Apparently in response to my engagement with him, Gary North has written a bit more on classical Christian education. He was already down in a hole with his very own shovel, and instead of heeding the adage to — when in such circumstances — stop digging, he decided to hire a backhoe.
My first response was titled North Heads South. This follow-up could be labeled — I will have to work up something — as North Heads Souther, or Almost to the Equator Now.
Let me say at the top that someone with North’s ostensible concerns could easily offer an intellectually honest (and helpful) version of his critique of the classical Christian school movement. It would go something like this:
“I understand that the founders and promoters of classical Christian education are trying to establish a distinctively Christian approach to education. I know that they have repeatedly rejected the idea of syncretism, and have also rejected the idea that we can in any way accommodate the destructive elements of paganism. They have certainly stated that our participation in the ‘great conversation’ should be as preachers of the gospel and proclaimers of God’s holy law, and not as dialogue partners. I know they mean well by all this, but here is why I believe the content of their curriculum will necessarily overwhelm their stated intentions . . .”
That would be a respectable critique directed toward any part of the classical Christian school movement, and there are some parts of the movement where I would actually agree with the critique.
But in order to say something like this, North would have to know what our stated intentions have been. He would have to know the literature of the movement, and nothing is more apparent than that he knows nothing of the kind. He can’t tip his hat to all the arguments, qualifications, exhortations, and admonitions we have made on this topic, for the excellent reason that he assumes we must not have made them. When it comes to what we actually teach and say, if ignorance is bliss, then North has almost achieved Arahant Enlightenment. If Nirvana were not knowing anything about this particular subject, North is floating down an endless river in a rowboat, at night, in a fog, in a coma.
“What is palmed off as trivium-based education today is classical paganism to the core,” “But this is not the sales pitch . . .” “But this is not how Latin is being peddled to naive homeschool mothers.” “We never read about the importance of learning the medieval Church fathers” (emphasis mine). Notice the confidence, not just about the merits of Latin or not, but rather about how we are promoting the work we do. We never say, according to North, the kinds of things that we are actually saying all the time. If bombast were pearls, and ignorance the thread, North has written an article that the Duchess of Windsor would not be embarrassed to wear.
“I regard this as one more example of poorly educated people teaching poorly educated people how to give their children theologically schizophrenic educations.”
He honestly, seriously, advances statements that are like six or seven fluffed up pillows: “We are never told any of this by promoters of . . .” Sure, we might add, finishing his sentence for him — “we are never told any of this by classical Christian educators in any of the books that I plainly haven’t read.”
So that I don’t do the same thing that North is doing — assert without citing — let me give just two examples. The first is from my Introduction to Repairing the Ruins.
“Are not classical and Christ-centered themselves on opposite sides of this antithetical divide? So how can a school purport to be pursuing both? Why do we even want to try?” (p. 20). In what follows, I distinguish three different kinds of classicism, the third of which is what we are seeking to do, and which is “an antithetical classicism, best illustrated by the relationship of the apostle Paul to . . . the learning of the classical world” (p. 23). The point here is not whether we have been successful. The point is whether North knows what he is talking about when he says that we have never declared that we were making the attempt.
“I believe that because of the enmity God established between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, all education has to emphasize the sharp divide between truth and error, goodness and sinfulness, loveliness and ugliness” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 231).
If this is syncretism, I think it is time for me to acknowledge that I am really bad at it.
Look — and I am taking a page here from the old North, the one who used to actually read the books of his adversaries — if you are going to debate with somebody, CITE THEM. Use a footnote or two, for pity’s sake. Tell us who you are talking about. A big part of this article of his was all about the overall uselessness of Latin, but when it came to the specific arguments we have advanced for Latin, it turns out his response is entirely homeopathic. Hardly any trace elements there at all.
If his object was to make a hearty and robust pot of chicken soup for the recovering classicist, he ought to have done more than have an anemic chicken walk through a pot of boiling water on stilts.
