Lizzie Sanduleac’s Reviews > Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education > Status Update

Neil Postman’s The End of Education emphasizes teaching historical narrative over simply learning “the facts of cultural legacy.”

Without "a narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, learning has no purpose.” (Emergency of historical alienation, see Bulwarks of Unbelief)

5 narratives: “spaceship earth, fallen angel, American experiment, law of diversity, and word weavers/world makers.”

Hirsch
“Those who attack cultural literacy as elitist… do not understand how national cultures are formed or the role that cultural literacy plays in bringing unity and allowing marginal groups to succeed within the native or dominant culture.”

If we lose cultural literacy, we’ll lose effective “crosscultural dialogue.”

E. D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, similar to Adler.

Both wanted all U. S. citizens to receive the same education with little or no variation and no socialization through classes like driver’s ed, sex ed, and hygiene.

“The goal is not conformity but the possession of a common cultural language.” (194)

Adler’s suggested three-part education
1) lectures and textbooks
2) coaching in 3 Rs
3) Socratic discussion of the Great Books and the various arts

Mortimer Adler's Paideia Proposal, a plan for public school reform, “mingles American pragmatism with a firm commitment to the classical tradition, liberal political concerns with a conservative pedagogical vision.” He had a “populist-egalitarian” goal.

Sayers seems better for classroom, Mason for small homeschool.

Though Mason leaned Romantic, she critiqued Rousseau’s “self-sufficient person who should know nothing of the past, should see no visions, allow no authority. But human nature in children is stronger than the eighteenth century philosopher and the theories which he continues to inform.” (Likely regarding Montessori)

Main distinction of Mason: synthesis vs analysis.
“Whereas our scientific, technological, utilitarian age puts all its focus on analysis, breaking down knowledge so that it can be memorized for standardized exams,” Maso sought a “holistic grasp of God, man, and the natural world” through quality books which are to be “taken in as close friends.”

"Children have a right to the best we possess.” -CM

Dorothy Sayers and Charlotte Mason “honored the traditional Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian paideia” but Mason had “a more Romantic, Wordsworthian view of children and nature.”

CM:
“children are born persons… equally capable of good and evil. Our job as educators is not to herd or manage or manipulate them… but to guide them into a love of learning that will help order their affections…” (183)

“Cynicism and skepticism tear down without building up... They are substitutes for rather than supporters of critical thinking.” (175)

C. S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man

"For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique…” (A o M, p. 88)

Accessible explanation of Heidegger’s “challenging-forth”.