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Progressivism Is Incompatible With Classical Learning

Altogether, the rules, expectations, and disciplinary consequences largely determine a school’s culture and values.

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At long last, classical education might finally become mainstream in the U.S. After so many years of classical schools’ successes versus the many decades of progressive public schools’ failures, The New York Times deigned to publish an essay in favor of the classical model. In it, writer James Traub notes how Eagle Ridge Academy, a charter school in a suburb of Minneapolis, has been reviving classical virtues, assigning books from the Western canon, and thriving as a result.

Unfortunately, Traub is not an educator, but an unapologetic leftist boomer whose last experience of a K-12 classroom was during the Vietnam War. He has no problem basing his whole argument on a singular observation made in one class at one school. As such, his analysis is utterly superficial — missing the forest for the trees — and comes away with the wrong conclusion.

As a high school English teacher at a public school who has his own children enrolled in a classical charter school, I can attest that the first thing to look for in a good school is its actual pedagogy, not the vibes it gives to visitors. For instance, while Traub marvels at a thoughtful discussion over a scene in the Aeneid, he never bothers to check how the students are assessed on the book, nor does he consider just how much harder the Roman........

© The Federalist