The Two Camps for Mathematical Teaching

As mentioned above, there tends to be two camps of educators debating the way students should learn mathematics. One camp could be called the “Traditionalists.” These educators believe that students should learn the “rules” of mathematics and repeat. A seasoned instructor usually models a problem and invites students to follow along and do 10 more similar problems. This “Traditionalist” camp emphasizes repetition and memorization.

This type of teaching began with one of the first textbooks published in the United States, Nicolas Pike’s Arithmetic, published in 1788, and continued with other series, including P.E. Bates Botham’s The Common School Arithmetic in 1832, and traditional back-to-basics curricula. These early math textbooks were designed to meet the needs of standardized testing, beginning in the 1980s (Larson, 2016). This methodology is especially evident when students need to learn traditional arithmetic, and when moving into algebra and calculus.

The other camp of math educators could be referred to as “New Math” followers. These “New Math” educators tend to focus more on conceptual learning, based on the ideas of the work of researchers such as Richard Skemp and Jerome Bruner. These educators tend to present problems to students with hands-on materials. They ask students to decide how the problem should be solved and to consider why it should be solved that way. The “New Math” educators emphasize connecting mathematical ideas and utilizing the hierarchy of mathematics.

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The idea of conceptual learning began as a response to the first “traditional” textbook, with Warren Colburn’s An Arithmetic on the Plan of Pestalozzi in 1821 and the large math boom with space exploration that began in the 1950’s (Larson, 2016). As states have moved to more standards-based education beginning in the early 2000s, the emphasis on understanding the why and how of the way mathematics works was widely adopted.

Listen to any type of social media or news outlet that discusses math education, and you will hear the ongoing debate today between these two camps. Outraged parents who are unable to help their students with their homework post rants about how the “new math” makes no sense: they just want their students to be able to say their math facts quickly. States and educators fret over test scores that show only 39% of students are able to apply mathematics in a way that will be needed for their future professions (NAEP Math 2024). However, these very same arguments have existed since the start of our country as the pendulum of education has swung back and forth between the two arguing camps.

The True Beauty of Mathematics

Instead of swinging back and forth on the pendulum between one approach and then the other, we should concentrate on true mathematics, which focuses on five elements of math education that include both viewpoints. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics defines mathematical proficiency as: adaptive reasoning, strategic competence, conceptual understanding, productive disposition, and procedural fluency. Mathematical proficiency is presented as strands that are woven together to create one solid approach to teaching mathematics (NCTM, 2001). The arguments from both camps are valid but need to be combined to create a well-rounded learner who knows and can apply mathematics.

The “Traditional” camp is correct that students need speed and repetition to access multi-step problems efficiently. The memorization of math facts and formulas help students to do that well. However, the “Conceptual Learning” camp accurately recognizes that students also need to know why they chose a specific formula or algorithm, and whether their answer makes sense. The two components need to be intertwined effectively so that students understand mathematics as a process and learn how to utilize its components.

The two camps have been in opposition from the start of our country, and they both have accurate arguments. Each is a singular piece that needs to be combined to make a true robust curriculum that produces well-rounded mathematical problem-solvers. The mathematics itself is unchanging. Algebra will always be algebra. There’s nothing “new” in mathematics except for an approach that some may have not learned in their own mathematical experience.

When combining these two approaches to create one complete definition of proficiency, we are providing our students the skill set they will need to be successful in today’s workforce that requires critical and analytical thinking. We are also providing a love for truth and beauty, which classical education emphasizes in other subject areas, and should be considered as a major component for mathematics, as well.

Teaching True Mathematics Challenges

The challenge with teaching mathematics using the reasoning from both camps and the definition from NCTM to create a truly proficient learner is that many current adults were never taught mathematics using both approaches. Depending on where the pendulum was located during an educator’s or parent’s learning experience, they may have not learned the why and how components of mathematics. This omission can create a huge disconnect as educators try to explain mathematics in a way they didn’t learn and parents try to understand what their student is doing at home. The teacher or parent can feel inadequate and immediately blame the curriculum, teacher, or school. Many believe that if they are unable to do the math, it must be some form of “new math” that was just invented, even though history tells us this is not true.

This constant tension results in educators and parents reverting to traditional learning that focuses on memorization, because it can yield short term results. Students who have the ability to memorize appear to understand the concepts. On an assessment where students are given recall-type questions, they do well. When these students are confronted with application and reasoning-type questions, however, they often are unable to decide which operation to use or to explain why they have used it. This deficit clarifies why summative assessment scores are often much lower than quick recall quizzes, as they tend to be made up of more complex problem types (NAEP Math 2024).

Finding a Solution

Communication and information are essential to ending this 250-year-old debate. As more people learn about mathematics conceptually, they understand why both of these arguments are essential components for mathematical proficiency. Ending the debate requires equipping both preservice and current educators with the tools to truly understand and teach mathematics while supporting parents at home.

Preservice and practicing educators are rarely given opportunities to learn how to teach mathematics. They may take higher level mathematics courses and a few methodology courses, but the ability to break down a misconception and build upon a student’s ideas are skills that require on-the-job training. Teaching math well requires the educator to engage with learners who ask questions and need redirection as they make mistakes.

Educators need support within their own school buildings to continue their own math learning journey through coaching and intentional planning. Through the act of solving problems with their peers, discussing them and analyzing them, educators are breaking down mathematics in a way that allows them to speak to developing learners. They can quickly pivot when a student makes an error and address misconceptions, because they have explored all the possible options through a deep dive into the curriculum. These teachers can truly develop the art of teaching mathematics well through intentional practice and preparation.

These same strategies can be provided to parents to support them at home. Newsletters, parent workshops, and videos can inform parents about how mathematics is being taught with a conceptual and procedural balance. Parents can relearn with their students and explore new concepts together. The excitement of exploration and teaching can inspire parents to challenge their students at home and build a love of learning that will transition into the classroom.

Moving Into the Future

Our beautiful country does not have to repeat the same patterns in education if its educators and families have an open mind to accepting the research on how children learn. Looking at other countries, such as Singapore, shows that a clear path encompassing all the components of fluency can produce results. Moving from one extreme to the other, as we have done previously with the never-ending pendulum, simply does not work.

Good mathematics education starts small by empowering educators to take ownership of a math lesson through intentional planning. Giving educators the space and time to break down a lesson will yield immediate results, as they become more knowledgeable about mathematics. They may even become excited about more teaching, and ready to share the progress with families. Working together, educators, parents, and students can all create something truly beautiful by developing a love for mathematics that shapes the next 250 years.

References:

Larson, M. “A Brief History of Math Education: Lessons for Today.” National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 16 Apr. 2016, www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/About/President,_Board_and_Committees/Board_Materials/MLarson-SF-NCTM-4-16.pdf .

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “Mathematical Proficiency: Five Strands.” NCTM, www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Advocacy/Advocacy_Toolkit/Mathematical_Proficiency_Five_Strands.pdf.

