Norms and Nobility: A Review

Norms and Nobility is a book I read during my time as a teacher’s assistant. It was a difficult book for me to begin, honestly. The cover was a simple maroon that didn’t entice me much, and then when I began the language was just antiquated enough that I didn’t want to have to discipline my mind enough to put in the extra effort to understand it. But, finally, I was on the train back from Michigan and the two and a half day journey with nothing to do but read gave me the environment i needed to go ahead and read it. And once I did, I loved it! Here are some comments on it.

In this book, Hicks argues for the implementation of classical education because of its effectiveness in making the lives of students meaningful in a world inundated with meaninglessness, a world that Solomon might have described as “vaporous.” In the prologue, Hicks explains that classical education’s chief aim is to educate the young to 1) Know what is good, 2) Serve it above self, and 3) Reproduce it.

Drawing from the musings of Aristotle, he claims that while Aristotle’s theories of democracy made “the good life” possible for every one, classical education puts that theory into practice by teaching man that ultimately “the good life” is a life of virtue, or a life of serving a “self-transcending ideal.” Classical education will also secondarily benefit the state by giving individuals the role to “preserve and develop culture [paideia],” articulating society’s purposes and values.

Although teaching virtue in the classroom has become unnecessary to modern educators who are simply concerned with teaching in a utilitarian manner that is only concerned with teaching the student how to live, teaching a life of virtue makes that existence worthwhile by asking the question “how.” This is done by teaching the student to question not just whether something can be done, but if something ought to be done.

At the center of Classical Education is “the word,” which Hicks describes as a crossroads between the mythos (man’s imaginative and spiritual effort to make the world intelligible) and the logos (man’s rational attempt to make the world intelligible). Implemented in the classroom, the beauty of the mythos is experienced through studying literature and history, “eventually fill[ing] the young person’s head with the sound of voices: the impassioned debate of the many great figures of myth and history concerning what is good, beautiful and excellent in man.” The logos is served through ushering students into a dialectic maturity, wrestling with what Hicks refers to as “dogma.” It is the teacher’s role to embody “dogma” and allow students to wrestle with the embodied dogma, rejecting unimportant aspects and affirming what they ascribe to be true. The teacher is to “teach himself,” as opposed to the modern method of teaching objectively and analytically.

At its core, the classical education that Hicks describes is very truthful in light of the Christian story. In a world that is hauntingly “not right,” Christians can courageously have faith because of the story that teaches us to hope in redemption. Part of living that redemption is to live a meaningful existence. Classical education teaches students to lead a meaningful existence by asking, “What is the good life?” and perhaps in fact proving that part of “the good life” is asking that very question.