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[Buck]

I was recently revisiting Chesterton's chapter "The Eternal Revolution" in his book "Orthodoxy" and came across some fascinating and, as to be expected, slightly humorous remarks.

"Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one.  The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals.  On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human.  That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger.  Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger.  It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger.  But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws. ... If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden.  For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature."

"As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same.  No ideal will remain long enough to be realised, or even partly realised.  The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind. ... This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed."

"We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform.  For reform implies form.  It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds.  Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling.  Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road -- very likely the wrong road.  But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape.  And we know what shape."

What does any of this have to do with classical education?

Buck

[agrarianreader]

Buck, here's a stab.  Here's another quote from Chesterston in his essay, "What is Rationalism?".  "Logic, then, is not necessarily an instrument for finding out truth; on the contrary, truth is a necessary intrument for using logic - for using it, that is, for the discovery of further truth.... Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."  So, in order to properly work with truth, we have to already possess it.  Perhaps in the same way, in order to properly educate, we must have something to educate towards / with,  and something that needs educating.  I think it safe to say that evolution, at least as Chesterton is arguing, removes those things from us.  It leaves us with no Nature, no essence, no thing toward which we can move, no thing that needs reforming.  Classical education would seem to stand in direct opposition to that.  We are self-consciously molding and re-forming the soul so that it may better perceive the light of the world. 

[Buck]

What a great quote.  I particularly liked that last statement, "Breifly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."  In order to work towards something, that something towards which we are working must be there; it must be fixed, or eternal. 

It seems to me that in each of these quotes Chesterton is highlighting the element of perception, the ability to see the eternal through the temporal, and then to work in shaping what is (the temporal) into what it may be (the eternal).  "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

I agree with your comment on evolution, and like how you state that it essentially "removes those things from us."  It is interesting how you point out that it not only removes the goal toward which we ought to be oriented, but also our nature, the "thing that needs reforming."  Ultimately, it is a kind of progress that never goes anywhere, or at least does not know where it is going.

Buck

[Andrew]

And this removal of our nature by evolution is precisely what scientific materialism celebrates, especially as it is expressed in the progressive education theories that control our schools. Dewey argued that Darwin proved there are no "species" (greek: eidon, from which we get "ideas) because in Christian classical thought the species was permanent or eternal: Unchanging.

If we have a human nature that is permanent and unchanging, then education is the quest for that perfection.

If we do not, then education is, as Dewey would say, the adaptation of an organism to its environment: i.e. practical application. That is why Progressivism arises from Pragmatism, which arises from Darwinism, which arises from scientific materialism. And it is also why most Christian schools are Darwinian in form and objective while fighting tooth and nail against Darwinism in content.

To fully understand modern education one must read very closely The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis and then his novel That Hideous Strength.

[Buck]

Dewey made two particular moves that freed his argument from the past and from the future, from what he called "a prior intelligent causal force" and "concrete purposes."

If all organic adaptations are due simply to constant variation and the elimination of those variations which are harmful in the struggle for existence that is brought about by excessive reproduction, there is no call for a prior intelligent causal force to plan and preordain them.

When Henry Sidwick casually remarked in a letter that as he grew older his interest in what or who made the world was altered into interest in what kind of world it is anyway, his voicing of a common experience of our day illustrates also the nature of that intellectual transformation effected by the Darwinian logic.  Interest shifts from the wholesale essence back of special changes to the question of how special changes serve and defeat concrete purposes; shifts from an intelligence that shaped things once for all to the particular intelligences which things are even now shaping;

The "intellectual transformation" as I understand it is a shift away from what lies behind and beyond the present state of things, from design and purpose.  As you put it, the issue becomes adaptation, which is a mode of survival. 

In attempting to grasp the significance this holds on education, I wonder what it means for education to exist in a constant state of survival?  Who is leading who?  What are we educating towards?

It now strikes me that within this model education is equivocated with technology.  It is efficient, pricey, and outmoded within a few short years.  There is nothing about it that is permanent except that it continues to stumble forward as progress chips and hacks away what is considered (by whom?) no longer necessary or useful. 

Everything is completely under control...until the power goes out.

Buck

[Andrew]

In attempting to grasp the significance this holds on education, I wonder what it means for education to exist in a constant state of survival?  Who is leading who?  What are we educating towards?

It now strikes me that within this model education is equivocated with technology.  It is efficient, pricey, and outmoded within a few short years.  There is nothing about it that is permanent except that it continues to stumble forward as progress chips and hacks away what is considered (by whom?) no longer necessary or useful. 

Everything is completely under control...until the power goes out.

Buck

Nicely said. What it means for education is that in any sense the classical tradition would have recognized education no longer takes place. I wish people better understood that. Kids learn that they should adapt and survive and if they are going to find a moral foundation they will only do it by luck - they'll end up worshipping at the altar of The Breakfast Club.