My sources

Annie Get your Gun (source Wikipedia)

The title of my blog is ”What Comes Naturally”, and I have acknowledged indebtedness to Stanley Fish whose book Doing What Comes Naturally has been an inspiration and a challenge both in my literary research and in my basic convictions about life.

However, how could I forget - the poetic and expressive phrase ”what comes naturally” belongs also, and perhaps even more properly, to the musical genre. How could I forget Annie Get Your Gun (1946) by Irving Berlin about the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, a muscial play which was run on Broadway for over 1000 nights. Listen to

the Baylor Theatre production from 2007 in ”Doin’ what comes Naturally”

EDUCATION: Stanley Fish - "Knowing the Formal Structure of Anything"

Sculpture (photo DD)

To Stanley Fish, it seems to me, learning lies exposed on the surface of reality as much as in the deepest cultural expressions. In his being in the now, Fish’s deep erudition allows him to learn anew every day by just taking part in whatever social or mediated situations that come his way. And this, I think, is the opportunity he wants education to give young people.

In three recent blog installments I have gathered information about what I call ”the roots of Stanley Fish’s Classical turn”. What I’ve done is I’ve tried to show some facts about the sources he uses in exemplifying some very different lines of thought and action that converge in affirmation of classical education as a remedy for crisis in education. This is, however, a very limited approach on my part. To speak about the roots of Stanley Fish’s turn towards classical education, I need, of course, probe somewhat deeper than to Leigh A. Bortins, Diane Ravitch or Martha Nussbaum.

On his way to work, each new day offers him an hour and a half in splendid isolation on the motorway. It is a situation in which trivial as well as deeply analytical associations make themselves available to the mind while communing with the trivial and genial impulses presenting themselves along the road and on the wireless.

In listening to the radio, one of Fish’s favourites is the Diane Rehm Show. Here, he says, he receives ”better education than any of my students will receive from me when I get to school.” He praises ”the detailed knowledge” that is displayed ”on subjects as various as those that might be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.” In celebration of his birthday, Fish tunes in Diane Rehm and enjoys to the full her ”blend of courtesy and firmness” a strategy of gentle insistence that never fails to elicit ”precise and nuanced answers” even with evasive debaters and interview guests. This is what Fish wrote in 2006, and with Diane Rehm still on the air the radio continues to  foster ”an engaged and connected local, national and global community” (”The Diane Rehm Show Celebrating 30 Years” http://wamu.org/programs/dr/30/ ).

It is here that the roots of Stanley Fish’s classical turn come to light. Fish is a god-gifted teacher. He is no less knowledgeable or less gifted than Diane Rehm. The reason why he can't give his students as good education as Rehm can give him is not because she is better. The thing is that he will and his students will not find Rehm’s programs ”glorious” (yes, that’s how he describes the program he listened to on his birthday in 2006), and the reason: he is and they aren’t classically educated. This is why! If you are classically educated your life-long process of learning will always keep you receptible to new knowledge - whether you're looking out the open side-window of your car, feeling the blowing of the wind or if you're listening to the Diane Rehm show on the radio.

In an article published on June 7, 2010, Fish describes the high-school education that opened worlds of knowledge to him:

    ”four years of Latin, three years of French, two years of German, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, English, history, civics, in addition to extra-curricular activities, and clubs — French Club, Latin Club, German Club, Science Club, among many others.”  (”A Classical Education: Back to the Future”)

What this classical education taught him is not only all those facts but something that has to do with the way brains work. Through ”imitation, memorization, drill, recitation and above all grammar”, what he learnt is not only ”grammar as the study of the formal structure of sentences (although that is part of it), but grammar as the study of the formal structure of anything” (”A Classical Education”)

”The formal structure of anything”. Learning to see formal structures and learning to use this ability to see how things, ideas, languages, arts, political and economic systems are structured - that is what classical education amounts to for Fish. Learning to see, learning to use and to find pleasure in this learning, in this seeing, in this using - to Fish this is the groundwork for democracy, for critical thinking, for intellectual self-reliance. If you want to take his word for it, these are qualities for the future.

Sources for this article:
Stanley Fish: Radio Days The New York Times April 19, 2006
- - - : Happy Birthday Milton The New York Times July 13, 2008
- - - : A Classical Education: Back to the Future  The New York Times June 7, 2010

Iron structure (photo DD)

EDUCATION: Roots of Stanley Fish's "classical turn" III

Third in line of the sources for the article where Stanley Fish advocates a return to classical education is the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum is one of the world's best-renowned present-day philosophers (see Wikipedia on Martha Nussbum).

