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Word Gems exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
James Walsh Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic
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David Barton, researcher of early-American education, tells of the law professor who currently requires all of his students to read The Federalist Papers, a series of 85 newspaper essays written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay to explain to the average citizen why the U.S. Constitution was needed. His students, law students, among the very best and brightest of the land, regularly come to him complaining that this little book by three of the Founding Fathers is the "hardest read" that they've ever encountered. The professor agrees, then wryly explains: "This book was not written for someone at your level; this book was written for the common, average, upstate New York farmer of 1787. Perhaps someday you will attain to their educational level."
What a remarkable educational system early America must have had! Writes Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death: "Thomas Paine's Common Sense [a popular tract written to justify independence from England], published on January 10, 1776, sold more than 100,000 copies by March of the same year. In 1985 a book would have to sell eight million copies (in two months) to match the proportion... [It eventually sold] 400,000 in a population of 3,000,000... [The equivalent today would be] 24,000,000... Thomas Paine ... is a measure of the high and wide level of literacy that existed in his time... in spite of his lowly origins, no question was ever raised, as it has with Shakespeare, about whether Paine was, in fact, the author... it was never doubted that such powers of written expression could originate from a common man... "Alfred Bunn, an Englishman on an extensive tour through America, reported in 1853 that 'practically every village had its lecture hall.' He added: 'It is a matter of wonderment ... to witness the youthful workmen, the overtired artisan, the worn-out factory girl ... rushing ... after the toil of the day is over, into the hot atmosphere of a crowded lecture room'... "As Richard Hofstader reminds us, America was founded by intellectuals, a rare occurence in the history of modern nations. 'The Founding Fathers,' he writes, 'were sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics, and law to solve the exigent problems of their time.'
Further, consider the Lincoln-Douglas debates: "... on October 16, 1854, Douglas delivered a three-hour address... When Lincoln's turn came, he reminded the audience that it was already 5 P.M., that he would probably require as much time as Douglas and that Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for four more hours of talk...
"To understand the audience to whom Lincoln and Douglas directed their memorable language, we must remember that these people were the grandsons and granddaughters of the Enlightenment... They were the progeny of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Tom Paine... [that golden age of education and reason has today been replaced with] the Age of Show Business." “There is no movement on record in which so large an amount of political science, observation, wisdom and experience was brought to bear as in the American Revolution.” “It may be doubted whether any popular body has comprised so large a proportion of highly educated members [as the signers of the Declaration]." Robert T. Conrad President Kennedy once quipped to a group of White House dinner guests, Nobel laureates, that their stately banquet room had not witnessed such confluence of intellect and talent since Jefferson dined alone! This humor, we imagine, was well received, but possibly the laughter was somewhat uneasy, not altogether full-bodied. For all of our modern accomplishments, we intuitively sense that the Founding Fathers were of a rare species, one largely extinct today. We note that their writings resonate with a kind of exquisite wisdom, an insight into the human condition, rarely, if ever, exceeded in the literature of the Western Tradition.
Where in the world did these men and women come from? Could the U.S. Constitution, or anything substantially like it, be produced today? We have our serious doubts. How did the Founding Fathers, residing in that backwater State which was the New World, come to possess such practical wisdom allowing their work to endure the centuries and to influence all civilized nations? The works of the Founding Fathers, the American institutions that guarantee our freedoms, puzzle many of us. We’re like tourists standing, bewildered, before Stonehenge or the Pyramid of Cheops: “Who built these things?” We don’t really know anymore. Whoever they were, they and their works seem to us larger than life, of epic proportions. Worse, we stammer as we gawk: “What are these things? Why were they built?” We’re not sure. Why all this untidy talk of separation of powers, of checks and balances, of due process and the rule of law? Politicians - and even Presidents - of recent times seriously advise us to “streamline” government by opting for a “one-house” legislature. Can’t we all be friends and just get along? Let’s be more “efficient” and get rid of time-wasting, uncivil “gridlock.” Sadly, this populist pandering sounds quite reasonable to many Americans. How many today understand George Will’s piercing evaluation of this sophistry:
