Thread by @michaelharriot

This is actually a good question.

When I first heard this, I felt the same way, until I learned what the "classical education model" actually means.

A thread.

Because I was homeschooled for the first part of my education, I'm really just learning how schools teach things. When I heard the phrase "classical education," I knew what it meant

My mom was big on the classics. I've written many times how she loved the Socratic Method:

This is part of classical education. It focuses on the tradition of western education, philosophy, science, etc. as a tool for teaching students.

For instance, because 60% of English words have Latin & Greek Origin...

the74million.org/article/amid-t…

Students who study Greek & Latin will have a better understanding of the English language

The structure was developed by a white mystery novelist named Dorothy Sayers. I won't throw shade at her because my mom's name is Dorothy, too.

Plus, she was smart.

But here's the thing:

This is how DOROTHY learned shit.

It is built on the premise that, because Dorothy and Benjamin Franklin and some smart white people learned stuff in a certain way, this is how you learn things.

It is wholly incompatible with effective education, for two reasons:

1. It predetermines what "smart" is.

If you say: "smart people know the state capitols," and I know all of the WORLD capitols, am I dumber than someone who knows that the capital of Wyoming is ... I don't know... Cowboyland?
Here is a better example:

My cousin can play any instrument by ear. Since he was a kid, he could hear a sound and figure out how to play it on a piano, guitar, saxophone etc.

I hated that dude.

So when he got to junior high, he tried out for the concert band and couldn't NEVER make it in.

Why?

He just couldn't read music.

Music is simply sound vibrations, so he was essentially SMARTER at music than his peers.

When he was in the 11th grade, he discovered he was dyslexic. Plus, he was left-handed.

His problem was not that he couldn't read music...

It was that he couldn't learn the method of translating sounds (notes, treble clefs, etc) that was created for PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO do what he does.

I'd argue that playing music by ear is ACTUALLY READING MUSIC

How can a student who speaks Swahili, Arabic & English...

Fail "Language Arts?"

Classical Education, that's how. It doesn't measure a student's ability to learn or teach them TO LEARN. It teaches students to learn LIKE WHITE PEOPLE LEARN who have already been deemed smart because they know white things

Or as the Tampa Bay times says:

But there's a bigger reason why Classical Education is a sham:

2. ALL THOSE PEOPLE ARE DUMB.

All those philosophers from Greece and Rome and Cowboyland were wrong. They thought the sun revolved around the earth. They thought the moon was a star. They didn't know things.

Education evolves. But if your foundation, like Classical Education, is built on ingesting and regurgitating shit smart people say, it becomes HARDER to progress as a society.

Unless, of course, progress is not your goal.

If your goal is to ensure that white people are smart,

Then Classical Education works great. Smart white people write three-act plays like the Greeks and speak Latin at dinner parties and play baroque music on violins

People without a classic education make musical instruments out of turntables because they can't read a treble clef.

If your classical education didn't teach you about stanzas and Shakespeare, you might make poems that sound like drums. If classical education doesn't teach you about the enlightenment, you might think Thomas Jefferson was a slave rapist who plagiarized other smart slave rapists

Without a Classic education, you might start music that evokes MORE EMOTION than the Beethoven with words that Shakespeare didn't and engineer an entirely different form of recording

Or you might invent a cotton gin or a light bulb or a whole genre that WHITE PEOPLE CAN'T DO

But how will people understand you if you didn't take Latin? How will you make it to Kalamazoo if you don't know your capitals?

And how did this Classical education revival even begin?

Well, I first heard about it from a woman named Sheri Few who started US Parents in Education

In 2014, Few ran for SC Superintendant of Education, which is weird because she only had one goal:

wng.org/roundups/grass…

In 2021, Few started a beef with a certified genius named Gloria Swindler Bouette.

If there is one person who knows about education, it's Bouette. She's literally been summoned to every continent to teach people how to educate students.

My bad, she's never been to Antarctica

Anyway, in 2021 Few put Swindler on a right-wing list of people who were teaching CRT.

To be fair, Few wasn't wrong. Boutte was teaching culturally relevant teaching or culturally responsive teaching.

The story is kinda crazy,

uspie.blog/2021/08/02/how…

Now you can call this dispute a matter of opinion between 2 education experts, but there's a reason why Sheri Few couldn't be a superintendent

She doesn't know shit about education.

She's never studied education or worked in a school. She has a high school diploma and that's it

That's right. The classical education lady DOESN'T HAVE A CLASSICAL EDUCATION!

But Few didn't start this movement.

Have you ever wondered why all those CRT laws that you hear about sound the same? It's almost like they were copied & pasted from the same source.

They were.

People know that Christopher Rufo started the whole Critical Race Theory demonization project, and has since been put in charge of "classic education" in Fla

Like Few, Rufo has no experience, education or training in education

Not even the classic kind.

nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/…

Rufo's day job is for the Manhattan Institute, a far-right think tank that actually created the sample legislation that mysteriously formed the basis for anti-CRT bills in 28 states

My favorite part is that the footnotes are just stuff Rufo said

What does CRT have to do with Classical education?

Well, a month earlier, the Manhattan Institute, the same place that WROTE the anti-CRT laws, published another paper:

Instead of citing Christopher Rufo, they mentioned smart white people

manhattan.institute/article/classi…

They tell you what it means.

Now here's the thing about Classical Education

When they talk about the Greeks and the Romans, they're talking about people who GOT THEIR EDUCATION FROM BLACK PEOPLE.

And I know y'all like to think that Egyptians weren't Black

history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myt…

But because I had a classical education, I actually know how those ancient Greeks and Romans described the people who taught them things.

Like Herodetous, the "father of history" and Homer, the first white man to spit bars

(BTW: Ethiopia literally translates to "burnt face"

But I understand why @FoxNews thinks I'm making shit up when I call it a "dog whistle."

I understand why that dude emailed me.

foxnews.com/media/msnbc-gu…

They probably have a classical education...

Or like my mama said: