Classical Education in a Disposable Age

We live in a disposal culture. It seems that everything is designed for obsolescence. Companies manufacture toys that won’t last more than a year, but they are still cheaper to replace three times over than to repair. Consumers replace smart phones yearly because tech companies design them to fail, even designing the software to degrade the phone’s performance as it ages. Apple and Google create phones with non-user replaceable batteries and screens so that an entirely new model must be purchased instead of replacing the broken part. 

Disposal culture is also prevalent in furniture and fashion. If you pop down to IKEA to buy some furniture, it won’t last four years against your three kids and dog, but by then a new style will be in vogue anyway. Disposal culture tells you to just buy something new. Buying clothes in the current trends means that you will recycle your wardrobe every few years as you flow down the fashion river. The idea of keeping furniture or clothing beyond a few years is nearly unheard of. What happens to the old items? They are often neither repaired nor passed on; instead, they are simply thrown in the dump. 

More serious is our culture’s disposal attitude toward ideas or institutions that had once been regarded as permanent. Instead of character, we speak of personality—an unstable, transient concept that can be reimagined on a whim. The teenager constantly reinvents himself, trying on different clothing, attitudes, postures, and friends. He exchanges interests, fashions, and motivations without thought or planning. In this model of the self, the individual is not unveiled but created—perhaps the closest man can get to ex nihilo creation.[1] Because it is created from nothing, to nothing it will return. It has no lasting value. The self can be discarded whenever the mood strikes. 

Yet the classical authors assume a different principle. From Plato’s or Aristotle’s reflections on education and habit to Burke’s reflections on English institutions, a man or woman’s habit and character are far more stable than modernity would admit. Poverty or wealth, suffering or fortune do not make a man new; they simply reveal the soul for what it already was. Nature is fixed. While the soul can be steered and directed, once it sets, it is no longer as easily moldable as unfired clay. As Proverbs 22:6 (ESV) tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” 

Progressive education, however, also runs on the disposable model. It focuses on techniques and methods that render students and teachers interchangeable. Any teacher should be able to walk into any classroom and follow the script to produce results. Why invest in educating teachers about their subject matter when they can be so easily replaced? Further, teachers don’t need to know their students; they just need to apply the right technique. If an idea or institution long cherished by posterity seems outmoded, get rid of it. This is the twenty-first century after all. Replace it with some fad that will not endure past the next election cycle. 

In contrast to this disposal culture is the conservative and classical ethos. Classical education does not discard something because of its age nor rely on popular and current fads. Opinions change, yet truth endures. But even in the practical experience of human beings, the conservative ethos does not turn to revolution when something isn’t working right. It relies upon the traditions and institutions that have given it life. Cultures are easy to destroy but difficult to build. Thus, the ideals that have endured gain value as they pass to successive generations. Classical education seeks to honor these ideas, texts, and art. 

The distinction between our disposal culture and the conservative and classical worldview is made apparent in the difference between a reformer and a revolutionary. The reformer, who embodies the conservative and classical view, wishes to work within existing systems to refine and order them; the revolutionary, who embodies disposal culture, must begin something new. He overturns the monopoly board and re-deals the money. The reformer has binding principles that direct his efforts; he is no more at liberty to revise them than to rebel against gravity. But the revolutionary must create without reusing anything. Nothing of the old may remain; he must start anew and create bricks without any tools or materials. Revolutionaries seek to do the impossible by turning the wheel back to its starting point, free from any precedent. 

The revolutionary impulse toward disposal says, “These books are old. They no longer suit our culture. There are better books that teach virtue in language more fitting for our children. They are more easily understood, and they teach the same things as the old books. There is no value in preserving something old merely for tradition’s sake.” To this argument the classical ethos responds, “These books are old and difficult, and some modern books do present similar ideas. But it is precisely their difference that makes the old books valuable. They speak from a standpoint outside our own and are free from our cultural blind spots. Further, their value is greater because they have endured the ravaging sands of time. They are proven to be great, while we still await the judgment of history on our modern books.” 

Providing an enduring education swims against the current of our disposal culture. The classical ideal is difficult, perhaps unattainable, yet it promises a better education. It is an education in the things that last. It will pay a higher cost for things or ideals that have stood the test of time. It does not need to change with the times or try to adapt to ever shifting job markets. It is a timeless endeavor that can’t be disposed of. Progress requires that we continue following the ancient paths rather than eternally searching for a new beginning.

[1] Except, as Coleridge suggests, the creation of an evil will by Adam.  See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion (C. Goodrich, 1829).