Classical Education

04-09-2023

Roger Berkowitz
Angel Adams Parham and Anika Prather argue that the growth in K-12 elementary schools based on a classical studies curriculum should be embraced by activists on both the left and the right. Against those who see classical education as “white” or privileged, Parham and Prather write: 

In a way quite similar to the foundations of Christianity, the principles of classical antiquity emerged, flourished and were shared around the Mediterranean Sea — the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The impressive exchange of ideas continued across the barriers of time, religion, geography and culture.
About 2,500 years ago, Herodotus reflected the richness of this exchange in his “Histories,” which imparted real and fantastical stories from what we now call the Iberian Peninsula to India, from Central Europe to Ethiopia and beyond.
From the 8th to the 13th centuries, scholars at Baghdad’s grand library of antiquity, known as the House of Wisdom, translated into Arabic the masterworks of Greek philosophy and mathematics. These included Aristotle’s treatises discussing democracy and the relation between living a virtuous life and happiness, as well as what it means to be alive.
Jewish and Christian scholars made pilgrimages to the library throughout its existence, eager to read classical texts that had been lost to the West — the fragile papyrus on which they were copied being vulnerable to war and natural disaster. Their discoveries reinvigorated Western learning.
The 13th-century Italian Fibonacci returned from his education in North Africa armed with Hindu-Arabic numerals, liberating his fellow mathematicians and future generations from the limitations of Roman numerals and counting boards.
In the 1100s, Islamic philosopher and scientist Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, wrote some of the most influential commentaries on Aristotle’s works on rhetoric, logical reasoning, science, literature and ethics. The Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas read and responded to Averroes with great respect, outlining the points on which their thought diverged. 
Rooted in the fullness of this history, classical education invites us and our students to learn from this rich crossroads and to enter into a millennia-long conversation about what it means to be human, the essence of freedom, how to live well and what constitutes a good society.

Angel Adams Parham will be speaking at the Hannah Arendt Center Conference “Friendship and Politics” on Oct. 12-13. Learn more here.