Classical Education and the Modern Era

For logic and rhetoric students, a thorough understanding of the competing ideals, philosphies and plans of today's modernists and postmodernists is essential learning if they want to be able to discuss local and world issues and social and education programs, but there are many more resources available for parents and teachers wanting to share the lessons of antiquity, than lessons of the 20th century.

We've wrestled with this issue as our oldest will be entering his middle school years next year. Here are some of the issues we've wanted to tackle:

1. The blossoming of science and technology and how scientific utopian visions caused trouble in the modern era.
2. Global philosophies and global war.
3. Manipulation of the media for political purposes.
4. The need to see beyond rhetoric behind competing philosophies of human nature, government, and religion.
5. To see how individual heroes (as well as villains) existed in every age, and learn how they met their challenges, where they drew their strength, and how they changed the course of history.

We had been doing Veritas Press cards, but just learning about the Wright Brothers or the Space Shuttle won't do it. It's surprising how poorly middle or high school texts seem to cover the 20th Century, too. We plan to tackle Gileskirk Modernity course next year, but now we're thoroughly enjoying the Teaching Company's course with Vejas Liulevicius on Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century. The audio download ($35) is a steal while it's on sale until mid-May. Highly recommended! The audio download includes lecture outlines, so transcripts aren't needed. Like Professor Fears (Teaching Company Classical History), Professor Liulevicius is an impassioned lecturer who has the knack of identifying essential assumptions and ideas that drove great and villainous leaders and their movements. It's a remarkable story seeing how a vision of a utopian society becomes twisted into a totalitarian nightmare.

In order to make the details of people and places "stick", we've also discovered that making picture flashcards has been invaluable. We'll share them so you can print them out at home. The first lectures have covered changes wrought by the French and Industrial Revolutions, the World Wars, and the ideas and actual realities of the Communist utopia. For additional reading, think about tackling George Orwell's Animal Farm. Because it's an allegory, it may be helpful for some to read this Animal Farm Study Guide ahead of time. Here's an online copy of The Communist Manifesto, too. When we get back from Boston, we'll post more of our links that have been helpful with this course.

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