A timely message from a past visionary who understood the value of choice and freedom in education.
Education and Tradition
Two weeks ago we had some of our grandchildren with us. One of them loves acting and musicals. She wanted to know what musical production she could watch. We had fun going through the list from The Sound of Music to Les Misérables. We settled on Fiddler on the Roof. I was interested to see if the classic adaptation would capture the attention of all three of the children, ages 8 to 13. I was not disappointed. They all loved the movie!
Tradition!
Our guide and the hero of the play is Tevye, a hard-working milkman and father of three lovely girls in the little town of Anatevka, a Ukrainian Village. In the course of the play, Tevye and his wife struggle with questions of the soul —questions around such things as tradition and which traditions are worth keeping and which ones are ok to let go. Throughout the story a fiddler plays tunes on a roof in the village, a poignant metaphor for the beauty found in a simple, pleasant life in a traditional town with an orthodox Jewish population based on what else? Tradition!
Tradition Rooted in Faith
The traditions held precious by Tevye and his community are found in the first five books of the Old Testament called the Torah. A mezuzah is a piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew verses from the Torah. These verses consist of the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael, beginning with the phrase: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” It is a reminder that God comes first. Other traditions include obedience to the law, the ten commandments, sabbath day observance from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, prayers, tefillin, feasts, foods, clothing, and marriage. Arguably “traditions” are what has maintained the Jewish faith now for over 3000 years!
Tevye appropriately opens the play singing the song entitled “Tradition.” He sings with his whole voice and body bringing the audience into his passion. It is exhilarating and joyful to watch. He tells us why tradition is so important to the family, town, and culture by saying, “Everyone in Anatevka knows who they are and what God expects them to do.” How simple and profound. Once we discover who we may be, then we can execute our future with Providential blessing.
Order of Importance and The Lines We Contend With
Some of these traditions surround the roles of marriage, faith, employment, love, and education. This type of film/play has become a classic because it speaks to these universal problems of values, priorities and what matters most. These are issues that we all deal with in our lives. The struggles for these answers are wonderfully taught by Tevye who, in the beautiful Jewish tradition, is constantly speaking out loud to God about his dilemmas and the impact on his family. In the play, Tevye’s daughters are all approaching the age of making independent choices in their individual lives.
One day, the local matchmaker arrives to speak with Tevye’s wife with the somewhat alarming news that the lonely local butcher Lazar Wolfe, who is at least 60 years of age, would like to marry their oldest daughter Tzeitel. Economically and religiously, this is a good match. But Tzeitel loves her childhood sweetheart, a young man who wants to become the village clothier and tailor. He is poor but has great ambition and dreams to one day own his own sewing machine. The dilemma is whether or not to let their daughter marry a poor man. Tevye decides he is a poor man (as an aside, he mentions this to God and asks if it would really upset the Providence to have let him be a rich man?) and he concludes that love may be a higher value to him and his daughter than money.
About that same time, Perchik, a radical Marxist student from Kiev, also arrives and falls in love with Tevye’s middle daughter Hodel. Perchik is a radical thinker and his viewpoints are dramatically different from the community’s. Perchik is eventually exiled to Siberia for his political views but Hodel’s love for him is great and she tells her father she is leaving. Tevye bristles at not being asked for permission to do so. The tradition of deferring to or asking permission from the “papa” was waning. Hodel promises to be married in Jewish tradition. But once again love overrules a less consequential tradition.
Finally, Tevye’s third daughter Chava falls in love with a young man who is Christian Russian Orthodox and the two are married in that faith. This was too much for Tevye to take and Chava and her husband become dead to him.
What We Leave, What We Take
As the story is winding down the Jews of Anatevka are notified that they have three days to leave the village or be forced out by the government. Tevye, his family and friends pack up to leave their homes and the simple life of traditions they had built. What did they leave behind? What did they take?
What traditions are you building that will last the test of time and endure the generations? Faith, family, celebrations, rituals, rites, customs — Which ones are higher in order or sequence? Education is how we discover who we are and how we establish and internalize our values. Remember that those values govern our behavior, but principles are unchanging laws of nature that are external to us and operate regardless of our awareness of them, our liking them, our belief in them or our obedience to them. Principles govern value-based choices. When we are faced with the questions around what to leave and what to take, it is wisdom to base our value system of traditions and choices on principles that are unchanging and enduring.