Jessica Kaminski, M.Ed. is an experienced educator, author, and international math consultant with over 16 years in education. She has supported thousands of teachers as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, and national trainer, specializing in Singapore’s approach to mathematics. Early in her career, she discovered a passion for helping students build deep conceptual understanding and a love for problem-solving. Jessica is the author of the Math in Focus 2020 Third Grade Teacher’s Edition and co-author of the Primary Mathematics 2022 Grades 2–5 Teacher’s Editions. Her work reflects a strong commitment to turning research-based strategies into meaningful classroom practice. As founder of Math with Purpose, Jessica now delivers custom professional development to schools worldwide with a mission to raise confident teachers who create lasting learning. Through her extensive knowledge of working with neurodiverse students, Jessica equips educators to make math meaningful, engaging, and effective for every learner.

This reignition began with a question: how does the research behind the Science of Reading and the beauty contained within classical literature not only co-exist but complement each other in cultivating wisdom and virtue? After teaching first graders for the last 6 of my 11 years in the classroom, I knew the science of reading and classical texts could be simultaneously valued, however, I wrestled with two important questions:

- What makes teaching classical literature so valuable in the modern world?

- How do we ensure most effectively that our students master reading?

I began with that ever-persistent question- WHY? The value of solid reading instruction, and subsequently, high student scores on reading achievement tests, are often framed in a way that places reading as the primary engine for “learning how to learn.” However, the value goes far beyond enabling students to absorb information; we are training hearts and minds towards what is Good, True, and Beautiful.[CP5] Additionally, in a classical liberal arts education, the emphasis on reading whole books is a deliberate pedagogical commitment honoring the integrity of human thought and contributing to the development of a student’s character.

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At the most foundational level, reading creates cognitive stamina. In the age of “snack-size” (and often digital) content, reading whole books [CP6] [CP7] [CP8] trains the mind to hold onto details over a sustained period. This practice builds an endurance that is much needed for learning- both in the academic and leisurely sense- and simply cannot be formed or replicated with excerpts. The idea that a text with a cohesive narrative can be diced up and offered as a combination of a few selections can serve as a substitute for marinating in a text in its entirety must be unequivocally rejected and abandoned. Reading the whole text pays honor to the author’s work – the arc of the story paints a masterpiece when it is enjoyed from start to finish. As Cicero noted, the study of letters is the nourishment of our youth. Studying them in their entirety is the way in which we maximize that nourishment.

It’s important to name explicitly that not all books spark the moral imagination and form the reader’s virtue in an equitable manner. The value of immersing students in great texts, as Descartes described, is “like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” The stories we place in front of our students present them with examples of tragedy and triumph, virtue and vice. We use these stories to train the affections of our students, or as C.S. Lewis says, “to love what is beautiful and despise what is base.” Great books show that the moral choices one faces are often messy and hard, requiring great discernment. We walk our students alongside archetypes such as Achilles, Virgil, and Oedipus, so they learn valuable lessons about who they are meant to be.

We also must consider the impact of layering in the principle of reading these great books in their entirety together in community, in classrooms around the country. C.S. Lewis famously used the phrase “two heads are better than one” in his 1944 essay On the Reading of Old Books. While he made this statement in support of reading authors and texts across the centuries, his reasoning that two heads are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction further bestows upon us the importance of engaging with others. It builds a common intellectual world in which students can wrestle with the great ideas, the meaning of language, and virtue. As Robert Hutchins, the fifth president of the University of Chicago, proclaimed, “all should be actively and continuously engaged in the Great Conversation” as it is the “road to education.”

This argument proves[CP9] the undeniable necessity of preserving the dedication to the study of great books, in their entirety, partnered with conversation about the texts as the fundamental pillars of reading instruction in the classical liberal arts tradition. But then the question with which we are left is how to preserve this practice of reading?

The research outlined in The Teach Like a Champion Guide to The Science of Reading can be a lamp illuminating the educator’s path. Reading has the power to unlock worlds, but unlike oral language, it cannot be acquired through exposure or imitation. Lemov, Driggs, and Woolway outline seven arguments that influence reading instruction once students have moved past the basic phonetic understanding.

1. Managing and Socializing Attention: In the digital age, attention is malleable and diminished; teachers must actively rebuild students’ capacity for sustained focus, making reading a focused, collective social activity rather than isolated, individual work.

2. Building Fluency: Fluent reading is necessary for comprehension because it frees working memory from decoding, allowing the brain to focus on meaning.

3. Background Knowledge as Comprehension: Comprehension is not a “transferable skill” but a result of background knowledge. To understand a text, students must have a deep, extensive knowledge base.

4. Vocabulary as Knowledge: Vocabulary should be taught as a form of knowledge rather than just a set of definitions, helping students build a deep, broad understanding of words.

5. Writing to Build Reading Power: Writing is a cognitive tool for deep thinking and memory encoding; slow, deliberate writing in response to text improves comprehension.

6. Reading Whole Books: Students must engage with whole books to develop the stamina and sustained attention required to analyze complex, long-form text.

7. Implementing Close Reading: Teachers must train students to master complex texts by focusing on technical details, structure, and text-dependent questions rather than relying on prior experience.

The authors outline research and strategies for each of these arguments in a way that not only advocates for the importance of them but also explains how teachers can begin to practically address them. It is essential to reiterate the conclusion based on their research that there is a large discrepancy in the time that students spend learning how to read as compared to the amount of time a student spends in school. If most phonics instruction ends around third grade, this leaves at least nine years of schooling potentially without foundational, purposeful, and explicit reading instruction, if we abandon the teaching of whole books.

One essential question remains; why is it important that these two “realms” of literacy instruction merge together? As fellow keepers of the classical education tradition, we must all fully commit to the ideal that every student not only “cracks the code’ of reading, but that they are also motivated by “Good and Beautiful” works to become master readers. We start strong in phonics and must ensure that the same intensity and commitment continue well beyond their elementary years so that students come to know the likes of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austin, Virgil, Plato, and many more. As educators, may we measure our success, at least in one way, by how deeply and actively students engage in the Great Conversation long after they leave the chairs within our classroom walls.

[CM1]Jenn - do you mean apologetic or UNapologetic?

[JR2]ha.. definitely UNapologetic!

[CP3]Quick note, does Carol want us to brand this with GH?

[JR4]I’m not sure- great question- I’ll ask her about that it when I submit it to her!

[CP5]You address this in the next sentence; I just want to highlight the lovely parallel of training the heart as well as the mind. Pointing students to what is good (true, and beautiful).

[CP6]I love the focus on reading whole texts!! Such a great angle.

[CP7]I wonder if it there would be a way to pull that out as a contrast to the current state of education’s focus on short texts. That is, the purpose of reading is to READ THINGS not just to perform the specific skills that make up the act of reading.

[CP8]In short, just adding to this paragraph a quick contrast to drive home the point you are eloquently making.

