On a recent weekend, my wife and I found ourselves in an odd place—a library. We’re used to public libraries and used bookstores, but this was different: coffered ceilings; rich built-in shelves filled with aging books; a fireplace framed by gargoyles, settees, and armchairs; and the gentle clink of fine china and cocktail glasses.
Ill at ease, I surveyed the formal scene until I spotted something that made me feel right at home: a portrait of a schoolboy lighting a firecracker with his cigar!
Boys have wanted to blow up classic libraries since the days of Augustine. In his Confessions, the bishop marvels, “Why did I dislike Greek literature? … Homer, as well as Virgil, was a skillful spinner of yarns and he is most delightfully imaginative. Nevertheless, as a boy, I found him little to my taste.”
For generations, schoolteachers have managed to curb naughty students like young Gus. Who’d have predicted the educators would come around to tossing the firecrackers themselves, burning centuries of Western heritage nearly to the ground? Luckily, Louis Markos has a plan to rebuild. In Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education, he defends old books from those who regard them as irrelevant or actively harmful.
Markos, an English professor at Houston Christian University, has tackled a wide range of topics in his books, from Tolkien’s Middle-earth (in On the Shoulders of Hobbits)to Greek philosophy (in From Plato to Christ). In Passing the Torch, he takes on the American education system, which he describes as “broken, ineffective, and in crisis.” His effort begins with two foundational questions often overlooked: What is a student? And what exactly is a student for?
His lengthy introduction characterizes students as many things, including noble creatures, moral agents, and habitual beings. Markos then turns to methods that will “allow us to pass down the wisdom of our culture to our children.” What is meant by “our culture” and “our children”? More on that later.
Part 1 is adversarial, pitting various emphases in classical education against their progressive replacements. In his chapter “Canonical Versus Ideological,” Markos’s argument gathers steam. “The works that are to be learned and propagated,” he writes, “are not to be chosen for their utilitarian or propagandistic value but as ends in themselves.” In this, his perspective echoes Charlotte Mason, a 19th- and 20th-century British education reformer. He describes her philosophy like this: “The teacher must invite the student to feast on the book, to live through its characters, to participate in its struggles and victories. … Children must be taught to love reading for its own sake.”
Entertainment, food, technology, and images all influence a society, but in Markos’s estimation, words have the greatest power to fashion culture. He writes, “A vigorous reading and wrestling with the Great Books provides the best paideia”—a Greek term that suggests comprehensive training in knowledge and character—“for shaping virtuous, morally self-regulating citizens.”
Markos’s best chapter is “Books Versus Textbooks.” It is short, surgical, and desperately needed. It also happens to be the most practical—a small course correction, even for public schools, that would guide educators back toward classical principles. Markos writes,
Too often, schools pay lip service to the canon and then quietly replace the books themselves with textbooks. … In all cases, [textbooks] replace a direct encounter with the Great Books of the past with an ideological filter that ensures that no student or teacher will be confronted or transformed by the wisdom of our ancestors.
It is a question of conviction: Do the Brontës and Jeffersons and Platos of history have the best words? If so, there is no shame in filling class lessons with their words instead of teachers’ words. Basically every classroom and course of study “would be improved,” Markos argues, “if they devoted more time to reading and discussing the actual works.”
Interestingly, Markos believes more time spent in vigorous reading of the Western canon could help cure certain societal ills: “The Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian tradition … set a high bar for freedom, law, and human dignity. It often fell short of that bar, but when it did it possessed the resources to try again.” A written canon outlives bad actors, giving the next generation a chance to choose more wisely.
In part 2, Markos interacts with several great books, showing how they illuminate the issues at stake when we debate the purpose of education. The greatest benefit of this section is that it provides a catalog of authors and works for educators to prioritize in their own reading—the aforementioned Charlotte Mason, as well as Mortimer Adler, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, John Dewey, Neil Postman, and others.
“For students to be engaged fully in their education,” writes Markos, “they must have instilled in them a love and joy for learning. But that instilling can only be accomplished by teachers (and professors) who themselves take love and joy in what they teach.” Do we want students who love reading and writing? It begins with rediscovering our own love.
When was the last time you sat down with a dusty old copy of Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana or Plato’s Republic? Teaching is an ancient profession, and some of the best thoughts on its practice are waiting on yellowed pages. As Markos puts it, “Rather than fixating on the latest pedagogical trends and technical innovations, we would serve our students best if we exposed them daily to authors and books where eloquence goes hand in hand with truth, with piety, and with love.”
