The Wisdom We Need to Lead in Stormy Weather
To Lead a Classical School is Hard in Any Condition--How to Lead Well Through Incessant Storms?
There is an old spiritual that celebrates the end of a storm: The storm is passing over / The storm is passing over / The storm is passing over—Allelujah.
We have all enjoyed the experience of the clouds breaking, the wind and rain dying down, and then sun shining through an opening sky. Ahh. It seems that everyone in the country now is quite ready for the storm to pass over—and we have endured many storms, storm upon storm, and various kinds. The entire news cycle could be summed up as one large enterprise of storm reporting and storm chasing; all news is becoming one conglomerated Weather Channel, one Storm Channel.
School leaders and teachers have been under unprecedented stress, as we all know. Leaders of classical schools, are no exception, naturally. But leaders of classical (and classical and Christian) schools must square off against some particular challenges. Classical schools feature a classical curriculum at a time when classics are being set apart for scrutiny, castigation, and cancellation. Classical schools also elevate wisdom and virtue as the chief ends of education when such goals are as far from modern school priorities as the east is from the west.
The classical tradition of education considers and esteems the longstanding “great conversation” among human beings on all perennial human questions including what makes for a good, civil, moral, stable society (or political philosophy). Now, at just such a time when Americans desperately need an education in political philosophy, we find Americans woefully ignorant of even the basic conversation about what makes for good, healthy, civil society. There is no need here to highlight the abject ignorance about American history, government, and civics, much less the ignorance of political philosophy from the Greeks to the Romans to Europe to Marx. Most Americans, it is safe to assume, don’t know what they don’t know about political philosophy and history. I would add that this is not to blame most Americans—they dutifully went to school where they assumed they were getting a decent education. Indeed most think that is exactly what they got.
This likely means that the classical school leader must grapple with his or her own ignorance of history as well as the general ignorance of us all—all of us whom might be teachers, board members, or parents at the local classical school. Yes, the classical renewal of education is growing, but it is populated with people (the great majority) which have not received a classical education. Of course it must be such—any renewal will be renewed by many people who are in fact new to the subject or it would not be a renewal.
You see the dilemma. Many of us in the renewal are by necessity neophytes—green horns trying to lead those who have no horns at all. When moderate ignorance confronts even greater ignorance… there is often confusion, ambiguity, equivocation, misunderstanding, and frustration. Often enough, there is outright insult, injury, and anger.
The classical tradition makes a recommendation for how to handle the storms of thought, ideas, politics, and emotion that can shake a culture—history. It is the study of history (along with literature of all kinds) that helps us to get a sense of what humanity is, what human nature is, how humans are likely to think, act, and respond in various circumstances. History, if you like, shows us ourselves, and it shows us how we are likely to thrive or flounder, collaborate or disintegrate. The study of history (it was thought) led to prudence, the ability to size things up and know what to do in various circumstances. In the Latin it was prudentia, in the Greek it was phronesis—the practical wisdom that Aristotle describes in The Nichomachean Ethics.
Prudence was included as one of the four cardinal virtues—that is one of those virtues on which the moral life turned (cardo, cardonis means “hinge”) and that when possessed made a man a man or a woman a woman. This virtue was often represented as woman looking into a mirror (for we must know ourselves) and with the face of an old man on the back of her head (for we must look backward to know humanity and know what to do). See the image below to see one famous two-faced image of prudence from the Raphael Room at the Vatican.
Because we haven’t studied history well, we don’t understand ourselves, our culture, and we don’t know what to do in this present moment. This is true across the American landscape but it is also true (to a lesser extent I like to think) in our classical schools. This is because we suffer (even if perhaps less) from the same historical and prudential deficit.
How to grow wiser? Read history. Unfortunately the study of history is best done over many years with good teachers, with lots of discussion and debate with friends and peers. We can’t get prudence in a short course. Still, we should begin.
We all should read Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Politics, Aurelius’s Meditations, and Augustine’s City of God. And we should read with friends and discuss.
In my next post, I will further explore the virtue of prudence and suggest some additional books and articles we should read and discuss if we want to grow prudentially wise.