Freedom
is an Art: A Personal View on
Classical Education
John
R. Rose, Live Oak Academy, 11/2006
Classical
education is both a goal and a journey.
The goal, simply stated, is to live well as a free adult. That this should be a goal is simple
human nature, and the methods of classical education are also rooted in human
nature. These methods are shaped
in detail by the experience of those who have made the journey before us. Their experience is distilled in the
collective wisdom of about three thousand years of civilization. The weight of this wisdom makes it
difficult to summarize. Instead, I
would like to share a few of my own “traveler’s notes” on some of the key
milestones, pleasures, and challenges of the classical road to freedom.
At
the center of classical education are the Liberal Arts. When listed, they often number seven,
but the number is not so important as the purpose. By “art” we simply mean a skill, a learned and practiced
technique. An art is “liberal” if
it supports my life as a free person.
By contrast, a servant is one who works for others (or for their
money). My ability to make bricks
or stock picks or computer chips is a respectable art but not a liberal one.†
In
ancient societies, there was a stark division between slaves and freemen, and
it was obvious who had to learn the liberal arts. Today a division between slave and free still exists, but
(contrary to some politicians) it divides each of us somewhere down the middle. In truth, every person is partly free
and partly bound. When I am
meeting a deadline at work or washing the family dishes, I am serving a
practical need imposed on me. At
other times, I am responsible to make free decisions, such as what career to
take, or how to govern my household, or what causes to support, or how to spend
or invest my free time, or how to build up my community. In those moments of responsible freedom
I need the liberal arts.
The
seven liberal arts are traditionally listed as follows: grammar, logic,
rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. These particular arts are found in extremely ancient texts
throughout the world, are discussed in detail by Plato and other ancient
philosophers, and have been in continuous use through the medieval period and
up to the present.
But
after the build-up of the previous paragraphs, the skeptical reader will ask
questions like, “What happened to algebra, physics, economics, painting,
Spanish, ...?” Or, “So is
astronomy a requirement and biology just an elective?” Or, “Why should grammar help me choose
a way of life?” (I pause for your
questions, O skeptic.)
The
first question is relatively easy.
There are seven liberal arts in about the same way that there are seven
colors of the rainbow or seven wonders of the world. Seven is a convenient number for arbitrarily dividing up a
continuum, or choosing a list of representatives. Just as you can name more colors or find more wonders, you
can add more liberal arts to the list, if you want. Some ancient lists have ten arts; some include architecture
or medicine. But the initial
examples already cover the field adequately, and the shorter list is more
easily learned.
The
first three liberal arts are called the Trivium (“three-way”), and constitute a
preparation for the latter four, called the Quadrivium (“four-way”). As Dorothy Sayers admirably describes
them, the first three are a developmental roadmap of the first twenty or so
years of a human life. First we
learn isolated facts by rote (grammar), then we learn to connect them according
to their meaning (logic), and finally we learn to communicate them clearly and
cogently (rhetoric). The abilities
of the child seem to change fluidly as he grows from one phase to another. The toddler absorbs vocabulary at a
reckless pace, and the preteen is not so fond of memorization but loves the
“why” and “what then” of things, while the youth is ready to move the world
with his passionate ideals. (These
phases, which arise from universal human nature, can be described in other
ways, but the classical formulation described here has been continuously active
over 2500 years of history.) As a
description of human development, the Trivium provides a useful set of compass
points for guiding a young person through his education.
The
connection to freedom is simple.
If my development is stunted in any of these areas, I will not be able
to enjoy the full use of my freedom as an adult. A weak vocabulary will prevent me from understanding what
others are saying, unless they talk down to me. If my thinking habits are lazy, I will fall prey to every
passing scam artist or crooked politician. Even if I have great ideas, I will be permanently frustrated
if my poor speaking prevents my friends from understanding me. All this might be true even though I
make a good living from some salable skill. Though I am politically and
economically free, without the Trivium I may still be forced to live as a slave
to ignorance, deceit, and irrelevance.
The
Trivium, in summary, is about the skilled use of language. The remaining liberal arts, the
Quadrivium, are more like math and science. They build on competence in language, and deepen it, by
applying it to certain areas of study.
These areas are in some ways comparable to college majors or faculty
departments. There are two key
differences: All parts of the
Quadrivium are necessary to the general education of a free person; they are
not “majors” or areas of specialization.
Also, while Plato and Aristotle would have welcomed most of the newer
disciplines found on college campuses, they would have ranked some merely
optional. In their ancient
academies, everybody took math, music, and astronomy, but there was no Persian
Studies department.
I
think the primary reason for such a choice, in the ancient world, was the fact
that 2500 years ago the few well-developed scientific disciplines were those of
the Quadrivium. Below philosophy
and theology, they were the intellectual crown jewels of the ancients.
It
is odd for us to think of music as a science, but that is because we take the
technology of music for granted.
Back then, the Greeks had recently acquired the skill to accurately
measure and classify tones, harmonies, modes, scales, and rhythms. The person who could learn the
complexities of all this, and then make use of it to perform music, would have
gained considerable poise and strength of mind, not just for music, but for
other complex tasks. It is still
true today. Beyond that, musical
ability, both to perform and to listen, is a kind of wealth well suited to those
who are free.
