The Children's Tradition Does Not Teach Subjects
One of the more shocking claims I make in The Children’s Tradition is that we are not teaching subjects. What do I mean by that? A quick perusal of the Table of Contents shows a list including literature, history, and geography. Aren’t those subjects?
If you Google what a school subject is, the algorithm will direct you to Wikipedia which says, “Subjects are the parts into which learning can be divided. At school, each lesson usually covers one subject only. Some of the most common subjects at school are language arts, history, mathematics, physical education and science.”
There are a few dangers that the classical tradition has taught me to be immediately concerned about when hearing this concept of subject study described.
The danger of thinking the subjects of our studies are best understood when isolated from the other parts of the world and viewed through that narrow lens.
The danger in thinking that knowledge is so finite, so containable, that education is about content that can be mastered.
The danger in defining knowledge as content or facts to be known in methods detached from rightly ordered loves.
Moderns have a number of problematic presuppositions about the nature of knowledge and education that are completely different from the way people thought about these things for most of human history. I am convinced that the divisive, analytical, deconstructionist approach to knowledge that is so prevalent today is doing violence to the souls of children. Modern education (and I am not just talking about the public schools) is rendering us dangerously close to what C. S. Lewis describes in Abolition of Man.
Let’s begin by looking at the idea that learning can be divided. On the one hand, yes, there are real categories by which we can describe different aspects of knowledge. Categories like literature, history, and geography are meaningful. However, it is inaccurate to say that knowledge can be wholly divided, as if you could teach history without literature or geography coming up. One good book may be a work of literature that contains history, geography, poetry, natural science, and more. Beyond books, all of life comes to us as an integration where knowledge and experience, books and things, weave and intermingle to form one great tapestry. The tradition The Children’s Tradition is drawing upon in ancient and medieval, which involves a much more integrated view of knowledge. An integrated understanding of knowledge meant that they kept both the whole and the parts in perspective. The Christians of these bygone eras understood that all knowledge is a finite part of a whole that is the infinite mind of God. When we inquire into the created world, we are actually inquiring into the mind of God as we seek truth, goodness, and beauty wherever it can be found.
Also contained in the idea of subjects is the concept that one lesson is only covering a single subject, and that single subject is the content of our teaching. With this approach, a curriculum is reduced to covering content. There are overly-specific core objectives of very particular knowledge that the teacher is required to cover. Covering content becomes the main goal, and teaching to the test the inevitable result. In contrast, ancient and medieval people did not teach ten subjects. They taught the liberal arts, which were the skills necessary to think. For the first five to ten years of a student’s life they went to grammar school, grammar being the first of the liberal arts. That is of particular interest to us, because that involved the years The Children’s Tradition is for (and, to be clear, went beyond into the teen years).
Now when they said grammar they did not mean the school subject where we learn about the mechanics of language. That is a real thing, more properly called scientific grammar (science, in the classical sense, just means knowledge). Grammar, historically, meant the art of learning how to be at home in language. In this sense, a grammar education was not considered a stage of learning or merely the systemized study of language rules, but rather, “consisted of everything necessary for interpreting a text- geography, history, even what we may call hermeneutics,” (Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition). To be at home in language, one must have a wide exposure to sophisticated language, but one also needs a memory chalked full of knowledge about people, places, things, and symbols.
Again, we see how this is a much more integrated view of knowledge, and now I am going to take us deep into educational philosophy, so stay with me. The goal of classical education is not content mastery but the development of the art of thinking through the cultivation of the inner and outer senses. It actually has much higher goals pertaining to communion with God that is connected to all of this, but for the purposes of this current discussion that definition works. So what does that mean? The outer senses are simple enough to understand, being a person’s sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. But each person possesses inner senses, and those are the “senses of the soul” by which what a person experiences with their body is communicated to their mind. James Taylor, in his wonderful book Poetic Knowledge, explains what the four inner senses are.
Commons Sense: the integration of what we see into recognizable patterns. i.e. the image we see is a tree, the sound we hear is a child’s laugh, etc. The perception of our senses that we share in common with other people.
Imaginative Sense: sensory experiences we have had retained in our mind as images, sounds, etc. that can be called upon to synthesize and form ideas of things never before experienced.
Memorative Sense: the seat of memory where we can recall past images or experiences.
Estimative Sense: intuitively judges the inward good or evil of a thing.
Understanding these inner senses gives a greater context to the work before us as we seek to educate children. One of the primary works of childhood education is to give our students’ outer senses a wide range of experiences, and to fill and cultivate the powers of their inner senses that mediate that outer world to their intellect. We cultivate their common sense by giving them lengthy, diverse experiences of the natural world that will give them a rich storehouse of sensations. We prioritize the cultivation of attention, knowing they will not store up sensory experiences without engaging their whole selves to behold whatever is in front of them. We build up the powers of their imagination with time out-of-doors, nature study, the arts, and good books. We exercise the power of their memory by having them learn many songs, poems, and Scriptures by heart, by practicing narration after each reading, and the use of repetition and review of important knowledge. Their estimative sense is formed organically to have a strong intuition regarding the goodness or badness of a thing through a rightly ordered atmosphere in the home and stories that aid in the formation of their moral imagination. The development of our children’s outer and inner experiences is fundamental to the work of education. Ultimately, it is for that reason that I say we are not teaching subjects. We are teaching the art of thinking through the cultivation of the inner and outer senses.
That leaves one final question: why did I divide the curriculum up into all the different categories if I don’t want you to think of them as narrow subject studies? The simple answer: organization. I wanted to organize John Senior’s recommendations (with a few of my own) in a way that would provide clarity and show the do-ability of giving our children the generous feast of knowledge. But you will quickly notice as you begin reading through the curriculum that I do not talk about them as narrow academic subjects. I begin with prayer as the central feature of the Christian home. We don’t “study” Scripture, we enjoy it receptively. We sing psalms and folk songs. We don’t teach the bare facts of history, we immerse children in its stories. We don’t dissect or analyze scientific data, we get out in nature and attend, observe, delight in, and experience. We write and draw and ponder. The poetic mode of learning, which is what The Children’s Tradition is all about, is immersive, participational, and living. We seek to, as Andrew Kern says, show them the glory of each person, place, thing, and idea we encounter. It is a way of life to be experienced, not dry academic subjects to be studied. It is through poetic knowledge that a person is awakened and inspired to be a true student (Latin: studient), one who runs after knowledge, for the rest of their life. No narrow subject study could ever do that.