“History is philosophy teaching by example.” – Thucydides

Western Culture in One Lesson, Part I 

Today, let’s talk about this idea of Western Civilization. The idea that America and Western Europe share a common culture that dates back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. And that this culture is the bedrock that has supported the accomplishments of the West for the last 2600 years.

When I was a kid, it was an accepted fact.

Now, it’s debatable. The ties that bound us together have unwound. Our core values are being called into question. We no longer see ourselves as Westerners in the European tradition. Instead, we are members of political or identity groups – each with its own views – that are fighting with one another like warring tribes.

This is destructive. It’s also not true. Even a cursory review of the institutions and conventions we take for granted – government, democracy, liberty, privacy, the sovereign individual, and economics, among other things – would make it clear that we share much more with the rest of the Western world than we don’t. And that more than 90% of what we value can be traced back to a common source: the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome.

All of the following fields of human knowledge are rooted in Greek and Roman thinking.

* Logic and Reason: first, the Milesian School (circa 600 BC), which gave rise to the scientific method; then, and most influentially, Aristotle (384 BC to 322 BC)

* Mathematics: Pythagoras (582 BC to 507 BC) and Euclid (325 BC to 265 BC)

* Physics: Empedocles (495 BC to 435 BC) and Democritus (460 BC to 370 BC); then Aristotle.

* Ethics: Aristotle and Plato (469 BC to 399 BC)

* Individuality and Idealism: Plato

* Astronomy: Aristarchus (325 BC to 250 BC)

* Geography and Paleontology: Xenophanes (570 BC to 475 BC)

* Stoicism: Zeno (340 BC to 226 BC), Epictetus (50 AD to 138 AD), and Marcus Aurelius (121 AD to 180 AD)

* Medicine: Hippocrates (460 BC to 370 BC)

* Skepticism and Relativism: Protagoras (490 BC to 421 BC), the Sophists (5th and 4th centuries BC), and Pyrrho of Elis (365 BC to 275 BC)

* Politics: Aristotle and Plato

There is a good explanation for this. Before Greece and Rome, primitive religions determined the answers to life’s most important questions – everything from how the world works to how one should conduct oneself.

But ancient Greece didn’t have a state religion. It wasn’t even a sovereign nation. It was a collection of city states, each with its own ideas about ethics, politics, and so on. And when Rome conquered Greece, as Herodotus tells us in TheHistories (430 BC), it adopted Greek culture.

As a result, instead of looking to religion for answers to their questions, the citizens of Greece and Rome began to discuss these issues amongst themselves. And by doing so, they developed what could be called the core curriculum of Western Civilization.

By the way, this curriculum includes much more than the scientific and philosophical categories listed above. The ancient Greeks and Romans also initiated and incorporated into their cultures such big ideas as free trade, currency, democracy, anti-tyranny (Cato 95 BC to 46 BC), duty to country, family values, law (“innocent until proven guilty”), and public service, to name a few.

So don’t tell me there is no such thing as Western Civilization or that Americans and Europeans are not connected to one another by a common intellectual history.

There have been significant contributions to philosophy, politics, and science that came from outside the Western cannon. But not many. It seems to me, from the reading I’ve done (see “Worth Reading,” below), that 90% of the best and most useful ideas were figured out at least two thousand years ago.

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“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations… can never effect a reform.” – Susan B. Anthony

What I Will Do as Dictator Pro Tem

Part I: My Educational Reforms

I don’t want to be president. I should be. But I’m not going to throw my hat in the ring. It’s a miserable, thankless job. But I would accept a six-month gig as Dictator Pro Tem. Get in. Get out. Make America great like it’s never been before.

(Yes, I know. You, too, should be put in charge. And I’m sure you’d do a fine job. But this is my essay. So we’ll focus on what I would do.)

I was hoping to lay out all of my reforms in a single essay. But I’ve got too many of them. So today, I’m just going to lay out my ideas for education. These, of course, will be more than ideas. They will be mandates.

The Overall Problem 

Education is, in theory, a great thing. Everyone should want to be educated. The more educated you are, the more access you have to everything our country has to offer.

The problem is, our educational system is based on a falsehood: that people can be coddled and coerced into learning. The fact is, teaching doesn’t work. Only learning does.

To quote Zig Ziglar: “If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.

My Solution 

1. Abolish public schooling. 

Tens of thousands – probably hundreds of thousands – of children are moving from grade school into high school without basic reading, math, and language skills. This pretty much determines that they will suffer through high school, bored and hyper-aware of their lack of learning.

This is especially true in our largest cities. And although everybody knows that this is so, we don’t talk about it. We tell ourselves stories about the rare exceptions, the one in ten that manages to succeed, ignoring the nine that don’t.

Public schooling is just too big and too bureaucratic. But the worst thing about it is that it treats all students equally. This is a great disservice to the kids that are financially and culturally disadvantaged.

