My Opinion on 5 Works about Education, Teaching, and Learning - Volume 10

As you're reading through these think about if these apply to us now, and if they apply 2,000 years ago. If they apply now and two millennia ago, I think they are universal principles.

'The Education of the Architect' in 'The Ten Books on Architecture' by Vitruvius 25 BC

If you think about architecture in ancient Rome you realize that they must have known how to educate well, and organize masses of people. When I stood in the Colosseum I thought, "You could fix this up and use it again." There are ancient Roman aqueducts and baths that are still used now, 2,000 year later. In this book on architecture Vitruvius opens it by talking about education. The whole section is wonderful. Here are the first three sections:

"The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of a drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the principles of proportion.

It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them.

In all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are these two points:—the thing signified, and that which gives it its significance. That which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking; and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. It appears, then, that one who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. He ought, therefore, to be both naturally gifted and amenable to instruction. Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist. Let him be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens."

Since then we've gotten better at technology. But, the human element hasn't gotten better. This helped me realize how much respect I need to have for the ancients as people who were not only not inferior, but in some ways superior. And, it helps to realize how much perspective is lost by students not reading these ancient texts, and how much perspective can be quickly gained in a few minutes of reading that transports us across continents and millennia.

'Letters on the Education of Children' by John Witherspoon 1797

Witherspoon was an American Founding Father. He was president of the College of New Jersey when James Madison went there, which later became Princeton University. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and the only active clergyman to sign the American Declaration of Independence. He was originally from Scotland and was recruited by two other American Founding Fathers, Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, to run the college. An extraordinary group of people.

This started as a letter of advice on education that someone had requested. It grew to five letters, was published as a book, and then later published again along with letters of advice from Witherspoon on marriage.

What's fascinating about these letters from a college president on education is that he doesn't talk about what we consider education at all. All five letters deal with raising moral and virtuous children in a good family with religious principles. He talks about the importance of the husband and wife being on the same page as to the ends and means of education, establishing authority over the child early so that you don't have to punish them often or severely later, having good servants around them, the parents having good conduct with others to develop good manners by example. It's all good advice that would work now or 2,000 years ago, and yet is rarely actually adhered to.

These letters helped me realize that when you ask most people about education they're going to think about math and history, but there are some people that immediately think about the deeper foundations.

'Thoughts Upon Female Education' by Benjamin Rush 1787

(I found different versions of this speech and article. The one I'm using is from 'Essays on Education in the Early Republic' edited by Frederick Rudolph, because it seems the most complete.)

When Rush gave this speech he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, and a trustee of the Young Ladies' Academy in Philadelphia. He pointes out how the United States is different than Great Britain and Europe, and therefore the education of women should be treated different, notably that women should read, write, do math and bookkeeping, learn geography, history, and science to be capable of teaching their children, conversing with their husbands, and running their estates and businesses when needed. Rush is the most famous doctor from the American Revolution and he states that singing helps with health, mental and physical. I think he makes a decent case against women reading novels, which I was surprised at.

Rush was always a strong Christian advocate and wrote an entire article against Bibles being banned in schools. Here he makes the case that reading and studying the Bible is important at all ages, and that women should have instruction in the different Christian denominations, which seems immensely practical for the religion to me, but is almost never done anywhere at anytime. He also makes the case that for most women time spent in learning French and a musical instrument ends up being wasted time.

Rush states that it's better to have a separate women's school rather than a co-ed school, and that the school they have in the city allows the women to remain living with their parents, which is better than being away at a school.

Rush was a proponent of strict school order, saying "If the measures that have been recommended for inspiring our pupils with a sense of religious and moral obligation be adopted, the government of them will be easy and agreeable. I shall only remark under this head that strictness of discipline will always render severity unnecessary and that there will be the most instruction in that school where there is the most order."

Rush also makes the case that it's the women of the country that determine the future success or fall of the nation. Here's part of that explanation. "A philosopher once said, “let me make all the ballads of a country and I care not who makes its laws.” He might with more propriety have said, let the ladies of a country be educated properly, and they will not only make and administer its laws, but form its manners and character. It would require a lively imagination to describe, or even to comprehend, the happiness of a country where knowledge and virtue were generally diffused among the female sex. Our young men would then be restrained from vice by the terror of being banished from their company."

It's amazing to me how thoughtful many of the American Founding Fathers were to their place in history, understanding that they were a break from Europe and working to build something new, but that they needed to both understand and be connected to the entire past of western civilization. They also understand and wrote about theory, as well as taking action and creating institutions. People like Rush are just impressive. A few of the particulars of his views surprised me a little, but they weren't major and he supported his positions. The two most interesting things that I realized are: one, he thought the future of a nation depended on the women of the nation, and there is a strong historical case to be made for that; two, he had serious doubts about how the future of the United States would hold up against the ills of human nature that had been seen in previous European cultures, and I think his fears have come to pass, but took longer than he would have predicted.