If North were a lady from Austen, and if I were Mr. Knightley, I would by this point be saying, “Badly done, Emma!” Also, if I were Mr. Knightley, I would find myself stuck in outlandish metaphors far less often.
North really needs to write a book on the history of the modern resurgence of classical Christian education. He should call it Great Experiments in Telepathy.
North still has a small coterie of dogmatists who read his stuff, basing everything on the plausibility structure of “we know.” Their motto is In “We Know” Veritas. That’s another argument. You have to know Latin to make jokes like that. Not that it is a good joke, but it is a joke that is on par with my Latin.
This whole thing is beyond sad and pathetic. I have read 26 of North’s books — and I have learned a great deal from them. But I am starting to feel the same way I felt years ago about Rushdoony — his early books were magnificent, but in his later years he really lost his grip. It must be Recon Rule 7. “Go out crotchety and irascible.”
North calls it a day with this particular non sequitur, pardon my French.
“If you want to teach the trivium, use the King James Bible . . . Or just use the King James Bible. The language is magisterial.”
But . . . if you try to rebuild the kind of education that the translators of the King James Version received, the kind of education that equipped and enabled them to do what they did, then it is plain that you are a temporizing idiot. But I will speak as one of them, on this wise. This maketh no sense, man.
May I suggest either, “the Norther he goes, the souther he gets”, or else “North is the new South”.
Please, dear Pastor Wilson, I hate to be pedantic, but spare the feelings of all of us Austen devotees out here. “Badly done, Emma,” was from the gorgeous, the virtuous , and the impossibly sexy Mr. Knightley. Colonel Brandon was the sad-sack who wins the heart of Marianne.
Jill, mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa! I fixed it, and now retire abashed.
Dear Pastor Wilson,
Well written, but now I’m getting embarrassed for him and thinking it’s time to stop bashing this brother.
BTW, Rush may have lost some grip in his dotage, but he never became crotchety or irascible. A lovely & kind soul.
Side question — on that “If bombast were pearls, and ignorance the thread”
on that “If bombast were pearls, and ignorance the thread …” — is that your original construction? Bravo.
As someone who came to NSA, trusting the people in charge, but skeptical of classical education itself, I’d like to add my own testimony to the mix. The first classics we read at NSA were written by Christians and we were given a thorough education in Christian theology before we came into contact with the ancient pagans. By that time we had learned to understand them correctly on their own terms (important, considering the subject of this post). Then we took the good we found in them right before applying the philosophical equivalent of a flying arm bar. If there’s… Read more »
I need to make a quick correction for accuracy’s sake. I remembered later that we did read a few books written by pagans at the beginning. However, we didn’t start the two-year capstone Western civ class, until after we had had theology and apologetics.
Doug, There is an even more recent article (dated 16 Jul 2014) on this topic than the one (dated 15 Jul 2014) you referenced herein. http://www.garynorth.com/public/12675print.cfm Some nuggets of truth from the above article are posted below just in case there happen to be any persons/commenters out there that might be too distracted (with funny concerns that North’s inner thoughts regarding the naivety of well intentioned parents also must “arrogantly and condescending” consist of Classical Christian homeschooling moms as Dingbats in “denim jumpers”) to view his article in the best light. But, if North, due to his reconstructionism (as another… Read more »
Sorry, meant to write in my previous comment:
Nonetheless, as Latin can be instructive for English, so can Greek be also – (indirectly) since Latin uses lots of Greek like English uses Latin, and (more directly) since English also uses loads of Greek.
And now I must protest! Please do not confuse Colonel Brandon with Alan Rickman. I do not say that Rickman’s portrayal was terrible, but it tends to give an exaggerated sense of Brandon being unattractive, socially awkward, and dour. Austen’s Brandon was rather low-spirited, but there’s no indication that he was anything but good company and was definitely good-looking. “Sad sack” is much too harsh.
