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Eleanor
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| Posted: Jan 25 2010 at 4:46pm | IP Logged
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I really like Dr. Fleming's essay. He could have been more clear about our eternal destiny (rather than the civic order) being the ultimate end of education, but the way I read it, it's implied throughout, e.g.:
"Plato and Aristotle went further, teaching students to aim at the highest goal, which is the contemplation of the good"
"It is only within such an ethical and civic context that it makes any sense to speak of pursuing or loving truth"
... not to mention the reference to classical education as a stage in between potty training and theology. 
Fr. Barbour's point is also well taken. While simplifying our daily lives can be a good thing, it doesn't seem that a monastic sort of asceticism should be something that we strive for in Christian family life, as if the material world were just a distraction to our children's intellectual and spiritual formation.
This also reminds me of some of Catherine Doherty's advice to parents. I can't find the reference, but she talked about how we should try to have the happiest, warmest, most welcoming home on the block... the one where the neighbor children will want to come in for games, and there are homemade cookies in the oven. [Edited to add: here it is.]
I think this comes back to the different vocations of women and men, which influence our approach to all areas of life. I once listened in on a funny argument between two of my friends, who were in graduate school at the time. *He* said that the only things that were important in life were studying physics and backpacking in high mountain ranges (which could be regarded as secular versions of the intellectual search for ultimate truth, and the ascetic path to transcendence). *She* said that it was also important to know the best way to roast a chicken. They just could not agree. (Last I heard, he's now an award-winning scientist, with a lovely wife who surely has a few of her own ideas about roasting chickens. )
P.S. In case it wasn't clear, I'm not advocating that chicken roasting be added to the Ratio Studiorum.  I'm just saying that maybe there are some situations where it's appropriate for us to learn and teach through the senses, as well as through rational argument. The Church certainly does that in the liturgy. And let's not forget that Babette's Feast made the Vatican's top movie list.
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Willa
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| Posted: Jan 26 2010 at 11:25am | IP Logged
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Eleanor wrote:
| I think this comes back to the different vocations of women and men, which influence our approach to all areas of life. I once listened in on a funny argument between two of my friends, who were in graduate school at the time. *He* said that the only things that were important in life were studying physics and backpacking in high mountain ranges (which could be regarded as secular versions of the intellectual search for ultimate truth, and the ascetic path to transcendence). *She* said that it was also important to know the best way to roast a chicken. They just could not agree. .. |
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The differences between men and women and how that affects education and other areas of life is almost worth another thread. My daughter and I like to discuss ideas about what the differences between men and women actually boil down to, though we never get very far . Personally I've never had much natural affinity with roasting chickens OR climbing high mountains, though I have admiration for those who do those things well. Physics is OK but primarily interesting to me as it borders with metaphysics.
I like the Edith Stein idea of a woman's body being more closely attached to the soul because of the maternal role. I do think that idea has to extend beyond women per se because Mary is the role model for all of us and the Incarnation is such a central fact of our faith.
Maria wrote:
| I do not feel that he (Mr Michael) is the last voice of authority on what is or is not a classical education. |
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I don't either, actually. I appreciate his attempts to make his case by reasoning and using authoritative sources but his can certainly not be the last word on the subject. I am sure he would agree.
When I mentioned him it was to refer to his point that the basic goal of education was stated in the Catechism. That seems like a good starting point where all Catholics would agree, even if we disagreed on the implications of how that worked out in schooling.
I liked the links -- I hope you get a chance to post again, Maria. I got the sense from Dr Fleming's article that he wasn't advocating wide eclectic reading, but almost the opposite -- careful reading in core texts, directed not just towards knowing this or that fact, but towards knowing more about the permanent things. I suppose it's inevitable that education will be based upon texts since they reach a wider and more permanent audience than talk does, as Augustine said.
Going back to the man/woman distinctives, I am starting to wonder if the Ignatians and other classical educators had implicit reason to wait till age 8 or 10 to start formal academics with the boys they taught. Before that, it generally seems to be agreed that children are best cared for and taught primarily by a mother or maternal delegates (of course, acting with the accord of the father). And yet, no one doubts that those early years are foundational.
LeeAnn wrote:
| 1) Could we learn anything about the "feminine genius's" role in contributing to education from the female Doctors of the Church--St. Catherine of Siena and St. Therese? Just a thought. I don't really know enough about them to expand on that; what they might have thought or wrote about education or what most people consider their major contribution to Catholic thought. |
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One thing about them -- ST Therese at least was not extensively educated. She entered the convent when she was only fifteen or sixteen. She read deeply in the Imitation and the Gospels, and she was very bright, but her knowledge, which brought her the title of "Doctor", did not come from an elite classical education.