[CP9]SO GOOD

Jennifer Ramirez (M. Ed., Curriculum and Instruction) has spent the last seven years working for Great Hearts after ten years of working in school districts around the US and abroad in Germany. She is the Director of Career Pathways on the Great Hearts America Professional Development Team. Prior to this role, she served as a teacher in various grades K-8, mentor teacher and instructional coach, and as a Headmaster. She is passionate about the impact of instructional coaching on both teacher development and student outcomes, which has led her to this current role. Jennifer and her husband Rogelio are the proud parents of five kids, three of which are still school-age and attend Great Hearts Forest Heights as 9th, 8th, and 5th graders. Outside of education, Jennifer enjoys hitting the trails with her dog and volunteering in various children's ministry programs.

Finally, professors at the country’s most prestigious universities candidly confess that their students, by and large, cannot competently read entire novels or long-form articles. Many students cannot concentrate long enough to follow the full development of characters or the complexity of an argument. They lack attentiveness and endurance when confronting a complete text. As a result, professors have resorted to assigning excerpts rather than entire works. This robs the students of the full development and trajectory of a narrative or an argument and reduces education to fragments of ideas and bits and pieces of knowledge.

These are dispiriting statistics and anecdotes for all of us, especially for those leading primary and secondary schools that assign rich and complicated imaginative and expository literature.

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To make matters even worse and because students struggle to read, many frustrated teachers and professors have turned to encouraging their students to use audiobooks rather than reading the text independently. Many of these works are available on Audible and Spotify in highly adapted and even reduced versions, which means the students may not even be hearing the full text. This is a serious pedagogical mistake, and it only further cultivates a nonreading culture.

When I first began teaching, our students made a firm commitment not to consult commentaries of any kind when studying great works of literature. It was even a written policy in our student handbook. Why? Because reading commentaries short-circuits the acquisition of the intellectual skills associated with reading and interpreting the words on the page. Furthermore, we were training students in what constitutes a legitimate and thoughtful interpretation of a passage. Not all interpretations are, in fact, equal. Most of the important discussions in a humane letters seminar, for example, hover around this precise issue: Is this a sound interpretation of that passage? If not, what does our colleague have wrong? Reading commentaries undermines the rigorous, independent thinking requisite for this kind of argument by artificially settling complex reading questions and distracting students from the important task of engaging a particular text.

Listening to audiobooks is very much like reading commentaries, except it is even lazier. The audiobook reader has already made the critically important interpretive decisions for the listener, thus preempting the most important objective of any humanities course: that is, to train students in careful, close, interpretative reading skills. The students do not actually have to read at all when using audiobooks. They just have to listen, and listening is not the same as reading. Even listening with the book in front of one’s eyes is an intensely passive exercise, demanding little of the reader. High school teachers on the ground confess that the majority of their students are employing audiobooks. As a result, the students have difficulty locating key passages in the text; understanding important developments in plot, character, and the use of words; and recognizing the beauty and elegance of the writing. These are all critical habits of mind a humanities teacher wishes to impart.

What the students need to learn is how to actively and rigorously engage with the written word and puzzle over its meaning. That can only be accomplished by picking up a physical book and reading, marking, and interrogating it. The latter means that the student is asking questions of the line of argument or the behavior of a character. In the case of an expository argument, the student is retracing the logic of the argument in the movement of his own mind. He is stopping to reread the last sentence and the one before it and even the one before that, laboring to see how one thought leads to another. He is also puzzling through fundamental premises. For instance: What is Aristotle saying in the opening line of his Nicomachean Ethics when he says that “every action and choice seem to aim at some good; the good, therefore, has been well defined as that at which all things aim.” Was Alexander’s slaughter of the innocents aimed at the good? What​ could Aristotle possibly mean?

In the case of imaginative literature, the student is recreating the movements and thoughts of the characters, puzzling over their motivations. Take, for instance, Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady: What does Isabel notice in the silence between Osmond and Madame Merle in the parlor? What is happening between Osmond and Merle? What has Isabel discovered? The student may even be responding to this moment with shock, disbelief, and sudden comprehension of the dangers Isabel faces. Everything about Isabel’s prior choices is thrown into deep relief in light of the present moment. If the student has been reading deeply and carefully, he will have already experienced some uneasiness about that relationship, but he will not have been able to put his finger on the cause of that uneasiness until now.

In Book IX of the Iliad, three ambassadors come to Achilleus to beg for his return to battle. They bring news that Agamemnon is willing to satisfy Achilleus’ demands and much more in order to make peace. Agamemnon’s gifts are so lavish that Nestor remarks, “none could scorn any longer these gifts you offer.” When the ambassadors approach Achilleus, Odysseus makes a compelling case for the great warrior’s return, but Achilleus responds with the following words: “For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who / hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.” The reader pulls up short here. Who is Achilleus referring to? Is Odysseus dissembling? Is Agamemnon? The student may want to return to the speech Agamemnon gave at the assembly at lines 115-161, detailing his terms for peace. Did Odysseus corrupt Agamemnon’s words? Did he leave something out? What irritates Achilleus?

Because the student is managing the speed of his reading, he has the leisure to stop and notice the whimsy and poignancy of a particular line. Take, for instance, Ruby Turpin’s revelatory moment in Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”: “Then like a monumental statue coming to life, she bent her head slowly and gazed, as if through the very heart of mystery, down into the pig parlor at the hogs.” What mystery could a self-confessed obese, middle-aged woman with a hardy streak of bigoted tendencies possibly see at the bottom of a pig parlor?

Puzzling over a passage, worrying over it, teasing out its implications, relishing its beauty, craft, and humor—these are the activities of a thoughtful, active mind at work when reading an important piece of literature. Reading is discovering a word that delights the mind or a logical move that brings pleasure and new understanding.

Here is some advice: Do not short circuit all of this crucial activity by putting audiobooks in front of your students. Do not undermine the arrival of that glorious moment when a student independently puts the pieces together to see what is going on. Do discuss with colleagues how to train younger students to proficient reading so that when these great works are put before them, they are ready to read and explore them.

Reading is about more than seeing words on the page or even reading those words. It is the student’s interpretation and discovery of meaning that makes that student a reader.

Jeannette DeCelles-Zwerneman serves as Director of Instruction and a Master Teacher at Cana Academy. Her thirty published works include Teaching Fiction From the Inside Out​; A Lively Kind of Learning: Mastering the Seminar Method, and twenty-eight other resources on teaching imaginative and expository literature and writing.

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Some students would attempt their studies but struggle and peter out as they encounter novel and increasingly difficult concepts. Another contingent would follow their own childish inclinations: eternal recess, free reign in the gym, phone time. And a final group would exert their power—the bullies, troublemakers, and ne’er-do-wells.

With time, even the well-meaning kids would find themselves embroiled in conflict. Any recess attendant has seen it: two well-meaning students who find themselves in a verbal altercation over something simple. One student kicks a ball into the field; another student sees this ball sitting alone and begins to play with it. Both believe they have a claim to it. Without an adult there to adjudicate right from wrong, the stronger or more popular kid would come out on top, regardless of the merits of his case.

