69: Andrew Kern - On How Harmony Guides Education

Join James as he sits down with Andrew Kern, the president of the CiRCE Institute, to discuss the place of harmony within the classroom.

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Check out Difff's other podcast: Chiron, conversations about the past to help make sense of the present.

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Music: 'Inspiring Dreams' by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome back to another episode of Educating Humans. I'm your host, James, and today we're joined by a special guest, a repeat guest, one of the first, I think. This is very it's a good sign if this is one of our repeat guests. We're joined by Andrew Kern, who has had many an introduction before, but if you're if you're unaware of him, all you need to do is look his name up and you'll see all the different things that he is doing and things that he's said, most notably president of the Circe Institute over in America, one of the leading voices in the classical renewal in America. He's been to Australia before and spoken as well. And we are just so grateful to have you with us, Andrew. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I'm very honored to be here and to be part of a program that's ongoing and to be part of uh a discussion about something so new in a way, and something so old and ancient, and that has been embraced by so many Australians. So to to thank you for letting me be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Today I was thinking um that it would be a good idea for us to have a conversation about the concept of harmony. In our last e in our last podcast episode, episode 50, for people that want to go back to it, we talked about kind of the four principles or the four keys to a classical education. Um and one of the things that we maybe didn't get into as much depth in in that episode was this concept of harmony as kind of a telos or uh ethos even um of classical education. So I just thought we'd open the doors wide, see where it goes, and have a conversation. So harmony, what is it? What do we think of it when we think of education?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Well, well, first of all, I I really like the words you just used, the telos and the ethos. Right. And I love telos because I don't think it's the ultimate telos, in other words, purpose or goal, but I think it's almost like a um, it's it's the it's the way you know whether you're reaching the telos. Right. So so if you are striving for harmony, okay, let me explain why I mean don't think it's the ultimate tell us, telos, the ultimate goal, and yet crucial to reaching the ultimate goal. Only Christ can be the ultimate goal. But the but the but goals along the way, you know you've reached the goal because you attain a level of harmony. And so, so for example, if you listen to a a normal everyday pop song, okay, and if it is filled with discord, it's not going to be a pop song. It's going to be a bad song. Nobody's going to listen to it. But at that low level, let's say, which really, yeah, it's I don't want to I don't want to be dismissive of professional musicians because they are very talented typically and write surprisingly good, surprisingly difficult things to perform, which is why they're the superstars and we're not, right? But anyway, compared to Bach, whoever's popular now, I think Taylor Swift still probably is, and Beyoncé maybe still is. Um, they they aren't Bach, but they attain a level of harmony. But if you're content with that level of harmony, then you're not going to reach the fulfillment, right? You're not going to reach the ultimate telos, you're going to reach a lower telos. If if music has a telos, which I believe it does, then it's not being reached in the simpler pop music. But if we go on then to Grieg, let's say, um, Edvard Grieg, the Finlandish Finnish composer, um, he's got a much more intricate harmony, more is absorbed in that harmony, more of life and more of spirit and more of emotion is contained in that harmony. And so it's a higher level harmony. And then if you go on to Mozart, still more is contained. And then if you go on to Bach, you're probably about as high as a human being has ever got, in terms of the quantity and dimensions of life that are contained in their music. He goes all the way from the coffee cantata to the mass and B minor, right? So the whole, the whole cosmos at least is more or less. The whole cosmos is contained in box mass and B minor. So that's a much higher level of harmony. And that tells you that he's getting closer to the telos than the pop musician is, because so much more is contained in the harmony, if you see what I mean. Uh it's the same is true in poetry, right? You can leave, you can read an eighth-grade poet who could be really super talented or maybe not, but an eighth-grade poet, they haven't lived very much yet. So they're not going to contain much in their poetry, but they can contain a good bit. Then a 12th grader is going to have more, a college student's going to have more, but you can see where I'm going. The next level up, maybe the next level up is let's say um Ezra Pound. He's too discordant. Um, I'm trying to think, let's say Robert Frost. Okay, there's more of life contained in his poetry. So it's better poetry and it contains it extends the harmony. And I don't want to dwell on this too long because I'm just trying to illustrate the point. But when we get to Shakespeare and when we get to Chaucer, and we get to the highest to Homer, to Virgil, so much of life is contained in their poem that it's closer to the telos. And you know it's closer to the telos because it attains a higher level of harmony, if you see what I mean. I hope you do. Um, if you let me let me pause and say, is what I'm seeing communicating? Do you do you see how? Yeah, okay. And and I think that's one of the crucial things about the arts is that the greatest works of art are the ones that reveal to us more harmony and enable us to reach a higher internal harmony by aligning with the works of art. And that's why the the Bible, of course, I would argue, the Bible is the highest harmony. It contains literally everything in some sort of a verbal form. But even the Bible, I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but even the Bible doesn't measure up to Christ Himself, right? Christ Himself is the principle of all harmony. You you know, if you unite yourself with Christ, then then all harmony is he's the telos. And the way, the way that one of the marks that he's the telos is nothing stands outside the harmony that he accomplishes except what rebels against him. And it's diminished by leaving that relationship. So I love the word telos, and I also love the word ethos because it gets the other element to this, which is I'm gonna call it sensibility, that you have a sense, you have feel, right? You have a you have a um response, an ethos to to to harmony. We like harmony, it it guides us. We we don't like discord except for short periods of time in short situations. We want we want we want peace brought back. If we're at war, we want peace. If we're at if we're in tension with another person, we want resolution. Or and if we can't get that resolution, we'll walk away.