I like the classical Christian education movement’s way of doing it better than Dr. North’s way of not doing it. Three cheers for all the poorly educated parents and naive homeschool mothers out there who want to give their children a better Christian education than they had themselves and four cheers for the people who are helping them do it. It’s not helping anyone to carelessly dismiss and run down a movement that has led to creation of actual Christian schools serving actual living, breathing young people, right now, today, while advocating something that doesn’t exist anywhere except in someone’s… Read more »
And Gary North outing Dorothy Sayers as an “advertising expert?” It just doesn’t get any richer than that.
This is a sorry excuse for a rebuttal, especially given this latest article by North, here:
http://www.garynorth.com/public/12675.cfm
Though poorly argued, North makes a point. In the Trivium, there is no place to learn any other language than Latin. Oh a class can be added, but it is not part of the core.
Jane, I abase myself. I love Captain Brandon, and I actually think Alan Rickman is good looking in a Professor Snape kind of way. But he is not Knightley! Brandon would have been my preference over Edward although I have to wonder at the judgment that could prefer Marianne to Elinor. Tell me, can you find Fanny Price (of the novel, not the awful recent movie) a satisfactory character? I go back and forth.
Kirsten, have you ever read “Murder Must Advertise”? If you haven’t had the chance, it is wonderful. Dorothy Sayers wrote it based on her experiences as a copy writer in an advertising firm in London. I love it because I love all her detective novels but also because I worked for a while writing advertising copy for a financial institution. I could so much relate to her experience because it was like sitting around all day collecting a pay check for being clever and silly.
Gary’s Remnant Review article today is actually pretty good. Far better than the scorcher he posted a couple of days ago. He asks some pointed questions. This is his actual challenge: “Timeless principles? This is Plato — his unproven analogy of the cave. This is Parmenides’ system of fixed standards, immune to Heraclitus’ endless historical change. This is Socrates’ theory of the metaphysically existing ideas, way out in the void. This is Greek humanism to the core. “Here is my challenge. Spell out these timeless principles. Show me what they are, where they come from, and why they are timeless.… Read more »
This could be a helpful, fruitful discussion, but I wonder if there’s too much ego involved. There are too many caricatured drive-bys at conferences, too many internet snipings– too many facebook and blog posts for sport.
I ad (malam) crucem!
I’ve recently listened to Canon’s “Best of repairing the ruins” and really appreciated it. On your talk on why study Latin I was left wondering for most of it why we should study Latin and not Greek. I’d love to hear more on this topic.
Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether studying Latin is a merely western thing or a Christian thing. Christian education in China may be about to take off. Out of Hebrew, Greek and Latin what – if any – would you recommend children learn and why?
Jill, yes, I love Murder Must Advertise. It’s a fun one. Try Nutrax for Nerves!
I disagree with his overly us vs. them way of analysis, but North appears to make several valid points in his critique of the prominence given Latin. Why are schools teaching Latin but not Greek or Hebrew–or, not teaching them to the same extent? Additionally (and this is a different question), is it necessary to have a dead language be required, as opposed to making students take _a language_ and then giving them a range of options? (I can see historical literacy and passing on cultural patrimony as an answer to the second question, but I don’t why, if it… Read more »
To complain about something North referenced, one of the links North suggests in his discussion of these issues is to an article (apparently referenced as outlining a philosophy of education he was more on board with) which uses the term “reflective” to mean (I think, someone correct me if I’m missing a meaning here) “inflected” and which claims that Russian is one of the least “reflective” (inflected?) languages of today, when in fact, (as far as I-who-don’t-speak-Russian understand), it is known for being highly inflected (the article was published in a journal edition which including a republication of Sayers “Lost… Read more »
Mr. North is right to question the Latin time expenditure. Let’s hear more from pastor Doug on that, please.
Do you buy into the grammatical-historical method of interpreting the Bible, as North does?
Does this method not assume that the human author’s thinking contained the thoughts on the page?
