Hillsdale College did not invent classical education, actually

A "nice" example of broken journalism from Axios

A couple of days ago I finished reading the short book “Introduction to Arithmetic” by Nicomachus of Geresa. An author name like that and you figure “must be an old book!” and indeed it was written around AD 90, and served as a mathematical textbook for centuries after that. We’re reading it with the tenth graders this Fall.

One thing I appreciated about the book is that he quickly gave his understanding of the four liberal arts sometimes called the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Basically he says:

arithmetic: the investigation of absolute quantity
music: the investigation of relative quantity
geometry: the science of that which abides and is at rest
astronomy: the science of that which moves and revolves

That’s probably not the way most moderns would define those subjects but… makes sense, yes?

For people who work in classical education it seems to be a famously difficult problem to quickly define exactly what we mean when we say “classical education”!, but one of the many ways you can attempt an explanation is to appeal to our teaching of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium. And we will just note here that these are very old divisions, much older than a Michigan college that began in 1844.

Axios and broken journalism

A few days ago April Rubin of Axios published an article called “Florida eyes ‘classical” education agenda”. Yes, she actually put “classical” in scare quotes, and yes the article is generally pretty nutty. But I share it because it’s a pretty good illustration of some of the things wrong with journalism today.

One, the real point of this article is not to inform readers, the point is to identify a new bad guy for them (“classical education”), so that when they hear the word in the future they will think “bad guy” and oppose it. As I wrote a couple of months ago now, the Left seems to largely function by putting people into groups of Good People and Bad People as opposed to analyzing arguments based on their internal claims and logic. And so we get:

So-called "classical education is really a wolf in sheep's clothing," said Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan University.

EXPERTS SAY IT IS BAD. Can I just say that the whole point of “wolf in sheep’s clothing” language is to imply that some kind of deception is afoot? Yet I don’t think I have encountered anyone in classical ed who wouldn’t be very happy to tell you exactly what we’re trying to do, trying to form students to be. You may disagree with it, but there is no deception here, we’re completely upfront about everything we’re trying to do. And then:

"Really what it's about is using selective Western thinkers to foment a specific moral ideology," he added.

The good thing, friends, is that public education is definitely not trying to foment a specific moral ideology.

Two… as someone who has academic biases about how well you’re supposed to know a subject before you’re considered qualified to explain it to others, it has long seemed kind of crazy to me that a journalist can learn about something new today, and think that today they are qualified to explain it to others. It’s harder to quote specifics, but that is the general vibe I get reading the whole Axios piece. The author really doesn’t know much about this topic at all (and she didn’t bother talking to anyone who actually likes classical education). She spent a few minutes reading some websites that seemed relevant to her (that’s almost the whole piece actually)… so you get stuff like our title item here.

The intrigue: Classical education is largely pioneered by Hillsdale College, a small, Christian, classical liberal arts college in Michigan.

That does make me chuckle. Maybe, someone told me, we don’t have to be so strict in how we understand “pioneered”… but this author does not understand the subject they are purporting to explain to you. Hillsdale has been important in the modern revival of classical ed, we can say that.

Three, not so much a comment on this article perhaps, but it helps to have a good name and to get yourself connected to some big institutions in our day if you want to be noticed. The genesis of this article is the possibility of Florida universities accepting the Classical Learning Test in lieu of the SAT/ACT. I’ve read articles even at good publications like FirstThings that almost make the CLT synonymous with classical education, and that’s a mistake too. It’s a helpful tool (especially for interfacing the expanding homeschool / K-12 classical world with often older universities), but the CLT could entirely disappear tomorrow and classical education would be just a little affected. But, they’ve got a great name and they’ve done a great job promoting themselves, and it shows.

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