I
If we break this book down into tiny bites we just might get somewhere. Did you read this first part (I) of the prologue? Did you understand it?
David Hicks is going to define for us "a personal interpretation" of what can "loosely be referred to as classical education." I really, really like his humility in approaching this subject. He begins by telling the story from the novel The Rector of Justin
by Louis Auchincloss. It is the story of the death of a vision. But as Hicks points out we don't know what went wrong. We don't even know what questions to ask.The language of our age has contrived to confuse us. We think that a statistic is a philosophy. We are overawed by technology. This has been illustrated in my life through the difference in my home births and my last hospital birth. In my homebirths the midwives relied on me to tell them where I was in labor, and they used their hands. In my last hospital birth when I told the nurse I felt like pushing she looked at the screen and said that was silly. Guess what? The baby was being born while the panicked nurse was yelling for the doctor. Thank goodness the doctor arrived in time ;)
II
The most confusing words in this part of the book were prescriptive and descriptive? What does Hicks mean by those words?
I like the picture Hicks gives of the Ideal Type striding between the poles of human strength and human frailty.
In this section we begin to get the first glimmer that maybe we have the wrong goals for our children and maybe it is a serious mistake. In III we begin to get nervous. But before we move to III, what do you think when Hicks says that the Ideal Type's ancient, prescriptive pattern of truth served Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians?
We have now read 7 1/2 pages of a difficult book. Easy-smeasy!! Did it seem comprehensible? Did the author lose you yet? Where?
Feel free to discuss anything that you found interesting in the prologue
I will try to move on to III and IV, finishing up the prologue tomorrow. I slowed this down because there is a big question on the horizon.
17 comments:
I'll be back to add more later. But I was thinking on "descriptive" and "prescriptive" so I did a little searching. Here is a page about the words as they relate to grammar and I thought there might be some helpful ideas in it for our discussion. For example, descriptive grammar is simply what *is* no value judgment about whether use of language is good or bad. But prescriptive grammar is about should and ought. Prescriptive grammarians want to help us avoid making mistakes with the language.
http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/grammarintro.htm
Jami M.
Commenting so that I can get email updates ;-)
Actually... since I dont own the book yet, I decided to google the author.
It's always interesting to find out where the writer is coming from.
http://www.darlingtonschool.org/daily/newsview.aspx?newsID=2459498
I don't know for sure what you're looking for, but here is my response to your question in paragraph three:
The Ideal Type had a prescriptive pattern of truth, yet the Christian's approach to it is radically different from the others'. The Christian pattern turned the ancient pattern upside down by making the hero a suffering hero, and the ideal was one found through acceptance of grace. But Hicks is right that there was a virtuous ideal in all four. They were just different ideals, or expressed differently.
Also, I don't eschew all technology, obviously, but I would like to at least ask the question of whether the technology serves the ideal. The problem, as Hicks points out, is that technology tends to frame the questions we ask. Or as Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message."
BTW, was Hicks being critical of McLuhan? I've always seen McLuhan as someone who points out the limits of technology, not one who praises it unreservedly.
While I was getting my English degree at a state university I encountered the "prescriptive" vs. "descriptive" categories in grammar & language development (how do you determine what a word means? By the dictionary that was written 100+ years ago or by how people are actually using it today). Of course, everyone at the university was a descriptivist, and though I sensed we all should be prescriptivist, I didn't know how to answer their arguments. After all, language does change, so you are shepherding the wind to try to keep some antiquated "purity" of the language. So, I see what people write on FB or texts or blogs -- or even homeschooled girls in my writing class -- and I weep for the language of Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible.
The descriptive/prescriptive difference is one over whether or not there is authority, objective meaning, and "oughts" -- at all, in any arena. Modernity's problem is that it has denied higher authority and so destroyed the basis of any authority (and I actually just read that this morning in CM, School Education, chapter 1). You can say whatever you want, a text can mean whatever it means to you, you can be whatever you want, don't let anyone impose their standards on you. No one has the right to prescribe any behavior or any definitions or any judgements. And hence we are in a mess of a culture and society.
My favorite sentence in this section is on the Ideal Type: "Both an elaborate dogma and a man, it defied comparison with any man, yet all men discovered themselves in it."
