The demise of classical education has created a problem in the minds of our youth today. Connected to this loss of classical education are the ideas, values, and visions of classical Greece and Rome. These are the ideas and values that shaped our nation and Western civilization.
The demise of classical education has created a problem in the minds of our youth today. Connected to this loss of classical education are the ideas, values, and visions of classical Greece and Rome. These are the ideas and values that shaped our nation and Western civilization.
Universities have just started scrutinizing these very ideas, ironically enough. Few Americans know that the origins of the West were in ancient Greece.
Unfortunately, American citizens are drifting further away from the important ethical an philosophical theories that are necessary if we want to understand, appreciate, and keep the freedoms we enjoy.
It is important that we remember the Greek wisdom that has helped build our nation.
We applied many of these philosophies into our governmental make-up: a constitutional government, individual rights, freedom of expression, an open economy, civilian control of the military, separation of religious and political authority, private property, free scientific inquiry, and open dissent. These are some of the things that we need now more than ever in our changing culture.
We should also bear in mind that the Greeks insisted on monitoring and tempering these freedoms with philanthropy, civic responsibility, and an absolute world view.
The Greeks did not believe that life was rosy; instead, they saw it as momentary and tragic. Concepts like this along with self-criticism kept things in check.
The demise of classical education leaves us with a skewed and incomplete way of looking at the world. In its place are lenses which gives us a look at the world that consists of blind allegiance, an adoration of material culture, therapeutics, and moral relativism.
The Greeks gave us the means to change the physical and spiritual universe, either for good or ill. They also provided the means for us to control our most animalistic instincts in order to give toward the common good.
We can only fight the demise of classical education, or hope that when classics fall, the educational Dark Age will bring our children into a New Greek era.
If we don’t want our children to struggle in this intellectual darkness, we need to give our children the tools they need to think for themselves, and also the means to appreciate the Greeks for the model they created for our nation.
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