Aquinas talks about something called the "connatural" understanding -- understanding through participation in the Good, True, Beautiful.
This is not an argument for the value of ignorance. Quite the opposite. It's just that there is "one needful thing" and that is immersion in the reality of the Incarnation -- mind, body, heart, spirit. With this, everything else becomes invested with value. Without it, all learning is basically sterile. The point is that Therese learned everything needful by focusing on the Life of Christ and her relationship with Him. Or so I would think.
On a Church-wide basis, there is no doubt an evangelical need to claim all things for Christ and that is why efforts to advance in understanding of all things is worthwhile. This is probably sort of like what Eleanor said about the different approaches, like phenomonology, flowing into the main tributary of truth. Josef Pieper says that philosophy (and natural sciences are a branch of philosophy, though generally not recognized as such nowadays) starts from below and reaches upward, while the doctrines of faith, revelation, start from above and are given to us freely as a gift. But still, understanding them and reconciling them to reason is a worthy endeavor. So philosophy is the handmaiden of theology because it by definition has to be faithful to it to be true to itself, though it works from a different direction.
(Edited a bit for greater clarity -- I was in a hurry this morning)
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LeeAnn
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| Posted: Jan 26 2010 at 12:12pm | IP Logged
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Willa wrote:
| The differences between men and women and how that affects education and other areas of life is almost worth another thread. |
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I agree!
Willa wrote:
One thing about them -- ST Therese at least was not extensively educated. She entered the convent when she was only fifteen or sixteen. She read deeply in the Imitation and the Gospels but her knowledge, which brought her the title of "Doctor", did not come from an elite classical education.
Aquinas talks about something called the "connatural" understanding -- understanding through participation in the Good, True, Beautiful.
This is not an argument for the value of ignorance. Quite the opposite. It's just that there is "one needful thing" and that is immersion in the reality of the Incarnation -- mind, body, heart, spirit. With this, everything else becomes invested with value. Without it, all learning is basically sterile. The point is that Therese learned everything needful by focusing on the Life of Christ and her relationship with Him. Or so I would think. |
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I forgot St. Teresa of Avila in my mention of women Doctors of the Church, but that doesn't change your comments, I think, as she was another great mystic with (likely) limited education.
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Willa
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| Posted: Jan 26 2010 at 7:44pm | IP Logged
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Another article by James Schall On the Education of Young Men and Women -- about the thinking of Jacques Maritain (a Thomist scholar) and his wife Raissa, a convert and scholar.
Maritain wrote, according to Schall:
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| often young women enter into the realm of knowledge with an intellectual passion more ardent and a love of truth more disinterested than young men do. If they are usually less gifted than men for the constructive synthesis and the inventive work of reason, they possess over them the advantage of a more vital and organic feeling for knowledge. When they love truth, it is in order to bring it down into life itself. When they love philosophy, it is because it helps them to discover themselves and the meaning of existence; and they well understand the saying of Plato, that we must philosophize with our whole soul. |
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Raissa wrote:
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| "As an atheist, I preferred metaphysics because it is the supreme science, the ultimate crowning of reason. As a Catholic, I love it still more because it allows us to have access to theology, to realise the harmonious and fertile union of reason and faith. It was not enough for me to live, I wanted a reason for living and moral principles which were based on an absolutely certain knowledge... Among all the sciences, it is metaphysics which, after all, seems to me best suited for a feminine mind with a gift for abstraction. |
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Sort of diverging from the main topic of the thread, and I am not sure if Edith Stein (say) would agree with Maritain on this,but I thought it was interesting, and Raissa does get to the heart of what the Church has always considered the value of reason -- not just to make a good living or even just "live well" in a decent earthly sense, but to seek the truth.
Aquinas said that faith is compatible with reason, but higher than reason per se, because it can know things that can't be discovered by reason alone. God tells us things that we can't find out by ourselves by natural reason. But once He has told us, often we can approach the truth to some extent using the tools of reason -- I think it might be something like the way you tell your small child something he would have no way of knowing by himself about the truth of things, and then a while later he surprises you by coming up with a true insight on the thing that you wouldn't have expected of such a young person.
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4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: philosophizing about Classical Education