unknown 7:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

And so this desire for for harmony gives rise to an ethos. And so that's the first thing I want to say is how much I like those two words that you use. The purpose of existence is manifested in harmony, and the ethos of life is the ethos that permeates harmony, is an ethos that we live and love. And it, you know, it guides us. And I'll just add one more thing here that sometimes we think of reason as cold. You'll sometimes hear cold rationality, but reason is musical. Reason is the quest for harmony and thought, and it's actually very beautiful and very warm and very um brings incredible joy when we actually believe that harmony is attainable and seek it. But if we if we reduce reason to a uh to utility, to ways of solving problems and getting our way and imposing our order on the world, then reason becomes diminished. But reason, one of the uh fundamental things reason does is finds the harmony in a in an argument, let's say, in a in a logical argument. What are you looking for? Consistency among in the syllogism, right? You know, the premises and the conclusion. You want a harmony between premises and conclusion. That's what reason strives for. So reason is the the way we think of reason today, at least, reason I would suggest is the conscious means of bringing harmony to a series of thoughts. And sometimes those thoughts are in our own minds and sometimes they're in other people's minds.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

So then so when we're talking about harmony, uh, we're talking about like I guess I'm trying to use because I loved all the the abstract or metaphorical ways of, you know, we're trying to lock down something and we're looking at well, music seems to be the the surest example um that's readily available to the mind of just like, oh, I know what it means, I know what it is, and I know what it isn't, you know. You can tell when something's harmonious in music. Um if we're to try and define it, um, or maybe even just pull other words that can help people get what we're talking about. Um, you could you could say even like a unity, a unity or um alignment could be another word where everything aligns into place. And so I'm thinking the reason I'm using those words is because I wondered if you could talk about in the classroom when we're talking about harmony in the classroom, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Yeah, good. Okay, so so I like this. Um telos and ethos again are essential to harmony in the classroom. If the students are aligned, right? That's that's the word you used, alignment. If the students are aligned toward a common end, then the class will be in harmony. And if the students are not aligned toward a common end, toward a telos, then there will be discord. There's nothing you can do to prevent that. So if, for example, every single student in the class is driven by getting the best grade for themselves, on the surface, that sounds like the same end, but it's actually not. It's it's multiple ends. Everybody has their own end. And they actually might end up being in competition for the best grade, especially if you have something like reading on a curve or or you know, certain groups, the best performance gets a higher grade, anything like that. Um, but but if everybody is seeking their own best representation or their own best assessment, they're not going to be in harmony. But if everybody is there because they actually want to understand an idea, or they actually want to resolve a challenge, or they actually want to overcome um a discord, right? Like they actually want to figure something out together. Um, or they also they all want to think of sports, it's easier to see there. If everybody wants to win, then in practice, they will all be in harmony with each other, right? And and there's no reason in my mind why that can't be the case in the classroom. Instead of coaching students so that they're working together toward a common end, too often we reduce the role of the teacher to being an administrator of information on behalf of a textbook publishing company, and we reduce a student to a performer to get a grade. And that's going to pretty well undercut the possibility of harmony. And so you have to have a common end. The second thing is you have an ethos, right? If if everybody is expecting the harmony to be there, then when it's not, they'll feel it. And when it when they don't feel it, they'll they'll not like it, right? It will disappoint them. Now, if they're used to always being in discord in the classroom, always sitting in their desk and isolating themselves from what else is going on around them, and maybe they're interacting with the teacher, but they're not in harmony with their. After a while, they just get used to that, and that's their way of functioning. But it's not the way they want to function. They they they limit the harmony to where the harmony is, and then they they shove aside the discords. They, in other words, they they limit the harmony to their own personal experience and their own mind, and they exclude the discussions going on around them because those create discord. Or they might extend the harmony all the way to include the teacher, let's say. I think more often, what what kids do by intuition is they start talking to the kid next to them because there they can have their own little harmony, right? And then they get in trouble for it. But what should have happened was before that ever became an issue, they the ethos should have guided the teacher and and the purpose should have guided the teacher so that the student, I'm idealizing, of course. I recognize that kids just sometimes are troublemakers and so are teachers, but the but the the the ethos would have guided them so that the student didn't need to talk privately to the student, the other student to have their own little harmony, because they would have been working together toward a common end and the classroom would have been in harmony. Now that's I've very generalized it. So if you want to dig deeper into more specific situations, I'd be happy to do that.