Respect for children means respect for the adults that they will one day become; it means helping them to the knowledge, skills, and social graces that they will need if they are to be respected in that wider world where they will be on their own and no longer protected.
This was excellent! Reminded me of WEB DuBois’s rebuttal to another conservative hero Booker T Washington about the need for a liberal arts education. The goal is to not create workers or even citizens, but whole men with the capacity to be creative leaders both of themselves and their communities.
The classical schooling movement is definitely making headway and offering a real alternative to what we call education today. Like you, I agree we can’t just slap on the label, toss classics to the kids, and watch the magic happen. There’s a process and a pedagogy that must be respected.
I also appreciate your point about the checkbox kids. Let’s be clear here, these are mostly Asian American kids with Tiger Moms. And yes, they learn to grind and master what’s tested, but there’s a deadening that happens which stunts their growth and independence. The discipline is great, but the shallow pursuits and mindset that come with it are dehumanizing and detrimental at a point.
In my state there are two teachers with largely asian students that sweep State Finals. These kids worked hard and are quite talented, but the Tiger Mom mindset makes them associate piano with a massive grind, and once they stop, they stop for good.
No practical skills yet living by one’s wits , exactly that denounced by Washington, doomed many young black men and in time all those sucked and siphoned into our public system are living irrelevancies except to their jailers. Truly DuBois is the Father of the ghetto.
This was great. I’ve sat through many a recital and know exactly the type of pianist you’re talking about. Technically everything’s perfect but there’s no soul.
Colleges used to provide a very good liberal arts education and foundation in Western Culture. I think the problem is we made college pretty much mandatory for non-trade employment. In the 70s the Supreme Court did away with corporate aptitude tests that allowed a high school graduate to get a good entry level job. Companies started relying on college degrees as a sorting mechanism. Then we had increased women entering the workforce, increased immigration, and the “globalization” of universities, which intensified the college admissions race (and job competition thereafter). Hence the “check-the-box” credentialism you write about so well.
College degrees are the new high school degrees. If everybody needs one for white collar work, standards are necessarily going to be watered down, and education becomes more focused on utilitarian competency.
One-size-fits-all Utilitarianism is also hopelessly incapable of finding that 0.001 percent of people who can be the elite-of-the-elite if put in the right place.
Wht a passionately beautiful article, I believe that I could sit down and talk with you for many hours, if not days. You covered so many things that are close to my heart. Thank you, Sir.
An excellent synopsis of something I've observed throughout my education. Indeed, all this supposed practicality is instead resulting in decline and absurdity. A few points:
Ramaswamy's rendition of Mozart was flat-out sterile and autistic, the musical equivalent of text-to-speech.
Really appreciated the reference to the priggish Eustace Scrubb (who eventually reformed). Another relevant detail from the Narnia books is the school he and Jill attend, Experiment House, which is clearly an exercise in libtard indoctrination, which of course turns into a shitfest of bullying, with one clique ruling over the rest of the kids. It's striking that even back in the 1950's, CS Lewis saw the roots of woke-ism in academia, to the extent that he felt the need to parody it in his books.
"Striverism" is a really good word that captures that mentality.
I can confirm that skillsets carry over, like this older fella I saw on twitch who lives in Japan, who has a background in assembly coding, then went into the traditional art of woodblock prints; it turns out that precision and attention to detail apply equally to these disparate fields.
Speaking of which, while this article is good, it could've used proofreading & copyediting -- there were some definite glitches & typos here and there.
One of the humanities instructors at a local classical academy lamented how none of his students went into the humanities themselves. In spite of his being well aware that there was no money in it where we live, he believed that was a sign of failure, as if the only way he would reproduce was through little classics instructors after his own image.
I can understand a lot of the criticism that Scruton has. But he never answers (afaik) an obvious question: Isn't that how capitalism works? Doesnt he mostly complain about the cultural consequences of an economy where all human action is subjected to market forces?
Wouldnt the conservative critique be much more convincing if it came with a critique of our current economic system, including concrete proposal of how to improve it?
The British Empire was arguably one of the most commercially orientated enterprises ever, yet it was overseen by people trained in the classics, who built beautiful buildings and who saw the economy as the necessary engine that supported the civilization. Its the elevation of the economy itself to be the end goal of everything is what creates the cultural void, enabled by scientific atheism of the 20th century.
The only way past is a conscious effort to revive the Western culture, and education and new thought is the only way past the liberal void.