Image attribution: Mileta Leskovac, scenographer, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Truth and the Unexamined Life
Have you set out on your educational odyssey yet?
If you haven’t, you may be asking yourself some questions. Why should I seek additional education? Is it worth the time and effort? What do I hope to gain or change?
The Pursuit of Truth
Written on the front of each volume of The Harvard Classics is the word veritas, which means “truth.” A primary purpose for education and living is to find and employ truth for increased happiness.
But what is truth? It’s time to ask an expert.
Socrates in Pursuit of Truth
The Harvard Classics, Volume II introduces us to Socrates and some of his friends in their collective quest for truth, justice, and virtue in finding the meaning of life.
Socrates was the son of an Athenian sculptor born in 469 B.C. He gave up becoming a sculptor himself to devote his time to the search of truth and virtue. He was most influential in teaching the youth, and others, employing conversation infused with reflective thinking built on discovered truth and virtuous actions surrounding that truth. His teachings and mentoring efforts resulted in accusations of being a corrupting influence against the young in Athens. Socrates was ultimately put on trial and sentenced to death for his teachings.
In His Own Defense
So what does a great thinker like Socrates say at the end of his life? What would be his final lessons? Socrates’ defense takes up twenty short pages.
Volume II of The Harvard Classics deals with Socrates’ “apology” and defenses of his teachings. An apology in this case is not an admission of guilt but “an excuse; something said or written in defense or extenuation of what appears to others wrong, or unjustifiable…”
The jury at his trial was cautioned not to be swayed by Socrates’ eloquence. His response was simple “unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth: for I do indeed admit that I am eloquent.” (The Harvard Classics, V. II, The Apology of Socrates, p. 5.) He invited his listeners “to think only of the justice of my cause and give heed to that: let the judge decide justly and the speaker speak truly.” He then lays out his case by saying the real danger is those who teach and take possession of the minds of children with falsehoods — and those who “warned” others of Socrates, a wise man who speculated about the heaven above and searched into the earth beneath, and who made the worse appear to be the better cause.
What were the truths Socrates taught and defended?
Truth is “conformity to fact and reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be.” Socrates was accused of not worshiping the Gods of Athens and of promoting nonbelief, especially in the young. He defends against the accusation of atheism by asking, “Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?” He then asks those of Athens why they cared so much about “laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? For virtue he said was not given by money, but from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private.”
Virtue was known as moral excellence of character in the development of youth to become good citizens and great souls. “The greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living—that you are still less likely to believe.” There it stands, the famous exhortation! The unexamined life is not worth living. That is what reading great books invites us to do. Examine ourselves.
God Only Knows
Socrates goes on to say that, “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” This statement, in particular, seems to have echoes of our day. He laments that his accusers are keen and quick and have avoided the condemnation of truth by villainy and wrong. He reasons further by stating that “no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death…. because he and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance.”
He ends his apology with this. “When my sons are grown up, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.”
Open the Door
In a subsequent book written by Plato entitled Phaedo the famous student notes of Socrates, “There is a doctrine uttered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand.” (The Harvard Classics, V. II, Phaedo.)
Can we open the door of our prison? How? Perhaps we are the only ones that can! Reading reminds us that we are not alone and that others have previously faced similar challenges.
Another student, Crito, writes that Socrates was happy because he had prepared and spent his whole life searching for truth and wisdom in preparation for this moment of liberation provided by death and for his reunion with God.
A bold statement for an alleged atheist.
Image credit: Jacques-Louis David, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Get a Harvard Education Like John Adams!
Have you ever dug a ditch? John Adams did. This is how he described it when, at age 15, John told his father he was done with Latin and education in general.
John’s father, a farmer and outdoorsman, however, wanted his son to study Latin to prepare for Harvard College. When John protested, his father replied: “Well, John, if Latin-grammar does not suit you, you may try ditching, perhaps that will; my meadow yonder needs a ditch, and you may put by Latin and try that.”
Young John looked forward to the “delightful change,” only to discover after a day and a half of hard, backbreaking work that he preferred Latin to labor after all. But he felt too humiliated to admit this to his father.