A school without adults would not necessarily descend into some tribal, murderous dystopia (although some schools might), but it would not be a thriving or even safe place either.

Astute readers will have noticed the not-so-subtle allusions to Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century political philosopher whose magnum opus Leviathan wrestled with the state of nature, the justification and use of political power, and the ideal structures of government. He was truly groundbreaking in that he pioneered justifications for political authority, not through appeals to divine right, but rather a rationalist, secular perspective.

To be clear, neither route to justify authority—through divinely ordained relations or materialistic rationalizations—shouldbe in inherent conflict with the other. As mathematician and lay theologian John Lennox has joked, if you asked why a pot of water is boiling, a physicist might answer “Because of heat transfer from the flame and water molecules changing state,” while Lennox himself might answer “Because I would very much like a cup of tea.” These explanations can be complementary, not necessarily contradictory.

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Engagement with any great mind—both the complements and contradictions—can prove fruitful. Hobbes’ core insights about human nature and the role of authority provide profound guidance regarding how to most judiciously order both a school and the classroom, even if we shy away from his preferences for absolute monarchy and an education order thereto. The Hobbesian worldview suggests that teachers and administrators have not only the right, but the obligation to assert their authority towards both rightly ordering the classroom and directing students to higher ends.

The Hobbesian Classroom

Why should students listen to and obey their teachers?

When I first started teaching, fresh out of college, never having held a position of authority in my life, I struggled with this question. Before I worried if students even would obey my commands in the classroom, I wondered why they should. Who was I to demand that others obey me?

In my role as an instructional coach and school leader, I’ve seen other teachers struggle likewise. This irresolution manifests in small, subtle behaviors. Their voice lacks command. Students tip-toe across behavioral lines. Teachers allow a preponderance of little transgressions—whispers during instruction or words spoken out of turn. Administrators implore students to behave, cajoling them in the office, but are reticent to give a forceful punishment.

And while I cannot prove it, I suspects many teachers doubt that they themselves are worth obeying. Everyone can nod along to discussions of consequences or basic order, but speak of compliance, authority, punishment, deference, or decorum, and educators grow uneasy. Nevertheless teachers and school leaders can and should wield authority. It is an essential, arguably the essential element, to any well-ordered society in general and school in particular.

To begin building towards a philosophy of justified authority, Thomas Hobbes proposes a state of nature where there is no government, no police, no rulers, and no laws. Such a society-less world would be a chaotic, violent place, Hobbes argues—a war of “every man against every man,” where life would be “solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short.”

Perhaps we members of modern, democratic republics might like to flatter ourselves into thinking that we would continue to live virtuously in such a world. But suppose a few roving bands of criminals began breaking into homes, stealing food or harming loved ones, and setting buildings ablaze for fame and fun. It would only take a handful of individuals unconstrained by laws to induce fear across a city or town. Many formerly selfless and virtuous people would turn to self-preservation as the foundation for every decision. There would be no way to enforce claims of private property except through brute force in the name of self-defense. Why, after all, do we all still lock your homes at night, Hobbes asked?

And such a society would also be entirely unproductive. “There is no place for Industry,” he writes, “because the fruit thereof is uncertain.” Why store up wealth or create anything if there’s no security? Consequently, he argues, there would be no culture, no commerce, no commodities, no beautiful buildings or structure, no scientific advancement, no arts, no history, and no letters. In short, no society.

In the Hobbesian state of nature, everyone would have a claim to everything, and thus nothing outside of force could maintain that claim. A man stumbles upon a tree in a forest with just enough apples left to feed his family. Moments later, another man stumbles upon the same tree. Does “finders’ keepers” necessarily rule the day? That’s hardly a more virtuous or high-minded claim than simple “might makes right.”

These two men could make an agreement, shake hands, and work together, but why should one necessarily trust the other? Someone must enforce the contract. Over and above them both must be an authority that ensures both sides uphold their side of the bargain.

From this state of nature, Hobbes derives a justification for political authority. We implicitly consent to a governmental Leviathan that curtails our own individual liberty in return for peace and order.

Translating that justification to the classroom, teachers must wield authority to maintain basic order and safety, to stave off a state of nature in school. Parents, in turn, consent to restrictions on their child’s liberty in order that their child may learn and grow in a safe environment.

Anyone who has worked in schools before knows that the state of nature analogy is not too abstract. I have worked in real schools where the administration stripped teachers of authority, and it was chaos. A few students still sought to attend to their studies, but only with difficulty. Others caused no real problems but did what they pleased. And a final contingent forced their own order onto the system, and it was not a benevolent regime. In many ways, Hobbes’ predictions about society were born out in the school building: there was no productivity, no safety, no learning, no discussions, no reading, no practice, nothing that could justifiably be called “education.”

As a society, we have decided collectively to fund a public education system, elect the school board to govern it, and delegate the day-to-day operations of that building to the building personnel. Teacher authority keeps children safe until schools return responsibility to parents. Certain basic rules must be enforced: Don’t run with scissors. Don’t stick your finger in the socket. Don’t throw rocks at recess. Teachers represent the sovereign in the school; they enforce order. Insofar as the alternative is chaos, teachers have the right and obligation to enforce rules. Failure to do so is a violation of the implicit contract between parents and teachers, society and schools. The classroom is not a democracy. The teacher is the Leviathan. But what kind of Leviathan?

Is there a higher foundation for a teacher and administrator’s authority than this negative case—that their power is preferable to chaos? Why did we institute schools in the first place?

In his De Cive, Hobbes observed that all men are born unfit for society “as all men are born infants.” In Shakespeare’s words, we come “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms,” unable to feed ourselves, cloth ourselves, speak, move, or do much of anything. Hobbes argued that “Man is made fit for society not by nature, but by discipline.”

Romantics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau took a different view, arguing that “the education of the earliest years should be merely negative.” Rousseau proposed an alternative state of nature: All was roses and sunshine until society came with its rules and regulations and corrupted the noble savage’s Eden-like utopia. He argued that teachers and parents ought to simply leave children to be and they will develop as needed.

Experience and time have proven that there’s much wisdom in Hobbes and outright falsehood in Rousseau. A child left to their own devices will not learn to read, do math, or control their behavior. Adults and children alike can be wise, courageous, gentle, kind, and loving, but so too can they be cruel, petty, factious, and downright wicked. Call it sin or imperfections left from mindless evolution, there’s something rotten in the heart of man.

A city composed exclusively of illiterate, uncivilized neanderthals would greatly differ from modern New York or any small town pinned on a map. It would not be a pleasant place to live. Hobbes wrote that “where the people are not well instructed in their Duty,” there will be civil disorder. Certain habits, certain pieces of knowledge, even certain opinions and rules are essential to a peaceable society.

Schools are one of the institutions that we employ—along with family and the church—to carry out this civilizing task. Teachers are the first stewards of our cultural inheritance and societal maintenance.

