Thread of the most beautiful college campuses in the US 🧵

1. Flagler College, FL 2. Thomas Aquinas College, CA

People are hungry for beauty.

And there's no place where beauty is more vital than within the “temples of learning”.

Here’s why we have to make classical schools beautiful again - a thread 🧵 Classical schools have frequently been located in uninspiring environments, originally due to necessity.

However, as a new wave of the classical school movement emerges, there's a call for ambition: school buildings should mirror the beauty of the curriculum they offer.

The handwriting of famous authors - thread 🧵

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky's manuscript draft of The Brothers Karamazov 2. Even in his final hours, the night before he died, C.S. Lewis took time to write a letter to a child:

"Dear Philip, to begin with, may I congratulate you on writing such a remarkably good letter; I certainly could not have written it at your age. And to go on with, thank you for telling me that you like my books, a thing an author is always pleased to hear. It is a funny thing that all the children who have written to me see at once who Aslan is, and grown ups never do!"

I get this question all the time so I thought it may be helpful to share with you five books that have been especially impactful for me in developing a love for classical education.

Here we go… The basic purpose for a why we educate has dramatically changed and what we have replaced the ancient telos with may unravel civilization itself. As soon as I finished reading The Abolition of Man I started over and read it again. This is a must read.

My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.

It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them:  they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.

Related: The Chaos of College Curricula

But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?

Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural?  What are the Federalist Papers?

Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers. But most students have not been educated to know them. At best, they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance. It is not their “fault” for pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature. They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present.

Related: Courses without Content

Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.

During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others. But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, by the way). E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix. Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success. Books for Book-o-Phobes
We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders. What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like “critical thinking,” “diversity,” “ways of knowing,” “social justice,” and “cultural competence.”

Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).

In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to “social justice”), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being “judgmental”) are hindrances and handicaps.

Regardless of major or course of study, the main object of modern education is to sand off remnants of any cultural or historical specificity and identity that might still stick to our students, to make them perfect company men and women for a modern polity and economy that penalizes deep commitments. Efforts first to foster appreciation for “multi-culturalism” signaled a dedication to eviscerate any particular cultural inheritance, while the current fad of “diversity” signals thoroughgoing commitment to de-cultured and relentless homogenization.

We Must Know…What?

Above all, the one overarching lesson that students receive is the true end of education: the only essential knowledge is that know ourselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference. Our commitment to mutual indifference is what binds us together as a global people. Any remnant of a common culture would interfere with this prime directive:  a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions.
Ancient philosophy and practice praised as an excellent form of government a res publica – a devotion to public things, things we share together. We have instead created the world’s first Res Idiotica – from the Greek word idiotes, meaning “private individual.” Our education system produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.

They won’t fight against anyone, because that’s not seemly, but they won’t fight for anyone or anything either. They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory.

I love my students – like any human being, each has enormous potential and great gifts to bestow upon the world. But I weep for them, for what is rightfully theirs but hasn’t been given. On our best days, I discern their longing and anguish and I know that their innate human desire to know who they are, where they have come from, where they ought to go, and how they ought to live will always reassert itself. But even on those better days, I can’t help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited – a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares – is about to come tumbling down, and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.

- Patrick Deneen

I often reference classical education without trying to define it. To assist in understanding the difference between mainstream modern education and classical education, here are 5 differentiators that serve as a starting point for comparison. 1) The goal of classical education is cultivating wonder and virtue in students (think of the 4 cardinal virtues and the 3 theological virtues). The goal of modern education is “College and Career Readiness”.

My father-in-law is a builder. He is insanely gifted. We were in a cathedral together years ago and I asked him what it would cost to build it today. I will never forget his answer…

“We can’t, we don’t know how to do it.” travelnotesandbeyond.com/the-mystery-of…

Juneteenth isn’t some “woke” new holiday invented by the left. It has been celebrated in Texas since 1866, it’s the annual observance of the end of slavery in 1865. Is the day we started living up to our founding creed.

The left has plenty of excesses to roast, Juneteenth is not… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… “Today, all across Texas and the United States, Americans are blessed to celebrate Juneteenth and the freedom we are all afforded as citizens of this great nation.
“As we reflect on the sobering circumstances that led to the necessity of such an event, let this holiday serve as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

My father-in-law is a builder. It is difficult to get his attention in a magnificent space because he is lost in wonder. We were in a cathedral together years ago and I asked him what it would cost to build it today. I will never forget his answer…

“We can’t, we don’t know how… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Building cathedrals requires a certain kind of culture. It requires a culture that literally believes in building on the work of previous generations rather than tearing it down.

I often reference classical education without trying to define it. To assist in understanding the difference between mainstream modern education and classical education, here are 5 differentiators that serve as a starting point for comparison. 1) The goal of classical education is cultivating wonder and virtue in students (think of the 4 cardinal virtues and the 3 theological virtues). The goal of modern education is “College and Career Readiness”.

What happens at Harvard never stays at Harvard. A little over a century ago Harvard chucked traditional classical education and embraced the then new specialization. This move had a profound impact on every aspect of American education. In an ironic goodbye to education as it existed for millennia, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot left us the 50-volume set now known as “The Harvard Classics.”

This is what a serious high school education looks like. This is why the Chesterton Academy network is one of the fastest growing networks of schools in America. Florida friends, I will be speaking at this gala tomorrow night, email the head of school to RSVP!

Comprehensive Reading List from the University of Dallas: this is what a serious undergraduate education looks like.
 
Narrative Literature (Epic or Romance)
•Bible: Genesis, Exodus 1-2, Samuel, Job, Four Gospels
Homer: The Iliad, The Odyssey
Vergil: The Aeneid
Dante: The… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Shelley: "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," "Mont Blanc"
Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn," "Bright Star"
Tennyson: "Ulysses," "The Lady of Shalott," In Memoriam 1, 7, 55, 56
Browning: "My Last… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

This is from Thomas Aquinas College in California. This is what a serious undergraduate education looks like. The students seem to enjoy it

I often reference classical education without fully defining it. To assist in understanding the difference between modern education and classical education, here are 5 key differentiators that serve as a starting point for comparison. 1) The goal of classical education is cultivating wonder and virtue in students (think of the 4 cardinal virtues and the 3 theological virtues). The goal of modern education is “College and Career Readiness”.

I use the term “classical education” a great deal without defining it so I thought it may be helpful to provide 5 very basic differentiators to help you compare and contrast modern education with classical education. (1) The goal of classical education is cultivating wonder and virtue in students (think of the 4 cardinal virtues and the 3 theological virtues). The goal of modern education is “College and Career Readiness”.

I use the term “classical education” a great deal without defining it so I thought it may be helpful to provide 5 very basic differentiators to help you compare and contrast modern education with classical education. (1) The goal of classical education is cultivating wonder and virtue in students (think of the 4 cardinal virtues and the 3 theological virtues). The goal of modern education is “College and Career Readiness”.

Six years ago, almost the day, I had a crazy idea that has been my obsession ever since. But I must begin earlier.

I arrived in NYC in 2004. I was a John Kerry voting Democrat and I was eager to do the noble work of teaching in the inner city. I left three years later I was deeply skeptical of the entire project of modern education. So what did I experience teaching in NYC? I witnessed a complete breakdown of the family. Students at my school were frequently arrested for gang violence, selling drugs, and shoplifting.