Finally, at nightfall,“toil conquered pride, and I told my father, one of the severest trials of my life, that, if he chose, I would go back to Latin grammar. He was glad of it; and if I have since gained any distinction, it has been owing to the two days’ labor in that abominable ditch.” (Diggins, John Patrick. John Adams. Henry Holt & Company, 2003.)
Perhaps you are like me. I too learned early in life that my occupation would not be digging ditches, and likewise, my father used to warn me about neglecting an education. And as a young man, the days of higher education seemed too distant in the future to warrant much worry. Perhaps you are like me in that way too.
Or perhaps now you look at your current stage of life and feel that the time is past.
Too soon, too late. Are either of these two things actually true?
Never Too Soon, Never Too Late
Years ago I was lunching with two youthful scholars where we discussed all the educational opportunities and potential that lay before them. I enthusiastically explained, Why wait to go to Harvard? You can get that liberal arts education now! You can access the world of Harvard electronically!
What I was introducing them to, as I have done for you, is The Harvard Classics. These precious texts can be accessed by PDF or via audio. One could theoretically listen to them for as little as 15-minutes a day as a way to begin. An entire Harvard education can be had in bites.
The Harvard Classics Mapped Out Just For you
The creators at myharvardclassics.com knew that The Harvard Classics as compiled by Dr. Charles W. Eliot was a treasure to the world. But they also knew that the collection of writings could be daunting to approach for many people. Here is what they have to say:
The Harvard Classics are a collection of the most important books, scientific writings, philosophical arguments, poems, fiction, drama, political theory, pivotal speeches and sacred texts from the entire range of human intellectual activity. The Harvard Classics are the works of 302 of the greatest minds whose writings and discoveries are the foundation for all human knowledge today. You will be certain to cover most of the readings you were supposed to read in high school and college but did not get around to. Finally able to check those off your to do list. The Harvard Classics were designed to give all the elements of a general university or liberal education at home in one year with 15 minutes of diligent reading a day using an exclusive reading schedule. The mission of The Harvard Classics is to provide the means of obtaining such knowledge of ancient and modern literature as deemed essential to be a cultivated person.
Charles Eliot developed selections from the 50 volumes for reading 15 minutes a day individually or with your children ages 12 and older. Dr. Eliot chose many stories, poems, tales, plays arranged for maturing children and adults. These books were once the curriculum of a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts from Harvard! The education offered there today pales in comparison to the richness and beauty of this classical journey.
Take a look at some of these timeless treasures.
Volume 1 - Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, William Penn Volume 2 - Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius Volume 3 - Bacon, Milton's Prose, Thomas Browne Volume 4 - Milton, Complete Poems in English Volume 5 - Emerson, Essays and English Traits Volume 6 - Robert Burns, Poems and Songs Volume 7 - The Confessions of St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ Volume 8 - Nine Greek Dramas Volume 9 - Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny Volume 10 - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Volume 11 - Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species Volume 12 - Plutarch's Lives Volume 13 - Virgil, Aeneid Volume 14 - Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part I Volume 15 - Pilgrim's Progress, Donne and Herbert, Walton Volume 16 - The Thousand and One Nights Volume 17 - Folk-Lore and Fable: Aesop, Grimm, Andersen Volume 18 - Modern English Drama Volume 19 - Faust, Egmont, etc., Goethe, Doctor Faustus, Marlowe Volume 20 - Dante, The Divine Comedy Volume 21 - Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi Volume 22 - Homer, The Odyssey Volume 23 - Dana, Two Years Before the Mast Volume 24 - Burke, On the Sublime, French Revolution, etc. Volume 25 - J. S. Mill and Thomas Carlyle Volume 26 - Continental Drama Volume 27 - English Essays, Sidney to Macaulay Volume 28 - Essays, English and American Volume 29 - Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle Volume 30 - Scientific Papers: Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb, etc. Volume 31 - Cellini, Autobiography Volume 32 - Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Renan, etc. Volume 33 - Voyages and Travel Volume 34 - Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes Volume 35 - Froissart, Malory, Holinshed Volume 36 - Machiavelli, More, Luther Volume 37 - Locke,Berkeley,Hume Volume 38 - Scientific Papers: Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur Volume 39 - Famous Prefaces Volume 40 - English Poetry I Volume 41 - English Poetry II Volume 42 - English Poetry III Volume 43 - American Historical Documents Volume 44 - Sacred Writings I Volume 45 - Sacred Writings II Volume 46 - Elizabethan Drama I Volume 47 - Elizabethan Drama II Volume 48 - Blaise Pascal, Thoughts and Minor Works Volume 49 - Epic and Saga Volume 50 - Introduction, Reader's Guide, Indexes Volume 51 - Lectures
Use this Reading Guide 15 minutes a day and become a cultivated scholar with all the elements of a liberal education in one year!
