Learning By Way of Conversation

     Learning with undergraduate and graduate students over the past twelve years employing  conversational learning (or Socratic, or shared inquiry, or dialogical exchange) has converted me.  While I can still see the value of a lecture as a means of conveying information (much like reading a book, article, or blog), I am completely convinced that conversational learning is the best way for deep attention in learning.  In other words, it is the best way to be certain that minds are engaged, and in addition to the transference of information, there is also thinking through that information. Conversational learning assures that the participants are reflecting and analyzing material.  It is also the only way I know that one can be confident that the movement from data exchange to the ultimate goal of becoming wise can occur.
     By way of honor to this way of learning, here are some select quotes I have run across over the years that address conversation and learning through conversation.  For the record, conversational learning is not when two or more people sit around and share their feelings about something, and it is not a collective gathering of mere ignorance.  Ideally, it is when people who know they do know approach something they do not understand with the tools of thinking and conversing to figure out what can be known. The expert in the conversation is that Great Book, or poem, or play, or math problem, or theory.  It is all predicated on the reality that few affirm and the "educated" ridicule-- knowledge is the single greatest hindrance to learning.  If you do not believe me, talk with someone who thinks they know something and see how open they are to learning what he already thinks he knows.
     Quotes about conversations for your enjoyment and hopefully you will share in a conversation with another....

“In academic life, in my experience, there is no real conversation; just various people awaiting their turn to hold forth.” Joseph Epstein

“Bring a 'wise man' to a party: he will disrupt it either by his gloomy silence or his tedious cavils…Drag him along to a public festival: his face alone will be enough to put a damper on people’s gaiety…If he joins a conversation, everyone suddenly clams up.” Erasmus

Always something ought to be investigated or heard or read or argued for the student who wishes to be great. Since satiety and tedium usually occur in this strenuous exercise, the mind must be refreshed by variety and relaxed by variations, so that easy material follows hard, joyous follows sad, and new follows old; and we proceed from reading to writing, from writing to entertainment, from entertainment to learned conversation and the learned gatherings of friends.   Johann Sturm

“Most people who make their views known on t-shirts and bumper stickers do not want to be questioned about their opinions.” Stephen Miller

“Impatience to interrupt others, and the uneasiness of being interrupted are faults toward conversation and difficult to remedy.” Jonathan Swift

“Equality is the life of conversation.” Richard Steele

“In conversation we form the interpersonal ties that bind individuals together in personal relationships.” Walter Ong

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue.  That is why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.”  Truman Capote

“A true knowledge of the world is gained only by conversation.” Henry Fielding

“Conversation is what binds us into a people.” Diane McWhorter

“To my taste, the most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind is conversation.” 

Michael de Montaigne

Bertrand Russell's The Study of Mathematics: Gateway to the Great Books Vol. 9 Mathematics

     When most Christians hear the name of Bertrand Russell, they are likely to be aware of his most famous (or infamous) essay which is entitled "Why I am not a Christian" (which, all Christians should read). In truth Russell should also be known for being a mathematical polymath. There are a number of insights one can glean from his writings on mathematics, beyond the very nature of math itself. One quote that Adler gives of Russell that is representative is, "The habit of mind that is developed in defining the obvious will stand you in very good stead when you enter the world of abstract thought. Your definitions will be your only landmarks." (83) 
     A point of import Russell makes that is well worth recurring reflection is, "At this stage, it is well to study afresh the elementary portions of mathematics, asking no longer merely whether a given proposition is true, but also how it grows out of the central principles of logic." (89)  It is here that Russell is asking the student of math to not only be able to crunch the numbers, but to be able to give an explanation for why things are the way they are in math.
     Even if one does not appreciate Russell's views of Christianity, one can certainly appreciate his view that, "As respects those pursuits which contribute only remotely, by providing the mechanism of life, it is well to be reminded that not the mere fact of living is to be desired, but the art of living in the contemplation of great things." (84)
     Unlike most mathematicians of the modern world, Russell was aware of the deep history of mathematics, especially as it is connected with philosophy. Russell speaks well of the roots of mathematics in Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers. He also notes the relationship between math and poetry, math and beauty, and of course math and logic. Russell makes one brilliant insightful comment about the understanding of Euclid and geometry. (87)
     As a teacher of Great Books, I have long been opposed to textbooks for their inadequate ability to actually teach students to think through disciplines. I was encouraged to read Russell had similar convictions, "In the great majority of mathematical textbooks there is a total lack of unity and method and of systematic development of central themes." (89)
     While there is certainly much in this brief essay to appreciate and even learn from Russell, there are also a number of elements that one would want to question.  More than once Russell makes claims for the nature and power of mathematics that may not be defensible. (91)
     Among the many things that a Christian reader can appreciate from this essay on mathematics, one could certainly affirm Russell's convictions against skepticism and his  argument for objective truth.  As a matter of fact he ends this essay with some of the most encouraging words for the defense of math one will ever read. "Every great study is not only an end itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mine; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics." (94)

