Neoclassical vs. Classical
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NEOCLASSICAL
“A good grammatical education teaches a child how to build a ‘grocery store of the mind’ for every subject. Children are not only fed information to put on the ‘shelves’ in their minds, but they are also helped to discover ways to organize the data for quick retrieval. When the child searches for an idea or fact, she has a place where the mind’s eye goes to either retrieve currently stored, related facts or to find a sensible location to ‘shelve’ new facts for later retrieval….To build the brain’s knowledge store, you begin by memorizing orderly systems. You do this by visiting the ‘store of word’ for any particular subject many times in an organized manner. For a student it means repeating data (revisiting the store) in an orderly fashion (filling the shelves)...we instruct students to repeatedly draw…repeatedly chant…repeatedly list…we add a new ingredient to the memory shelf…Since rote memory is the first step to filling the shelves”
Leigh Bortins
founder of Classical Conversations, author of The Core
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CLASSICAL TRADITION
"Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? "
Charlotte Mason
Education Philospher, author of School Education
Rhetorica ad Herennium
by Cicero
“There are, then, two kinds of memory: one natural, and the other the product of art. The natural memory is that memory which is imbedded in our minds, born simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is that memory which is strengthened by a kind of training and system of discipline. But just as in everything else the merit of natural excellence often rivals acquired learning, and art, in its turn, reinforces and develops the natural advantages, so does it happen in this instance. The natural memory, if a person is endowed with an exceptional one, is often like this artificial memory, and this artificial memory, in its turn, retains and develops the natural advantages by a method of discipline. Thus the natural memory must be strengthened by discipline so as to become exceptional, and, on the other hand, this memory provided by discipline requires natural ability. It is neither more nor less true in this instance than in the other arts that science strives by the aid of innate ability, and nature by the aid of the rules of art."- Cicero
The Art of Building Memory
by Adrienne Freas
Training the memory was much more than a matter of providing oneself with the means to compose and converse intelligently when books were not readily at hand, for it was in trained memory that one built character, judgement, citizenship, and piety.” -Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 11
There are vast differences within the classical and the neoclassical movement. The neoclassical education movement is not analogous to the neoclassical periods in history. Instead it stands for a new or modern-classical education model. Understanding the differences between these models can help you make informed choices about what is best for you and your child.
In a recent discussion on our Facebook Community, I posted the quote above by Leigh Bortins, the founder of Classical Conversations. I asked the community if this quote sounded like a classical approach. One reader responded, “Sounds like the mind palace technique.” Well, yes it does! She was right. However, I pondered this observation and went back to my notes from training teachers about memory palaces.
Memory palaces were common in the middle ages. Classical and medieval educators used metaphors to create mental storehouses. These storehouses of the mind would help students remember what they had been studying. Such metaphors were common. Quintilian and Virgil both reference beehives as a place for storing knowledge. Other common place would include libraries, book boxes, inner chambers and memory gardens.
Bortins’ metaphor however, sounds like a mind-machine over a memory palace. A mind palace was made of beautiful things. While a grocery store shelf is not beautiful, it is practical. A beehive, a castle— these are palaces! The metaphor used to describe a child’s mind as stocking grocery store shelves so they can retrieve data is a very different philosophy from the traditional classical education model.
You may find yourself thinking, “The grocery store is something familiar to me. A beautiful library or a palace is just not practical for the world we live in today.” You are justified in thinking this way. It is common for parents who are trying to decide what education model is best for their child, especially if going to college is important to you. However, what I challenge you to ask yourself is, “What is best for my child?” and “In what way do I want my child to learn and absorb information?”
I encourage you to consider how much this matters. The progressive model of education treats a child like they are a mini-computer. The progressive model of education aims to push children through a conveyor belt system filled with quality control (testing mandates) and prepares children to be “college ready” as if that this the aim of education. When considering what type of education you want for your children, the question to ask is not “Will this education prepare my child for college and the modern, technological world?” but rather “What is best for my child? and What kind of adult do I want my child to be in 20 years?” Most of us want a good and beautiful education for our children.
The information that you find on most neoclassical programs use the language that claims to embrace the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. Beauty is often lacking at the expense of drilling facts and storing information that they can recite from memory. If a mom shares this metaphor with her children then it robs them of creatively building their own memory palace which should be beautiful. Instead, the child will look at grocery store shelves and they'll envision their minds not as a mental palace. They are at risk of viewing ideas as information to be filed and stocked instead of ideas to wonder about. They lose the true image that ideas are worth knowing and storing in a beautiful place. The mind is beautiful, it is not a shelf stocked with commodities that are to be consumed. This metaphor is quite far removed from the tradition of classical education.
When considering the classical approach to education, we need to consider the tradition from which it came. While considering how children retrieve ‘data’ (if we are talking about a classical education) we must look back to the medieval model of education. The medieval scholars for the most part did not favor rote memory work as a form of “data retrieval.” The practice of narration (mentally composing and retelling) fits more closely with the type of memory building that they valued. In Mary Carruthers’ Book of Memory, she explains that the Medievals favored a moral emphasis for the purposes of rhetoric. Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine all preferred mental composition over rote memory and they valued a speaker who could mentally compose and command the use of his own original words from the storehouses of knowledge (p. 93). This is the type of memory building we see in Charlotte Mason’s emphasis on the pedagogy of narration. Students are to retell in their own words every detail that they can recall from the lesson or the story. This is in keeping with the tradition. Carruthers reiterates, “For the orator’s ‘art of memory’ was not in practice designed to let him reiterate exactly in every detail a composition he had previously fabricated. For one thing, to sound as though he were reciting from memory like a parrot was one of the worst faults a Roman orator could commit”(Carruthers,The Craft of Thought, 8). This idea of a “parrot” is not part of the tradition of classical education. It is in fact considered a flaw for a student to memorize in this way, and yet the neoclassical education model emphasizes the grammar “stage” of the trivium as the poll-parrot stage.
This is just one example of many in how the neoclassical model is different than the tradition of classical education.
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“Tower of Wisdom” is a fascinating mnemonic device for remembering how to order one’s life. If you know the “memory palace” technique of memorization, where you associate something to remember with a room inside an imaginary palace, you can see what the Cistercian monks are attempting here.
- Curating Theology blog, “Teaching Virtue: Medieval Illustrations from the Cistercian Monastery at Kamp”
