I am prompted to revive my Reinventing Education series by a bittersweet post by Rod Dreher. (Is there anything Dreher writes that isn’t bittersweet?) In “The Wonder and the Dusk of the West,” he uses Mont-Saint-Michel as a metaphor for needed redoubts of Western civilization in the midst of civilizational suicide.
Yes, what is going on in most educational institutions is just that, civilizational suicide. Dreher quotes at length from William Deresiewicz, a literature scholar who has left academia. Why did he leave? Because it has become clear to him through hard experience that scholars who actually have the gall to love Western literature need not apply for most university literature positions. One must instead be proficient in deconstructing and belittling Western literature as a product of racist/sexist/homophobic/blahblah patriarchy to be hired. In other words, one must practically hate the West to teach the literature of the West at most universities.
This miseducation produces students who, instead of being enriched by, say, Dante, ask with a straight face why “a dead white European male, the product of a sexist, racist, bigoted society, had anything to say to us today.”
Hence the grave need to reinvent education, especially to pass on Western civilization instead of acquiesce in its destruction. To preserve the heritage of the West from the professional barbarians and their progeny, Dreher reminds particularly of the need for classical education:
We have to build our Mont-Saint-Michels (so to speak) within which to bear witness to the truth and goodness of our civilization and its inheritance, and educate our children, and their children, and their children's children….
I don't know a more effective way to do this than building and strengthening classical Christian schools and the movement producing them. It is not enough to want your children to go to these schools so that they can escape liberalism. You need to see them as guardians of civilizational memory.
That may seem a big ask — and it is. But do not be discouraged. I have noted that small is often better in education at producing such guardians.
Personally, I am involved in a very small ad hoc group, mostly of young men. Right now, roughly two Sundays a month, we are watching the Francis Schaeffer film series How Should We Then Live and are doing Evening Prayer. An interesting mix has been joining us that is by no means all typical students. Two are factory workers. One is an oil field worker. One helps run a vape shop. Yet our discussions are surely more erudite than many college seminars. I have far more hope for these men than for most university students.
A more organized effort is well underway amidst the mountains and lakes of Northern California. St. Andrew’s College Lake Almanor is now getting off the ground. Some readers may be familiar with St. Andrew’s Academy run by the persistent Fr. Brian Foos. Now, having already offered college level courses, he is beginning an Anglican microcollege with one degree, a Bachelor of Liberal Arts emphasizing Classics and the Great Books.
Here is a podcast interview with Fr. Foos on St. Andrew’s College. Whether you are a young person seeking a real education or a person of means wishing to support real education, I heartily recommend you look into St. Andrew’s College.
And those who pray, please pray for these and other efforts to revive and reinvent education. We all need it! And God does delight in using small things:
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
Brilliant. Thank you.