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yes, I would like to. I think first, though, I want to talk about something that just came as you were talking about that, because then I was thinking back to the the discussion of music, you know, and then I was thinking, well, you know, how much how much of a teacher's role is to be a conductor, you know, in an orchestra of of different instruments that make different sounds and have different times to play their parts and to play their parts solo and then in in unison, uh, and to build upon one another. And the idea that that the conductor in that sense is producing very little of their own noise. But what they are doing is really bringing together all of these separate voices. Um now they all might be playing off a piece of music, you know, they're playing off a piece of music, so there is a there is a I guess you could say a truth to be explored, and these voices are all doing something, they're not doing their own thing, they're unified in tell us. Exactly. Um and so yeah, I think I just thought that image as you were talking about, it's like there's so much um because what that does, if you think of it like that, is it does very much shift the operation of the teacher, you know? Um or shifts the focus or the the mode of operation. Yeah, yeah. It shifts the focus because even the way they're seeing their students is different, right? No longer are they thinking that uh the criteria for success equals every student has been quiet, written the thing, done the exit ticket, blah blah blah blah blah, there's um maybe less there's less sterility to the environment, right? There's more life to it. Uh and that can be difficult because yeah, it's more human, but that's difficult because if all the instruments are trying to play their part, you've got to conduct them all into harmony. That that's a big job.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Um anyway, I just thought that that image was coming to my mind as we were talking. I'd love to talk about I'll continue. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Can I just sit on that for a moment because I love it so much? I want to it's self-indulgent, but this is how I think is I think out loud and to process things. And and I love that. And one of the things that practically, I can just hear teachers saying, Well, I don't have time to be a conductor. And and to that, I would say possibly you're in the wrong environment. But also I would say that's true. You're not always a conductor, but sometimes you have to be. And the the key to it is everybody has to know what the purpose is, right? In a in a in an orchestra, everybody knows the telos. You're trying to play Mozart's requiem or whatever it happens to be, or maybe it's maybe it's all you need is love. You're playing the horns, right? Everybody knows what their role is and wants to be a part of it. And in that case, when when everybody is freely part of what's going on, the conductor simply helps them do what they want to do anyway, right? And and that's freedom. Um, but that comes in degrees in the classroom, especially in the modern world where everybody is required by law to go to school, whether they should be or not. And and then everybody who who wants to be there has to be in the presence of people who don't want to be there. But there are moments when the teacher becomes the conductor. And I want to give you an illustration of this. And that is there's a uh a young lady who's a new teacher, first-year teacher, in a school that it identifies as classical, um, but it's been frustrating for her. And the reason it's been frustrating is because she wants to teach great books and literature and so on, but they're they're so consumed by grading and they're so consumed by the conventions, right, that she hardly has any time to actually teach. But every week, for half an hour, every week, she reads a fable by Aesop. Now, you might be thinking, what? She takes a half hour to read a fable by Aesop. That's one paragraph. Yeah, depending on what you mean by read, right? What she does is she she she begins a discussion. And let me just quickly hasten to add that her care classroom is composed of the normal division. There's one group of kids in the classroom that actually want to do well. There's another group of kids that sometimes do and sometimes don't, and there's another group of kids that couldn't care less. The biggest problem is the kids who want to do well, what they mean by doing well is get good grades. So they don't actually want to get involved in discussions, they want to know how to perform. And then probably the best group for just thinking is the middle group who sometimes are in and sometimes are out, because typically what gets them in isn't just the desire to perform for a grade, but they're actually interested. And that's that's the dream scenario, right? As a teacher. Well, what happens week after week after week, she reads a fable, and about halfway through the fable, she'll ask a question like, What do you think is gonna happen next? Or she might ask what should he do? And now, first of all, kids like stories, so do all humans, we all like stories, but second of all, that question just engaged them as human beings, not as people who are gonna get a grade, but as human beings who get to think about a story. A purpose was given to it, a transcendent purpose, you might say. And so now they're engaged in a discussion, and then she doesn't tell them the moral of the story. Eventually, after a while of discussing it, she'll say, What do you think is the moral of the story? And because their opinions are valued, because they're being treated like human beings, every single kid is engaged and they want more week after week after week. She becomes the conductor in that situation. And it kind of makes me chuckle because conductor, of course, has two very different meanings, right? Electricity and music. And yet, in both cases, there's a similarity. They're, they're they're serving as the means by which something is is energized, by the means by which life is given to something, the means by which something is brought to its, I won't say perfection, but but to it, to a harmony. And I think a teacher should play that role as often as possible. But I do recognize sometimes you have other things to do besides just conduct. So I think that's in that sense. I so I just want to make I just want to make sure everybody doesn't feel like we're putting some implicit, horrible burden that's that's really untenable on them, that all the time they need to be conducting. That would be exhausting. Sometimes you just practice. Sometimes you just tell people to do things.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