You can begin here https://www.myharvardclassics.com/
An Opportunity to Learn
The education imparted by these books is one of the best liberal arts educations in the world. Can you spare 15-minutes per day while you drive, or in the evenings, over lunch, or a break time?
I am not affiliated with this organization, but I have used this as a convenient way to learn. The cost of $45 per year seems very modest for such a superior educational opportunity.
Enjoy!
Image attribution: The Lowell House at Harvard University, Carrie, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
At This Moment: Whose Education is This, Anyway?
Whose education is this anyway? Whose children are they?
In a Chicago Tribune commentary piece, my good friend Daniel Coupland shares why we need choices in education.
He states a glaring problem:
Most Americans know by now that K-12 teachers are underpaid, overworked and underappreciated, but few acknowledge the fact that they are also overregulated. Even now, teachers are hamstrung by rigid, top-down mandates from government administrators and policymakers far removed from local schools and communities.
Let’s legalize freedom with choice in education to liberate our country, state and schools from the grip of bureaucracy and mediocrity. “So what’s the solution?” my friend asks in the commentary. His solution is one word: “Freedom.”
I strongly recommend reading and sharing Daniel’s commentary found at this link.
Education—Where to Begin
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau
As you saw last week, my mother decided to pick up her college education where she left off 70 years ago. How about you? When will you begin?
Does it ever end?
EDUCA’TION, n. [L. educatio.] The bringing up, as of a child, instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties. (Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language 1828)
This is why we become educated. We seek it to acquire manners, discipline, understanding of arts and science, temperance, and even, perhaps especially, the indispensable religious education provided by parents.
Several years ago, I was reading the preface of The Great Conversation, the first book of Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World by Robert M. Hutchins. I was captivated by his invitation.
…Education in the West has been steadily deteriorating; the rising generation has been deprived of its birthright; the mess of pottage it has received in exchange [for the great books] has not been nutritious; adults have come to lead lives comparatively rich in material comforts and very poor in moral, intellectual, and spiritual tone.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins, Great Books of the Western World, Volume I, The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education
I realized that I was one of those richly educated by my mother in moral virtues, but greatly malnourished by modern education in the liberal arts. Hutchins was not being hubristic when he stated, with conviction, “We do not think these books will solve all our problems. We do not think they are the only books worth reading. We think that these books shed some light on all our basic problems, and that it is folly to do without any light we can get. We think that these books show the origins of many of our most serious difficulties. We think that the spirit they represent and the habit of mind they teach are more necessary today than ever before. We think that the reader who does his best to understand these books will find himself led to read and helped to understand other books. We think that reading and understanding great books will give him a standard by which to judge all other books.”
That is a bold statement. Is it true? There are two ways to know: observe it in the lives of others who are on the path, or take the invitation yourself.
The “Why”
Hutchins then goes on to the most profound of all reasons for embracing classical learning.
“We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy. A prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people cannot understand and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter; they cannot be educated, in the sense of developing their intellectual powers, but they can be bamboozled. The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so they can appraise the issues for themselves.”
Think of the power that an educated mind can gift to you! This reward liberates you and your posterity for life!
“Great books….can help us to that grasp of history, politics, morals, and economics and to that habit of mind which are needed to form a valid judgment on the issue. Great books may even help us to know what information to demand. If we knew what information to demand we might have a better chance of getting it…..the idea that liberal education is the education that everybody ought to have, and that the best way to a liberal education in the West is through the greatest works the West has produced, is still, in our view, the best educational idea there is.”