Mortimer Adler on the Meaning of a Liberal Education

Mortimer Adler, the polymath behind the Great Books of the Western World series, and one of the many leaders behind the modern Great Books movement, wrote numerous essays on the nature of a truly good education and what real learning looks like. There are many essays by Adler that I would encourage you to read, but what I would like to do in this brief meditation is to highlight one that is of importance especially in light of recent arguments to get rid of Liberal Arts or Liberal education in many American universities.  In truth, much of what passes for Liberal education is orientation into ideological propaganda, but that is a matter for another time.
     In the essay Liberal Education–Theory and Practice (1945), Adler explores what is most often misunderstood by educators and now common practice by colleges today.  It is what is replaced by technical training.  In truth, real Liberal education has extraordinary capabilities for students.
     Not willing to shy away from even the language of critics of liberal education in 1945 Adler says, "The direct product of liberal education is a good mind, well disciplined and its present process of inquiring and judging, knowing and understanding, and well furnished with knowledge, well cultivated by ideas." (109, 110)
     Adler, also unwilling to shy away from a good fight, asserts that a B.A. should not signify a completed liberal education and it certainly should not signify that one now has received the proper training to earn a living or even to live a happy life.  A B.A. degree should rather signify, "only decent preparation for the continuing task of adult education." It should be immediately added, that Adler most certainly did not mean by "adult education" what the modern degree factories mean by the term "adult education."  Rather what Adler meant was that the B.A. degree (if earned at a place of learning) enables one to learn the rest of one's life in a truly liberal and humane manner.
     To conclude this reflection with what I consider one of the best definitions of a liberal education found anywhere by anyone in anytime, "In any roomful of people, we would pick out the liberally educated man or woman as the one who manifests all the goods which belong to the intellect. These goods–the truth and various ways of getting at the truth-contribute to a happy life; they may even be indispensable, as is good moral character and some amount of wealth; but by themselves they do not make a man happy.  A liberally educated man, lacking the goods which liberal education does not provide, can be more miserable than those who have these other goods without the benefit of liberal education. Liberal education is a perilous asset unless other and independent factors cooperate in the molding of the person. It is an asset, nevertheless, both because of what he contributes–a good mind, which everyone would enjoy having–and because a good mind is useful, though never by itself sufficient, for the acquisition of all other goods." (110)