They have received a commission—that is, an official command from a place of authority—to hand along the knowledge and norms on and through which our civilization stands and is perpetuated to the next generation. And it’s this sense of responsibility and authority that I observed many teachers lack. In the American Mind, John Peterson of Hillsdale College captured it well:

You can see it on the faces of the teachers, in the cowed words of the administrators. They’re scared of their students. I don’t mean that they think their students will hurt them physically. Rather, they are afraid to assert any real authority, to stand in the places of adults and representatives of a good and lasting order and pass any serious judgment on the habits and choices of their students.

Just as I keep my children from playing in the street for their own safety—I can say so with authority because I do, in fact, know better—we can demand that our students study, listen, learn, write, and read. It’s a fact of life that adults usually do know better. To emphasize Peterson’s words, parents and teachers alike are “representatives of a good and lasting order.” We stand with the authority of the Western tradition, empowering us to bring the next generation into it.

And here we start to break from Hobbes. His first principles led him to argue for an absolute authoritarian. The cover Leviathan depicts a giant king himself made up of hundreds of individuals, representing submission to total power. As such, he saw the role of schools and universities as forming children towards this state, the beliefs as prescribed by the sovereign and a natural stance of submission.

We’re instead commissioned to create students fit for a modern, liberal, pluralistic society—that is students who are free-thinking yet virtuous.It is liberal arts education that achieves these ends. Through an education in their Western inheritance, the students learn much factual knowledge, but they gain something more than a mere keen intellect. In the structure of well-ordered schools, they develop virtuous habits. They learn prudence through failure, wisdom through the counsel of great authors, patience through engaging with long works, and justice and self-control through discipline.

Teachers derive their authority from the knowledge that bringing children into this tradition is a good, worthwhile project. The foundation of teacher authority begins with mere safety and ends with virtuous citizens.

Teachers as Leviathans

Many schools spurn the inherent good of authority. Insofar as rules are enforced, policy targets discreet behaviors. For example, some states - such as California – and many schools prohibit the use of suspensions for “willful defiance.” Mainstream education publications bemoan school rules that target vague concepts such as “insubordination” instead of clear transgressions such as fighting or drugs. Submission to authority is not the expectation.

But these policies and opinions misunderstand the role of authority. In reality, the infractions that they argue deserve no punishment—defiance, insubordination, direct refusal to comply with the orders of an adult—are really the root of the issue. If students are not expected to comply with a teacher’s request, however small, then the entire edifice crumbles.

Hobbes writes that “The skill of making and maintaining common-wealths consisteth in certain rules as doth arithmetic and geometry.” Schools, too, require carefully crafted expectations, rules, goals, guidance, routines, schedules, space, and activities. Each should be carefully thought through with the purpose of directing students towards the higher things of an education, not just rules for submission but for training in liberality, as a musician may trudge through their scales today that they might play Beethoven tomorrow.

Quiet hallways allow students to focus. That students wait to speak allows others to formulate their own thoughts and facilitates the procedures of academic discussions. Even how students exit and enter the room can either promote efficiency and decorum or disorder and chaos.

When it comes to upholding these rules and routines, there’s either the expectation that students follow these rules or there isn’t. To pick and choose rules with which students must comply undercuts the very authority on which a system functions. Perhaps we can let it slide when one student whispers out of turn or refuses to sit somewhere other than their assigned seat. But what if they all did?

To maintain order, schools must fuss over even the smallest infractions. Establish a teacher’s authority over the small things—a request to pick up a piece of trash or slight uniform infractions—and there is less of a need to enforce the big rules. To quote another political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, “when justice is more certain and more mild, it is more efficacious.”

For example, I have observed many teachers who provide one, two, or three warnings—or they ignore misbehavior so long as it is small and unobtrusive—before they finally lashing out in anger and taking away a day’s worth of recess. What does this communicate to students? Not that they must listen or follow the rules, but they must only do so when their teacher is angry. The incentives encourage students to misbehave.

Conversely, if that same teacher were instead to correct behavior immediately, with a small, unobtrusive consequence—one minute from recess perhaps every time a student speaks out of turn—what does that communicate? A teacher’s authority must be respected as such. Meanwhile, the incentives discourage even the smallest transgressions; there’s a disincentive attached to every single one.

It’s essential to note that the above discussion in no way justifies a dictatorial, imperious teacher. Suggesting that teachers be authorities does not justify a Miss Trunchbull-like tyrant grabbing boys by the ears and tossing them across the room because they forget to mind their manners.

I’ve watched plenty of teachers abuse their authority: a teacher who leveraged his students’ insecurities to instill fear, a principal who ran a school based on her own cliques and preferences for the day instead of well-established policies, and teachers who punished entire classes in ineffective attempts to force one child to behave.

Quite the contrary, recognizing the authority entrusted in teachers necessitates an even higher calling towards virtue. Teachers are more than babysitters. They’re not automatons who run through a curriculum. They are leaders in their own classrooms. They must ever have in mind the good of their own students. They must consider deeply their instructional and curricular choices. They should strive to direct their students beyond mere safety and basic engagement and towards higher things—goodness, truth, and beauty.

Often times, from the best teachers, authority goes unnoticed. When a community of students respects their teacher for his or her mastery of content, instructional excellence, personal virtue, and educational passion, they comply from a natural place of respect.

The question I asked myself as a first-year teacher—why should students listen to me?—was never really about me. It was about what I represented: an adult entrusted with passing something valuable on to the next generation. Teachers are not in classrooms to be liked, or feared. They are there because children do not raise themselves, learning does not happen on its own, and because the alternative is chaos.

Authority isn’t a dirty word. It’s the precondition that makes everything else possible.

Daniel Buck is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), director of the Conservative Education Reform Network (CERN), and an affiliate of AEI’s James Q. Wilson Program in K–12 Education Studies, where his work focuses on K–12 education, charter schooling, curriculum reform, and school safety and discipline.

Before joining AEI, Mr. Buck was a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an assistant principal at Lake County Classical Academy, and a classroom teacher at Hope Christian Schools, Holy Spirit Middle School, and Green Bay Area Public Schools.

His work has appeared in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, National Affairs, and National Review. Mr. Buck is the author of What Is Wrong with Our Schools? (2022).

Mr. Buck has a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

I will argue in this essay that classical teachers and leaders need to play to our native strengths in connecting with young men and women. Instead of presupposing the oft-told narrative of teen alienation, we can relate to young men and women, not through pop cultural references they will mock us for attempting, but through friendship built around the most human of propositions that cut to the core of who they are becoming. Classical schools are especially built to meet the growing philosophical and existential impulse within the souls of our secondary scholars. When they ask the most natural of questions—“who am I?” “what is my purpose?” “What should I do?”—we answer with a great heroic tradition that will inspire them and is designed for them. We can respond to their journey and questions with the Great Conversation, in a way that is both objectively true and non-dogmatic. Above all, we can build real relevance and trust with our rising colleagues by deploying prudence and sound practices, five of which I will outline below. Of course we study the curriculum; but we must intently study the human beings in front of us—what motivates him? What makes her laugh? How does he react to pressure? How can I unlock her wonder? Relevance is found through connection between student and teacher around what is true, lasting, and a profound respect for one another and what is being studied that is greater than the self. This work is not visionary fluff, but eminently practical.