So there's something you said there then that I thought I thought was interesting, um, where you talked about the idea that these these students get seen as people. Um and I was thinking about that in relation to um Charlotte Mason's um that that education is about relationship and understand and understanding the relationship of things to each other. And I thought, well, there's a relationship that obviously can't be missed in education, which is the teacher to student the student to student relationship, the relationality of the classroom. And by that I don't mean to necessarily um that you're all buddies. I want to more talk about this idea of what you were saying there that what does it mean in the classroom to see a student as a human? And how does that connect to the relationality and harmony of a classroom?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Oh wow. So three parts there. What does it mean to be a human? What is what is and how does that relate to relationality and how does that relation to relate to harmony? Let me crash the two together harmony and relation because the right relation between things is almost always a harmony. And and so let's hold that off just for a split second and say let's look at what does it mean to be a human? That is the fundamental question that educators have to begin with and never well and rarely do. Right. So I I I suspect this is true in Australia. I know that it's true here that if you ask a teacher at a teacher's college what is a human being or what have you learned a human being is in your time in teachers college, you'd probably get laughter. A comparison would be I used to do a lot of in-house teacher training, professional development. And I would frequently ask on the first day the question how many of you have been to teachers college? Because in in the States anybody can teach in a private school. It's the responsibility of the private school to make sure that they can do it. So it you don't have to get a degree which is one reason why in America schools can be horrifically bad and why they can be so good, right? Because you don't lop off the the top of the poppies and and then over time schools that are no good just die out because they get replaced by better schools. But then new bad ones start it's just you know it's it's it's freedom sorry I got distracted. The point is that what was the point? What were you talking about? Oh yeah I go to these teacher training things yeah I go I would go to these teacher training things and I would ask the question how many of you in teachers college learned how to cultivate virtue in your students and they would laugh what a silly question. Ha ha right however the good news is somewhere around 2015 I would ask that question and there would be two or three teachers in some schools that had gone to a few colleges that actually did teach their teachers how to cultivate virtue. And they would raise their hands and that for me was the first spring sprouts of the grass of a new civilization coming into being right that is when when let me just say it's really hard to cultivate virtue. It takes a long time and if you have to sit in a desk for 12 years of your childhood and nobody near you or around you is working to cultivate virtue the best opportunity you will ever have is unundercut is ruined and now it's going to be super difficult to become a virtuous human being and that's what that's what we do in our in our the modern world but in the Christian classical movement the perception of what a human being is is different. A human being is a is a person first of all a person right and second as a person one who is capable of becoming virtuous and one whose happiness depends on his virtue one who cannot possibly be happy without virtue. And so thank God life itself demands virtue of us and I I want to hasten to add here because the question is what's a human being and the connection between what's a human being and virtue is that virtue is what enables us to be a good human being to be to be good versions of ourselves. And so I need to again hasten to add this that it's not just moral virtues I'm talking about a virtue is any human excellence right so the ability to use language well is the virtue of language right there are intellectual virtues if I can understand what you're saying to me I have the intellectual virtue of intellection actually which is understanding if I can read well that's an intellectual virtue. I can be a bad person and still have an intellectual virtue okay I and and the duty of the teacher is to cultivate the intellectual virtues even in the bad kids because because stupidity doesn't help you become good right so no reading doesn't make you good in and of itself but it can help if it's used to that end but the intellectual virtue of understanding difficult texts is a virtue. Running fast is a virtue human beings are made with the ability to run and to quote um the guy in Chariots of fire have you ever seen chariots of fire? Yes yes yes okay you remember that scene where he says I can't do Scottish accents so I'll embarrass myself for the whole world for a moment but he says to his sister God made me to run and he made me to run fast and when I run I feel his pleasure you see that's what it should be. If God gives us a gift whether it's running calculating reading physical intellectual whatever gift God has given us when we use that gift we feel his pleasure because it pleases him it pleases him and so there are moral virtues too and there are spiritual virtues all of them need to be cultivated in order for us to become human because humans are the image of God and therefore we have spiritual virtues intellectual virtues physical virtues and moral virtues. Now the physical virtues of course Jesus had them but I think it's safe to say God the Father if he has physical virtues it's in some mystical way that I don't know but but but every time any virtue that we have any any any ability that we have is refined is in other words what's a virtue it's a refined ability anytime any ability that God has given us is refined we are more godlike we are more we are better at being the image of God. And when that becomes your goal as an educator is to make this child more godlike in all the dimensions of being a human and I really want to stress not just moral virtues moral virtues yes but all the virtues they're all good okay anytime we cultivate a virtue in a child he becomes more godlike he becomes more what he is the way I like to think of it is that the Lord gives everybody a name. And when the Lord gives people names they mean something. And what our goal is what what we want to become ourselves is what God means when he says our name. And so our task when we're working with other people is to help them become what God means when he says their name that's what it means to be a person a human being and and all of the all of the theories and practices that anybody has ever developed in the history of the world if they help a person become a better human being then we can use them right we can use them whether it's a football coach who developed a certain way to practice football or a or a soccer coach do you say soccer in Australia I forget yes yeah yeah we say soccer yep okay so associated football and and Australian league football or cricket or or rugby what whatever game it is if a coach has figured out a way to help a player become better at playing that game they are helping that child that player become more virtuous okay that makes them better as themselves as a human being that makes them more godlike. And so therefore if if a coach has figured out a way to do that that isn't manipulative you know there's morals there's parameters but if a coach has figured out a way to do that then there's no reason in the world why we wouldn't draw on that and imitate it in a similar way if Homer figured out a way to write poetry we do well to imitate him right and and and if and if Shakespeare let's say Shakespeare was an atheist which I don't at all believe but if Shakespeare was an atheist and but he figured out a way to write poetry then we can imitate that and and in do in so doing we become more godlike we are better versions of the image of God. And that's why I'm I'm just building on this or stressing this maybe perhaps too much but this is what I mean when I say education is the cultivation of virtue it's it's that becoming what God made us to be what we are by nature and increasing our capacity to be ourselves and that gives us that increases our capacity to manifest the gimmick the image of God and the glory of God in us.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

