All Things Work Together For Good: Classical Education Seminar
By Karina Hepner
The Victorian State Library, once known as the Melbourne Public Library, opening in 1854, sits comfortably on its own two acres in Melbourne’s central business district.
Allegedly one of the most visited libraries in the nation, its Swanston Street frontage is defined by the impressive Corinthian columns of its neoclassical architecture. A visitor wandering inside the library buildings will be awe-struck by the beautiful octagonal domed ceiling of the La Trobe Reading Room.
To satiate the curious, the library has become a depository of over a million books, more than 16 thousand serial publications and other artefacts of historical and cultural significance, such as Captain James Cook’s notes and Bushranger Kelly’s armour.
As one of the first free public libraries in the world, this iconic place was established as a “university for the people”, allowing anyone and everyone equal opportunity to learn.
Developing Virtue
Melbourne also recently hosted a Classical Education Seminar, organised by well-known education writer and senior fellow from the Glynn Institute, ACU, Kevin Donnelly. The Seminar brought together parents, academics, business representatives, teachers and educational leaders for the good of education, to discuss and dissect the toil and trouble of modern schooling; yet, above all, to seek Truth, Goodness and Beauty in reshaping today’s education.
It was a gathering of like minds. One parent, a director of the new Hartford College, a liberal arts school for boys, aptly commented at the day’s conclusion: “We can turn this educational ship around.”
Indeed, there is hope. Several leaders and teachers provided rich examples of emerging schools and new directions in traditionally “progressive” schools. Challenges have been reimagined as opportunities.
One Queensland school, well-known in some circles for its courage and tenacity to work outside the accepted educational systems, now identifies itself as a “Christian school in the liberal arts tradition”. Students there are offered a distinctive educational experience, such as the Logic (Construction, Design, Enterprise and Performance) life skills program and a St Augustine Retreat (where students pause to meditate and reflect in 12 hours of silence, from sunrise to sunset).
But the liberal arts or classical education is not merely a collection of “new subjects”; this school focuses on equipping the young in wisdom and knowledge.
Wisdom — the charioteer of the virtues — fortitude and self-discipline and the other virtues allow people to be free: true liberty.
Dr Paul Morrissey, president of Campion College in Sydney, reminded the gathering that the classical approach, unlike the fragmented national curriculum of today, emphasises the virtues as the true pursuit of a flourishing person. Rather than the championing of “unlearning”, as sang a recent university campaign, schools must return to the foundational blocks of knowledge framed by a virtue pursuit.
Harkaway College, for example, a Catholic PARED (Parents for Education) school, holds true to this pursuit. While not identifying as classical nor liberal arts, its motto, Veritas et Virtus, allows the curriculum and mentoring system to nourish young people in what is true, good and beautiful.
And the outcomes are encouraging — students’ writing standards, their verbal communication skills and their character in the community and in the home demonstrate virtuous children in the making. Hopeful school stories.
Prime Pedagogy
Unlike other Western education systems, Australia is challenged by a standardised, one-size-fits-all national curriculum. The Seminar audience posed thoughtful, important questions: in particular, how do we offer a truly distinctive classical education within the confines of the Australian system?
Dr Fiona Mueller, Adjunct Fellow at the Centre of Independent Studies and former ACARA curriculum writer, buoyed the listeners by identifying the nationally scripted curriculum as one built with freedom and flexibility. The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration promotes “the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians”.
ACARA also recognises applications for alternate curricula; both Montessori and Steiner schools are examples of this curriculum flexibility. Hope ignited again.
Kon Bouzikos, teacher and president of the Australian Classical Education Society, spoke of the work that is already in progress to prepare the way for the encouraging number of emerging classical schools around Australia. He spoke in particular of the first group of Australian teachers re-training in classical education pedagogy.
Through online and live classes, Dr Robert Woods, from Kepler Education in the United States, is masterfully demonstrating to his Australian charges the paideia principles of classical-education methodology.
As evidenced by this Melbourne gathering of committed classical-education converts, modern Australia is searching for alternative educational opportunities to counteract the doomsday narrative of schooling.
Dr David Daintree, director of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, is a well-known Latinist and inspiring teacher. His opening address acknowledged that the narrow confines of a traditional classical education, one that maybe Shakespeare or Milton experienced, will not suffice in the modern cultural context.
Schools today focus on specialisation too early and too young, but young people must write well, read well and think well. Foundations are needed first, Dr Daintree said.
The times they are a-changin’.
Our wonderful Victorian State Library clothed in its magnificent heritage architectural features could not stay the same either. Today, the splendour and richness of the library’s past communes with e-resources, self-facilitated studios and modern research techniques. But do not forget that this extraordinary building sits on the foundation stone, unchanging, rock-like, though not always visible.
Now picture a gaggle of young girls taking candid selfies beside the Joan of Arc statue, commissioned from French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet in 1905, that sits in the library’s grounds. These girls deserve to be gently and expertly curated through a discovery of the past — a past of goodness, beauty (and darkness) — to forge like fire into their future.
___
Originally published at News Weekly.
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