Reinventing Education – Smaller Can Be Better

Yesterday, I greatly enjoyed going over to First Things to read “How to be on the Right Side of History” from James Hankins.  It is an engaging take on different views of what constitutes “the right side of history” or even if such a thing exists.  This amateur historian loved it.  Do go read it.

For the purposes of this series, I will focus on Hankins’ recommending traditional education as a possible way to end up on the right side of history.  He deals mainly with K-12 in that regard, but I think his point can be applied to education as a whole.

He compares the predominant and increasingly woke public schooling, which often indoctrinates more than it educates and discourages intelligent discussion, with the small but growing classical school movement, which both educates and nurtures thinking and intelligent expression.  And he asks a pointed question:

How are the two populations of high school graduates going to compare after a decade of independent development? The graduates of woke K-12 education are going to be incurious ignoramuses. Even if they possess a lot of raw intelligence, they will be intellectually torpid because a system of schooling that aims at indoctrination must smother natural curiosity and a sense of wonder about the unknown, the spring of all true education. They will lack creativity because knowledge—knowledge inside your head, not merely retrievable data—provides the raw material of the imagination. 

Meanwhile, children brought up in classical schools will know stuff. They will have a much fuller grasp of the amazing story of America. Having taken courses about Western civilization, they will have a grasp of the broad sweep of history, and they will be able to compare Western achievements fairly with those of other civilizations. They will have been brought up on a rich diet of Western art, architecture, music, and literature. They will have been taught that good character is a person’s most valuable possession. They will have been taught logic (the art of reasoning) and rhetoric (the art of eloquence and persuasion).

So ten years from now, which group of high school graduates will constitute the elite? I don’t mean the credentialed elite, but the true elite—the young men and women with the best characters, the best skills, and the best, most creative minds? I think we know the answer to that question.

He then points out that Petrarch and his followers began small but had a great influence on education and thought during the Renaissance. I was reminded of the Benda clan, about which Rod Dreher wrote warmly in Live Not By Lies.  Their educational efforts were underground in Communist Czechoslovakia.  But when the house of cards of Communism fell, people they educated and influenced rose up to pick up the pieces of that society.

For a current example of being small but effective, I cannot but help think of Cranmer House.  I am a bit biased because there I earned my Certificate of Anglican Studies, which I value far more than Masters degrees from most institutions. Cranmer House borrows its physical facilities from a church, has much of its classes online, and has a very affordable tuition.  But it punches above its weight, is growing, and is rightly gaining a reputation as a go-to seminary for traditional formation at a time when several once reputable seminaries have become weak and even woke.

In many situations, smaller is better.  In fields where the need is great but the demand small and focused, such as traditional Anglican education, it may be a necessity.  It is easier to experiment and adapt if one’s project is small.  It is also easier to evade the predations of cancel culture; they have bigger targets to ruin.  

And what can more effectively provide a traditional, classical education – a large institution pressured and perhaps already taken over by the woke or a small project run by those more committed to good education than to the preservation of institutions or careers?  Not to mention that so much effort and money goes into the maintenance of large institutions.  Small projects do not have such burdens.

I could go on.  But as we do our part in the reinvention of education, do not be discouraged by smallness.  Often small is more effective and is certainly more adaptable and is probably necessary in many areas of education as well.  And in a society when so much “education” is garbage, projects that provide excellent education will shine and grow.  More importantly, their students will be several cuts above the crowd.  Such are the leaders that make history.