“[Mentioning a politician by name] says that eliminating one legislative chamber would 'streamline' government, making it more transparent and less of a 'maze'... Unicameralism would make government more 'efficient'... All that is largely correct. Which is why unicameralism is a mistake... Granted, the Framers crafted the Constitution to create a national government more effective than was possible under the Articles of Confederation. But efficiency did not trump all other values. It ranked below liberty and deliberative democracy... Bicameralism is ... conducive to gridlock. But there are 6 billion people on this planet and about 5.7 billion of them would be better off if they lived under governments more susceptible to gridlock. Gridlock is not an American problem, it is an American achievement." If the American civilization is to cheat history out of one more empire’s epitaph of “rise-and-fall,” it will do so only by returning to its heritage and time-honored values of the Western Tradition. We will need leadership equal to that task. To accomplish this we must return to the most successful educational system of history, that which produced our Founding Fathers. “No generation either in this country or elsewhere ever thought out more deeply and more thoroughly the problems of human life and their relation to the happiness of the many than this group of men who between 1770 and 1790 laid deep foundations of our Republic.” James J. Walsh “This handful of educated men, trained in the old Scholastic way, taught principles rather than facts ... drilled in thinking rather than in memorization, impressed themselves very deeply on their generation... there was something in [their education] effective for making men capable of deep thinking not for self but for others." James J. Walsh The story of Scholasticism, its origins, its development in European and American colleges, and the reasons for its untimely and ill-conceived abandonment, is a saga largely untold in U.S. history. The following section, excerpts from James Walsh’s study of education in colonial America, will, I believe, offer vital and fascinating reading.
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“Scholasticism, the philosophy of the Schoolmen and of the medieval universities, the group of subjects which occupied most of the attention of European university students for a thousand years or more, is usually thought to have gone out of vogue at the end of the Middle Ages ... “That almost universal impression is entirely mistaken. The proof of the serious fallacy that has gained acceptance in this matter is to be found in the easily ascertainable fact that Scholasticism continued to be the philosophic teaching of ... American universities and colleges down until well on in the nineteenth century. “The evidence for this is abundant and convincing in the archives of our colonial colleges... “On Commencement day the candidates for the degree of B.A. were required in all the colleges of this country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to defend a series of propositions, about 100 more or less, that were printed ... and distributed to such of the audience as cared to take part in the public disputation... These propositions summarized the studies ... of the students during ... their college course..... “... the men who organized our government of the people, by the people and for the people in its present form, were most of them trained mentally in accordance with this medieval mode of thought and teaching. “The Founding Fathers of our republic, then, were educated according to the academic traditions which had been formulated in the earlier Middle Ages by Boethius, sometimes hailed as the father of Scholasticism, developed under St. Anselm in the eleventh century, reaching their culmination in the mind of Aquinas... “A number of the professors of philosophy to whom I submitted the ... theses re-echoed the expression of the distinguished historian of Harvard that it is a matter of pride and congratulation that our American colleges were in their inception linked with the age old traditions of education which have come down to us from the Greeks of the golden age of Athens... “The chapters on the history of education at each of the colonial colleges were submitted to the history departments of the present day institutions and suggestions made by them were invariably taken...
Introduction Scholasticism in the Colonial Colleges “What would seem to be undoubtedly the most important group of documents for the history of education during the colonial period in this country, but also for a full generation after the Declaration of Independence, has been strangely neglected or profoundly misunderstood. “These are the so called Commencement theses printed on broadsides (large sheets of paper some 20 x 24 inches) and comprising lists of Latin propositions, one hundred or more in number, in logic, grammar, rhetoric, as well as in natural, mental, moral philosophy and mathematics... “... Scholastic philosophy and medieval methods of teaching ... survived in all the colleges of the English colonies until well beyond the American Revolution and indeed on into the first quarter of the nineteenth century. “Harvard College library has original imprints or photostats of many of the theses issued at her Commencements since 1642... Princeton ... William and Mary ... Yale ... “These broadsides are often erroneously presumed to have been Commencement programs... they very distinctly were not, although Commencement programs grew out of them. Originally a thesis sheet was in effect an intellectual challenge to the learned community by the graduating Bachelors. It was a set of propositions to be demonstrated, that is, proved syllogistically, by any of the candidates for the degree, and then manfully defended against any objections... “... an important method of education in the Arts and Philosophy courses down to the nineteenth century was the disputation. At Cambridge, for instance, every Freshman was required to go through a series of public disputations before he became a Junior Sophister. The Senior Sophister was subjected to another such test before he became a Bachelor, and the Bachelor disputed again before he could take his Master’s degree. “In addition every college of the university had disputations among its members for practice... “When I was a student under Father Jouin, S.J., fifty years ago at St. John’s College (now Fordham