This was excellent! Reminded me of WEB DuBois’s rebuttal to another conservative hero Booker T Washington about the need for a liberal arts education. The goal is to not create workers or even citizens, but whole men with the capacity to be creative leaders both of themselves and their communities.
The classical schooling movement is definitely making headway and offering a real alternative to what we call education today. Like you, I agree we can’t just slap on the label, toss classics to the kids, and watch the magic happen. There’s a process and a pedagogy that must be respected.
I also appreciate your point about the checkbox kids. Let’s be clear here, these are mostly Asian American kids with Tiger Moms. And yes, they learn to grind and master what’s tested, but there’s a deadening that happens which stunts their growth and independence. The discipline is great, but the shallow pursuits and mindset that come with it are dehumanizing and detrimental at a point.
In my state there are two teachers with largely asian students that sweep State Finals. These kids worked hard and are quite talented, but the Tiger Mom mindset makes them associate piano with a massive grind, and once they stop, they stop for good.
DuBois made terrible mistakes.
No practical skills yet living by one’s wits , exactly that denounced by Washington, doomed many young black men and in time all those sucked and siphoned into our public system are living irrelevancies except to their jailers. Truly DuBois is the Father of the ghetto.
Good afternoon.
This was great. I’ve sat through many a recital and know exactly the type of pianist you’re talking about. Technically everything’s perfect but there’s no soul.
Colleges used to provide a very good liberal arts education and foundation in Western Culture. I think the problem is we made college pretty much mandatory for non-trade employment. In the 70s the Supreme Court did away with corporate aptitude tests that allowed a high school graduate to get a good entry level job. Companies started relying on college degrees as a sorting mechanism. Then we had increased women entering the workforce, increased immigration, and the “globalization” of universities, which intensified the college admissions race (and job competition thereafter). Hence the “check-the-box” credentialism you write about so well.
College degrees are the new high school degrees. If everybody needs one for white collar work, standards are necessarily going to be watered down, and education becomes more focused on utilitarian competency.
One-size-fits-all Utilitarianism is also hopelessly incapable of finding that 0.001 percent of people who can be the elite-of-the-elite if put in the right place.
Wht a passionately beautiful article, I believe that I could sit down and talk with you for many hours, if not days. You covered so many things that are close to my heart. Thank you, Sir.
An excellent synopsis of something I've observed throughout my education. Indeed, all this supposed practicality is instead resulting in decline and absurdity. A few points:
Ramaswamy's rendition of Mozart was flat-out sterile and autistic, the musical equivalent of text-to-speech.
Really appreciated the reference to the priggish Eustace Scrubb (who eventually reformed). Another relevant detail from the Narnia books is the school he and Jill attend, Experiment House, which is clearly an exercise in libtard indoctrination, which of course turns into a shitfest of bullying, with one clique ruling over the rest of the kids. It's striking that even back in the 1950's, CS Lewis saw the roots of woke-ism in academia, to the extent that he felt the need to parody it in his books.
"Striverism" is a really good word that captures that mentality.
I can confirm that skillsets carry over, like this older fella I saw on twitch who lives in Japan, who has a background in assembly coding, then went into the traditional art of woodblock prints; it turns out that precision and attention to detail apply equally to these disparate fields.
Speaking of which, while this article is good, it could've used proofreading & copyediting -- there were some definite glitches & typos here and there.
One of the humanities instructors at a local classical academy lamented how none of his students went into the humanities themselves. In spite of his being well aware that there was no money in it where we live, he believed that was a sign of failure, as if the only way he would reproduce was through little classics instructors after his own image.
Excellent, thank you!
Hope you took the deal.
Beautiful and poignant bit of writing!
I can understand a lot of the criticism that Scruton has. But he never answers (afaik) an obvious question: Isn't that how capitalism works? Doesnt he mostly complain about the cultural consequences of an economy where all human action is subjected to market forces?
Wouldnt the conservative critique be much more convincing if it came with a critique of our current economic system, including concrete proposal of how to improve it?
The British Empire was arguably one of the most commercially orientated enterprises ever, yet it was overseen by people trained in the classics, who built beautiful buildings and who saw the economy as the necessary engine that supported the civilization. Its the elevation of the economy itself to be the end goal of everything is what creates the cultural void, enabled by scientific atheism of the 20th century.
The only way past is a conscious effort to revive the Western culture, and education and new thought is the only way past the liberal void.
But new is not enough, right? AI is producing a lot of new, how should I say, material.