Here is a generational idea that will feed you and others for a lifetime and beyond. Start reading a book from Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World or take the “Harvard Challenge” and read from those books. You could begin with the first book in either series, but I invite you to pick one that interests you and build on your education from there.
An Educational Feast
There are a few questions I love to ask everyone I meet:
What is your passion? What are you reading? What are you learning? Who is your mentor?
Here is a second invitation from Dr. Charles W. Elliot who compiled The Harvard Classics also known as the Five-Foot Shelf of Books. “[These books] take you out of the rut of life in the town you live in and make you a citizen….. They offer you the companionship of the most interesting and influential men and women who have ever lived; they make it possible for you to travel without leaving home, and to have vacations without taking time from your work. They offer you-—if you will only accept their gifts—friends, travel the knowledge of life; they offer you education, the means of making your life what you want it to be.”
Thanks to Robert M. Hutchins and Charles W. Elliot for offering us a perpetual feast of a lifetime.
Come join in. The banquet is extraordinarily tasty, nutritious and delightful.
An Invitation to Build Heritage
Heritage is a gift or blessing we receive, build upon, and then pass down to others. What are you doing and learning that you can pass on to others? Where are you in the Patriotic Sequence as a pilgrim, pioneer, hero, or patriot? Repeating this sequence using great ideas you discover as you go is how you will create purpose, happiness, and ultimately heritage and legacy.
This last week we celebrated the life of my mother who is turning 90 years old. Her own mother was the first female in her family to gain a college degree in their county in 1918. So, inspired by that example, my mother decided to go back to school to finish the college degree that she set aside when she got married 70 years ago! She is pioneering a new future for herself at 90!
But why wait until you are 90? You can start now! Reading great books and discovering great ideas will bring you through the Patriotic Sequence continually over the course of a lifetime.
Education is Freedom
When you stop learning and creating new paths for your life you will atrophy and die! I hope you have enjoyed the Patriotic Sequence as inspired by “America the Beautiful” and Katharine Lee Bates. Remember: education is freedom. You will only be as free as what you know. One of my modern mentors and heroes, Ronald Reagan, put it this way:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Ronald Reagan
I want my children and grandchildren to know that Linda and I have done all we could to pass on this gift of education and learning to them. G.K. Chesterton is credited to have said, “Now in history there is no Revolution that is not a Restoration… All the men in history who have really done anything with the future have had their eyes fixed upon the past.”
And as such this begins with you and me because we can only control ourselves. I have never felt more alive or energized than when I look into the eyes of the next generation of Americans. I see it in their faces: Our best days are yet to come!
What Have You Left Undone?
No doubt there are challenges ahead for our nation and world, great and daunting challenges that will demand true servant leaders who are up to the task. I know the rising generation is up to the challenge. As you pioneer reading and the discovery of great ideas, it is likely your posterity will inherit a love of reading and will seek the right kind of education.
In conclusion, I would ask: What have you left undiscovered or undone? What is yours to do? We are never too old to create and build. What will be your gift to family, community, or America? I am convinced that nothing—absolutely nothing—will do more to improve the world in our day and the decades ahead than restoring America’s heritage through education. Nothing else will make as much impact for freedom or spread as much influence for good.
Unfortunately, the history of freedom is primarily the history of something that was not. “Liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization beset in every age by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.” The story of freedom, then, is “the deliverance of man from the power of man.” (Lord Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity”)
The right kind of education is a legacy, and a gift that will keep giving forever. My objective in both building John Adams Academy and creating Revolution in Education has always been to invite you and those who want to travel with you on this journey to exit “the cave,” liberate the captive, and build a life that will help youth find and apply the greatness that is inside them—if that is part of your mission. The ministry to learn and serve is so worth it! The next generation is yearning for us to teach them how to stay free. They deserve an education in human excellence. Begin now. Let’s not let them down.
Examples to Emulate in The Patriotic Sequence
Where are the youthful John and Abigail Adams-level leaders for the 21st century right now? Who are they? How will they prepare? Who will guide them? Are they getting an education that is worthy of the challenges ahead for this nation and the world?