Why Russell Kirk's Teaching Humane Literature in High Schools is MUST Reading

     On occasion, someone will email me or ask me at a conference, "if there is one article or essay on the problems and solutions to modern education, that everyone should read, what is it"?  Questions like this are wonderful on at least two levels--it gives me the exhilaration of mentally scanning the articles that might fit, and the opportunity to then to ask a few questions to narrow down the search.
     Of course, there are hundreds that might fit, but the one that I most often place at the very top of the list is Russell Kirk's Teaching Humane Literature in High School.  This intellectual treat was reissued back in 2007 in The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays, with a number of other pieces well worth reading in this fine collection.  
     Of the many qualities found in Kirk's writings one can admire and certainly emulate, the way Dr. Kirk provides precise analysis of the crisis, and while never moving toward despair, offers a sound prognosis with much helpful advice for a possible cure.
     In the article entitled Teaching Humane Literature in High Schools, originally published in 1977, Kurt provides much that we could gain from listening to as we strive in Classical Christian schools and home-school circles to offer the best education possible grounded in our great intellectual heritage.
     Writing in 1977, Kurt offers some reasons as to why humane letters were in decline at the time. "One reason for this decay is the unsatisfactory quality of many programs of reading; another is the limited knowledge of humane letters possessed by some well–intentioned teachers, uncertain of what books they ought to select for their students to digest well." The truth is, at what what true in 1977 is even more true today.
     Russell Kirk, gives two specific reasons why literature studies are in trouble.  "The first of these is a misplaced eagerness for 'relevance.' The second of these is the kind of sullen purposelessness–the notion that literature, if it has any end at all, is meant either to start up discontents, or else merely to amuse."
     Certainly many have bowed a knee to the idol of relevancy and lost out on truths that transcend a particular moment.   In the pursuit to be constantly relevant, they often discover that relevancy is fickle and often difficult to track. He speaks about this relevancy in the most poignant terms,  "Such shallow relevance to the trivial and the ephemeral must leave young people prisoners of what Eliot called the provinciality of time." In other words, while some people aspire to be relevant, what really occurs is they become irrelevant because the notion of relevance passes to quickly.
     As in his other writings, Kirk reminds us that instead of being taken captive to the momentary wind of relevancy, we should aspire to embrace "the permanent things." We should recognize those works of literature that address the depth and the breath of the human condition, those that examine moral issues, those that address the span of human history, and those that also explore ways of what it means to be human living in community with other humans.
     One of the more terrifying and yet historically accurate assertions made by Russell Kirk is that, "In every civilized land, literary studies were taken very seriously indeed until recent decades." Kirk as well as others, who are committed to humane letters, is willing to make the case, and does so persuasively, that humane letters should be ranked as peer to theology and philosophy.
     Kirk offers insight into how humane letters actually work, "Humane letters rouse us to the beautiful and the just through symbol, parable, image, simile, allegory, fantasy, and lively example. The purpose of literature is to develop the moral imagination. If human beings do not feel the touch of the moral imagination, they are as the beasts that perish."
     For the critic out there unnecessarily, but ignorantly set to condemn Russell Kirk's view as being romantic, he is very clear as to the limits of literature.  "Literature can corrupt; and it is possible, too, to be corrupted by an ignorance of humane letters, much of our normative knowledge necessarily being derived from our reading. The person who reads bad books instead of good may be subtly corrupted; the person who reads nothing at all maybe forever adrift in life..."
     Among the many hopeful, or positive suggestions provided within this essay, Kirk also gives what Adler does in a number of places, and that is Kirk provides a reading list or suggested beginning reading list for the 9th through 12th grade level. It is worth noting that these works are rich with a sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful.  As a matter of fact Kirk says this, "all things begin and end in mystery. Out of tales of wonder comes awe–and the beginnings of philosophy."

Select Quotes From Select Christian Literary Critics

     While working on my doctorate, I did come to realize that a lover of a book is a very different creature than a critic of a book.  When I started reading the lovers, it became a delight to read both books and literary criticism.  Here are some quotes to spark your thinking about why and how we Christians read, and why and how we read through the lens of faith, hope, and love.  The critics operating according to the fruit of the Spirit are the best guides.  A few quotes below are not from Christian critics, but their sentiments are close to the Kingdom.

     Among scholars and critics of ‘primary narrative,’ it is widely recognized that the emergence to prominence of literary theory over ‘explication de texte,’ despite certain evident attractions, carries with it a disturbing proclivity to occlude the texts which were once, ostensibly, theory’s justification.  David Lyle Jeffrey People of the Book, 354.

     One thing, however, is certain: Reading can never die out among Christians.  This is because the whole Christian revelation centers around a Book.  God chose to reveal Himself to us in the most personal way through His Word—the Bible.  Gene Veith  Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, 17.

     Among stamp collectors, letter-writers are not always welcome.  George Steiner  After Babel:  Aspects of Language and Translation. xi

     A growing problem is illiteracy—many people do not know how to read.  A more severe problem, though, is “aliteracy”—a vast number of people know how to read but never do it.  Gene Veith Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, 25.

     As readers it is our task, as well as our delight, to enter that world (secondary literary world) with open eyes, accept it on its own merit, learn its rules and see its function.  James W. Sire How to Read Slowly: Reading for Comprehension, 93.

     The quest for meaning is like the desire for life, presence, survival against threatening encroachments of death, absence, annihilation.  Valentine Cunningham In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts, and History, 13.

     Both items in this reading-writing transaction, the word and the world, exist only by courtesy of each other, because both consist, for the reader, in each other.  Valentine Cunningham In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts, and History 11.

     The aim of a Great Book is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Russell Kirk Enemies of Permanent Things 41.

     The very phrase “humane letters” implies that literature is meant to teach us the character of human normality.  Russell Kirk Enemies of Permanent Things.

     In certain ways, the great novel and great poem can teach more of norms than can philosophy and theology.  Russell Kirk Enemies of the Permanent Things 51.

