Classical learning assumes that children are curious and will learn best when they are interested in the subject. But it also assumes that children’s interest may need awakening, through gentle exposure to unfamiliar subjects.

I don't know that that's true of "classical learning" in its classical sense, but the sentiment is, I think, true and part of a very short essay I enjoyed today.

ADDED:

A classical teacher knows that writing and mathematics are skills which must be mastered before they can be thoroughly enjoyed. Most of us remember the frustrating early days of learning a new skill — sewing, for example, or woodwork, or knitting, or learning a new musical instrument. Exercising a new skill can yield more frustration than delight — until practice has made the skill second nature. Once you have learned the basic skills of sewing or woodwork, your focus is able to shift away from the mechanics of the skill itself (sewing a straight seam, creating a perfect joint) and towards the production of a beautiful object (a dress or bookshelf).

In Defense of Valentine's Day

During an email discussion of Valentine's Day today, someone quipped that those who celebrate Valentine's Day are "slaves to the Hallmark holiday." David Hunt had an enjoyable response to that, and I got his permission to share it here:

A few years ago [my wife] and I watched "The Karate Kid Part II", a film I haven't seen since childhood. Though a pale shadow of the original, it's still a decent film; certainly not the fairly dismal flick that was number 3, nor the abomination that was number 4. One wouldn't think a middling eighties film sequel would be the source for an important social insight, but it was through watching this movie that I first really began to understand the importance of ritual.

Beforehand, I had been more of your mind. I looked on the ritualistic, from weddings to certain holidays, with a kind of "why bother?" disdain, feeling myself above the grooved-in modes of culture that others seemed to trek through, unthinkingly, as if on some kind of auto-pilot. They were just going along as they were directed, but I was standing on the higher plane above, surveyor of the meaningless random slash marks in our cultural landscape that these poor lemmings were trodding through without a thought. What did they gain from acquiescing to these routines? Nothing? I would skip over them happily. That I felt superior for doing so was only a dimly acknowledged side benefit of my ruggedly individual choice.

But I was wrong. The lemmings were right.

During Karate Kid II, there is a scene where Daniel is undergoing some kind of courtship ritual with his new Japanese girlfriend. I have no idea whether this scene is founded on true Okinawan culture or merely some fertile screenwriter's mind, but that's irrelevant. She is treating the ritual very solemnly, carefully undergoing each step, when all of a sudden Daniel makes light of a certain bit, trying to generate a laugh. But he doesn't get the connection he was looking for. Instead of chuckling along with him, she gives him a look of stern rebuke, chastening him back into the solemnity of the ritual's steps and processes.

For some reason, this little bit, a quite honest moment with the self-aware American trying to make light of an old-world tradition and coming out on the wrong end of the transaction, opened my eyes to what ritual really is. Ritual is a sign of respect, a communication that one is removing oneself from his normal life for a bit in order to demonstrate his seriousness and commitment to something he finds special. The arbitrariness of ritual is its point. In doing a series of steps that are patently unnecessary, and something out of orbit from how one would normally behave, one is putting a stake in the ground, saying "I do this as a symbol of respect, in order to show that this other thing matters deeply to me."

It sounds simple, but I'd never quite seen it that way before. Now, thanks to Karate Kid II, I do.

And so, I will celebrate Valentine's Day tomorrow with my wife. I'll skate the cultural groove along with everybody else, and do so happily. Even though I am aware of the holiday's origins, origins don't always inform meaning, and to our culture, Valentine's Day has become a ritualized day to show the one you love that they are special enough to you that you'll engage in the same societal ritual that the rest of our culture is engaging in on that day; that you'll put aside your own things in order to honor the other on that day. I may be a greeting card slave, but I'm a happy slave, and I'm looking forward to the ritual.

Happy Valentine's Day.