University) ... we held disputations every week... “In New England ... students entered college from Latin grammar schools, where from early childhood they had devoted themselves almost exclusively to Latin authors, and were acquainted with some of the simpler Greek classics, or the New Testament. Latin, then, was an instrument which every Freshman was supposed to be capable of using. College students were subject to a fine if they talked anything but Latin in college, except during those hours set aside for recreation... “During their first two years the collegians read certain Latin and Greek authors for the sake of their content rather than linguistic training. Cicero, for example was studied mainly because he was a model of oratory... Homer was read because of his knowledge of human nature... “The definitely announced purposes of education at all the colonial colleges were the preparation of men for the ministry and magistracy. Above all the colonists wanted learned ministers capable of expounding the Scriptures... “Sometimes Horace and Virgil found a place in the curriculum of the first two years, but the principal subjects for Freshman and Sophomores were grammar, logic and rhetoric. Anyone familiar with the curriculum of the medieval universities will recognize these subjects as the old trivium, or first three of the Seven Liberal Arts which came down through the Middle Ages. The quadrivium, modified by the advance of knowledge and consisting in medieval times of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, constituted another part of the Seven Liberal Arts... “It may be thought that this curriculum was stunted and conventional, little calculated to provide mental development; but that is not the opinion of authorities such as Denifle, Haskins, and Rashdall, who have given critical attention to medieval education... “... Huxley (stated) ‘[The work of Scholastic students] brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man ... I doubt if the curriculum of any modern University shows so clear and generous a comprehension of what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium did.’ “Latin was then the language of scholars ... no one was admitted to the colonial colleges who could not use Latin readily... In that language there is a very definite expression of philosophic knowledge in terms that do not vary, and that bring out the inner and substantial meaning of things... “Scholasticism means simply the philosophy of the monastic schools during the early Middle Ages. “The principal object of the medieval study of philosophy was to furnish students with a scientific basis for the Christian faith that all were presumed to have. “William Turner in his History of Philosophy says, ‘Scholastic philosophy had its origins in the foundation of the Carolingian schools, an event which was the beginning of an intellectual renaissance of Europe in no way inferior to the fifteenth century.’ He adds, ‘The Schoolmen were defenders of the rights of reason... Scholastic philosophy was eclectic in the truest sense of the word; while preserving a correct idea of systematic cohesiveness it admitted elements of truth from whatever source they were derived.’ “The Schoolmen contended that there could be no contradiction between philosophy and theology ... Both were studied and taught for the same purpose: the rational defense and exposition of Christianity. If they were properly taught, it was certain that the more knowledge a student acquired, the better Christian he would be. “Scholasticism ... formed the minds of the Fathers of the Republic. “Certain features proper to Scholasticism have drawn down upon it no little obloquy in modern times (such as) ... the syllogistic method of argumentation which presupposed the use of deduction rather than induction for the demonstration of truth... ‘the purpose of syllogistic argumentation is not to investigate but to defend truth.’ “[Testimony has been given by] the Catholic University as well as of the Jesuits and of the Roman colleges and seminaries as to the similarity amounting practically to identity of the teaching of philosophy in the American colleges before the Revolution and the Catholic colleges of the modern time. There can be no doubt at all about the thoroughgoing Scholasticism of the philosophic curriculum in the American colonial colleges... “[Scholastic students] know how to think. The great complaint that lies against the students of the colleges which a hundred years ago abandoned Scholastic teaching is that their pupils can no longer think for themselves... “So it was by medieval methods and largely the study of medieval subjects that the men were educated who signed the Declaration of Independence -- for the majority of the signers were college men -- but also formed the minds of the men who gave us the Constitution of the United States... “No generation either in this country or elsewhere ever thought out more deeply and more thoroughly the problems of human life and their relation to the happiness of the many than this group of men who between 1770 and 1790 laid deep foundations of our Republic.” “In his introduction to the revised edition of Sanderson’s Biographies of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, Robert T. Conrad said: “‘It may be doubted whether any popular body has comprised so large a proportion of highly educated members [as the signers of the Declaration]. The number of those who had regularly graduated in the colleges of Europe and America was twenty-seven or nearly one-half the whole number, fifty-five. “‘[There were] Twenty other members whose education though not regularly collegiate was either academic or by dint of unaided energy as in the case of Franklin was equal or superior to the ordinary course of the universities. “‘Nine of the members only of that august body can be set down as of ordinary and plain education, though in that number are included men of extensive reading, enlightened views and enlarged sagacity...’ “‘There is no movement on record in which so large an amount of political science, observation, wisdom and experience was brought to bear as in the American Revolution.’ ... “It is a never ending source of surprise to note how many of the signers had the full benefit of the college education of that day which required a preparatory school training of some four or five years in the classics and then four years of college work. “These men who received their degree of Bachelor of Arts had had an excellent introduction to the classics in Latin but also in Greek, knew more than a little about Hebrew... “They even knew their mathematics in Latin terms and were thus closer to the great mathematical classics than our students... “They were expected to read at least the New Testament in Greek... “A Latin quotation would never go over their heads and their philosophy of life was always molded by their knowledge of the significant events that had occurred in the past and the work of the classical writers who had contemplated the human scene... “The more one knows of the lives of these men, the more one realizes how successful their college educations were in arousing them to such interest in culture as made their education a living force... “Their education was not taken up with the idea that it would help them to get on in the world but that it would broaden and deepen their intellectual lives and give them a real interest for ever afterwards in the things of the mind... “They were not in haste to get to money making at that time. Thomas Stone, the third of the Maryland signers, rode daily ten miles back and forth to a school ... at which he obtained a thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek. The classics were the favorite set of preparatory studies for law... “Richard Stockton ... of the signers from New Jersey ... with a talking knowledge of Latin and a reading knowledge of New Testament Greek... “[The colonial college men] began their serious study rather early, for we hear of their taking up work in the Latin schools at the age of eight or nine and spending five or six years or more in the acquisition of Latin and of a certain amount of Greek. “By the age of fourteen or fifteen when as a rule they entered college -- not a few of them were younger -- they were capable of talking Latin ... were able to read the New Testament in Greek. These constituted the principal requirements for admission to college in those days... “What is most important to realize is that these intellectual leaders among the colonists had been educated according to a ... academic tradition that had been in existence for more than a thousand years... “The principal part of their teaching concerned the ethical sciences... Ethics was taught by the president of the college as a rule and represented the most important course in the last year of college. These ethical propositions represented definite moral principles for the guidance of conduct in life... “This was the education received by the men whom we are indebted for the securing of independence... They were deeply influenced by the old-fashioned philosophy which it had taken some five hundred years to develop... “... there was something in [their education] effective for making men capable of deep thinking not for self but for others... “They had learned to think and not merely remember... “The conditions for admission to Harvard [1600s] ... for boys sixteen or less ... ‘When any Scholar is able to understand Tully (Marcus Tullius Cicero) or such like Classical Latine Author ex tempore and make and speake true Latine in Verse and Prose suo ut aiunt Marte... And decline perfectly the Paradigms of Nounes and Verbes in the Greek tongue: Let him then and not before be capable of admission into the college.’ “The charter of the original Harvard College proclaims the aim of the institution to be, ‘for the advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences,’ but even above these was placed for nearly a hundred and fifty years after the original foundation [1638], the cultivation of religion... [All students studied theology] in order to know the reasons for the faith that was in him. “Harvard followed closely the discipline and curriculum of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the Alma Mater of John Harvard, and that schedule was rather demanding. More than twelve hours every day were given to intellectual work... “[Harvard’s Charter asserted] ‘Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3). And therefore lay Christ in the bottome as the only foundation of all sound Knowledge and Learning.’ With this before us it is easier to understand Harvard’s motto, Christo et Ecclesiae (For Christ and the Church) ... “It is surprising to look back now and note how few were the students [approximately 20 per year] who went to Harvard until after the Revolution. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Harvard graduates had a deep and lasting influence ... all over the country... “This handful of educated men, trained in the old Scholastic way, taught principles rather than facts ... drilled in thinking rather than in memorization, impressed themselves very deeply on their generation... “The old-fashioned [Scholastic] curriculum ... set men to thinking deeply over the truths of Christianity as applied to conduct and supplied them with the definite principles that made for personal ethical development and cultivated that civic virtue which led men to consider their brother citizens and their advantages quite as well as their own... “The students were expected to be ... capable of responding to objections that might be urged upon their opinions, but also thoroughly able to persuade hearers... “... the disputations were considered of cardinal importance and the old medieval method of teaching philosophy was being carefully preserved. “[Jefferson] insisted that the principles behind the Declaration were to be found in the elementary books on public rights, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc. “Always in these colonial college foundations emphasis is placed on the provision of education for the sake of church and state. Only rarely is there any mention of education for the personal benefit of the student... “President Clap [Yale, 1754] ... ‘On Monday [the students] gave themselves to disputing in the syllogistic fashion.’ Everywhere in the history of the colonial colleges there is this emphasis on the disputation or exercise of argumentation that was the heritage from the old medieval universities... “At all of the colonial colleges ... [there was the] thoroughgoing conviction ... that the all important function of the college was to make men better and above all better citizens. They were not educating people for personal success in the life but for the benefit which they would confer on the community... “The old Scholastic philosophers were always intent on the cultivation of all the knowledge that they could secure. Their main purpose was to apply Scholastic principles to knowledge of every description so as to bring it under their system of thought... “The students were expected to learn the reasons for the faith .. and young men learned not to accept propositions of various kinds just because they were asserted but to demand reasons for them and be able to solve objections... “None of the colleges founded about the middle of the eighteenth century ... imposed religious tests. Here in America there was a growing spirit of tolerance which eventually led to that enactment of freedom of worship... “Men must have gone out of college deeply impressed with the principles of right and wrong which had been not only expounded to them but which they themselves had to defend against objections urged very strenuously... “... in these disputations there always entered an element of competition, and a man who could not defend his thesis against strenuous objection was considered to have failed in the contest of wits... “The examination at the end of the Senior year included the whole subject matter [of the four years] ... in order that students might not have the feeling that they could dismiss subjects from their minds as having been completed... “Always in the colonial colleges ... the knowledge and worship of God was presented as the culmination of intellectual development... “[Regarding the disputations] Dr. Johnson [King’s College (Columbia), 1758] emphasizes that the rules for the syllogism ... if duly attended to would effectually prevent all sophistical reasoning [and gives examples of] false reasoning. He numbers four of these: 1, Ignoratio elenchi, when the dispute proceeds upon a mistake, occasioned by not attending to the state of the question; 2, Petitio principii, when the thing is taken for granted which has to be proved ... [i.e.] ‘begging the question.’ 3, Fallacia quatuor terminorum, which occurs when the intermediate term bears a different sense in which it was used in the major; 4, Non causa pro causa, mistaking for a cause what was not a cause... “Johnson held ethics in the highest esteem and considered it the keystone of the arch of education... ‘Our Blessed Savior hath exalted ethics to the sublimest pitch and His admirable Sermon on the Mount is the noblest and exactest model of perfection... Ethics explains the laws of our duty ... that equally bind all intelligent creatures... “Provost Smith [College of Philadelphia, 1757, Commencement Address] ... ‘Thus I have given a sketch of the Capital Branches of Human Science ... But there is yet one Science behind necessary to compleat all the rest, and without which they will be found at best very defective and unsatisfactory. ‘Tis the Science of Christianity and the Great Mystery of Godliness, that Sublimest Philosophy, into which even the angels themselves desire to be further initiated.’... “It is all the more interesting to have these propositions from the College of Philadelphia because ordinarily it would be presumed that Franklin, the president of the board, was entirely too modern minded and practical to encourage what must seem to many very old-fashioned even medieval teaching... “In the original charter [College of Rhode Island (Brown), 1764] ... ‘In this Liberal and Catholic Institution shall never be admitted any Religious Tests but on the Contrary all the Members hereof shall forever enjoy full free Absolute and uninterrupted Liberty of Conscience... “The theses at Brown are ... more closely medieval in character than the theses of any of the other colonial colleges... They demonstrate too what a very definite effort was being made ... to train the minds of young men in habits of thinking so as to enable them as far as that was possible to think straight and not merely accept formulas ... without weighing duly the propositions in which the declarations were made... “Brown ... for some six years during the Revolution the regular collegiate exercises were suspended because the members of the college, faculty and students, were all almost to a man ... in the service of their country... “It was the custom during most of the nineteenth century for educators outside of the Catholic Church to belittle the significance of Scholasticism, to speak contemptuously of it and to disparage its content and method... “Turner in his History of Philosophy... ‘The philosophy of the [medieval] schools resulted from the attempt to dispel the intellectual darkness of the age of barbarian rule, and throughout the course of its development it bore the mark of its origin... The attitude of the great schoolmen towards the rights of reason appears most strikingly in the Scholastic use of dialectic as a means of arriving at a knowledge of natural truth and of obtaining a scientific, albeit an imperfect, grasp of the meaning of the mysteries of faith. Turner: “‘... the schoolmen [unified] philosophy and theology to discover and demonstrate the harmony of natural truth with