Doing Things Badly, and the Good That Comes of It

Unless I am mistaken, it seems that the classical schooling phenomenon has been marked in recent years by a new variousness.  As I have become acquainted with some of the different iterations of classical education that have arisen, I can see real and important differences in both theory and practice among the schools that choose to call themselves classical.  This is mostly a good thing, I think, and speaks to a certain maturation of the effort to spread the classical approach.

But despite this variety in approaches, I would venture that every classical educator agrees a certain process of transmission or preservation remains at the heart of the enterprise.  The core of classical education will always lie in an effort to perpetuate the fugitive wisdom of our tradition as a vital, efficacious force for the development of young souls in our present age.  Whatever else classical education may be or may become, it will always be this: a commitment to give our children the best that has been thought and said, in the conviction that this will nurture the best portion of their own souls.

This emphasis on what our courses of study have to offer to our students has profound implications for the educational experience of classical students, in comparison to their peers.  By confiding in the value of what our courses of study have to offer to young minds, we ask our students to come to us with an attitude which is fundamentally receptive.  We believe that there is an intrinsic significance to the practice of drawing natural forms to their likeness, or in learning the taxonomical organization of animal species, or in memorizing a sonnet of Shakespeare.  The primary thing we ask of students is that they simply open themselves up to these experiences; we are convinced that by doing so, they will find the experiences themselves edifying, regardless of the aptitude they bring to them. 

Does this mean that we put excellence, or growth in aptitude, out of the question?  By no means.  But we come to the pursuit of our students’ growth with a genuine understanding of the springs of human achievement.  We know that the motivation which leads towards excellence always comes from within, that no one has ever accomplished anything of worth who did not ardently will the accomplishment.  Certainly, you can coax students towards high test scores with promises of college acceptance and marketplace success, but to raise them towards a capacity for any genuine attainment – for any real growth in character or intellect - you must ignite a drive towards excellence within them.

This is done by doing.  The only way a student comes to grasp the value of writing metrical poetry is by writing metrical poetry.  Whether he writes metrical poetry well is besides the point at this stage.  What matters in the first place is imbibing the intellectual joy of searching out the right word which is also the most harmonious word.  He will never progress to the stage where his compositions have any merit if he fails to catch this initial fervor from the exercise.  And the fact is that the overwhelmingly preponderant number of high school students never will progress to the stage where their compositions have any public merit.  No matter – they can still catch the joy of that exercise.  Their intellectual instincts towards order and elegance can still be fortified.  Their characters can still be improved by the practice, even if their verses never are.  Operative here is Chesterton’s famous quip – surely a cliché by now – that if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly.  A classical curriculum is loaded with things worth doing badly – with exercises and lessons and assignments and events and experiences that impart opportunities for growth to our students whether they are done well or not.

Why, for instance, do parents sign their daughter up for ballet lessons as a young child?  Is it because they believe her destined for the Bolshoi?  Perhaps this is the case with one or two eccentrics, the “Tiger Moms” of the dancing school.  But in the normal case, the child is sent to ballet school in order to acquire a certain physical grace to stay with her all life long.  Of course, she will only acquire that grace if she applies herself relentlessly to the art, just as though she were bound to become a prima ballerina. But whether or not she possesses the talent for such a career, her study of the art will in fact bestow that elegance and comportment that was the prime end her parents had in view in the first place.

Similarly, the classical educator supposes that the greater portion of the activities to be performed in school are ones that impart a mental or a spiritual grace to students regardless of how well they perform them.  To trace the sequential stages of a geometric proof, to memorize Latin declensions, to tease out the meaning of Crime and Punishment – these are all highly challenging intellectual tasks.  They will be done by some students far better and more readily than others.  But all students who do them, and do them with full attention and effort, will strengthen their reasoning powers over time.

The modern education system, with its stupid and unhealthy obsession over testing metrics, constantly requires young people to demonstrate what they can give.  But the classical school only asks the student to show up ready to receive.  This emphasis on the students’ receptivity has one obvious corollary, which is that young people of highly differing aptitudes can benefit from a course of study so conceived.  If the significant thing is not what students bring to their studies, but what they take away, then a considerable disparity in talents can be accommodated in classrooms where engagement is prioritized above all things.

There is one other corollary to this approach which is perhaps less obvious.  The openness or receptivity I am referring to is by no means a passive state of mind.  It inheres in a consistent application to the material presented to the student.  To truly benefit from the sort of academic experiences I referred to requires the student to work diligently at the tasks involved.  Whether mastery be achieved or no, the student must always approach her studies as though mastery were the end of them.  For all the disparity in academic aptitude that the classical approach is capable of accommodating, when it comes to effort, there really is only one kind of student who can flourish in a classical setting: the willing one.

If a student comes to us ready to throw herself wholeheartedly into her studies, if she is willing to exert herself in the various tasks assigned her, she can confide in the wisdom that shaped the course of studies presented to her, and know that she will find her reward in it.  There is no cause for anxiety here, no need to compare her performance with her peers.  There is a certain joy that accompanies the soul in its proper development, and to attain that state is the only form of accomplishment that is being asked of her.  All that is being asked of her is to be happy, and to accustom herself to the forms of activity that are consonant with happiness – which is just another way of referring to her growth in the virtues.  So long as she takes that happiness away from her studies, she has received all that classical education has to offer to her.