So when Voltaire for example was writing his philosophy against God the angels up in heaven were looking down and saying look at that can you believe it nothing but God could have made that thing that's good so I I mean I love it I love what you've you've said there and it reminds me of an anecdote from my own life um of you know I was I I didn't receive a a classical education per se until I yeah and and like the well the this primary and high school that I went to were not classical in any sense and so the the interaction with the liberal arts and all of that was a was a university level thing for myself but the fault of my early education falls more on myself in many ways because I was just a very lazy student. I just I didn't care I I wasn't disruptive in any way maybe I fell into that middle group of students you were talking about sometimes interested sometimes not um and I and I had very little yeah well if if they can be if they can have fortitude which I did not I was very lazy and had very little fortitude. But I remember when I was you know 15 years old um a friend of mine who was a little bit older than that said hey it's time that we started working out it's time that we started going to the gym and I was kind of like oh okay yeah I'm I'm I'm happy to give that a go. It sounds fun just hanging out with friends. And then I got there and it was nothing of hanging out with friends and all hard work. Right. Um and this was the and and but because it was there was hanging out with friends in it as well but it was it was not the vision I'd had um and it was hard work and it was hard work that required fortitude and paid off and it was for me as a young man um a big step in towards becoming more classically educated. Yes because what it did was train fortitude and and prove to me that hard work is worth it. It's worth it.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

And that you can do that hard work.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Exactly right and so I think it's exactly right all these things that you've said there about you know if someone um if there's a rugby coach who's really able to get the best out of his students in terms of rugby well that is a great great opportunity to use that momentum and that virtue that is being cultivated there and to spread it into all the facets of the world you know to all the different areas that we are called to wonder at um and to enjoy. And so it can be said the other way as well right you know if you've got students in a class that are loving a class but they hate sport well then I'd just be thinking well hey how can we spread this virtue that they're cultivating to the other goods of the world.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yes yes I love that do you know that gymnastic is considered the foundation of classical education?

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Yes I do yeah that's that's um gymnastic and then is it music? Is that the other yes the two yeah um yeah I love it. I I think it it's one that maybe gets lost because or you know what maybe it's not I think there's this hidden episode of educating humans where Diff and I got into an argument about um about sport and neither of us were wrong. We were kind of arguing the same thing from two different perspectives um where he was arguing that sometimes we can care about sport too much and I was arguing that sometimes we can care about it too little and ultimately we're both arguing for the golden mean. Right, right but I think one of the thoughts that that came up there with it in that conversation was I was trying to say speaking from that anecdote sport has a really good opportunity because it's human and it's good for us and the cultivation of a healthy body both lead us and help us in our cultivation of a healthy soul um and his argument was kind of like but sport is everywhere we like his thought was like it is already the thing that humanity likes to do now not all of humanity but the ones that kids that get into sport almost devote their lives to sport you know that the con becomes like a a religious affiliation where you're well do you guys have park run in America do you know what park run is park run? Yeah park run no maybe it's an Australian thing it's um every Saturday morning every Saturday morning there's a five kilometer run around a park um and these things have exploded and people are loving it because people go and there's this nice community feeling and it's just like you come the first time and everyone's really happy and and supporting you on. But then there's kind of this underbelly to it or not not an underbelly but maybe just this this joke that gets made about that well it becomes a bit of a cult because all of a sudden every Saturday morning you you're now one of the volunteers wearing the shirt and then you go into the special runs that are happening at different times and all these different so there's this idea that we can we can obsess over anything too much right yes yes and what I would say is that earlier we talked about levels of harmony and I talked about pop music and then and then whatever I said Mozart and Bach right I would say that that's an example of low level harmony.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