But we know that is impossible. Bible = perfect / God’s mind / no sin. Paul’s mind = imperfect & sinful.
Satisfactory character? Well, she’s certainly flawed no doubt about it. I think it’s a common mistake to think that JA was making her into a paragon, when she was intended to be no such thing. Still, I think she makes an interesting and realistic character. Were she real, I think my reaction to her would be to love and admire her for the warmth of her heart and the steadiness of her character, while not being blind to the timidity and well-intended self-righteous streak that makes her less attractive. IOW, she’d be one of those friends (like most real-world friends)… Read more »
“Why are schools teaching Latin but not Greek or Hebrew–or, not teaching them to the same extent?”
Because you don’t have to learn a completely new alphabet to learn Latin
I had many years of latin – starting in 3rd grade, and now my kids are learning it and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I think that the whole question of “Why would you do Latin when you could be doing Greek or Hebrew?” is an educational version of the Jesus Juke. Learning latin as a child was less about learning a foreign language and more about training your brain while learning grammar rules that apply to your own language, and “base” words that you will see appearing in all the Romance languages. While we are having our children learn… Read more »
I’m not so sure we Latin-izers got much of a foundation with that language. When you abandon the project early on, most of its cobblestones erode away.
If you want similar brain train — try Spanish or Russian or French. More likely you’ll have a chance to keep it.
It seems to me that Gary North has more important battles to fight than this sort of thing. His pot shots at those who are actually doing the hard work of Christian education are counterproductive. North comes across as the sort of Christian who wags a self-righteous finger at his friends for celebrating Christmas “because it’s so pagan, and I can prove it”. North does give a few necessary precautions, but he is late in offering them, and others who teach classically have made them more powerfully. By not acknowledging this (or being apparently unaware of it) North is actually… Read more »
I honestly think it would be beneficial for you two to get together and have a little debate. Shoot, neither of you need to leave your desk, just post videos online.
I think there’s much to be gained from Omnibus and the Ron Paul Curriculum. But I’d like to see you two discuss the contrasts.
Rachel, you need to remember that Greek is not a Romance language. Neither is Hebrew nor English. Though a significant percentage of English percentage of our vocabulary is of Latin origin, an almost equal percentage comes from Greek. In fact, you have to admit, you can’t study Latin without someGreek creeping in, because the Romans were heavily influenced by the Greeks. Romance languages are languages descended from Roma-Rome. French, Spanish, Italian etc. had the Anglo Saxon invasions not occurred, English would be in the same boat. Structurally, English is Germanic. That is why we can split an infinitive and only… Read more »
I am not saying that Latin shouldn’t be taught. I am saying that Latin shouldn’t be the only language taught. American schools, private and public, should teach spoken language from Kindergarten through Second grade. At that age, the brain is designed for spoken language learning. Waiting nail third grade for an academic language and not a spoken one, wether Latin or Greek, s a colossal waste of educational opportunity.
The preadolescent brain is designed to learn languages. A side effect of adolescence is that the part of the brain for language acquisition partially shuts down. That is why a little I immigrant kid can learn English with an American accent, but a teenage immigrant always speaks with a foreign accent. Christian schools that wait until third grade to teach an academic language, Latin, Biblical Greek or Hebrew are wasting the opportunity God gave their students to learn to SPEAK a second language. Kindergarten through second grade Is time enough for a child to become functionally fluent in any language.
I thought the computer lost the second post. That is why I redid it
I undo my “undo admiration”, and replace it with an “undue admiration”.
“Kindergarten through second grade Is time enough for a child to become functionally fluent in any language.”
So teach your own kids a foreign language. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that if you think it would be a valuable addition to their studies. The way kids learn language at that age is by immersion and hearing it spoken around them, which isn’t a method that is terribly compatible with formal schooling anyway.