The Patriotic Sequence is where such individuals are found and made. The pattern, in which we begin as pioneers and end as citizens and servant leaders, is one from which we can all learn. It was followed by John Adams—reading the classics, discussing great ideas with parents and family members, taking charge of his own education at an early age, and digging even more deeply into the classics during his youth. He continued this love of learning in the great classics during his time at Harvard and for the rest of his life—as a husband and father, in business, as an ambassador in Europe, while serving as vice president and later president of the United States and as an elder statesman in his later years. He was an active citizen and at different times a pilgrim, pioneer, hero, and patriot. He always saw his life work and mission as serving the great brotherhood of humanity.
It is important to note that all of this was built on the foundation of his childhood and youth education. This foundation in the classics, the great ideas, set the standard and marked the path for everything else that came later. This is what great education does.
Benjamin Franklin — The Quintessence of the Patriotic Sequence
The same can be said of several Adams’ contemporaries, including his wife Abigail, his son John Quincy, his cousin Sam Adams, and others such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. As an older peer who was already accomplished and admired when Adams was coming of age, Franklin especially provided an example of the servant leadership that inspired Adams in his education and development.
Note in what follows that Franklin’s path to leadership followed a similar pattern to the Patriotic Sequence. As a child Ben learned that all education is self-education. By his early youth he took charge of his own education, stating, “From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books…. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning lest it should be missed or wanted.” (Eliot, Charles W. The Harvard Classics, Volume 1. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1937.) The books he read were mostly classics, including such greats as Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Xenophon’s The Memorable Things of Socrates. Reading and learning became his routine and his passion.
Each season of life found him making discoveries and creating his personal story by being anxiously engaged in building a future for himself, his community, and his country. Franklin wrote, “It is in youth that we plant our chief habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our party as to profession, pursuits, and matrimony…in youth the education is given…character is determined…”
A Man Worthy of Renown
Adams noted that Franklin, among all his contemporaries, was famous and admired not only in the American colonies but also in Great Britain. Few of the London elite had even heard of Washington or Jefferson when Adams reached adulthood, but every English gentleman knew about Benjamin Franklin. Young Ben was taught by his father the following proverb: “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men.” He spoke of this later in life.
I considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encouraged me, though I did not think that I should ever literally stand before kings, which, however, has since happened; for I have stood before five, and even had the honor of sitting with one, the King of Denmark, to dinner.
Benjamin Franklin
Adams also noticed that Franklin worked very hard to accomplish his goals. An observer noted of the young upstart when he set out in his new printing business: “For the industry of that Franklin…is superior to any thing I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed.”
Education is Always at the Heart of the Sequence
Again, like John Adams, Franklin’s trajectory in life was built on a foundation of youth education in great books and deep thinking. Franklin’s father discussed, nurtured, and encouraged great ideas: “At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children.”
Franklin also set an example of being willing to change when needed, and to engage the hard work of personal improvement. He described the difficulty of changing oneself with the following story:
A man buying an ax wanted the speckled surface to be as bright as the edge. The smith consented to grind it until bright if the man would turn the wheel of the grinding stone. The grinding was grueling. Fatigue set in, and the man suggested he would keep the ax as it was. “No,” said the smith, “turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by-and-by; as yet, it is only speckled.”
Franklin observed, “…this may have been the case with many, who having, for want of some such means as I employed, found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle, and concluded a speckled ax was best…”
For both Adams and Franklin, and many other founding leaders, great service was built on a foundation of great learning—often during their childhood and youth. The education of the young is in many ways the greatest agent of improvement and societal progress ever discovered by humanity. When we help a young person obtain a great education, fall in love with learning, take charge of his or her own education and catch a vision of becoming a true servant leader and making the world better, we are preparing a new generation of Franklins, Washingtons, Jeffersons, Lincolns, Abigails, Churchills, Joans of Arc, Mother Teresas and others like them. This is what quality education does.
What about now?
The American founding generation, deeply educated in the classics as youth, declared independence from the greatest power on earth at the time and created the longest surviving written constitution in recorded history. The founding of this nation offers perhaps the greatest act of liberating the mind of man the world has ever known. What a heritage! What a legacy!