It's a good thing to run for five kilometers with your friends that's a good thing. And then the question is what's the higher level harmony they're going to go to are are they going to are they going to be content that every week we're just going to run for five kilometers maybe that's okay but probably because humans are human whenever we reach one step of harmony we want to get to the next level right and so so what happens then is they start looking for if they just went for the physical now they start looking for the social. And that that then can lead to the social being the highest level of harmony and at that point it can become cultic right that's when we become that's when we start laughing. The problem isn't that it got to that level though the problem is that it stopped at that level what's the next level up and and this is where faith is so important. If your faith only believes in the social level of existence that okay we're we are we are material objects but for whatever reason we like each other and so we should hang out in society and that's what you believe in it's an arbitrary faith but you can have it that's as high as you're going to go but then if you if you go a step further and say that we believe in the spirit or you know whatever you want to say I think the only thing higher than human society is God. So let's just say God, okay, then it's not going to be enough for you to be in a group of people and identify with that group of people just because you need a group of people to identify with or because you like them you're gonna go up a level and you're gonna say I'm actually seeking union with God it's just a question of are you going to keep going right it's always in fact one of the can I can I this is this illustrates this point so I I'd like to share it and it's one of the strangest things in the whole Bible to me in the book of Revelation the Apostle John it begins the book of Revelation begins with the Apostle John seeing a vision of Christ in glory. Read Revelation 1 it's the most incredible I mean he looks like brass on fire and you know Christ is in glory and and it's not an image that we can even begin to comprehend. It's just kind of weird. Okay this is John okay remember that John is the apostle who sat beside Jesus at the at the Eucharistic meal at the communion and was resting his head on Jesus' breast he's the the one who's called the apostle whom Jesus loved right John we're talking about somewhere around Revelation chapter 11 he sees an angel and I can't remember the details now because I haven't looked at this for a couple of years but I think it's Revelation 11 and I think it's the angel who has one foot on land and one on sea I'm not positive though. The important thing is he sees an angel and it's a majestic glorious angel do you know what John does no tell me don't forget who John is okay he has seen Jesus in his glory he saw Jesus ascend into heaven he sat by Jesus at the communion he listened to Jesus he's the only one of the apostles who didn't flee but stood under the cross while Jesus died this is maybe the holiest man who ever lived apart from Jesus he fell down and worshiped the angel and the angel says get up I'm just a servant like you that unnerves me to think about it that angel was so much like God that John himself fell down and maybe I'm wrong maybe he didn't worship but he fell face down because he was so much like God. If John does that in a vision what hope do the rest of us have in the normal life right but but notice the difference between an angel and a demon is the angel said get up I'm just a servant like you the difference between the truth and a deception is any deception receives your your submission and the truth the truth is I'm just a servant like you until it's Jesus. And the point I'm getting at is no matter what it is that we're enjoying, it could be our wives could be anything whatever it is we're enjoying whatever it is that's pleasing us that and and remember the reason something pleases never forget this fact the reason something pleases you is because it's godlike the devil doesn't have any pleasures to give he can only steal pleasures from God and and twist them around and give them to the reason something makes you happy is because it's godlike the problem becomes when you're content with that level of godlikeness because if you go up a level there's more pleasure and if you go up all the way into God himself there's infinite pleasure and that's that's where we've we cannot allow ourselves to be content right Augustine called it divine dissatisf divine I think dissatisfaction was discontent divine discontent we can never be content with anything short of God but it's exhausting to to to reach unity with God. So it's okay to you know you you should enjoy something for what it is but never for more than what it is there's always there's always a a greater journey and for that reason the two things we should never do is despise things right like I don't know if like let's let me oversimplify and say Diff was actually opposed to sports. He wasn't but let's say it okay he shouldn't have been opposed to sports what you what you were both looking for is the right proportion of devotion an ordered devotion the ordo amoris right the order of love you were you're both looking for how much should we love this in our time and in our day and that comes down to your earlier question what's a human being and what role does this play in me becoming a virtuous person? And our task is as much as anything else to create a uh a culture an atmosphere in which the child who is learning a given thing whether it's running on Sundays or whether it's performing an instrument which they can that can become everything to them or playing a sport or or drawing pictures anything they get good at can become ultimate to them.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Okay what we need to do is create an atmosphere where there's always more there's always an upward call there's always a next step right a culture not just lessons but a culture that's always calling them up to the next level of of harmony or of or of virtue which is this the same thing in a way I love that you went just exactly where I was about to go with the auto moris bear because I was like you know I was thinking in the abolition of man we get Auto amoris Lewis putting forward auto amoris as the kind of idea of virtue. And really it's the idea of harmony. Those ordered loves brings harmony. And when you have disordered loves, that's where discord comes.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

That's right, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

And but you're right, there is this inclination in all things good that man um I like what you said, that man gets content with it or is satisfied by it. He's filled up by it, and that's what he goes back to to keep filling himself up. You know, if you think of gluttony or lust or even um, you know, the sin of curiosity or curiositas, if we want to use the the like the going back to these these sources to fill you up that aren't designed for that, and so it corrupts the whole process of going to these good things. Um so let's bring that then. I love this whole conversation we've had is great. I want to end it by talking about the lesson. What is the lesson when we talk about harmony and the students and their humans, and we've seen them as that, and we're reflecting that, and we're we're we're bringing the ethos and tell us of harmony into the classroom. But when we talked about, let's say, lesson planning, to be real specific. Yeah, how does harmony fit within the concept of a lesson plan?

