Blue Marble University and the Great Books Movement

The Great Books movement has had its ups and downs. It is the belief that education, particularly in primary and secondary school, should be centered on a classical education based on the study of the great literary works. Patrick S.J. Carmack stated it this way:

“Why great books? Because greatness means excellence – the highest and best materials on which the human mind can work in order to gain insight, understanding, and wisdom. Obviously, inferior materials lessen the opportunity for such gains, to the point – with poor to bad materials – that nothing is gained and much may be lost. No one can any longer read all books, or even most books, but only a very tiny percentage of the total number of books. Therefore, to maximize the gains to be made from reading, the best should be read – the great books.” [published at: http://www.greatbooksacademy.org/great-books-program/great-books-movement/].

Dr. Carmack further summarizes the modern day status of the movement thusly:

“Into the 1960′s the movement continued to gather steam, but it never reached more than a small minority of colleges and homes before the progressivists’ reaction began. The damage wrought by Dewey’s pragmatism, widespread skepticism, anthropological relativism, and logical positivism, combined with America’s growing post-war prosperity and accompanying materialism turned the heads of our youth, and they became fair game for all of the above. The 1960′s marked the demise of the Great Books Movement. Thence forth, to be a dead, European, male author (as the writers of the Western classics almost all were) was to be irrelevant. Only the living were worthy of a hearing. The Socratic method, like Socrates before, was condemned to death. Education was increasingly turned over to the radical “progressives”, who still entirely dominate education, and the tragic results now haunt us.”

He makes an interesting point about homeschooling in America: “In light of the absence of educational progressivism and institutionalized resistance to reform in the homeschool movement, 2000 A.D. bodes well to be the year of the beginning of a revival of the Great Books Movement in education, or, as one author in this issue has called it: the Great Books Homeschool Renaissance.”

In other words, classical education has found a home and been kept alive in homeschooling. It has been reported that as of 2010, over 2 million children are now home schooled in the USA. Another proponent of classical education is Susan Wise Bauer PhD, a university professor and author of many books relating to the use of classical education in primary and secondary schools. Because she is so understanding of this topic, we set forth here the summary she authored for her website, The Well Trained Mind [ http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classical-education/ ]:

“What is Classical Education?

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

The first years of schooling are called the “grammar stage” — not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid, just as grammar is the foundation for language. In the elementary school years — what we commonly think of as grades one through four — the mind is ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts. Rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics — the list goes on. This information makes up the “grammar,” or the basic building blocks, for the second stage of education.

By fifth grade, a child’s mind begins to think more analytically. Middle-school students are less interested in finding out facts than in asking “Why?” The second phase of the classical education, the “Logic Stage,” is a time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect, to the relationships between different fields of knowledge relate, to the way facts fit together into a logical framework.

 A student is ready for the Logic Stage when the capacity for abstract thought begins to mature. During these years, the student begins algebra and the study of logic, and begins to apply logic to all academic subjects. The logic of writing, for example, includes paragraph construction and learning to support a thesis; the logic of reading involves the criticism and analysis of texts, not simple absorption of information; the logic of history demands that the student find out why the War of 1812 was fought, rather than simply reading its story; the logic of science requires that the child learn the scientific method.

The final phase of a classical education, the “Rhetoric Stage,” builds on the first two. At this point, the high school student learns to write and speak with force and originality. The student of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses his conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language. Students also begin to specialize in whatever branch of knowledge attracts them; these are the years for art camps, college courses, foreign travel, apprenticeships, and other forms of specialized training.

 A classical education is more than simply a pattern of learning, though. Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television).

Why is this important? Language-learning and image-learning require very different habits of thought. Language requires the mind to work harder; in reading, the brain is forced to translate a symbol (words on the page) into a concept. Images, such as those on videos and television, allow the mind to be passive. In front of a video screen, the brain can “sit back” and relax; faced with the written page, the mind is required to roll its sleeves up and get back to work.

A classical education, then, has two important aspects. It is language-focused. And it follows a specific three-part pattern: the mind must be first supplied with facts and images, then given the logical tools for organization of facts, and finally equipped to express conclusions.

But that isn’t all. To the classical mind, all knowledge is interrelated. Astronomy (for example) isn’t studied in isolation; it’s learned along with the history of scientific discovery, which leads into the church’s relationship to science and from there to the intricacies of medieval church history. The reading of the Odyssey leads the student into the consideration of Greek history, the nature of heroism, the development of the epic, and man’s understanding of the divine.

This is easier said than done. The world is full of knowledge, and finding the links between fields of study can be a mind-twisting task. A classical education meets this challenge by taking history as its organizing outline — beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art and music.

We suggest that the twelve years of education consist of three repetitions of the same four-year pattern: Ancients, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, and Modern Times. The child studies these four time periods at varying levels — simple for grades 1-4, more difficult in grades 5-8 (when the student begins to read original sources), and taking an even more complex approach in grades 9-12, when the student works through these time periods using original sources (from Homer to Hitler) and also has the opportunity to pursue a particular interest (music, dance, technology, medicine, biology, creative writing) in depth.

