Misquoted in The American Conservative

Dateline April 3rd, in the Year of our Lord 2023

In Matthew Freeman’s April 3rd piece in The American Conservative, “Classical Education’s Woke Co-Morbidity”, I found little to disagree with, except that he uses me as his antagonistic foil.   

Given his argument, I wonder if “Freeman” is a pseudonym? His article is centered on this crux:  "But neither [Hooten Wilson] nor Theodor Adorno forced him [David Goodwin] to write that classical education exists for liberating the minds of people groups, marching for freedom, and giving them rights."

His evidence of my claim?  Freeman quotes from my Federalist Article:  “Classical education was created to, and has, liberated the minds of countless people groups in history, and it is capable of doing the same in America today — and beyond. It has been at the forefront of the march for freedom and education; for individual rights apart from race or class or sex. If we let the very toxin that infects progressive education get into our classrooms, we’re doomed. This toxin was created and propagated by those who hate our tradition. Should we voluntarily drink it?”

I made no claim about the ultimate purpose of Classical education.  I claimed classical education has an historical purpose of liberating minds, as evidenced by the medieval’s name for it — the Liberal Arts.  And that it did so for countless people groups as is evidenced by outposts among the Pics, Celts, Saxons, Danes, Slaves, Goths, etc.  I also claimed it had a pivotal role in the rights focused upon at America’s founding — “individual rights apart from race or class or sex.”  These claims are all demonstrably true.  But “Existing for” is a quality of classical education that my quote does not offer.  Such an assertion would call for the telos of classical education.  

The telos of classical Christian education, as close as I could state it succinctly, is to bring the student’s heart, soul, mind, and body into conformance with the truth, goodness, and beauty of Christ.  Or, as I describe less succinctly in Battle for the American Mind:  Paideia.  In a 1200-word response article, as in The Federalist, it would have been impossible to have that discussion.

Freeman applies another contrived, hypothetical quote to me: “No, we’re not racist — in fact, our books are anti-racist!”  As an aside, to claim our books are anti-racist would be to claim they are racist — maybe that’s his point.  In either case, nothing I said implies that.  The closest I might get is that there is a certain “equality of access” inherent in classical education’s tradition.  This belief is rooted in the church tradition of educating the poor and lowly, along with the aristocrats.  “Cathedral schools” and many monasteries served this purpose from the earliest days of the Christian era.  John Amos Comenius, one of our classical Christian forefathers, made educating the masses his life’s work.  We still revere his work in the movement today.  If this tradition makes classical Christian education too egalitarian in Freeman’s view, then I am guilty as charged. As a commoner myself, I wanted my children to have a classical Christian education so I helped build them a school.  Our movement thrives on the action of everyday commoners starting schools with the hope of better days ahead.

Freeman’s thesis seems to miss the relationship between freedom and virtue.  Freedom comes with virtue and cannot exist without virtue.  Virtue was viewed in antiquity as the path to freedom!  Classical education trains in virtue, through heroes, as Freeman rightly claims, to the end of liberating minds from vice.  Yet, his argument implies that virtue and freedom cannot coexist as purposes.  In fact, they are bedfellows.  Christians turned toward true freedom as an educational purpose.  True freedom is submission to the Truth (“The Truth shall set you free").  Perhaps Freeman presumes I meant “freedom” or “individual rights” in an unconstrained, libertarian sense.  Or, perhaps, he is unaccustomed to my protestant (though not “liberal protestant” as he claims) sensibilities toward freedom of conscience and the Bill of Rights, endowed by our creator.  

Freeman’s article is valuable in two respects.  It rightly views the entire woke enterprise as destructive for classical education — if for no other reason than it pulls us away from our mission.  One of General Patton’s least appreciated missions in the European Theater during WWII was to create a fake “balloon army” of tanks and men that would draw the German focus away from the Normandy invasion.  These types of diversionary tactics are effective, if you fall for them. 

Classical educators are at risk of gathering our forces, trying to defeat a balloon army that claims we are “racist” or "misogynist.” We need to stop.  We should view all of these descendent calls to inclusiveness and diversity as diversionary tactics to be ignored.  If they draw our focus, the enemy has already achieved their purpose.

Jessica Hooten Wilson and others are calling for a bombing raid on a bunch of latex.  These folks are among us and influence our leaders to focus energy on a faux problem.  The danger is not so much that students might read an obscure female author conjured into the mythical “tradition”, or that the discussion will inevitably turn to a demonization of our Western tradition – though these are both damaging – but rather that we’ll all shift our attention and focus toward placating an enemy who is not there.  The whole DEI apparatus was conjured, as Freeman referenced from my piece, by the descendents of the Frankfurt School, to get us off target.  Racism, misogyny, etc., are a bunch of balloon tanks that look pretty convincing from a 30,000 foot reconnaissance aircraft.  There are stories of atrocities and Western failures painted on every airbag.  But the damage is done when classical educators work themselves up and believe that racism/sexism are the real problems that need to be addressed.  We start new tracks at our conferences and find speakers who can talk about diversity, reconciliation, and there we go, leaving our defenses open to the real vulnerabilities.  The beaches of our families, our churches, and the paideia of our children are left unguarded.

Freeman’s article also reminds us that virtue requires heroes, and that classical education is not egalitarian, but views the world hierarchically. In some strange twist of irony, I just drafted the first chapter in my next book from Harper Collins about classical education.  It begins with a defense of hierarchy.  For the record, when it comes out, I wrote it before Freeman’s critique.  

I commend Freeman’s article to my readers, sans his foil of course, because he makes good points.  He is just a bit careless with his choice of quotes in an apparent strain to indict with a wide swath.  But then, indictments are easy to get these days.