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Liveblog: Professor McClay, Part III
The Founders saw the civic importance of education: education is about the good life in common. Education is preparation for citizenship. What does this mean? Well, McClay asks, let's look at the subjects they studied: history, particularly that of ancient Rome and post-Elizabethan Great Britain - which allows them to cite the historical events in contemporary political debates - and political philosophy, from Aristotle to David Hume to Thomas Gordon to John Locke. (Locke, Bacon and Newton were Jefferson's Trinity - which gets a laugh from the crowd.) Also law and literature, both ancient and contemporary and in between (like Shakespeare). Their education was "rigorous and classical."
"They were active people - they were activists. They were involved in a time of great political and social upheaval." These books weren't just a diversion, McClay says; they consulted the works of the past, "to help make sense of their present tribulations." McClay quotes Nash: "They tended to regard books not as ornaments but as tools."
The Founders, McClay said, built a government not from abstract reason but from experience. However, experience to them included all of history: "The past was real for them."
The lesson for today, McClay says, is that we often imagine the past to be much more distant and useless than it is. We need a new Renaissance.
"Ordering the minds of students in such a way. . . to equip them to be wise and responsible leaders, offering them a sustaining, even loving experience with the same books of history, law, and literature that the Founders knew."
"I know this concept of education will sound hopelessly idealistic and nakedly elitist, and maybe it is." But McClay offers the example of Harry Truman, who cherished the books that the Founders did and read them with the same intense interest. He was fortunate to grow up in a time when even the commonest public school taught the same books. He was fortunate to have that education even though he never went beyond high school.. . . It introduced him to the great conversation of the ages. It pushed him. . . to civic education. I see no reason we can't teach the same to students today."
Perhaps this education awaits us on the other side of the current and coming woes."
McClay opens the floor to "questions and improvements."
Posted by Michael Pomeranz on November 05, 2010 at November 5, 2010 10:12 AM
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