2. Break the public schools up into small learning academies and institute a simplified core curriculum. 

Each elementary school will be broken into learning academies, each one taught by a single teacher. Class sizes will range from 12 to 16, depending on circumstances. The teachers will follow a very basic curriculum: reading, writing, and arithmetic, and – in seventh and eighth grades – history and science.

The teachers will be compensated on the basis of how many students enroll in their classes, with a bonus of up to 10% of their compensation depending on how well those students perform on a standardized test each year.

Apart from the curriculum and some basic health and safety requirements, the teachers will make all of the decisions about how they run their classes. They will, for example, determine their teaching methods, including their policies regarding assignments, homework, testing, and truancy.

They will be under no pressure to move kids along with their coevals. Entrance into high school will be earned by passing a standardized test on the fundamentals: reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and science.

High schools will operate in a similar way, with teachers compensated similarly. But they will generally teach only the subjects they are specifically qualified to teach. As with elementary school, graduation will be determined by passing a standardized test.

Parents will be free to enroll their children in any school with available space.

3. Institute a universal, progressive voucher system. 

It costs local, state, and federal governments anywhere from $7,000 to $22,000 a year, depending on the school district, to provide a child with a public school education. The average is $10,000 to $12,000, depending on how you calculate the averages.

Under my plan, tax revenues will provide the funding for education at $12,000 per enrolled child.

A fixed amount of that total budget (about $2,000) will go towards paying for the schools themselves, which will be run like for-profit businesses, and also for standardized testing, which will be done at the end of every year.

What remains will be used to issue vouchers.

The vouchers will not be equally distributed. They will be progressive, like income tax, based on the relative income or wealth of the parents.

Thus, wealthy parents might have to kick in additional funds to cover their children’s tuition, while low-income parents will get vouchers sufficient to cover classes, after-school programs, and such amenities as in-school meals and personal computers. (See #5, below.)

4. Authorize shorter school days and higher teacher pay. 

 Children cannot sit still for six hours, and they should not be asked to. A child can learn all he needs to learn in three or four hours a day.

Elementary school classes will be limited to three hours a day – an hour for each of the basic areas of study: reading, writing, and math. In seventh and eighth grades, an additional hour will be devoted to science and history.

There will be two sessions: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. (Generally, from 9:00 to noon and then from 1:00 to 4:00 through sixth grade. And from 8:00 to noon and from 1:00 to 5:00 for grades seven and eight.)

This will allow willing elementary school teachers to effectively double their salaries.

High school classes will be limited to five one-hour sessions – an hour for each area of study: reading, writing, math, history, and economics. High school teachers will earn proportionally more than elementary school teachers, to make up for the impossibility of doing two sessions a day.

5. Install before- and after-school programs. 

 Sports, drama, debate, and other “enrichment” programs will be available to interested students on a voluntary basis. They will be designed and run by specialists in each area.

Low-income and working-class parents will be able to use the extra money they receive on their vouchers to pay for such programs. Affluent parents will pay out of pocket.

There will also be programs for special needs children and programs that teach trades. Again, they will be designed and run by specialists.

None of these programs will be graded. A certificate of completion will be given if/when the student satisfies the program director’s requirements.

Since attendance at these after-school programs will be voluntary,  the compensation of those running them will be determined on a market basis. Program directors that develop the most successful programs will attract the most students and earn the most revenue.

6. End the idea that education is an entitlement. 

You don’t have to be a sociologist to understand that our nature as Homo sapiens is to value what we work for and devalue what we don’t. (Consider oxygen, for example.)

Paying for something – whether with dollars, time, or public commitment – creates confirmation bias. Confirmation bias stimulates perceived value. And that encourages work.

Vouchers provided by the government can be said to be “free” money. But to prevent entitlement mentality, parents will be required to pay an additional fee for their children’s education, ranging from as little as ten dollars a month to several hundred. This fee will be symbolic. There will be no penalty for parents who, for whatever reason, cannot afford it.

7. Demand transparency in educational results. 

 Testing will be mandatory, and all test results will be publicly available. Thus, parents “shopping” for a school for their children will be able to rate the individual academies and teachers based on the past success of their students.

8. Give parents access to all the information they need to make an informed decision. 

In addition to having access to the above (and below) test results, parents will have the opportunity to tour the various facilities and ask questions during interviews with the teachers and program directors.

9. Eliminate educational requirements for teachers and program directors. 

 The only requirement to become a teacher or program director will be to pass a test to demonstrate competency. The results, like all of the tests I am decreeing, will be public.

You Love It. Admit It. 

I’m sure you are 100% agreed that putting my reforms into practice will have an immediate and immensely positive impact on the quality of education in the US.

Students will learn better and quicker and in fewer hours. Literacy and numeracy will skyrocket.

Plus…

Parents will be happier because they will have the ability to judge the success of the teachers and program directors they are paying for with their vouchers. They will also be able to decide what extra-curricular activities their children will take.

Teachers will be happier because they will be given more independence in terms of how they teach, greater responsibility for the success of their students… and many of them will have the opportunity to earn more money.

So that’s my plan.