Chris Perrin, over at Inside Classical Ed, suggests that classical schools are offering too many classes. He champions the idea of multum non multa – much not many. Perrin writes, “To study and learn well, humans have learned that it is important to study a few things deeply, even to mastery, rather than to dabble and sample dozens of things.” Here we have a Pareto distribution, there are a few subjects that when learned maximize the entirety of a student’s learning. He points to C. S. Lewis, who as a student predominantly learned the classical authors through his study of Latin and Greek. This highly selective study generated a massive output of some of the best literature of the 20th century, along with a distinguished career as a literary critic, academic, and Christian apologist. Lewis did not take courses in film studies or home economics, let alone any AP classes.
Perrin’s point is that we diminish the joy students experience and the love of learning that can be derived from careful, close study of fewer subjects. He issues a compelling criticism:
Classical schools, like other modern schools, generally follow a curriculum that, according to Lewis, dabbles far too much. Our graduates really don’t “know” Latin; many of them don’t do math, or study literature, history, math, or science “incidentally.” There is usually no room for any of this incidental or accidental learning, because we fill students’ every hour with all matter of what becomes academic “stuff.” Sadly, loves are not cultivated by rapid sampling or “drive-through” courses of study—or by simply asking students to pile their plates high with great heaping helpings of the True, Good, and Beautiful. We have a phrase to the effect that one’s eyes can be too big for one’s stomach. In contemporary classical education, I fear that our eyes are too big for our students’ souls. We dish it up, eight periods a day, with eight different enthusiastic chefs serving large amounts of what we know our students will want and love. They, however, have had enough.
To gorge ourselves and our students on too much of even good, true and beautiful things can have the effect of sickening, when instead we would want them to savor such an educational meal.
Perrin’s thoughts are provocative and worthy of consideration. Thinking through what is essential for our students can be challenging, especially as the job market makes its demands on what students ought to learn before entering the workforce. But education serves an even higher value in the formation of whole persons who enjoy lives with meaning and purpose. At the heart of Perrin’s concern is that students dabble in classes superficially without cultivating a love for knowledge. It could be, though, that the issue lies not in the proliferation of subjects, but in the methodological malaise inherent in modern education. Jason and I have actually found that students respond well to a wide and varied curriculum. Charlotte Mason writes that it is “not the number of subjects but the hours of work [that] bring fatigue to the scholar” (Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 82). The mind is nourished by many and different ideas. So how do we enable our students to grow in their relationships with all the ideas out there without squelching their spirit? On the role of ideas in education, see Jason’s previous post. We’ll come back this topic to in future posts, but for now we’d love to get your thoughts.