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We all know what the data says. Our young men and women are not thriving. While the digital culture has risen over the last 15 years, the anxiety of our colleagues has followed suit in direct proportion. Face-to-face friendship is becoming an after-thought. In 2010, right before the full invasion of the cell phone, “gen Z” spent an average of 130 minutes a day in face-to-face interactions with friends. Just over a decade later, the average stood at a depressing 40 minutes (see J. Haidt, The Anxious Generation). At the same time as authentic friendship has eroded, we see a corresponding decline for young men and women to see the future with optimism and to demonstrate the willingness to heroically risk, engage, and launch. In staggering percentages, risk-taking is down; perception about work as a central part of their future is down; the desire to have children is down; while at the same time, extreme cultural ideology has risen, and in the last decade, both clinical level anxiety and the percentage of 12^th graders who are not satisfied with themselves or the future has doubled (see J. Twenge, Generations.) Young men and women who enter our upper schools today are inheriting a five-alarm cultural dumpster fire, and so are we teachers who seek to serve them. We must meet the moment by reinvigorating their souls with authentic friendship and heroic hope.

Before I outline five practices of daily teacher prudence by which we can do right by our scholars, we must first consider the question of the heroic calling. Any classical school serving young men and women that is not based on an ontology of heroism is not classical, I would argue. It is a game-changer in our service to them when we see each of them as wrestling out a unique and providential calling. There are three aspects to this understanding.

First, we can rely on Aristotle’s definition of magnanimity when we frame up our engagement with young men and women. Aristotle’s megalpsychia or “greatness of soul” is helpful in fostering a proper and measured sense of self-worth. Aristotle describes the virtue of magnanimity as having a correct, high estimate of being worthy of great things, and acting accordingly, situated between the extremes of vanity (overestimating) and false humility (underestimating). The magnanimous person deserves honor and claims it appropriately, focusing on noble deeds and beautiful actions, bearing trouble calmly, and showing a lofty, generous spirit, but they are not arrogant, as they understand true worth comes from virtue, not just external praise. The Aristotelian “mean” of magnanimity is the target of teaching prudence. We give scholars proper and specific praise for measures of real excellence, avoid sugary flattery that turns our scholars into cynics, and cultivate a calm and quiet confidence in them especially amidst hard things. Quintilian says of the prudent teacher, “when praising the efforts of his students, he should be neither grudging nor effusive: the former generates distaste for labor, the latter leads to overconfidence.” Magnanimity is the opposite of the economy found on social media when external praise is sought regardless of noble actions and deeds.

Secondly, this quiet and grounded confidence comes from the capacity for young men and women to test and see how their unique gifts correspond to the world beyond themselves. Upper schools matter because young men and women will be tested and questioned, and at classical schools, tested and proven with the great examples, traditions, and disciplines of the millennia. The great heroes and heroines of the West—from Moses, to Aeneas, to Mary—all heard an inner calling that corresponded to an exterior reality, a heroism marked by sacrifice and obedience to the greatness that they were uniquely created to achieve. We can teach young men and women to listen for that inner voice, measure it to objective reality, and call on the best that has been thought, said, and done as a witness of calling and response.

Thirdly, listening for that inner voice and calling is supported by the rhetorical work of the teacher. As the scholars study the curriculum, so too the teacher studies the natural inclinations of each of his or her charges. As Quintilian writes, “Natural ability, on this view, becomes even stronger when supplemented with attention, conversely, the student who is directed away from his inclinations never achieves real competency, and even grows weaker in the areas of his inborn talent, due to neglect” (Oratorical Instruction). Or as Cicero states, “We are well aware that impressive students of very different types can and do emerge from the same classroom, as long as the teacher adjusts instruction to the natural inclinations of each” (On the Orator). In a very important sense, there is no such thing as a class. I do not teach a class of students. I uniquely encourage uniquely created and called individuals who are assembled in a conversation with me and one another. When the forest obscures the trees, we fail.

Given the framing above, I posit five relational keys to working with young men and women. All of them are grounded in teacher prudence and magnanimity.

1. Proper Praise. As mentioned above, the prudent teacher finds the magnanimous mean between flattery and excessive criticism. Praise of scholars should always be specific to what is observed in the student’s actions, speech, or work—not some watery mumbo jumbo about what might have been intended. Young teachers must be taught how to praise properly through coaching and role playing by veteran teachers. And when critical and specific feedback is offered, there is an art form in narrating the positive to young men and women by which they walk away wanting to try harder because they have hope.

2. Fostering Right Competition. In The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle says of the young that “they are eager for honor but especially eager for victory… They live for the most part in a state of hope… for they have not been beaten down by life or experienced need, and greatness of soul means considering oneself worthy of great things.” Young men and women seek to measure themselves against reality and prove their metal—to stand and deliver. Our teaching must respond accordingly. In Homo Ludens, Johann Huizinga observed that “the competitive ‘instinct’ is not in the first place a desire for power or a will to dominate. The primary thing is the desire to excel others, to be the first and to be honored for that.” So, we classical teachers need to allow students to excel so others can respond and excel in turn. Teacher prudence allows moments for students to stand-out while giving hope to others to emulate, stretch, and achieve. As Matthew Crawford has noted, “the difference between wanting to excel others and wanting to dominate others gets elided in egalitarian culture” (“The Origins of Social Order”). When classrooms and conversations are set up the right way, the contest for honor gives rise to “deference and trust among players,” a standard of excellence beyond the self. Right competition generates a culture of respect, formation, and friendship.

3. Authenticity: Young men and women have a preternatural ability to sniff out a fake, especially among us in authority. To connect with them, we need to believe what we say and love what we study. Our words and actions must correspond to what we really think. “Authenticity is the display of emotions, reactions, thoughts, and ideas that are consistent with one’s internal experience” (B. Rathbone & J. Baron, 2015). When we honor a student, it needs to be true. When we teach Shakespeare, we really need to have read the text deeply and see the inquiry as important to who we are. We can only give real things that we really hold. And the great news is that belief is contagious. Authenticity drives up student commitment, rigor, and follow-through and when it leads to trust between a scholar and a teacher you can challenge him or her so much more and resolve disagreements that may arise so much faster.

4. Kindness: This most basic of dispositions is solid gold in our work. Kindness needs to be our athletic and ready stance—every day we are ready to do the good. And kindness is built on the little courtesies—smiling, being pleasant, opening doors for students, and making sure everyone has a chair. (The old adage that a teacher shouldn’t smile until Christmas is foolish.) Furthermore, the teacher builds trust and credibility when he or she apologizes when he or she misses the mark in a response or did not prepare well enough for a class. We admit when we don’t know but commit to finding out and following up. Above all, kindness speaks to what is noble not what is easy or merely pleasant. The most important act of kindness is the tone of the teacher’s voice—constant and hopeful, expecting the best of everyone. And kindness radiates out. Research on empathy points to two contributing phenomena: mimicry and emotional contagion (Singer & Lamm, 2009). Lastly, a joyful aspect of that hope is having a good laugh whenever possible, when the whole class laughs, not at any person’s expense, but because life is joyful, worth living, and all the twists and turns of what we study and how we live together bring moments of surprise and mirth.