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Okay, good. Very practical. First of all, the most important thing in anything that's going to have a harmony is it needs a principle. It needs an ordering principle, right? In Greek, that the word for that is the it needs a logos. Every lesson needs a logos. Christ is the logos that orders everything, but every lesson needs its logos. And and maybe you can't say what it is, maybe it's got an element of mystery to it, but but at least you intuit it, right? If it is knowable, you shouldn't you should know it. And then you should you should make everything that happens move toward that logos. We talked about earlier the conductor, the tellos, right? There's a there's a there's an ordering principle to a symphony, and that's guiding the conductor. Maybe it's the key. I don't know music well enough to know how to technically put it. Maybe it's the whole symphony itself, the message, the the unspoken, unspeakable message that the symphony is communicating, right? The whole thing has to be played. Um, but it's all but but it's all guided by this logos. But anyway, I want to keep it simpler than that. There's four kinds of logos that you can have in a lesson, I believe. One is um, let's say wisdom, or or let's be more immediate, um, understanding. Okay, you you want your student to understand something, and you want them to consciously understand it and then be able to communicate that they understand it. That would be that would be one kind of lesson. And that would be, for example, a math concept or or how to do a procedure could be an understanding, but more likely, um, what is justice, what is what is beauty, how what is kindness, right? Um, you use it, you use a fable by Aesop to explore kindness, right? And so so the governing principle of that would be would be what kindness is, would would just it'd be kindness. Okay, that's understanding. That's one kind of lesson. The second kind of lesson would be a skill, a virtue, ultimately a virtue, but a skill. So, for example, holding a pencil correctly, holding a violin correctly, hold uh um um laying the ball up properly off the backboard in the basketball, um, dribbling, um, forming a letter when you when you make when you're learning spelling. Um, but then there's more intellectual skills like um coming up with metaphors, uh, developing a simile, right? These are all skills. Um, intellectual skills require understanding of a concept, but this, but the skill is the goal of the lesson. Okay, so so the logos of the lesson then, the harmonizing principle of the lesson is the skill that you want them to learn. And then the third is content, the information you want them to recall. That's easier. You just have some kind of um, that's why this is mostly what kids are graded for, because you can easily measure whether they learn the information. But nevertheless, there's a category that holds it together. Typically, you're not gonna just give them seven random facts and tell them to remember. You're gonna give them seven facts of history during a period of time, for example. So there's something that holds it together. If there's not, you're gonna have chaos, discord. And then the fourth thing, and this is the most um difficult to apprehend, is sensibility. And I'm um Hebrews 5.14 has become the verse of the year for me. What you're always trying to do with your students is cultivate their senses to perceive truth, to perceive the beautiful. Always your goal is to cultivate senses. If ever you do something that undercuts their capacity to use their senses to perceive reality, you have damaged the child, right? And and that's that's to curse them, and that's something you need to repent of. So when it comes to the senses, it's more that you need to create an atmosphere and a culture within which their senses are cultivated. But sometimes you actually can say, during this lesson, I want my child to better sense the way language works, for example, to better sense the way rhyme schemes work in a poem. Okay, so that's in my view, that's the most important of the four. If you were gonna, maybe one way to make a diagram would be to make that the target. And then you have three sections or three modes, three approaches to sensibility. Because sensibility, refined sensibility is maturity. And it requires understanding and it requires knowledge and it requires skills to refine the sensibility. Okay, so maybe what I'm saying is the logos of every lesson is sensibility, but you still want to get more specific to the given lesson. And so what the first thing you need to do is if the lesson can be stated in a sentence for yourself, I'm not saying you should state it to the kids, but for yourself, you should state what the set the lesson is, what the logos of the lesson is. What do I want them to know? What do I want them to understand, or what do I want them to be able to do? You need to have an adequate grasp of that. If it's sensibility, you probably can't explicitly write it, but do your best. I want my child to be more sense sensitive to the taste of wine or something like that, because they're going to grow up to be a Somalia. So once you've done that, 80% of the battle is done. Now commit yourself, come hell or high water, to sticking to that being the goal. But the next part of the battle that's most important is how are you going to take that logos of the lesson, that key principle, and embody it? How are you going to put it in, how are you going to put it in types? How are you going to incarnate that logos, right? And so then it's a question of let's say my logos is that I want them to be able to do two-column addition. Okay, then the types of that are specific examples of two-column addition that I'm going to show them how to do and they're going to watch me do it, then they're going to imitate it, then they're going to practice, and I'm going to give them appropriate feedback. Okay, that's how I would do it with a math skill, let's say. If it's an understanding, an idea, like it is good to share, okay, then I can use a story, or I could actually share something with them, but I but I use something that embodies the truth of the thing that I'm trying to teach them. And if it's a if it's a um if it's information, then I give them the information, but I make sure that they see how it's connected. And information by itself is not interesting. They have to see how it's connected to the ideas and the skills, and they have to see, they have to feel, not necessarily no, but they have to feel how how it's cultivating a sensibility. And again, that can be a linguistic sensibility, it can be an aesthetic sensibility, a physical, like you know, taste. Any, it's just training the senses to perceive. That's that's what we're talking about. Physical senses, intellectual senses, and spiritual senses. So if you have the logos and you have ways to embody the logos and types in specific instances, then 98% of the battle is is is done. You'll be able to um keep the harmony, if you then can lead them into the types, into the specifics, and up to the to the logos. And that's where the that's where the moment-by-moment challenge comes in. But it's not as hard when you know where you're leading them and you know how you're leading them, right? If all you've got is a textbook and you're trying to give them information so that they can pass the test, that's when classroom management becomes an issue. Because no kid wants to be there and not many teachers do. So, you know, at that the teachers want to be there, but they don't they don't really want to teach that way. It's just, you know, that's what they're used to doing. But what they'd really like to do is see these kids come alive and logos and and and incarnation bring us to life, right? It's teaching them the form of Christ. So that's that's how I would that's how I would put it in a practical formula. Just don't let it be too formulaic because then you know you lose your senses. It's not a method, right? There is no method, it's a journey, it's a pilgrimage.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