Hmmm. Did the Israelites have so much trouble in the book of Judges because they plundered the Egyptians in Exodus, and taught classical (Egyptian) Israelite education? Naw; it was because in ‘plundering’ the Caananites they didn’t kill the old religion thoroughly enough (and, as Calvin said, the human heart is a factory that makes idols–and surely it’ll make them out of anything available.). So if the classical Christian educators find stuff of value in Greek or Roman culture, e.g. Aristotle’s logic, fine–no unbeliever can suppress all the truth at once, can they?–but watch out for pagan assumptions and whatnot coming… Read more »
Arwen, I was trained as a foreign language teacher. This discussion is about pedagogy of Christian schools, not about my family.
Gary North apparently is worried that focusing on Latin is a waste of time and he takes this up as a cause. I have concerns about Gary North’s use of his time.
I’m not anti-Latin, but, given that the early years are especially important for language acquisition, maybe teaching a language the children are actually going to speak might be a better use of time for the earlier years (my understanding is that small children distinguish more sounds than older children)? Also, if you believe the Bible in the original languages are what is authoritative, it seems Greek or Hebrew (or Aramaic, to a lesser extent), might make sense to teach, given that your kids are going to have a more foundational (though of course, not exclusive) contact with books written in… Read more »
First, let me say, I have never had a *classical* Christian education. But, I have learned Latin. I got a degree in it in fact. I remember going through Catullus in high school and wondering why certain poems were absent. Why was the poem after Catullus 1 not Catullus 2? Why was it Catullus 3? When I took a class on Catullus in college, I discovered the reason why certain poems had been omitted: they were R-rated, homo-erotic poems. The College Board, which makes the AP Catullus exam, realized that “catamite” is not a necessary vocabulary word in Latin, and… Read more »
I had four years of Latin in high school in Canada, along with five years of French and three of German. I am willing to believe that no learning is ever wasted (measure twice, cut once; lefty-loosy, righty-tighty), but on digging out my copy of Latin for Canadian Schools yesterday I found the following on the flyleaf:
Latin is an ancient tongue,
As dead as it can be;
It killed the ancient Romans,
And now it’s killing me.
But I’m still kind of sorry my daughter’s schools didn’t teach it.
Jane, I so much appreciated your comments. I wish we could hijack the board for an Austen discussion! I always felt that Austen found herself not liking Fanny Price as much as she thought she should, and liking Mary Crawford much more than she thought she deserved. But I always laugh to myself when I remember Kingsley Amis’s remark about Fanny and Edmund: they are not the Austen couple one would most gladly invite for dinner. I always wondered how Fanny acquired her celebrated innate moral excellence, her unerring instinct for not only what was proper but also what was… Read more »
Jill, I’m always up for a good Austen discussion with someone who understands that it’s about more than how cute Colin Firth is and how pretty Empire fashions were. (Not that Mr. Firth is not attractive or that I wouldn’t like to try dancing in Regency-era attire!) Valerie Kyriosity is one of the someones with whom such conversation is possible; it’s nice to know there are others.
However, you are right, we mustn’t hijack, so this will be my last word on the topic until such time as we find ourselves in an actual Austen-related context. ;)
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I’d be very interest to hear more about the rationale forLatin. I took Latin in high school, and maintained the study a bit in college. Once the path of my life brought me to seminary, how many, many times I wish that all those hours of study had been in Greek instead. The only long-term benefit I can possibly notice from my study of Latin is that it gave me a decent foundation for learning Greek… I cannot think of any significant benefit from studying Latin that is not also provided by studying Greek… Plus you have the additional benefits,… Read more »
Hi Dan, I gave your question a lot of thought and did some reading on the net. My last linguistics course was decades ago, and although I have taught ESL, I am no expert. So these are just my perceptions. Most of the reasons given for studying Latin seem to me misguided or wrong. We like to think of Latin as one of logical of languages–elegant, precise, and consistent. But every language is equally logical in that it follows its own complex internal structure in order to communicate meaning. We like to think that because so many English words have… Read more »