating in them through his imagination" (39).
"A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can" -J. S. Mill (49)
"Not all experience is equally meaningful; in fact, no experience in itself has any value whatsoever. What validates experience are the questions, assumptions, and attitudes one brings to it and takes from it" (75).
"An education limited to what is scientifically verifiable excludes huge tracts of human experience and sends students into the wilderness of this world without a map" (77).
"The teacher often becomes so caught up in getting his students to cover a body of material that he forgets why they are studying it" (87).
"Debate is a natural vehicle for achieving the goals of the classical academy: the cultivation of the conscience and style of a learned, graceful, inquisitive, just, self-aware world citizen" (177).
Currently reading
September 11, 2025These quotes are the closest I’ve come to finding a succinct explanation for why I wanted to homeschool.
“[A man’s] understanding of the nature and proper end of man determines the purposes and tasks that he assigns to education.”
He’s just referenced Gilgamesh and Enkidu, David and Jonathan, and Odysseus’ insults at the Cyclops… “What made these stories valuable to me was not their historical authenticity or experimental demonstrability, but their allegiance to a pattern of truth…Let my teacher remember to what and his instructions are principally directed…’That he unspent not so much in his schollers mind the date of the ruine of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio, nor so much where Marcellus died, as because he was unworthy of his duty he died there: that he teach him no so much to know Histories, as to judge of them…To some kind of men, it is a meere gramaticall studie, but to others a perfect anatomie of Philosophie; by meanes whereof, the secrete part of our nature is searched-into.’”
“[A man’s] understanding of the nature and proper end of man determines the purposes and tasks that he assigns to education.”
He’s just referenced Gilgamesh and Enkidu, David and Jonathan, and Odysseus’ insults at the Cyclops… “What made these stories valuable to me was not their historical authenticity or experimental demonstrability, but their allegiance to a pattern of truth…Let my teacher remember to what and his instructions are principally directed…’That he unspent not so much in his schollers mind the date of the ruine of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio, nor so much where Marcellus died, as because he was unworthy of his duty he died there: that he teach him no so much to know Histories, as to judge of them…To some kind of men, it is a meere gramaticall studie, but to others a perfect anatomie of Philosophie; by meanes whereof, the secrete part of our nature is searched-into.’”
July 1, 2025
A rather dense treatise but nonetheless profound and insightful. This book is very helpful in understanding how science and technology have affected modern education, as well as society’s view of the value of education.
Hicks also offers a very compelling case for a classical education, one that is ancient yet relevant for our present day.
A must read for any educator!
Hicks also offers a very compelling case for a classical education, one that is ancient yet relevant for our present day.
A must read for any educator!
May 7, 2025
I may have only understood about 75% of it and had to apply the Just-Keep-Reading-And-It-Will-Make-Sense-Eventually Rule once or twice, but this book created a lot of great discussion within our book club and food for thought. I don’t think I could have read it on my own—it was so valuable to process these ideas with others. My brain is fatigued in the best way and I’ll return to this again someday.
April 15, 2015
This heady tome assumes the reader has a robust vocabulary and a passing familiarity of philosophy. I slugged my way through, ferreting out gems and wondering why this didn't cross my radar sooner! I was under the "inter-library loan" gun to get it read in a week, for which I am now glad. Am considering buying my own copy so I can underline and reference it.
Now that Common Core is in the offing, this book is more important than ever. The author makes a strong case that a "classical" education is the only education model that will preserve democracy in the long run. It is interesting to weigh the predictions and observations he made thirty years ago to today's reality. Sobering, indeed.
Now that Common Core is in the offing, this book is more important than ever. The author makes a strong case that a "classical" education is the only education model that will preserve democracy in the long run. It is interesting to weigh the predictions and observations he made thirty years ago to today's reality. Sobering, indeed.
June 12, 2015
Favorite quotes:
"True learning knows what is good, serves it above self, reproduces it, and recognizes that in knowledge lies this responsibility."
"Education as paideia is not preparation for life, for college, or for work; it is our inherited means of living fully in the present, while we grow in wisdom and in grace, in conscience and in style, entering gradually into 'the good life.'"
"The greatest part of education is instilling in the young the desire to be good: a desire that sharpens and shapes their understanding, that motivates and sustains their curiosity, and that imbues their studies with transcendent value."
"True learning knows what is good, serves it above self, reproduces it, and recognizes that in knowledge lies this responsibility."
"Education as paideia is not preparation for life, for college, or for work; it is our inherited means of living fully in the present, while we grow in wisdom and in grace, in conscience and in style, entering gradually into 'the good life.'"
"The greatest part of education is instilling in the young the desire to be good: a desire that sharpens and shapes their understanding, that motivates and sustains their curiosity, and that imbues their studies with transcendent value."
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