Why Classics?
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#1: The Classics Teach Us Human Nature. The classics give us a glimpse into each of these basic human instincts. In fact, the thing which makes a classic great is glaring insight into basic human nature. Ultimately, as you study the classics, you learn about your own personal nature. Learning through experience is good, but it is often better to learn from someone else's experiences and build on them. We hope a baby will learn from his parents not to touch a hot stove, even though the actual experience would certainly have impact. If we will let them, the classics can teach us lessons without the pain of repeating certain mistakes ourselves. They can show us correct choices which will get us where we want to go. At a deeper level, knowing how others think, feel and act allows us to predict behavior and lead accordingly. We can develop empathy, compassion, wisdom and self-discipline without subjecting our relationships to a more painful learning curve. This is invaluable to the entrepreneur, parent, community leader or statesman. People with experience have been through certain patterns many times and know what to anticipate. The classics can provide us with many such experiences. ~A Thomas Jefferson Education, p. 62 |
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#2: The Classics bring us face-to-face with greatness. The purpose of studying literature is to become better. As we read, we experience despair, heartache, tragedy--and we learn to recognize what causes them and avoid it or cope with it in our own lives. As we study the characters, real or fictional, in the classics, we are inspired by greatness, which is the first step to becoming great ourselves. Greatness is the first goal of leadership education.
In the classics we come face-to-face with Moses on Sinai, Buddha leaving the castle, Christ at Gethsemane, Mohammad's cave (and Plato's), Paul on Mars Hill, Adam's finger outstretched on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Washington at Valley Forge, Hamlet, Lear, Shylock, Othello, Macbeth, MacDuff, Hector, Penelope and Jane Eyre. Who we are changes as we set higher and higher standards of what life is about and what we are here to accomplish. ~A Thomas Jefferson Education, p. 63 |
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#3: The Classics take us to the frontier to be conquered. Previous generations have had geographical frontiers to conquer. We don't. Without a frontier we cannot become what the Founders, the explorers and the pioneers became in their extremities.
Our challenges define us, our reactions to them mold and shape us. As Thucydides said over three thousand years ago, and as I used to tell my students at George Wythe College: "There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school."
Human beings need a frontier in order to progress. ~A Thomas Jefferson Education, p. 63 |
Think.
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#4: They Force us to Think. At first reading the classics can be a chore, an assignment. If we persist, it eventually becomes leisure and even entertainment. Then one day (after a few weeks for some, perhaps years for another) something clicks; all the exposure to greatness reaches critical mass, and you, the reader, awaken. Your exposure to greatness changes you: your ideas are bigger, your dreams wilder, your plans more challenging, your faith more powerful.
Thinking is like exercise, it requires consistency and rigor. Like barbells in a weightlifting room, the classics force us to either put them down or exert our minds.
They require us to think. Not just in a rote memory way, either. The classics make us struggle, search, ponder, seek, analyze, discover, decide, and reconsider.
As with physical exercise, the exertion leads to pleasing results as we metamorphose and experience the pleasure of doing something wholesome and difficult that changes us for the better.
~A Thomas Jefferson Education, p. 64-65
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#5: The Classics connect us to our stories. Each culture is different because it has different shared stories. Different stories define each family, each religion, each nation. And members of each connect themselves with the stories--they make the stories part of their personal story.
That is why I think it is such a tragedy that the current generation of American youth are mostly growing up without the stories of the Declaration of Independence, Daniel in the Lion's Den, Patrick Henry, Sitting Bull or Daniel Webster. The classics are the ark, the preserver, of stories which unite the cultures and the generations.
In addition to cultural, national and family stories, we each have individual stories. We all have a personal canon, a set of stories which we hang onto and believe in and base our lives around; and great classics are the best canon. A canon is the set of books we consider to be the standard of truth. Since the purpose of reading, of gaining education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books.
Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great. ~A Thomas Jefferson Education, p. 65
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#6: Our Canon Becomes our Plot. If you were evacuated to another planet and could only take one book, upon which to base the teaching of your family and establishing right and wrong for your community, what would it be? Your answer is a good indication of what your national book might be. Are your companion books through life in line with your national book? What about your definitions of good and evil? Look at your life; is it in keeping with your canon?
These questions can be powerful as you analyze where to take the education of your children, your students, yourself. Perhaps the most important thing we can do to remain free and prosperous is to clarify a national book and live by it.
From the Founding through the end of World War II, the Bible and the Declaration were the U.S.'s national books. Even the great revolutions which occurred after 1945, such as increased freedom for minorities, were fueled by these two national books. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches center around them and quote them extensively.
America was based on them and became what it did because of them. Take them away, and America will become something very, very different.
The place to start is with yourself. Establish a clear canon and spend time in it every day. Become an expert on it, ponder it, put your life in line with it. Teach it to your family and then others. If you are a teacher, take it into your classroom.
If your faith doesn't include the Bible, use the Declaration or something of equal magnitude. Then broaden your knowledge to the other classics which support that central classic. Each nation is what it is due to its national books, and the choices you make now regarding books will have tremendous impact on what America will be twenty, forty and even sixty years from now. ~A Thomas Jefferson Education, p. 67 |
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