Teaching is a demanding profession, and settling for the predigested opinions of educational authorities can save valuable time. But as the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau warns us in a passage Markos quotes, “If ever you substitute authority for reason in [a person’s] mind, he will stop reasoning and become the victim of other people’s opinions.”
This principle applies even as we consider Markos’s own interpretation of great thinkers. Take John Dewey, for instance, a noted progressive who wrote extensively on the goals of education in democratic societies. We could content ourselves with Markos’s reading of “Dewey’s intent,” “the logical and inevitable upshot of his vision,” and “the clear implication that underlies” a particular piece of his writing. Or we could allow the block quotes in Passing the Torch to direct us toward Dewey’s own words, from which we can make up our own minds. After all, as Markos notes, “if we are virtuous of mind,” his words “can no more hurt us than food can hurt a healthy body.”
Although Markos models lively engagement with a host of educators and texts, my guess is many readers of this apology for Christian education will be struck by the stark absence of scriptural engagement. The omission is deliberate. As Markos explains his approach, “I will follow the model of The Abolition of Man and draw on the wisdom of a wide range of Christian, non-Christian, and pre-Christian thinkers.”
In leaving the Bible largely to one side, Markos aims for broad-minded guidance that both public and private schools can usefully apply. However, I wonder whether this choice to pursue a middle way could narrow his readership, leaving Christians wanting something more scriptural and non-Christians wanting something more general.
This attempt at broad appeal also leads to some confusion when Markos uses pronouns like we and our. Some readers might reasonably assume he means “we Christians,” while others—also with good reason—might infer “we Americans” or “we educators.” Only as Markos’s argument develops does it become obvious that his primary focus is preserving American culture and heritage.
Given how Markos affirms the “centrality of definition to the educational enterprise,” it is surprising to find him largely assuming the meanings of foundational concepts—like the liberal arts, the humanities, and even goodness, truth, and beauty—rather than carefully defining them. One fascinating assumption he seems to share with John Dewey himself is that schools are the gatekeepers of culture. Readers wondering what role families and churches might play in the educational endeavor will need to look elsewhere.
At times, Markos drives so hard at the rational mind that he appears to forget that his readers, like students, have hearts and imaginations waiting to be reached by illustration and story. This imbalance is especially odd given his stated willingness to complement rational appeals with “romantic methods of pedagogy that emphasize experience and the cultivation of imagination, wonder, and awe.” Elsewhere, he doubles down: “Across time and place, the most effective way to teach children to pursue virtue and forsake vice has been to tell them stories.”
Is this not true for adults as well? After all, to use Markos’s words, “We are grown children.” For Passing the Torch to make its best apology, it would spend less time analyzing texts and more time telling stories.
Markos’s book is a worthy introduction to the modern movement for Christian classical education. As I see it, any deficiency in his latest work is common to the movement itself. We’ve reached the point, anyhow, of having more than enough apologies for its approach to forming minds. What the movement needs, most urgently, are habits of dwelling richly within the classical tradition and bringing it alive for others.
Consider an analogy from the realm of baking. I can study famous cookbooks. I can know all the ingredients, understand the logic of combining them this way or that, and memorize the exact internal temperature of a well-baked loaf. I can even study the history of recipes and chefs, learn the science of yeast and gluten structure, and research the best kitchen tools. But if I never put my fists in the dough, I am not a baker.
Cookbooks drive us to cook. Living books drive us to live. Classical circles love analyzing what Markos repeatedly calls the “Great Books,” but when culture is merely studied—even appreciated—it still remains functionally dead. Only when we live within it does it remain an active, burning torch we can pass to the next generation.
This brings us back to where we started—an old library with a cigar-toting schoolboy. It’s located on the second floor of a historic business club in downtown Pittsburgh. Clubs like these are libraries of rituals, patterns, tastes, appreciations, and relationships—in short, culture. How does an old club avoid becoming a museum? By continuing to live in those libraries, trusting they can handle the use.
Will we live in these old books? Specifically, what rituals, patterns, appreciations, and relationships will they cultivate in our homes, churches, and schools? Can 21st-century classical Christian education graduate from writing apologies to becoming communities that walk in the virtues, habits, and “excellencies” of God (1 Pet. 2:9, ESV)?
Homer will outlive our current educational moment. Generations to come will dust off Dante and rediscover his genius. And the Word of God needs no apologies. The question is not whether these Great Books will endure—but whether the classical movement is a firecracker or a flame.
Chad C. Ashby is the founding head of school at The Oaks Academy in Washington, Pennsylvania.