"Descriptive grammar (definition #1) refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers. Prescriptive grammar (definition #2) refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used."
This is from the link Jami posted above.
Laura, I am not really looking for anything in particular, I just thought it was worth discussing and your words set me thinking about it quite a bit. The gospel was born into a culture that was comfortable with ideals. Certainly skepticism was already around as Hicks points out. Pilate was asking, "What is truth?" Obviously, God's timing for the life of Christ was perfect. I am just wondering if it is significant that the cultures of time understood the idea of the ideal and also the need for redemption.
Also this all makes me think of LOST :) That would be the ABC TV show.....But LOST seems to be the study of the IDEAL and the need for redemption.
Dana,
I will try to stop after the prologue until next week to give you and others a chance to get the books. We will probably read it very slowly.
Do you know why N&N is such a tough read for me? I get to about page 4 or 5 and there are so many ideas exploding all over the place that I start to feel like I might drown in them! And I admit, I'm a verbal processor, so this discussion format makes me feel like I'm allowing a tiny trickle of the ideas through but if we could sit down together in my living room the damn would burst and my mind would be able to come up for air. ;-)
But I will do my best. The sciences and social sciences have their place. They can describe some things in reality, empirically. They can record and measure. They assess some problems in modern education, but too many people wrongly believe that they can solve the problems diagnosed. But when it comes to the eternal, timeless, *soul* of things, those methods fall short. Hicks is trying to offer a path back to methods which *can* redeem education. A prescriptive methodology built on Ideal Types historically provided the unifying vision worthy of educating the young.
I love that quote by Montaigne. I come back to it again and again to remind myself that it's not the lists of dates and facts that my children need. But the characters of the men of history, both good and bad. The stories and tales. And "historical authenticity or experimental demonstrability" are less critical than the allegiance of those stories to a "pattern of truth". This makes me think of Charlotte Mason and the inclusion of readings from Plutarch in her schools.
When Hicks speaks at the end of section II about modern education wanting to break patterns and deny the transcendent, I thought of James Daniels speaking of Truth being a person, Christ, and all knowledge being unified in Him. The true patterns exist because He is in all things and before all things and in Him all things hold together.
Okay, that lets a little of the pressure off my mind...whoooshhhh...
Jami M.
Another thought or question--
Hicks twice says that materialistic and democratic society have a devastating affect on education. I understand why materialism is so deadly. It leaves no room to consider the nature of things, the soul of man, the transcendent. But is democracy (in it's truest form--the masses governing), equally problematic? Is it too leveling, not allowing for true nobility? Is that why descriptive science is so beloved by Americans, because it makes no judgments and all are equal in the eyes of a statistician?
Jami
Wow! You were ready to start :)
I think I did understand the first section, a little. I, too, appreciate his humility. Often this kind of treatise seems to come off as "my way or the highway" without allowing other streams of thought in Classical Education.
The portion that really resonated with me here was the picture of the new radar guy who thinks he's got it all down, but won't listen to other navigators who've been in this water before. Leaving the lessons of history behind ... and leave it behind because of what "technological science" says. I see that in so many places right now from our food choices to how to birth or raise my children. But, at the same time, are the choices I make based on some weird sense of "this is how it has always been done" making it better rather than figuring out the prescriptive nature of the argument. (IOW, am I forcing history instead of science into a "descriptive" compartment rather than a "prescriptive" one?)
I had thought some about his use of prescriptive vs. descriptive in the second section before I read your question (but after I saw that you posted on this section). I thought he was using "prescriptive" more related to a "prescription" ... not just that something "ought" to be some way, although that is part of it, but rather that one ought to listen to the "ought" and then "put the ought on" or "leave the ought off." Take your medicine or don't eat that food. "Prescriptive" is a call for action by the learner while the "descriptive" leaves the learner passive as regards his own character.
This leads me into the Ideal Types considering where Paul tells us to "put on Christ" or to "have this mind ... which is yours in Christ Jesus." (Rom 13:14/Gal 3:27, Phil 2:5) Is this a hang-up in the church between "knowing Christ" and "knowing Christ?" From a descriptive position we can read the Bible and have all sorts of head knowledge about Christ who he was and what he did without really doing anything about it ... a flat character but not much more than that. But from a prescriptive position we see him as a whole, fleshed out being who forces us to hunger and thirst and seek His righteousness?