I like I like that, and I feel like if we're tying it back to the original discussion of harmony, I mean that's that idea of sensibility is when the student's senses come into harmony with the truth of reality. Oh, that's so you know that's they they their senses are able to perceive the true, the good, and the beautiful. Uh in whatever aspect that is. This reminded me of this this great book. You might know it. It's called Unless the Lord Builds the House: Shared Foundations for Christian Education by the author Andrew Kern. Um I'd be remiss if I didn't read a little bit of it in hopes that other people go and read this book as well, because I've I've thoroughly enjoyed it and returned to it many a time, and it's only been published for a year or two, so that's that's how good it is. Um But uh in the middle of this of chapter six on how we learn, you said this thing, and I've underlined it and asterisked it, and I think the next time I read it, I came and asterisked it again and again. Uh it's so good. It says this only love can generate the wisdom, the principles, and the knowledge that enables us to treat things wisely and well. And love awakens when glory is revealed. I thought that was great in this whole conversation we've been having, and if we're connecting it back to Auto Amoris and love, and then you bring in the idea of glory. What awakens love, it's glory. Um so if you wanted to in your departing moments comment on that you can, otherwise you've said it wonderfully there, and we can leave it for people to mull on.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Well, they're gonna wish I didn't do this, but I I just want to say thank you, first of all, because I think you probably found the sentence that is the point of the book. I'd never really thought through that. I didn't do that on purpose, but that's probably the point of the book right there. But what I do want to emphasize from it is we haven't talked in this talk very much about glory, but that's where the senses come in. We have a God-given sense by which we can see that things are glorious, right? We can see the glory of a tree just by looking at it, it moves us. We we this is what art does for us. It cultivates in us the ability to see the world around us. It cultivates in us a sense for the glory of things that otherwise we tend not to see. But everything God made is filled with glory, and we have in our spirits and in our souls, we have a sense for that. And cultivating that sense, that ability to perceive and respond to the glory of a thing is what cultivates love, right? And I think the illustration that works easiest is I fell in love with my wife because I saw a glory. And that's that's what happens. You you see, and and what determines what you love is your capacity to see glory. If you can only see physical glory, then you will only love physical things. But if you can see the virtues of the soul, which is to say soulish glory, you'll fall in love with soulish things. And if you learn to see spiritual glories, you will fall in love with spiritual things. And but we have those senses, we have been given them by God. And and that's what the goal of education is to cultivate those senses, to perceive glory. And that's why I mentioned Hebrews 5.14. That's for me, that's been the verse over the last year for me. It just blew my mind when I finally actually thought about it, because what what the author of Hebrew says is, I want to talk to you about the about the print the uh priesthood of Melchizedek, right? Who who spends all their time on the priesthood of Melchizedek? You know, it's not commonly talked about. And I think he identifies why in these verses. He says, I want to talk to you about the priesthood of Melchizedek, but I can't. Because you're children. I need to give you baby food. And then he ends that whole section by saying, strong food is for the mature. And then he gives a definition of maturity, and it caught me so off guard I couldn't believe I'd never thought, and I mean, I've loved the book of Hebrews for 45 years now, and uh more than that. And so I'm reading this verse and it says these words strong food is for the mature. That is, those who, by reason of use, have trained their senses to discern good and evil. Kalos kecakos, and good and evil can mean good and evil morally, but it can mean every kind of good and every kind of bad. Cacophony means bad sound, cacos fanos. And that caught me off guard, that swept my feet up from under me. That's what maturity is. If that's what maturity is, which is another way of saying if that's what virtue is, if that's what godlieness is, if that's the fulfillment of the image of God, then that verse right there has just taught us the fundamental thing we need to do in education. That is, we need to use the senses to learn to distinguish good from bad, whether that be in paintings, in animals, right? Because a bad animal is an unhealthy animal, let's say, in morals. But if if we just try to do it morally and then suppress their artistic gifts, that's bad. We should have better sense than that. What it all comes down to is everything we do is either cultivating or undercutting the senses of our children and our students. And that has become an insanely humbling realization for me in the last year. So I'm 62, I offer it to you. I think you're younger than 62. I I hope that I hope that it doesn't take you till you till you're my age to to realize how important that principle is, because I'll just bluntly state my life would have been wiser if I'd grasped that earlier.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:03

That's that's that's so potent. Thank you. Um Margan again. If this was a three-hour podcast, we'd now go on to talk about the the fall and the the fact that they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and maybe that was some babies who going to strong food before they were really permitted to. Yes. Um yes. But but we don't have time to get into all that. So I'm just gonna leave that there as a little um thing for people to go think about and look into. Um thank you so much, Andrew. This has been a pleasure. It's probably gonna be another one of my favorite episodes because it's just every time you get talking about something, it's it's rich and deep, and you can return to it and hear different layers. Um, but thank you. I'm sure the audience will really appreciate it. And I should say before we leave if you go to Parkrun, I I do not believe Parkrun is a cult. I'm very glad you go, it's a very good and healthy thing. Please do not stop listening to the podcast because I was just echoing some sentiments other people have shared. Um, yes, God bless Andrew. Thank you. God bless you too. Thank you, James.