The other subject areas of the curriculum are linked to history studies. The student who is working on ancient history will read Greek and Roman mythology, the tales of the Iliad and Odyssey, early medieval writings, Chinese and Japanese fairy tales, and (for the older student) the classical texts of Plato, Herodutus, Virgil, Aristotle. She’ll read Beowulf, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare the following year, when she’s studying medieval and early Renaissance history. When the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are studied, she starts with Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) and ends with Dickens; finally, she reads modern literature as she is studying modern history.

The sciences are studied in a four-year pattern that roughly corresponds to the periods of scientific discovery: biology, classification and the human body (subjects known to the ancients); earth science and basic astronomy (which flowered during the early Renaissance); chemistry (which came into its own during the early modern period); and then basic physics and computer science (very modern subjects).

This pattern lends coherence to the study of history, science, and literature — subjects that are too often fragmented and confusing. The pattern widens and deepens as the student progresses in maturity and learning. For example, a first grader listens to you read the story of the Iliad from one of the picture book versions available at any public library. Four years later, the fifth grader reads one of the popular middle-grade adaptations — Olivia Coolidge’s The Trojan War, or Roger Lancelyn Greene’s Tales of Troy. Four more years go by, and the ninth grader — faced with the Iliad itself — plunges right in, undaunted.

The classical education is, above all, systematic — in direct contrast to the scattered, unorganized nature of so much secondary education. This systematic, rigorous study has two purposes.

Rigorous study develops virtue in the student. Aristotle defined virtue as the ability to act in accordance to what one knows to be right. The virtuous man (or woman) can force himself to do what he knows to be right, even when it runs against his inclinations. The classical education continually asks a student to work against his baser inclinations (laziness, or the desire to watch another half hour of TV) in order to reach a goal — mastery of a subject.

Systematic study also allows the student to join what Mortimer Adler calls the “Great Conversation” — the ongoing conversation of great minds down through the ages. Much modern education is so eclectic that the student has little opportunity to make connections between past events and the flood of current information. “The beauty of the classical curriculum,” writes classical schoolmaster David Hicks, “is that it dwells on one problem, one author, or one epoch long enough to allow even the youngest student a chance to exercise his mind in a scholarly way: to make connections and to trace developments, lines of reasoning, patterns of action, recurring symbolisms, plots, and motifs.”

At Blue Marble University we believe, as many educators have also stated, that a classical education should be the core of primary and secondary education, much as presented by Dr. Bauer. Students should arrive at college ready for specialized education. And this is how our programs are set up. We dropped the ridiculous requirement of “seat time”, that you the student must pursue a general education studies for 4 years to obtain a B.A. Degree, programs full of math for students interested in humanities, or full of philosophy for students interested in biology.

We also adopt the thinking of many modern educators that a classical education–that is a liberal arts education– should be completed in High School, leaving the undergraduate and graduate students free to pursue specialized studies.

This is in part why at Blue Marble University, most of our undergraduate Bachelors degree programs are 2 year programs only, and are coupled with a 3 year doctoral program. This results in a fast track BA/PhD combination degree which is completed in 5 years. The first two years are spent preparing for the desired specialty education, not in taking general education courses, all of which should have been completed in the high school years.

Blue Marble University is a best fit for undergraduate students that already have pursued a general liberal arts education in high school, or are otherwise interested in specialized education, because we don’t waste your time or money with unnecessary general education courses. In fact, we don’t offer any. Every one of our courses is offered for a reason, not to fulfill a long outdated requirement!

We recognize that parents may not have many choices. But if you are a parent, you probably can find a classical education for your child. Search “classical education” or “classical education academy” on Google and you may be pleasantly surprised to find a primary and/or secondary education program near you.

And if you are a prospective or current college student and you enjoy the humanities, Blue Marble University has two terrific programs in the Humanities which we feel follow the philosophy of the Great Books movement and tangential emphasis on history: First, we offer a 3 year online PhD degree in “Critical Thinking” in which the study of great literary works is grouped around themes, such as “Models of Historical Understanding” or “Mystical Parable and Visionary Romance”.

Second, we offer a combined 3 year online BA/MA degree in our Humanities program called “Worlds”, in which we cover the history of civilization using as a core text Wil and Ariel Durant’s “The Story of Civilization”.

For further information on these programs and the curricula, please visit: https://bluemarbleuniversity.wordpress.com/academics/departments-and-degree-programs/

At Blue Marble University, we are not opposed at all to a liberal arts education…we just believe it should be completed in high school and not pursued as an general education undergraduate degree, which is a waste of time and money. If you enjoy liberal arts, go straight to it…don’t waste time learning a second language or taking unnecessary math courses you are not interested in, yet which the established educational institutions still want you to pay for.

At Blue Marble University, we are not just about science…we believe in the Humanities as well!