Much not Many: The Pedagogical Principle of Going Deep

Why Too Much Teaching Spoils Teaching

In my last post, I reflected on the teaching maxim Festina lente which translates to make haste slowly and for teachers it also means master each step. Multum non Multa is closely related to Festina Lente; we might say they are sisters, almost twin sisters. Multum non Multa means “much not many.” In pedagogical terms, this maxim means digging deep wells with our students rather than superficially skimming the surface of content that students will soon forget and seldom love.

A good classical teacher will not only proceed carefully to ensure mastery of each concept or skill taught, he will also be selective and only teach what is necessary for the student to learn well. Why is this? It is because the wise classical teacher understands the humanity of the child before him and understands the limits of his ability to learn, deeply understand, and remember. He knows that if he tries to teach too much content he may overwhelm the mind of the student or distract him from mastering what he must learn now that he might learn even more later. Put another way, he knows that only so much content can be absorbed and mastered in a given span of time for the particular kind of student that is before him.

A teacher of 4th graders will teach a different quantity of content than a teacher of 10th graders. Any good teacher will be conscious of the “curse of knowledge” that afflicts him, and will fight it off. This “curse” afflicts most of us: We forget what it means to learn an art as a neophyte; we forget what it means to learn as a child. As a result, we project the ability to learn a concept into a child’s mind—usually a concept that we know so well that we can’t even remember learning it ourselves. As a result, we often teach more content than a student can manage and master and we often teach it at a level beyond their reach. If we are teaching Latin to 4th graders the way we learned it in college, we have fallen prey to the curse. If we expect our high school students to read a novel a week like we did in college, we are under the curse (though I think a novel a week in college is a curse too).

John Mays, the creator of the Novare Science curriculum, discovered that many of the large science textbook companies produced science texts that contained twice as much content as the average student could learn in a year. Perhaps you remember the 1100 page physics of chemistry text you had in high school. Following the dictum of multum non multa, John selected what he considered to be the essential content in physics, chemistry, and biology that a high school student actually could master in a year (and enjoy). As a result, his books are about 400 pages long (and beautiful) and students are usually delighted to study a book they believe they can actually understand and master. 

John of Salisbury in his Metalogicon (1.24) describes the teaching methods of Bernard of Chartres: 

At the same time, he said that we should shun what is superfluous. According to him, the works of distinguished authors suffice. As a matter of fact, to study everything that everyone, no matter how insignificant, has ever said, is either to be excessively humble and cautious, or overly vain and ostentatious. It also deters and stifles minds that would be better freed to go on to do other things. That which preempts the place of something that is better is, for this reason, disadvantageous, and does not deserve to be called 'good.' ... The ancients correctly reckoned that to ignore certain things constituted one of the marks of a good grammarian.

What must we do then as teachers to heed Multum non Multa? Ignore certain things. We must do what poets must do: kill our darlings. You may teach World Literature and you may love Dostoyevsky. Of course you must teach Crime and Punishment. But also The Brothers Karamazov, naturally.  And who can exclude The Idiot? You can also assign a couple of his short stories…

No, we cannot do this. If we overwhelm the students with too much of a good thing (even Dostoyevsky) we will do more harm than good, and even ruin their taste for something beautiful. Following John of Salisbury, we will deter and stifle the minds of our students.

C. S. Lewis speaks to this same issue arguing that in our schools we should teach fewer subjects and teach them far better. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he writes:

In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life. Smewgy taught us Latin and Greek, but everything else came in incidentally.

Here Lewis notes that by trying to teach too much we risk destroying the standards of a student, perhaps for life. Teaching too much content (and too many courses at a time) actually impedes learning, reducing the chances that students will taste and see the beauty of Dostoyevsky, Augustine, algebra, physics, or Mozart. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and there is such a thing as a teacher who tries to teach too much. Could that be you?

Note as well that Lewis makes reference to the human limitation of…time. We only have so much of it. Multum non Multa reflects a prudent understanding of the reality of living in time and using it wisely by being selective and choosing the best thing among many good things. It echoes, therefore the wise way Christ addresses Martha in Luke 10. Martha, was busy in the kitchen while her sister Mary was sitting with Christ in meaningful conversation. Martha, seeing this confronts Christ saying, “Tell my sister to help me!” He responds, “Martha, Martha, you are busy about many things. Mary has chosen the better part and it won’t be taken from her.”

A good teacher will naturally be a busy teacher. But she will know when to choose the best things for her students, and push aside the superfluous good, ignore certain things that she knows (and even loves) and offer only what is best for the student before her. 

The irony is this: it is only when we teach less that a student can learn more, and more often means with more depth, understanding, and love. The further irony is that if a student comes to love one thing deeply (by going deep) she often is inspired to continue—on her own time. If she reads Crime and Punishment deeply with guidance and relish, she is much more likely to begin reading The Brothers Karamazov on the weekend. Help her to savor Macbeth and she will turn to King Lear on vacation. Help her to fully comprehend Euclid’s first proposition and she will come to class having mastered his second one. Yes, we often go farther faster by slowing down.