5. Predictability: This may not be the most exciting of prudential practices, but it really matters. Routines, clear expectations, and consistent application of accountability are the fixed rails of trust. Young men and women are going through major emotional and physical transitions and a learning environment that is well ordered with clear delineations of how you show-up and interact with others allows them to relax and be more themselves. Predictability is different than rigidity. Predictability fosters risk-taking: “Predictability, as a foundation for the development of trust, allows people to take the risk that are necessary for important discoveries.” (Kouzes & Posner, 2002). So, classroom management practices are just as important for the teacher of seniors as they are for the teacher of first graders, albeit these practices will look quite different in terms of mature and Socratic methodology for the former.

We are so rewarded in working with young men and women. Our relentless goodwill towards them pays dividends that we begin to see and which give us so much hope that they will redeem our culture. As they leave our upper schools at graduation we stand in awe of their heroic nature and how much more ready they are to meet their calling than we were at their age.

Dr. Daniel Scoggin is the co-founder of Great Hearts Academies. Over twenty-five years ago, he started as the headmaster of a classical, liberal arts academy in Tempe, AZ. In 2004, Dan authored the original Great Hearts business plan. As the founding CEO, he secured the initial strategic funding partnerships with local and national philanthropy to launch the Arizona network of academies. From 2004 to 2015, he directed the network’s growth and academic model, including Great Hearts’ expansion into Texas. Great Hearts now serves 30,000 students at 52 schools in Phoenix, San Antonio, North Texas, and Baton Rouge, with immediate plans to expand into Utah. Great Hearts also serves students with online classical academies, and Dan recently led the founding of a growing network of Christian classical academies in Phoenix, serving a diverse group of families via ESA funding opportunities. In addition to serving on the Great Hearts America, Arizona, and Foundation boards, Dan is the organization’s Advancement Officer. Dr. Scoggin holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the Claremont Graduate University, a B.A. from Santa Clara University, attended the Stanford University Executive Education program, was a Piper Fellow, Pahara-Aspen Fellow, and recently completed an M.A. in character education from the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham (U.K.). He is the father of four daughters (two Great Hearts graduates and two current Christian academy scholars) and lives with his wife Tiffany in Mesa, AZ.

A recent re-read of St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine seemed to have permeated my unconscious thoughts. Augustine declares that the fulfillment and end of scripture is to love God and neighbor. He says that the sum of our lives “…is the love of an object which is to be enjoyed, and the love of an object which can enjoy that other in fellowship with ourselves.”² Everything we do, and all the objects which fulfill what we do, can be a means to know and love God and that we would not “love and delight as if it were a good to rest in, but with a transient feeling rather, such as we have towards the road, or carriages, or other things that are merely means (emphasis mine).”³ In essence, all that is good in this world, every beautiful word and thing, are a means to love something greater. I had learned that our whole purpose on this earth is not to do for the sake of doing, or know for the sake of knowing, but to love for the sake of loving the Good. To achieve this love, I needed to seek the much not many.

The cloudy and drizzly fall weather of the British Isle refreshed me and reignited my senses. At every turn, the passing countryside from Scotland to Cumbria snapped my devotion upwards. I was instantly grateful. I slowed down and attended to the landscape of experiences before me, setting aside the distractions at home. While in Ambleside, I was able to pick up an original grammar lesson plan journal written by revolutionary educator, Charlotte Mason, that explained the power of words to young students. These simple handwritten grammar lessons that center on only one part of speech at a time, express how focused attention can reveal “much.” Mason, a master of English grammar, deliberately unveils how words form a language which unlock even greater ideas when united together. These rich “muchly” lessons, uncomplicated yet deep, helped me understand that less is more in curriculum and life.

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This past fall, I have had the opportunity to consult with schools who have “many” beautiful and good things in their curriculum, but the “many” is now burdensome. Students are distracted, teachers are tired, therefore, both students and teachers love less. Loving well first requires teachers to slow down and be intentional about what they teach for, Mason says, “The ordering of the will is not an affair of sudden resolve; it is the outcome of a slow and ordered education…”⁴ This posture allows the teacher the freedom to prune even good things and curate what matters most so students can attend to much rather than many. Lessons should imitate those first grammar lessons by Charlotte Mason: clear, intentional, singular. As classical education leaders, our job is to help students live “muchly”—to lead them to the “much” in a world full of “many,” i.e., multum non multa. Students look to teachers to know what is good, so we have to know it ourselves. In addition, we need the skills as well as freedom to know what is worthy of attention at every moment.

In the CiRCE Master Teacher Apprenticeship, drawing student attention to the aim of a lesson is called “teaching to the logos”—the “one word.”⁵ Through the practice of mimetic teaching, teachers become free to love and teach one thing at a time. They develop laser-focused discernment for the priority of a lesson even when they have curriculum that insists on teaching many things at once. As 17^th century Czech educator, Jan Amos Comenius, says “Nature does not overburden herself, but is content with a little.”⁶ He knew that students apprehend more when they perceive one thing at time. This is a reminder for all educators.

While in Windemere (home of Beatrix Potter), I observed this knowing of “much” as I spied border collies excitedly jump onto their farmer’s four-wheeler, anticipating the herding work before them. Their wagging tails and smiling faces expressed overwhelming joy knowing that they would soon be doing the one job they were meant to do. Trained to concentrate all devotion on herding sheep, their precise and sharp movements are impressive to behold. Creatures who know “much not many” work in their purpose and love what they do. Therefore, when planning and teaching lessons, classical teachers must first know the teaching material well yet also be willing to edit any distractions from the logos (one purpose) of the lesson so students can hone skills and realize their full potential. This is what it takes to teach others to love well. While “doing everything” is tempting in a classical education (so many books, so little time!), it only leads to anxiety and “loving nothing.” Students become like their teachers, so I will seek to smile and wag like those border collies as I prune and pursue my own purpose. I will do less to love more.

Works Cited

Augustine, and J. J. Shaw. On Christian teaching (on Christian doctrine). New York: Digireads.Com, 2021. 

Comenius, Johann Amos, and M. W. Keatinge. The Great Didactic: Of John Amos Comenius. London: A. and C. Black, 1910. 

Comenius, Johann Amos, and M. W. Keatinge. The Great Didactic: Of John Amos Comenius. London: A. and C. Black, 1910. 