Arithmetic
and geometry are unified today in a sort of continent of mathematics along with
algebra, calculus, and so on. In
ancient times, they were more like two lone islands. They still stand as representatives of what we would call discrete
and continuous mathematics. Or, as
the medievals would say, arithmetic is about counting and geometry is about
weight and form. Or, as a
neurologist might say, left brain for accounting and right brain for spatial
reasoning. These are distinct and
complementary mental functions or modes of thinking, and the well-trained mind
should be completely comfortable (so says the classical model) with both. In the ancient and modern worlds,
“innumeracy” is almost as destructive as illiteracy to one’s freedom.
Geometry,
as taught in the classical tradition, is more than just a skill with
measuring. It is an advanced level
of logic. In ancient times, it was
the course of study which required the student to reason with the greatest of
precision, of rigor. In our world,
which rests lightly on the labors of three millennia, logical rigor is often
deprecated or taken for granted, but in the days of the Greeks, it was a new
revelation. Euclid’s
geometry textbook, The Elements, is a standard of sustained clear thought that
was previously unheard of, and has since been only rarely equalled. We remember Abraham Lincoln for his
rhetorical skills, informed by Shakespeare and the King James Bible, but
Lincoln said it was Euclid’s Elements that taught him to reason
accurately. This sort of reason
was so prized at Plato's Academy that over the front door was inscribed the
following entrance requirement:
“None But Geometers Shall Enter Here.”
Finally
we get to astronomy. In the days
before hyper-accurate clocks and calendars, the sky was everyone’s timepiece,
and it behooved the educated person to be able to read it fully. Though astronomy is less useful today,
and even somewhat unfashionable, it still retains one special claim on the
educated person. When one is out
of doors, the sky is fully half of what is visible (on an unclouded day), and
surely it is important to have an appreciation for what is going on up there.
I
might include several other modern sciences (physical, social, or historical)
on the short list as soon as astronomy.
Today it is a truism that students need more science. The rulers of the schools generally
reason that this would make the graduates more productive in technical
careers. This is (in the terms
defined above) an illiberal goal. But science is, I believe, pre-eminently a liberal art. As a discipline, it (like mathematics)
strengthens the mind and prepares it to reason through difficult decisions, and
to evaluate and criticize the claims of experts. For these reasons, every citizen in a democratic state
should be able to think scientifically.
Beyond that, science is an irreplaceable way of knowing, contemplating,
and wondering at the world we live in.
It is a kind of intellectual music, a joy in itself suitable to the mind
of the free person.
If
we were forced to choose just four representatives of the sciences, there is a
certain fitness to choosing the Quadrivium. Just as arithmetic and geometry are complementary modes of
thought, concerned with number and shape, so also music and astronomy are also
concerned number and shape, but with the addition of movement and change. Music may be regarded as the movement
of number (number in rhythm, tone, and harmony). Today, we study change and movement by means of a historical
outgrowth of astronomy—calculus, invented by Isaac Newton to describe the
heavenly motions.
You
may have noticed that the Liberal Arts are not an encyclopedia of all useful
facts. Rather, they are the
intellectual tools needed to read—or write—any given encyclopedia. They stretch out the mind to its full
capacity, able to reason in all of its inborn modes, ready to sift truth from
falsehood. In these days of
increasing tsunamis of information, we need the Liberal Arts to keep us afloat
and masters of our own course.
Finally,
the Liberal Arts are not the whole story of human growth; they are not enough
to complete us. Plato wanted
entrants to his Academy to be well versed in the Liberal Arts. Only then were they ready for the final
step, the study of ultimate realities, which he called philosophy. The Christian medievals required a
student to become a Master of Arts (the liberal kind, of course), before
attempting a doctorate in theology.
They viewed theology as the “queen of sciences”, the final knowledge to
which the other arts were but handmaids.
The Greeks had a saying that the mature mind is a spear’s throw away
from philosophy. So it is. The mature mind is ready to tackle the
most important questions of all:
Who am I? What are we here
for? How shall we live? And finally, the noblest question for
any free person, a question unknown to the pre-Christian sages: Whom shall I serve? If I yield myself, heart, mind, and
strength, to God, then God can baptize the human freedom conferred by the
Liberal Arts (and every other form of education), and fulfill it in the
spiritual freedom granted by Jesus Christ, the Son of Man.
The Liberal
Arts will never make a quick profit.
In fact, they can be painful to acquire. It is rightly said that freedom is never free. But freedom, wisely used, is the key to
all kinds of wealth, and certainly the noblest kind of wealth, the life rightly
lived. I cannot yet lay claim to
such a life. I can say that the
pleasures of intellectual growth have been well worth the difficulties, and
that they can point toward wisdom and a better sense of what is worthwhile in
life. Let us journey together on
the well-marked path.
† Is
it jarring to see the word “liberal” used in this sense? C.S. Lewis once wrote a book chapter on
the concept of freedom, at the end of which he complained that modern political
use of “liberal” had murdered it as a useful word. Perhaps it can be resuscitated.