truth of the supernatural order... it is only the most superficial student of history who fails to recognize in the Middle Ages a period of immense intellectual activity... the schoolmen were far from failing to recognize the rights of human reason ... [and] contended that philosophy and theology can never contradict each other. In this way -- and herein lies the philosophical significance of Scholastic philosophy -- the schoolmen established between the natural and the supernatural the relation which the Greeks had established between matter and spirit... Modern philosophy was born of the revolt of philosophy against theology, of reason against faith... Frederic Harrison, A Survey of the Thirteenth Century, “does not hesitate to say that the age of Aquinas, Bacon, St. Francis, St. Louis, Giotto and Dante is the most ‘purely spiritual, the most really constructive and indeed the most truly philosophic ... of all the epochs of effort after an new life... the whole thirteenth century is crowded with creative forces in philosophy...’ “... a period which gave us the universities in the form in which they exist at the present time, developed Gothic architecture, led up to the evolution of the arts and crafts in a way that has never been excelled, could not possibly have been satisfied with an insignificant philosophy... “... Scholasticism ... lies open to the charge of having been over much a priori, over neglectful of experiment, of research, of observation, of nature at first hand, of linguistic study, of history, of documentary evidence... it must not be forgotten that Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon in their works nobly rebut this charge... “No feature of the teaching at the colonial colleges was so much emphasized by the statutes as the disputations... a direct inheritance from the medieval universities and from the disputations (syllogistic argumentation) which formed such an important element in the education afforded by the Schoolmen... “Men who knew practically nothing at all about the disputations ... have not hesitated to characterize these college exercises as if they represented a sort of childish occupation with trifles ... about questions of very little importance... The striking example so often cited of what disputations had degenerated into is based on the famous ... story which represented the scholars at the medieval universities ... as occupying themselves for long hours with ‘disputes’ over such questions as, ‘How many angels can rest on the point of a pin?’ “No one has ever been able so far as I know to trace that story back to any original medieval source but it has been quoted over and over again in the modern time, as if there could be no possible doubt that this was the sort of thing Scholastic philosophers of the olden time ‘disputed’ about... Professor Saintsbury, University of Edinburgh: “‘All the peculiarities which ignorance ... used to reproach or ridicule in the Scholastics -- their lingering over special points of verbal wrangling, their neglect of plain fact in comparison with endless and unbridled dialectic -- all these things did no harm but much positive good from the point of view [that of exactness and accuracy in the use of words]. When a man defended theses against lynx-eyed opponents, or expounded them before more lynx-eyed pupils ... it was necessary for him, if he were to avoid certain and immediate discomfiture, to be precise in his terms and exact in his use of them.’ “The sublime ignorance of educators who talk about the centuries that saw the rise of the universities in connection with the erection of the great cathedrals and the creation of immortal literature in every country in western Europe, as if these times had wasted their intellectual energies over nullities, is only equaled by their assumption of knowledge... “... above all the value of the disputations for the cultivation of the habit of the distinctive use of words... verbal exactness... “What have been referred to as trifles prove to have been the most serious elements in education... “There is so much misunderstanding of what these disputations ... really were... Reverend Father Schwickerath, S.J., in his volume, Jesuit Education gives a definitely detailed description ... of the disputation as it has been in use for some seven hundred years... ‘One of the students has to study carefully a thesis previously treated in the lectures in order to expound and defend it against the objections which are being prepared in the meantime by two other students... “‘On the appointed day the defender takes his place at a special desk in the front of the class, opposite him are the two objectors. “‘The defender states his proposition, explains its meaning, and the opinions of the adversaries, ancient and modern, then gives proofs for it in syllogistic form -- all this in Latin. After a quarter of an hour the first objector attacks the proposition or a part of it or an argument adduced in its proof, all this again in syllogisms. “‘The defender repeats the objection, then answers in a few words to major, minor and conclusion, by conceding, denying or distinguishing the various parts of the objector’s syllogism. “‘The opponent urges his objection, by offering a new subsumptive syllogism to the defender’s solution. After a quarter of an hour the second objector does the same for fifteen minutes. During the last quarter either the professor or any student present may offer objections against the defender’s proposition. “‘These disputations are regular intellectual tournaments, the objectors trying to show the weak points of the thesis, the defender striving to maintain his proposition.’ “... there is nothing that can take the place of the disputation and that it represents the best possible means of bringing out the thinking powers of students... also serves as the best possible method of engraving deeply on the minds of students the reasons for the truth of the propositions... “Robert of Sorbonne, that famous founder of the great college named after him ... was thoroughly aware of the value of disputations to clear up doubts and difficulties with regard to knowledge... ‘[Disputation] is of even greater service than reading because it results in clearing up all doubts and the obscurities that may have remained after reading... Nothing is perfectly known until it has been finished off by the tooth of disputation.’ “Reverend Richard Clarke, S.J., a distinguished teacher of philosophy in England... ‘It is a splendid means of sifting truth from falsehood... In every class are to be found men who are not to be put off with evasion and a professor who was to attempt to substitute authority for reason would very soon find out his mistake.’ “Professor Paulsen, Professor of Education, University of Berlin, History of Higher Education... ‘As regards the disputation it may be said that the Middle Ages were surely not mistaken. These exercises were undoubtedly fitted to produce a great readiness of knowledge and a marvelous skill in grasping arguments.’ “[By 1840] the disputation method was being abandoned, and the obligation of presenting a [written] thesis for a degree in the shape of an essay ... took the place of the defense of theses... “The modification of education ... brought about was so gradual that many educators scarcely realized what was taking place. It was a full generation before it was consummated... “The acquisition of information [under modern education] now took the place ... of training in thoughtfulness and in discrimination of truth from falsity... “Cardinal Newman, Idea of a University, writing shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century ... ‘I will tell you what has been the practical error of the last twenty years [after the elimination of Scholastic teaching] -- not to load the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge but to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects, of implying that a smattering of a dozen branches of study is not shallowness which it really is but enlargement which it is not; of considering an acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons and the possession of clever duodecimos and attendance on eloquent lectures and membership with scientific institutions and the sight of the experiments of the platform, and the specimens of a museum, that all this was not dissipation of mind but progress. All things are now to be learned once, not first one thing and then another, not one well but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, without finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it, and this forsooth is the wonder of the age.’ “Probably no one of the nineteenth century had thought more deeply with regard to the problems of education than Newman... [few] had his penetrating power of thought ... made available to him by the old-fashioned method of education... He foresaw very clearly the evil fruits of this crowded pseudo-elective system, long before it came to be so destructive as it is at the present time [1935!]... ‘Whether it be the school boy or the school girl or the youth at college or the mechanic in the town or the politician in the senate, all have been victims in one way or another of this most preposterous and pernicious of delusions.’ “I am very much inclined to think that ... Cardinal Newman touches the conscience of a good many Catholic educators who have been caught up in the quest of the new in education... “If Newman said this with regard to the unfortunate developments of education as he saw them in his time [1860], what would he say with regard to the new-fangled education of our day [1935!] in which it would seem that the one supreme purpose of educational authorities is to secure as many students as possible for their institutions, where bigness is the one feature above all that presidents and trustees of a university strive to attain... One would like to know [Newman’s] idea of universities whose most important drawing card is their athletic record...’ “Professor Grandgent of Harvard in his volume Old and New suggested the alteration of the Century Dictionary’s definition of the ‘Dark Ages’ into something like this: ‘The dark ages, an epoch in the world’s history beginning with or shortly after the French Revolution [when Scholasticism waned almost to nullity] marked by a general extension and cheapening of education resulting in a vast increase of self-confident ignorance... Never before were conditions so favorable to the easy diffusion of a false semblance of information. Cheap magazines, Sunday supplements, moving pictures, have taken the place of books. Quickly scanned and quickly forgotten, they leave in the mind nothing but an illusion of knowledge.’ “Rev. Dr. Bernard Iddings Bell, St. Stephens College (Columbia), The American Scholar (January 1933)... ‘These seem to be the three great mistakes of the American people which have contributed to the debasing of our education: first, a feeling that the business of schools is to facilitate the production and ownership and use of things as the one great good in life... second, an illusion of equality which ignores natural differentiations in human mentality... third, a conviction that teaching is a trade like brick laying ... instead of a high art, that education is a mechanical process...’ “Almost needless to say there is a very marked difference between the education afforded the students at the colonial colleges and that provided for them at the present time. The supreme feature of that difference deserves special attention. “It is that students in the colonial colleges had their duties toward others emphasized for them while the students of the modern time are taught ever so much more about their rights... the making of money... development of personality... “...then, they had repeated for them over and over again that education’s aim was the benefit of the community and the doing good for their fellow men.”