Nussbaum's recent book Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the Humanities argues that ”education for profit has displaced education for citizenship” and emphasizes ”the importance of critical pedagogy for the development of individual responsibility, innovation, and self-examination.” She ”analyses the role of the arts and humanities” and emphasizes their importance in all education (Amazon.com Editorial Reviews).

Her Commencement address for Colgate University's 189th commencement, May 16, 2010, is a concentration of her educational aims. Here Nussbaum warns of the future results of today’s downsizing of humanistic education in schools world-wide: ”Nations of technically trained people who don't know how to criticize authority, useful profit-makers with obtuse imaginations.”

In the bilingual magazine for reflexion on art and culture, Literal: Latin American Voices Nussbaum develops her thoughts on democracy and the liberal arts.

EDUCATION: Roots of Stanley Fish's "classical turn" II

Looking further into the sources for Stanley Fish's call for Classical education, I find that Diane Ravitch and her latest book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education offer a somewhat less ideologically incorrect though hardly any less controversial choice than Leigh A. Bortins. Diane Ravitch is an education historian and a former assistant secretary of education.

See Wikipedia on Ravitch: ”She was appointed to public office by both President of the United States George H. W. Bush and his successor Bill Clinton. Secretary of Education Richard Riley appointed her to serve as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which supervises the National Assessment of Educational Progress; she was a member of NAGB from 1997 to 2004.”

The Amazon editorial of her new book emphasizes Ravitch’s profound experience of the US educational system and the knowledge she has gathered from her manifaceted perspectives: ”Ravitch has witnessed the trends in public education over the past 40 years and has herself swung from public-school advocate to market-driven accountability and choice supporter back to public-school advocate”.

To get an idea of the rich background for Ravitch’s work and of the relative importance of her views on education in the USA it is helpful to read Sam Dillon’s article in the New York Times ”Education” column on March 2, 2010.

For a more comprehensive view of Ravitch’s educational aims today, read Alan Wolfe’s article in The New York Times on May 14 2010.

Not unlike Fish, I would say, Ravitch is a pragmatist with her deepest allegiance to learning. She has first-hand knowledge of supporting and trying national testing and free choice of schools as remedies for problems in the educational system. Having seen these remedies fail, she makes no bones about changing her mind.

As Wolfe concludes, ”Ravitch ends with a call for a voluntary national curriculum, and believes that a consensus around better education is possible.” An interesting call coming from someone who has been in the position of having really tried the concept of free-market schools in the country of free enterprise: ”we should be working harder to preserve the benefits of community and continuity that neighborhood schools offer” Wolfe summarizes Ravitch’s point of view.

As a source for Fish, Ravitch provides first-class first-hand evidence in favour of a common national curriculum based on classical skills.

EDUCATION: Roots of Stanley Fish's "classical turn" I

I got interested in the sources for Stanley Fish’s discussion on education for the future - Leigh A. Bortins is one of them. Bortins is a driving force in a movement for Christian home education. What classical models of education are favoured by Bortins? What is her approach to science, I asked, and reading under the headline ”Challenge: Loving Life and Loving Learning” I found one of the challenges is ”apologia sciences”.

The term "apologia sciences" led me to the home page of Apologia Educational Ministries subheadlined ”Learn, Live and Defend the Faith”,  advertising ”an elementary science curriculum that is truly God honoring, user friendly, and scientifically sound”.

Is this a leading star for Fish's "classical turn"? (Cathedral of Firenze. Photo DD)

One question is - does the connection here between Stanley Fish’s call for classical learning and the creationist movement disqualify his idea of a ”classical turn of education”?  Or should Fish’s well-known eclectic model of thought be given the benefit of the doubt once more, trusting him to be onto something pragmatically useful after all?

EDUCATION: What are the keys to good education?

Education in the the Western world suffers from low results.  To remedy this, you need to decide what you want education to accomplish and by what means. In Europe, the EU steers the educational systems with the help of the Bologna declaration in a direction towards entrepreneurialism and "employability" (http://www.ehea.info/article-details.aspx?ArticleId=16). A different approach is taken in a discussion among US academics with a deep knowledge in the field of education. Professor Stanley Fish summarized part of this discussion in The New York Times last year:

Classical content
Less emphasis on testing
Less emphasis on entrepreneurial skills and job-training
Increased emphasis on classical skills - math, science, language, history, economics and literature. 

Stanley Fish: Classical Education - Back to the Future

Leigh A. Bortins' recent book The Core is one of Fish's sources. Read more about it here.

Read also what Bortins herself says about education and ”edu-tainment”.