A potpourri is an aggregation of disparate things…things which are not blended. In this case, I have several small topics. The first is a review of what is an interesting book, as well as a review of what the book could represent.
The book is The Abacus and the Cross: the Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages by Nancy Marie Brown (2010). This book is a sort of biography of Gerbert of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II (c. 946 – May 12, 1003). I say sort of in that it is mostly concerned with what he did with regard to advancing the idea and practice of empirical sciences.
Much of this science Gerbert learned as a youth living on the border of Islamic Spain, then an extraordinarily tolerant culture in which learning was prized. Born a peasant in the mountains of France in the mid-900s, Gerbert entered the Benedictine monastery at Aurillac as a boy. He learned to read and write in Latin. He studied Cicero, Virgil, and other classics. He impressed his teacher with his skill in debating. He was a fine writer, too, with a sophisticated style graced with rhetorical flourishes. To further his education, his abbot sent him south to Christian Barcelona, which then had diplomatic ties with the Islamic caliphate of al-Andalus.
A professor at a cathedral school for most of his career, Gerbert of Aurillac was the first Christian known to teach math using the nine Arabic numerals and zero. He devised an abacus, or counting board, that mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It has been called the first counting device in Europe to function digitally—even the first computer. In a chronology of computer history, Gerbert’s abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 BC and the invention of the slide rule in 1622.
Specific biographies of historical personalities are always interesting and the further back the go the more I get interested. Unfortunately, the further back in history one goes the more complex and frustrating it can get to really understand the real motivations and ideas of some of these important people. It can be quite easy to lapse into a sort of unintentional revisionism, in the case of this book to try to counteract other contrasting forms of revisionism (i.e. the dark ages were ‘dark’ and bereft of any of the later refinements of culture, including study and intellectualism (throw in the sciences too…).
When you see this limitation, this book then becomes a really worthwhile read… that is, it is a counterbalance.
The next topic relates to some of these ‘old’ ideas, especially as they relate to how we view education, and the problems (and possible solutions) we see there. The False Promise of Classical Education is a rather long tract which tries to show the potential shortcomings of using ideas like ‘classical education’ as a possible remedy to the problems which are becoming so obvious in our schools.
In E. D. Hirsch’s best-selling book Cultural Literacy, he cites a Washington Post article titled “The Cheerful Ignorance of the Young in L.A.” in which the author says:
I have not yet found one single student in Los Angeles, in either college or high school, who could tell me the years when WWII was fought. . . . Nor have I found one who knew when the American Civil War was fought. . . .
Only two could even approximately identify Thomas Jefferson. Only one could place the date of the Declaration of Independence. None could name even one of the first ten amendments to the Constitution or connect them with the Bill of Rights. . . .1
A typical study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) concludes that the average eleventh-grade student is an incompetent writer.
In Dumbing down our kids, Charles Sykes tells a chilling story about a straight-A student in the eighth grade named Andrea, who was very eager to learn science. Unfortunately for Andrea, her school, like most today, stressed the importance of “creativity” over “dreary” facts, and of “hands-on,” “active” learning over “dull,” didactic instruction.
One gets the impression, upon reading Adler, that he regards the process of gaining knowledge as less important than the process of discussing philosophical questions (as if there is a separation between the two). In fact, he and Hutchins state this more or less explicitly. In Hutchins’s Great Books: the Foundation of a Liberal Education, he writes: “Childhood and youth are no time to get an education. They are the time to get ready to get an education.” Adler echoes this view in The Paideia Proposal, saying, “Youth is an insuperable obstacle to being an educated person.
Among the more sophisticated commentators on modern education, it is a commonplace yet valuable observation that education needs reform more radical than a bigger education budget, a stronger teacher’s union, smaller class sizes, or more rigorous testing procedures. After examining the nature of classical education, it should be clear that education also needs reform more radical than harking back to a more traditional approach that mouths respect for facts, logic, and abstract thought. Education must be radically reformed in accordance with a proper understanding of abstractions that gives new meaning to the very notion of facts, logic, and abstract thought.
I find that the whole thesis is missing a lot of basic points in that ‘classical education’ is used as a code work in private schools to mean that ‘classical deportment’ are on the menu far more that actually dealing with the classical Trivium or Quadrivium.
Having said that, the fact that a rigorous education, which is based upon physical mastery of facts, and rigorous use of dialectic, practice in rhetoric, learning values, and practicing to really think will likely result in graduates who are better prepared than their conventional counterparts.
From what I have seen in undergraduate college programs in the last few years, and from my personal experiences in high schools, I think couching arguments about abstract thought based upon what Immanuel Kant had to say may be missing the mark (a bit on the high side…).
Finally, if only as a palate cleanser, I have a topic which has enthralled me since I was five years old. Long ago, I had access to some picture books my Dad had from WWII. Since he was a Navy man (I was Army…another long story…), he had a lot of photos from the pacific theater. The thing which always caught my eye was the razzle-dazzle camouflage used by the British and French navies.
The strange aspect of this ‘camouflage’ was not so much to hide from view as to hide one’s intentions. These camouflage paint jobs were so bewildering to look at that is wasn’t very clear which way the ship was going…at least that was the theory.
Here is a link which shows a number of these ships (mostly from WWI): You are the Fleet Admiral of the Navy in WWI what do you do?