     Literature is meant to rouse and fortify the living, to renew the contract of eternal society.  Russel Kirk Enemies of the Permanent Things 2.

     Life is its own end—if one has a soul to tell him so.  Russell Kirk Enemies of the Permanent Things 11.

     The love of life burns brighter in Ray Bradbury than in any other man of letters.  Russell Kirk Enemies of the Permanent Things  120. (This is one among many reasons I love the fiction of Ray Bradbury)

    When called a moralist, Ray Bradbury accepts the impeachment willingly. Russell Kirk Enemies of the Permanent Things 121. (This is another reason I love the fiction of Ray Bradbury)

     The Christian view of language and its implied principles of literary theory are hardly then, pace Bloom and Derrida, bound to the mere semeity of texts.  Human words are creatures of the moment, even as are the bodies of those who speak the words; fleetingly they are present and then pass away.  David Lyle Jeffrey People of the Book 69.

     Ultimately my fullest appreciation goes to literature that pleases me, not only by its imaginative beauty, but also by its truth.  Leland Ryken Triumphs of the Imagination 150.

     If modern life is ugly and depraved and perverted and violent, we can expect modern literature to be the same in the subject matter it portrays.  Leland Ryken Triumphs of the Imagination 179.

     What is indisputable is that literature is a stimulus to a response.  Leland Ryken Triumphs of the Imagination 187.

     We do not understand literature without a theory of language, and we do not understand either without a theory of life.  Michael Edwards Toward a Christian Poetics 1.

     We do have a sense of language in an Edenic condition of efficacy and plenitude, at one with the world and with ourselves, fulfilling our desires as speakers and writers, and doing so with ease.  We recognize it at times as a quite prodigious power.  On the other hand, we also know, perhaps more clearly in our century than ever before, that language has been subjected, like the human and non-human world to which it belongs, to ‘vanity’ and ‘corruption.’  The Edenic harmonies lost, our access to it – as to everything else – is troubled, and our engagement with it a form of our exilic labour.  Michael Edwards Toward  A Christian Poetics 11.

     My contention is that part of the function of language and literature is too strain towards that spiritualising of the body. Michael Edwards Toward a Christian Poetics, 5.

     Language, if one accepts this teaching, is neither additional to the rest of our experience nor merely of extreme importance.  It is within us and we are within it, rather as if language, like air, were the medium through which we move and which moves through us.  It is our way, to ourselves, to this world, to another, and to God.  And it is disturbed, a divine word challenged by lapsed human words.  Michael Edwards Toward a Christian Poetics 220.

     In the imperfect area of human signification, where we see now “as in a mirror enigmatically,” the asymptotic character of fallen language is a source of endless frustration as well as momentary joy.  David Lyle Jeffrey People of the Book 8.

Taking Note of T.S. Eliot's Notes on Education and Culture

     The end of World War II and our current moment have one thing in common when it comes to educational books. There was then, as there is now, a plethora of books putting forth various theories about education and calling for education reform. After more than sixty years of change, it seems things are more broken than ever.  Few at that time, and certainly few, if any, at this time, have a sense of the history of education, let alone a rich philosophy of education. The great poet T.S. Eliot can help us considerably in this regard. In his book Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, he specifically addresses the issue of education and culture.
     Beginning with the definition of education, Eliot relates the nature of education to culture as a whole. Specifically on culture Eliot says, "if we mean that Culture is what is passed on by our elementary and secondary schools, or by our preparatory and public schools, then we are asserting that an organ is a whole organism. For the schools can transmit only a part, and they can only transmit this part effectively, if the outside influences, not only of family and environment, but of work and play, of newsprint and spectacles and entertainment and sport, are in harmony with them." It may be here that one should spend a great deal of time for a long pause. Why? Because this is a matter that few educational theorist have thought about when examining education. And the point is this: the relationship between education and the broader culture is so important that one of the reasons modern education receives an "F" is because the culture from which it draws its identity and reason for being receives an "F."
     In addition to spending a good bit of time on the definition of education, T. S. Eliot also addresses the purpose of education.   Now for Christendom, this is indeed a very different matter than the purpose of education for those outside of the church. Eliot says, "the purpose of education, it seems, is to transmit culture: so culture [which has not been defined] is likely to be limited to what can be transmitted by education."
     Eliot then examines the connection between education in America and the idea of democracy. Unlike others, he does not merely stand and wave the flag. He recognizes that democracy also has implications for education, possibly even pitfalls for education. Eliot also looks at education as training and happiness and how possibly education may have multiple ends and not merely one end or goal.  At this point, Eliot demonstrates how some of these views within the theories of education do indeed conflict with one another.
     Unlike others, especially those who have come to see education as a means to an end of happiness and wealth, Eliot does explore how education can and cannot, may or may not make one happy. It is worth noting that this essay by T. S. Eliot from his book written back in 1948 projected forward to a society where virtually everyone has "the quality of opportunity" for an education.  It is here where Eliot says, "the ideal of a uniform system such that no one capable of receiving higher education could fail to get it, leads imperceptibly to the education of too many people, and consequently to the lowering of standards to whatever the swollen number of candidates is able to reach."  Read that last part again and consider how bloated the American university system is with candidates unfit for learning.
     As we are able to move from 1948 to the present moment, and we are able to fast forward to now we recognize that Eliot was correct. Here it may be worth the effort to reflect on a portion of Eliot's powerful poem, The Rock:  