For over twenty-five years, Carrie Eben has championed classical education in both the private school classroom and homeschool arenas. She currently serves as founding board member at Sager Classical Academy in Siloam Springs, AR and is a Head Mentor for the CiRCE Institute Master Teacher Apprenticeship for the Ozark Mountain region. As a consultant, she develops and delivers customized workshops and mentorship for administrators, teachers, and parents in both classical school and homeschool settings (www.classicaleben.com). Carrie holds a BSE in Intermediate Education, a MSEd in Curriculum and Instruction from Oklahoma State University and is currently a PhD (abd) candidate in the Great Books Humanities program at Faulkner University. She is co-author of The Good Teacher: Ten Pedagogical Principles That Will Transform Your Teaching with Dr. Christopher Perrin. She loves to sing, read, ride, and provide a hospitable place for transformative conversations in her home.

Let us begin with the five objectives of seminars. They should train students to: read well with independence and sensitivity to the specific genre; speak precisely in a spirited, adult conversation, free of pop-culture references; defend their positions from the text while exercising intellectual honesty; think through a problem with clarity; and think about the world more generally. Reading. Speaking. Defending. Thinking. I can imagine no greater need for our students than the ability to address thorny issues in reasoned but spirited discussion, based on evidence and the confidence that they can get to the truth of the matter.

Contrary to other methods where the teacher plays little to no role at all other than as a kind of traffic cop, Humane Letters seminars must be led, and the seminar leader must prepare and lead with purpose. First, and perhaps most importantly, the leader must read and study the text carefully. While secondary sources are helpful, teachers still must argue their positions from the text.

When leading a seminar on expository literature, the first objective is to get the argument; the second objective is to respectfully evaluate that argument. In preparation, leaders should write their questions down and organize them, putting questions of content first and evaluative ones last.

Preparation for a seminar on imaginative literature involves an imaginative recreation of the story, noting important drivers of the action and key imagery and symbolism employed in the text. Leaders should write questions that direct the students to puzzle over the characters’ actions and motivations. Unlike expository literature, the students should not be led to evaluate imaginative literature, so any discussion questions the leader proposes should avoid that workshop approach.

Secondly, seminar leaders need to train their students to mark their texts. When students do not annotate their texts, they cannot remember the argument or the pivotal moments which best capture a storyline. Thus, they cannot participate in the seminar. When reading expository literature, the students should be trained to write down the thesis of the reading assignment, the page numbers that demonstrate that thesis, and, finally, what questions the material raises in their thinking.

This method is not the proper instruction for marking imaginative literature because there is no thesis or argument in imaginative literature. Imaginative literature is experiential. Still, the students will need to mark their texts for repeated uses of words, sentence structures, phrases, and symbols. They will note moments of action that perplex them. For instance: Why does Ivan Karamazov become so enraged when he sees Smerdyakov wearing eyeglasses?

Third, the best seminars begin in wonder and the desire to know. Seminar leaders model wonder for their students by asking good questions throughout the seminar, and those questions should begin inside the text: for instance, Why does Hamlet delay so long in killing Claudius? If the students can answer that question, they have an essential hold on Hamlet’s character.

While a treatment of expository literature requires the students to unpack the argument first, the more valuable questions are those that go to the larger issues at stake and the merits of those arguments. The students need training in how to respectfully evaluate arguments and how to compare and contrast them with what they know to be true, especially historically. Hegel, for example, announces that all history is an uninterrupted progression toward human freedom. The students should ask themselves: Are there more or less slaves today than there were in 1831, the year Hegel died? When reading Thucydides, for another example, one might ask: Are the Athenians correct in arguing that power and self-interest should be the sole driving forces of international relations? Here is another: Is it true—as Plato has Socrates suggest—that we cannot be taught virtue? If so, what have parents and pastors been doing all these years? Notice that the questions are not directed at the students’ personal feelings. They are not, for instance, being asked how they feel about private property or theft or any of the other issues that arise internal to a discussion of political theory.

The more valuable questions regarding imaginative literature are those that tend to a character’s motivation and development. Regarding Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: Why is Clytemestra so insistent that Agamemnon step on that tapestry? Why is she making such a big deal out of this? Why does he hesitate and then allow himself to be bullied? He is a seasoned soldier, freshly returned from ten years of brutal combat; how does his wife persuade him to do something he knows he should not do? The chorus seems to not know what the reader knows. Why is that? How do they interpret the events preceding this story? Let’s gather their aphorisms and examine them. Do they hold up in the context of this story? Does the chorus’ position change? Why did Agamemnon kill his daughter, Iphigeneia? Did he do it willingly? Is there any reason to believe he could have resisted the sacrifice? Note that none of those questions are extra-textual; they all lead the students deeper into the text in search of interpretive treasure.

Sometimes students will ask what appear to be simple questions on the face of it. If leaders listen closely, however, they can turn what appears to be a simple question into something richer. For example, a student might inquire: How old is Hamlet? In my experience, the students will immediately speculate that he is their age: that is, eighteen. When I ask them why they think he is eighteen, they say, Because he acts just like I would if my mom married another man, especially my uncle, that fast! But that was not the question. The question was: How old is Hamlet? What textual evidence do you have to indicate his age? Eventually, some alert student will direct the class’ attention to the gravedigger’s remarks in Act 5, Scene 1, where the gravedigger calculates his arrival at King Hamlet’s court, which corresponds to the birth of the younger Hamlet. Thirty years, he concludes. He confirms this calculation when he exposes Yorick’s skull and declares, “Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’ th’ earth three-and-twenty years.” This figure comports with Hamlet’s sweet remembrance that Yorick bore him “on his back a thousand times.”

Establishing that Hamlet is thirty and situating that revelation in the context of the discovery of the body of a long deceased and much loved older friend is deeply unsettling to the students. After all, they had taken Hamlet for a much younger man. How does this fact inform or change our understanding of who he is and why he acts the way he does? A skillful seminar leader will catch at these opportunities and drive them toward matters of greater consequence.

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Fourth, note that all of these questions are harnessed to the text. In a Humane Letters seminar, wonder should be elicited by confronting the text and the knowledge and experience achieved by staying true to the text. Every contribution is susceptible to rebuke, verification, and modification by the text. The text, in other words, is the engine driving the seminar. In that light, not all readings of a text are defensible. It is a leader’s responsibility to make the boundaries clear and to teach the students to find those boundaries themselves. In company with the text, the teacher is the intellectual center of the classroom—intellectually alive, energetic, and opportunistic. In short, leaders have to be thinking on their feet about the material.

Finally, teachers must not outsource their responsibilities as seminar leaders by dividing their classes into mini-seminars, led by the students. Teachers are the singular leaders of the seminar and the only ones in the room who can lead the students to what they ought to know and experience. They create wonder by asking probing questions. They challenge the students to offer textual evidence and teach them what constitutes valid evidence and logical argument. They help their students identify their assumptions and their contradictions. They train them to treat symbols with dexterity, without becoming too brittle. Finally, they habitually model for their students how to disagree and not take offense and how to treat a text with respect and sensitivity to its imaginative world or its argument.

Notice all the active verbs in that list. That is the kind of active leadership that elicits wonder.