And what a call to provide truly great education for the youth of our day. The great leaders of tomorrow are among today’s youth, right now thirsting for the kind of quality education they will need to make the world what it should be. If we fail the education of today’s youth, we are failing the whole world. If we help them get the right kind of education, we hold up a lamp of wisdom, hope and opportunity to the next generation, and beyond.
Image credit: The original uploader was MatthewMarcucci at English Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Watch Dr. Dean Forman’s Interview on The Mark Haney Show
Mark Haney is a successful entrepreneur in Northern California committed to helping others confront the challenges and embrace the opportunities of entrepreneurship. On his show, Mark has interviewed California’s most notable billionaires, millionaires, and start-up founders.
Dr. Forman joined Mark to talk about why and how he launched John Adams Academy, what has been accomplished since its inception, and his vision for the future of education.
Pioneer to Patriot: Seasons of Growth
Last week I introduced the concept of the Patriotic Sequence. We examined Katharine Lee Bates’ poetic observation that our country’s pilgrims sent a powerful thrum across the plains with the beat of freedom. As citizens, we too get to pilgrim new Providential paths. These actions test our resolve in the furnace of affliction like those faced by pioneers. They push us to muster our courage and determination. Our responses to challenges, and the will to take courageous, transcendent actions as servant leaders beckon us to become heroes to our families and our communities.
Being a patriot is the outcome of the American Dream as suggested in Bates’ fourth verse. It is earned one act of nobility at a time on the battlefield of life. As we progress, we reach the point where we have proven virtue and equity in real patriotic honor—which is ours to defend and keep. And to pass on.
This is the patriotic pattern. It is the story of America. It is still being created by each new generation. In our day, what will liberate and build America more than anything else? The answer is real, and right in front of us: Education! In my opinion, nothing else comes close.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.” This is true of children and youth as well as adults. There are seasons of life that allow you and me to repeatedly discover this patriotic pattern. Development of our unique gifts, our “special excellence” or arête, as the Greeks named it, requires seasons of growth (just like winter, spring, summer and fall). As we progress, we start becoming and cultivating the harvest of who we were meant to be. I believe some never leave a certain phase or season simply because they have accomplished what they were meant to do. Others may stop progressing because they lack learning, ambition, or even opportunity. The patriotic pattern is a continuum, allowing all to make progress at their own pace.
In all of this, as a nation and in each individual life, the creation of the patriot comes as we use our virtues to serve others. Development of talents informed by virtue will provide each of us with experiences in all of these phases at multiple times in our lives. If you have not experienced the pattern, I would ask: Have you left “the cave?”
Many people never quite exit their comfort zone, as described by Plato. Yet, as humans, we are by nature creators and explorers. All of us were meant to progress, to improve, to grow, to live an odyssey. To the extent that we develop each virtue to the full measure of our potential, we add it to our personal symphony like a new poem, song or musical instrument and discover new sounds, better harmony and a synthesis of metaphorical and musical masterpieces. This is education. This is learning. It starts with children and youth, but it is a lifetime journey. We never entirely complete our education, not if we understand what education really means.
Still, the pattern can guide us. We are pilgrims, moving past old and even bad things in search of a better way. We are pioneers, establishing and building new and improved communities, institutions, families and nations. We also have times in our lives that require us to be heroes—to face challenges and turn them into victory, or if we fail at times, to learn from defeat and use the lessons to do better next time. Again, these are the great lessons of true education.
We are engaged, active citizens who live the laws and uphold the nation through our self-control, our good and noble choices; this allows our nation to be self-governed and free, rather than ruled from above.
And we are all dedicated discoverers—because all journeys begin with an idea that produces a yearning and desire to improve our station. We see this throughout our history among the overwhelming number of immigrants—from the Pilgrims to current immigrants. If you were to ask those coming today why they are willing to make such a great change, at such high risk, the central themes would be economic opportunity, safety and prosperity. To be successful, most of the new pilgrims must learn English, gain an education, achieve a level of economic independence and become an asset to their community. It has been this way for centuries, and millions have successfully accomplished it—largely because of their own hard work combined with the many freedoms and opportunities they found waiting for them here in the American system. Together we are also, in this pattern of progress, part of a great brotherhood, one that stretches “from sea to shining sea,” promoting freedom and servant leadership to all people.