Where is the Life we have lost in living? 
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? 
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? 


     Eliot could not have anticipated the age of personal computers where people get all excited about the reality of iPads for everyone from K - College seniors. One can only project into the future of the dark world that we may be making for ourselves starting now.  Eliot carefully defining education for everybody says, "education for everybody is the means we must employ for putting civilization together again. Now so long as we mean by 'education' everything that goes to form the good individual in a good society, we are in accord, though the conclusion does not appear to get us anywhere." Having been part of American "Higher Education" for more than twenty years, it is comical and tragic to argue that our current system works.  Again, Eliot, "In our headlong rush to educate everybody, we are lowering our standards and more and more abandoning the study of those subjects by which the centrals of our culture–of that part of it which is transmissible by education–are transmitted; destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future willing encamp in their mechanised caravans."
     One has ample evidence that at least half of all getting degrees are not qualified to even begin to pursuit of that degree, and more than half of the recipients of the paper signifying that degree did not receive an education close to purchasing price. Our hope rests in  Classical Christian schools and Christian colleges and universities that take their cues from the best of the past. "We know now that the highest achievements of the past, in art, in wisdom, in holiness, were but 'stages in development' which we can teach our springalds to improve upon."  We can do as Eliot urges in this essay or, as is likely for the bulk of our educating machine, we can continue to follow a failed system that is destined to the dust of death.

Michael Oakeshott on Learning and Teaching

     A lecture from Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) describes the relationship between a student and teacher and is of value to the modern student and teacher.  "Most of what I have to say about learning and teaching relates to the character of what is taught and learned." Oakeshott spoke in terms one would not likely hear today, that education is about considering more than merely redistributing data. Ultimately it is about cultivating the gift of discernment within the student. "Before any concrete skill or ability can appear, information must be partnered by judgment, 'knowing how' must be added to the 'knowing what' of information." Later Oakeshott says, "judgment, then is, that which, when united with information, generates knowledge or ability to do, to make, or to understand and explain. It is being able to think–not to think in no manner in particular, but to think with an appreciation of the considerations which belong to different modes of thought."
     Oakeshott challenges the long-held analogies of the relationship between the teacher and student as clay and wax or as students being a receptacle to fill.  "A learner is not a passive recipient of impressions, or one whose accomplishments spring from mere reactions to circumstances."  More than once Oakeshott uses the phrase, "the civilized inheritance of mankind" to describe what it is that is translated between teacher and student and that it is of the greatest lasting value.   It is this civilized inheritance that the teacher is to teach and the student to learn,  "Learning is the comprehensive activity in which we come to know ourselves in the world around us…being aware, to what may be called understanding and being able to explain."
     It is rare that those in the field of modern education speak about what it means to think, beyond the nebulous "critical thinking," but when they do stumble upon the notion of thinking, they rarely clarify what it means to think or what they mean by thinking. Oakeshott additionally gives us assistance as to what it means to learn to think, "learning to think is not merely learning how to judge, to interpret, and do use information; it is learning to recognize and enjoy the intellectual virtues."  When was the last time you heard someone in the field of education speak about intellectual virtues, let alone enjoying the intellectual virtues?
     One other item related to Oakeshott's notion of intellectual virtues is that he personally believes that virtues could not or should not be taught, but that virtues, including intellectual virtues, can be caught by the student as these are conveyed by the teacher.  This however would mean that the teacher is characterized by a life of intellectual virtues.  There are few schools where this is a priority.  Those are the schools where learning is occuring.