I was also fascinated by Hicks' discussion of prescriptive vs. descriptive as it relates to the material world. Are we trying to change what is around us or ourselves? Do the technological advances of the 20th C aid or hinder us? Does an upper middle class lifestyle in the 21st C encourage me to be improving/ seeking the prescriptive Ideal Type and consider the big scary questions/ideas of millenia or does it allow me to wallow in American Idol and not think about, well, anything? Do the big scary ideas go away when shaped by a cookie cutter? When Hicks talks about "To function efficiently becomes his only goal in learning ..." I think he could cut that sentence after "goal." Perhaps when our children are filled not with lofty goals of the Ideal Type but with the trivia of "making the world a better place," expediency of labor is designed to lead to slothfulness rather than continued learning. I am not immune, I don't want to work hard, nor do I want to work long, I do like to sit and watch American Idol and Chuck and the Office. Thinking is hard work, and work I haven't done much of.
It is late and I am rambling. I hope this makes some semblance of sense.
Jami, I also thought of CM's inclusion of Plutarch when I read the quote by Montaigne.
Cindy, thanks for the discussion of precriptive and descriptive. I think I have a better grasp of what Mr. Hicks means.
Joy
Jami,
I loved your thoughts. It is going to take my brain some time to think about the democracy idea. It also makes me think we might find some answers in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar because in reading that this year I have wrestled with the idea that Brutus was noble and my brain rejects that.
Dawn,
WOW, I am so happy you were able to join in!! Yesterday while searching for something in one of CM's books, can't remember which one as I had them all out, I saw a passage where Charlotte chides a woman who raised her sons to be evangelical Christians, teaching as absolute truth her own interpretations of scripture. Both of her sons strayed. One, I think, became a Catholic (obviously that would seem like straying to an evangelical) and one became licentious...I think. Charlotte pointed out that the woman would have been better off teaching her sons the simple truths of scripture without equivocating her own ideas on them.
I have also noticed this danger. If we passionately go off the deep end, our children may follow for a while but then if they see any error in our thinking they may reject everything.
And Yeats says it best, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
As to the culture. It is a distressing and powerful force. The only antidote is truth. You may not be able to avoid the culture on some levels but at least you can fill your mind with the idea that some things matter and some things do not.
Dawn: I loved, loved, loved your comment!
I hadn't thought at all about what you said as far as putting on Christ, how perhaps the prescriptive/descriptive antithesis is at the root of the knowing Christ/knowing Christ (as you put it) difficulty which seems to plague the church. So much to think on.
One thought I had in rereading all of this is that it used to make me uncomfortable that so many call Charlotte Mason a "character" education. I resisted that description, and almost resisted CM because of that description, due to my associations with public school "character development" nonsense which are basically self-esteem courses breeding vanity of the worst order.
I think I now see that Charlotte Mason was "character" education not in terms of what I saw in school growing up, but in terms of that prescriptive ideal.
Thinking about all of this brings me back to that tension inside that comes with wondering whether I am doing right by my children...
Forgot to ask you Cindy: Have you read The Rector of Justin? Should this be on my list?
Probably won't be reading The Rector of Justin. There is a whole new stack of books by my bedside on the floor. 15 books.
I recently started Barzun's House of Intellect (I have a very bad case of start-itis, actually), and he addresses the issue of democracy as the enemy of intellect, and by extension, you might say prescriptive education.
Democracy is a descriptive form of government, in that we determine what the majority wants, and we get that, rather than using any external standard to prescribe for them what they should want and making them take it. In that environment, wanting anything that everyone does not have (intellect, education) opens you up for the charge of elitism, which is by definition anti-democratic, and so it goes around.
It should be noted rather pointedly that David Hicks includes Charlotte Mason's Philosophy of Education in his bibliography at the end of N&N. He doesn't mention her or her work by name in his book, but he considered her work of enough value to include it there.
Cindy,
I have ordered to book to read with you all. (It has been on my wish list for some time now and I had some gift money!). Of course I am usually behind your schedule, but I will try and catch up as I would love to participate.
Kim
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