Epilogue: Observations
“[Disputation] is of even greater service than reading because it results in clearing up all doubts and the obscurities that may have remained after reading... Nothing is perfectly known until it has been finished off by the tooth of disputation.” Robert of Sorbonne
Scholasticism, as we have seen, was much more than a glorified “honors program” with required readings in the classics. It appears that the Disputation was the key factor for the intellectual success of Scholastic students. After reading Walsh’s work I can never again delude myself with the expression: “I understand it - but I can’t explain it.” No, the crucible of the Disputation would quickly make plain to oneself and, painfully, to others what one truly knows and understands. Disputation -- those “contests of wits” or “intellectual tournaments” -- created some of the keenest minds of history. We often hear of educational programs purporting to “teach students how to think.” Scholasticism actually succeeded, and brilliantly so, in this endeavor where other programs have failed. As we look at Scholasticism’s regimen, we begin to understand why it was able to deliver such stellar results. Every week -- for four years -- students were required to defend intellectual positions against all comers, “lynx-eyed” peers and faculty, whose aim it was to probe and dissect the soft underbelly of haplessly formulated propositions. We can imagine students preparing for their intellectual jousts -- planning, strategizing, scrutinizing every word of their arguments, every nuance and angle of thought, every possible objection from the other side and how to respond -- four years of this mental chess play! We can begin to appreciate that one apprenticed under such a system would not become indiscriminate in his choice of words, and a non sequitur from any interlocutor would not likely go over his head or be easily dismissed. But Scholasticism in the colonial colleges created much more than a sophisticated debating society, those skilled at rhetoric. While the Disputation may deserve primary credit as the single greatest factor in forging sheer brain power, Scholasticism’s greater glory is that it provided young minds with a well-ordered paradigm of Life. Without embarrassment, Scholasticism taught young minds that there is such a thing as Truth, and it encouraged its students to get at it, to apprehend and appropriate it for themselves, and to defend it. While Scholasticism looked to Ancient Greece as mentor for such subjects as logic, rhetoric, and mathematics, Scholasticism, in essence, was not “neo-Aristotelian,” not merely re-heated Greek thought. Scholasticism’s primary ideals sprang from Christian teaching with its emphasis on the sacred dignity of man. Its chief aim was to promote the precepts of the Faith by developing those who would become its intellectual defenders. I have stated that Scholasticism was much more than an expanded “honors program.” By this I do not mean to minimize the importance of studying the Greek and Latin classics, the great works of world literature. While some would view such a program as elitist and passé, there are strong, practical reasons to continue this tradition. The great educators of the past understood, as we today often do not, that “[the readings of Scholastic students] brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man,” not the least of which endeavor was the study of the classics. “During their first two years the collegians read certain Latin and Greek authors for the sake of their content rather than linguistic training. Cicero, for example was studied mainly because he was a model of oratory... Homer was read because of his knowledge of human nature...” Why should a first-rate education focus upon what we today might call the Humanities? Aristotle maintained that a study of psuche, the mind-essence of man, is the basis of many other studies. For example, how can one properly investigate political science, the study of the polis as a sphere of human activity, without first understanding the nature of man? Could the Founding Fathers have created the U.S. Constitution without first having plumbed the depths of “the many-sided mind of man”? The answer is clear. Our greatest “natural resource” is not timber, farmland, petroleum or water - it is the mind of man. Created "in the image," our own cyber-capacity, guided by a sincere quest for the truth, has always been this world’s best hope for the future. Scholasticism has been more successful at developing this “raw material” of the mind than any other educational system of history. Scholasticism is a primary, proximate cause for the personal liberties, wealth, and prosperity that we enjoy today in the Western world.
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