“Feet flat.
Hips back.
Shoulders straight.
Eyes forward.”
We’d drone in unison.
This was how we announced our readiness at the teacher’s command from the front of the classroom.
Opinion
Thirty years ago, I thought this was how all young minds engaged in education. The teachers checked our bodies for compliant tucked-in shirts and belts; our pencil cases for only allowable writing utensils — six-sided pencils, sharpened, unmarred by bored children’s chews. Our curriculum was classical, before The Heritage Foundation touted classical curriculum as the hope for America’s future.
Thirty years ago, I was 7 years old. I was learning how the world worked.
This summer, the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act began disbursing up to $7,000 per K-12 student to Wyoming private and homeschool families despite ongoing litigation regarding the law’s constitutionality. Supporters, like Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, assert that this law justly provides due support for families called to root their children’s education in religion and moral order from the home. Critics, like the Wyoming Education Association, believe it siphons already limited tax dollars without oversight, creating immense risk for Wyoming’s public schools and the quality of education for the state’s youth.
Both my elementary school, Fort Caspar Academy, and its related middle school, Casper Classical Academy, were founded in the mid-90s, predating Wyoming law allowing charter schools. Both remain public schools. I can’t speak to their founders’ intentions beyond a desire to shape young minds thoughtfully. However, the parallels are undeniable, particularly around “the trivium,” a foundational pillar of my alma mater and a favored tool of the highly conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
In Latin, the trivium means “where three roads meet.” Those three roads — grammar, logic and rhetoric — formed the foundation of my classical education.
My schools operated with “pillars of virtuous character development” and “purposeful high expectations.” In our elementary classrooms, we recited long-form poetry. We dissected grammar and math verbally at the overhead projector with daily exercises called “Daily Oral Language (D.O.L)” and “Daily Oral Math (D.O.M).” In middle school, we were required to take Latin and logic class, learning the roots of rhetoric. In short, my schools were strict about everything from your midriff to your penmanship.
Aristotle’s philosophy on logic is regularly quoted as: “All men are mortal. Socrates was a man. Therefore, Socrates was mortal.”
If children with poor posture often disrupt class, and disruptions to class interrupt the classroom experience, then children with poor posture interrupt the classroom experience. Enter the mantra recited in unison between lessons.
Follow the syllogism further: If America needs compliant, orderly adults and schools discipline children toward compliance and order, then America will soon have its desired population. Yet, I look at myself, a once classically educated youth, and question that truth. I hesitate to believe I am the picture of the Heritage Foundation’s ideal case study. One glance and I’d be quickly diagnosed as terminal with “woke mind virus.”
Thirty years ago, I looked to my teachers to teach me how the world worked. I was beholden to their power through report cards and threats of dress code violations. I learned to thrive in their systems with their tools for better and for worse.
I don’t believe the trivium was a formula for compliant citizens. Rather, it was a foundation for what’s next: thought, expression, conversation — Heritage Foundation nightmare fuel. Imagine if they found out I have a nose ring.
The discourse around the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship explores topics that could be excavated endlessly. How does the state’s budget reflect how we educate our children? Who gets to decide what that education should produce? I don’t have those answers.
Perhaps I am a product of an education designed to shape America’s youth. From the time I was 7 years old, I anxiously adjusted my body and belongings to be granted my teacher’s approval. Sometimes, I still do. I learned to crave my teachers’ praise for my obedience. That’s a lot of power to hand in for a letter grade.
Yet my future was not predetermined by my education. Rather, it was honed by it in ways that no trendy ideology or curriculum ever could.
I learned the rules and followed them. Then I questioned them.
It seems to me that the education you received accomplished the purpose for which it was designed: to help raise and form a free-thinking adult who has the ability to write well and who is not afraid to ask questions and think outside the box.
Trump was supposed to dissolve the Federal Dept. Of Education……
But he didn’t do that did he?
He would like to though, wouldn’t he.
No, he wouldnt Gordon. He hasn’t even made the attempt.
That would be relinquishing Federal powers. Washington DC never relinquishes power regardless of party, they only seek to consolidate. Signing meaningless EOs doesnt negate that he put WWE in charge of dumbing down the children(Fed Dept. Of Ed’s main mission since its inception)
Today we pay 6.29 for diesel due to a Trump policy that the Democrat Presidents and confessional leadership holds as well, be Israel’s pawn in the middle east.
The bankruptcy ensuring debt spending continues regardless of who “runs” the country.
Until Americans somehow realize that they have been investing their emotions in a political charade, nothing is going to change.
Chad, yes he has attempted the destruction of The Department of Education. b The way he destroys agencies is by installing a hack to run it. In this case, a world wrestling administrator.
Gordon, most cabinet level appointments are “hacks” regardless of who is President. They all do it, Biden made a California Lawyer/Politician the Sec. of Health and Human Services followed by Trump naming another Lawyer. Biden and Obama had the same Sec. of Agriculture who’s nickname was literally “Mr. Monsanto”. The list is endless.
The American education system has been in steep decline since the Federal Dept. of Education was made a cabinet level position. Getting rid of it would be a blessing, but Trump is NOT doing it.
In my opinion as a retired Spanish/French teacher, your education accomplished much more than accumulating a bunch of facts. You learned to question. That leads to real learning! (Perhaps not the intention the Heritage Foundation had in mind, but leading to a lifetime of self education.) The best word a kid can learn is “why.”
Actually, as someone who also had a classical education, I can tell you that questions were not permitted. You were taught the facts. Those were the facts. Do not stray from the facts. Do not ask why. Do not ask questions. The answers are in the text. The answers are in your notes. We were taught to obey and NOT ask questions actually.
It’s my hope that our education system teaches students critical thinking skills. Obedience, conformity, and seeking praise and confirmation from others seems counter productive to an educated citizenry which will maintain a democratic form of government. Thanks for your observations and nice work using your brain power.
Don’t you think the author had education or life experiences after middle school that might have helped them question? That’s what I, who also had a classical education, understood that particular quote to mean.
“I learned the rules and followed them. Then I questioned them.”
Not to overstate the obvious, Ms Brauer, but perhaps I will, nonetheless: Isn’t your last statement a succinct summary of the exceptional education you received and is that not the point of an education that produces a well-educated, civic-minded person?
Having encountered the writings of Shakespeare, you likely recall Queen Gertrude utter the famous quote: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.
The ‘logic’ and ‘rhetotic’ suggest that any benefits of a classical education far surpass any [all] potential liabilities resulting from a ‘classical education’.
Don’t you think the author had education or life experiences after middle school that might have helped them question? That’s what I, who also had a classical education, understood that particular quote to mean.