Pliny the Younger, letter 4.13 to Tacitus 104 AD

While reading this and realizing how amazing this is, remember that it's almost 2,000 years old. This is the main part of the letter:

"When I was last in my native district a son of a fellow townsman of mine, a youth under age, came to pay his respects to me. I said to him, "Do you keep up your studies?" "Yes," said he. "Where?" I asked. "At Mediolanum," he replied. "But why not here?" I queried. Then the lad's father, who was with him, and indeed had brought him, replied, "Because we have no teachers here." "How is that?" I asked. "It is a matter of urgent importance to you who are fathers" — and it so happened, luckily, that a number of fathers were listening to me — "that your children should get their schooling here on the spot. For where can they pass the time so pleasantly as in their native place; where can they be brought up so virtuously as under their parents' eyes; where so inexpensively as at home? If you put your money together you could hire teachers at a trifling cost, and you could add to their stipends the sums you now spend upon your sons' lodgings and travelling money, which are no light amounts. I have no children of my own, but still, in the interest of the State, which I may consider as my child or my parent, I am prepared to contribute a third part of the amount which you may decide to club together. I would even promise the whole sum, if I were not afraid that if I did so my generosity would be corrupted to serve private interests, as I see is the case in many places where teachers are employed at the public charge. There is but one way of preventing this evil, and that is by leaving the right of employing the teachers to the parents alone, who will be careful to make a right choice if they are required to find the money. For those who perhaps would be careless in dealing with other people's money will assuredly be careful in spending their own, and they will take care that the teacher who gets my money will be worth his salt when he will also get money from them as well. So put your heads together, make up your minds, and let my example inspire you, for I can assure you that the greater the contribution you lay upon me the better I shall be pleased. You cannot make your children a more handsome present than this, nor can you do your native place a better turn. Let those who are born here be brought up here, and from their earliest days accustom them to love and know every foot of their native soil. I hope you may be able to attract such distinguished teachers that boys will be sent here to study from the towns round about, and that, as now your children flock to other places, so in the future other people's children may flock hither."

Pliny points out problems with public schools, and problems with boarding schools. This is 2,000 years ago that these things were already known. And yet, almost everyone makes the exact same mistakes now. This helped me realize that people in all eras make these same mistakes, which means that the problem also won't be fixed for most people in the future, and that throughout history and the future it will always be a small percentage of people that choose to have a decent education for their children. I've read a lot of works on education, and this might be the most fascinating single paragraph.

'Social Statics' by Herbert Spencer 1851

Herbert Spencer was a philosopher who became famous in his lifetime. Today he's most known for coining the phrase "Survival of the fittest."

In this book chapter 26 is on education. The first paragraph reads thus:

"In the same way that our definition of state duty forbids the state to administer religion or charity, so likewise does it forbid the state to administer education. Inasmuch as the taking away, by government, of more of a man’s property than is needful for maintaining his rights is an infringement of his rights and therefore a reversal of the government’s function toward him, and inasmuch as the taking away of his property to educate his own or other people’s children is not needful for the maintaining of his rights, the taking away of his property for such a purpose is wrong." Such a great statement, one governments obviously don't and won't agree with.

His entire third section of the chapter lays out the problem wonderfully:

"A sad snare would these advocates of legislative teaching betray themselves into could they substantiate their doctrine. For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life—to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this—a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one. It must first form for itself a definite conception of a pattern citizen; and, having done this, must elaborate such system of discipline as seems best calculated to produce citizens after that pattern. This system of discipline it is bound to enforce to the uttermost. For if it does otherwise, it allows men to become different from what in its judgment they should become, and therefore fails in that duty it is charged to fulfill. Being thus justified in carrying out rigidly such plans as it thinks best, every government ought to do what the despotic governments of the Continent and of China do. That regulation under which, in France, “private schools cannot be established without a license from the minister, and can be shut up by a simple ministerial order,” is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough, seeing that the state cannot permit its mission to be undertaken by others without endangering the due performance of it. The forbidding of all private schools whatever, as until recently in Prussia, is nearer the mark. Austrian legislation, too, realizes with some consistency the state-education theory. By it a tolerably stringent control over the mental culture of the nation is exercised. Much thinking being held at variance with good citizenship, the teaching of metaphysics, political economy, and the like, is discouraged. Some scientific works are prohibited. And a reward is offered for the apprehension of those who circulate Bibles—the authorities in the discharge of their function preferring to entrust the interpretation of that book to their employees, the Jesuits. But in China alone is the idea carried out with logical completeness. There the government publishes a list of works which may be read; and, considering obedience the supreme virtue, authorizes such only as are friendly to despotism. Fearing the unsettling effects of innovation, it allows nothing to be taught but what proceeds from itself. To the end of producing pattern citizens, it exerts a stringent discipline over all conduct. There are “rules for sitting, standing, walking, talking, and bowing, laid down with the greatest precision. Scholars are prohibited from chess, football, flying kites, shuttlecock, playing on wind instruments, training beasts, birds, fishes, or insects—all which amusements, it is said, dissipate the mind and debase the heart.”

Now a minute dictation like this, which extends to every action and will brook no nay, is the legitimate realization of this state-education theory. Whether the government has got erroneous conceptions of what citizens ought to be, or whether the methods of training it adopts are injudicious, is not the question. According to the hypothesis, it is commissioned to discharge a specified function. It finds no ready-prescribed way of doing this. It has no alternative, therefore, but to choose that way which seems to it most fit. And as there exists no higher authority, either to dispute or confirm its judgment, it is justified in the absolute enforcement of its plans, be they what they may. As from the proposition that government ought to teach religion there springs the other proposition, that government must decide what is religious truth and how it is to be taught, so the assertion that government ought to educate necessitates the further assertion that it must say what education is and how it shall be conducted. And the same rigid popery, which we found to be a logical consequence in the one case, follows in the other also."

Spencer rails against government education for the entire chapter, and refutes all of the main arguments made for government education. But, as he points out, even in ancient Athens the government tightly controlled education. This chapter helped me realize that in every generation there are people that see and know the truth, but the general public never does.

Conclusion

Isn't it amazing how good advice has always been available? Every single one of these works, from Vitruvius, Witherspoon, Rush, Pliny, and Spencer is good advice. And yet, our society doesn't follow the advice of any of these men. Is it because they are wrong, or is it because we are wrong?

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