Nassim Nicholas Taleb changed how I looked at the world a few years ago. Black Swan, Skin In The Game, and Antifragile taught me a new way to analyze the world and myself. You should check out all three of these books. For today though, one of the things I took from him is that within every system, there will be weaknesses and glitches. These types of things are normal. Expect them. People get into trouble because they think their system is bullet-proof. There is no such thing. Anything created by man is going to have flaws. Look for them. Find out what they are. See if you can live with them. If you can, then there is nothing for you. If you can’t, you need to change something.
Classical education and Liberal Arts have a “glitch” in it so to speak. It at least has a bad rap. This rap comes from the area of STEM. Ironically, I was hired originally to teach Mathematics and Physics. Finding anyone to learn how to teach these subjects classically was difficult. Most people that I have run into within classical education circles have no idea how these things relate. I’ve come across one guy who gets it: Dr. Mitch Stokes. I was given a lecture by him call STEM and the Lordship of Christ that massively helped my understanding. The dearth of people within the classical education circles who do not understand how STEM factors into the education system is a problem. I would probably say that it is the problem.
To give you some background on how these things fit together. Looking at a subject classically like Dorothy Sayers puts it, is to look at the Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric of a subject matter. The Grammar is the nuts and bolts, how things work and fit together. The Logic is the why and how they all fit together. The Rhetoric is how you would build new things out of the nuts and bolts, along with some boards, metal, and some plans. Within Mathematics, basically all of the subjects, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and so on, is taught at a Grammar level. People are given a screwdriver so they can find all the screws, but they don’t know the plans or what is it they are even trying to build. Take the derivative. I was taught the power rule in my Calculus class. It didn’t know it by the name, and I didn’t know the point of it. But I knew how to take one function and to get the derivative from it. I thought it was really cool. I didn’t know the problem that it was meant to solve. A big one is the problem of change. Calculus can be thought of the mathematics of instantaneous change because any distance divided by zero time is meaningless. Yet change happens. How do we calculate it? The derivative, which is a type of limit. It’s fun stuff. Come to my Calc class, we can talk about it.
I know I have already bored most of you. Thanks for still reading.
You’ll only get this kind of point of view from a Classical school because we care about why things work the way they do and where they come from. We don’t just care about how to make the thing work. We don’t just use the power we have; we consider if we should first.
If we do all this, why do we get a bad rap when it comes to STEM? In my experience, there are two reasons. First, we tend to attract parents who like the arts. Kids tend to follow their parents. If the kids like the arts, they are probably going to struggle with Mathematics. Left brain/right brain things. They will have to work harder to enjoy Mathematics than a left-brained person. So, that is one big thing. Beyond that, we are shooting at different targets. I would much rather have all of my students understand why mathematics is vital to their world, how to understand it, not get taken advantage by it, and to be able discuss it. I’m alright if they are slower at computing it. People who have gone through the public schools, who have taken traditional Mathematic classes are the ones who told us to “trust the science.” My students know better than that. They know that science is a practice, and it is meant to be questioned. They know that the world is mathematical and weirdly user-friendly (like it has a designer), so if the science doesn’t point to something logical, something that fits within the framework of how they know the world to work, they probably aren’t going to believe it.
Yes, most of my students don’t find the enjoyment that I do when solving the quadradic or finding the mistake within a problem. Which is fine. I also know that anyone who has been taught how to learn (like my students), and who wants to go into the STEM field, will be able to catch up and leap ahead once they get to college. Fascination with a subject has a weird way of accelerating the learning process. It is also like one is doing what they are meant to be doing.
So, do we have a problem with STEM in Classical Education? I don’t think so. Maybe some schools. We have a glitch. We may not score as well on the mathematics portion on some tests (though I have had several that have placed off the charts), but I know that my students truly know how the world works and how to find answers. Which coming out of a high school, isn’t that a pretty good place to be? We aren’t for everyone, but then again, nobody is.
If this sounds like your type of education though, come to our info night.