Category: Bulletin

Miguel Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quixote, was considered “the final and greatest utterance of the human mind” by Doestoevsky, and was voted the best book ever written in a survey of top authors. Cervantes begins his prologue by speaking to the “Idle Reader”; the work presents a sustained reflection on the impact that the new reading culture had on 17th century Spanish society. Near the end of volume one, a learned clergyman reflects on the good, bad, and ugly of fictional writing, in words from which today’s creative writers can learn.

Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter XLVII

The canon and his servants were surprised anew when they heard Don Quixote's strange story, and when it was finished he said, "To tell the truth, senor curate, I for my part consider what they call books of chivalry to be mischievous to the State; and though, led by idle and false taste, I have read the beginnings of almost all that have been printed, I never could manage to read any one of them from beginning to end; for it seems to me they are all more or less the same thing; and one has nothing more in it than another; this no more than that.

“And in my opinion this sort of writing and composition is of the same species as the fables they call the Milesian, nonsensical tales that aim solely at giving amusement and not instruction, exactly the opposite of the apologue fables which amuse and instruct at the same time. And though it may be the chief object of such books to amuse, I do not know how they can succeed, when they are so full of such monstrous nonsense. For the enjoyment the mind feels must come from the beauty and harmony which it perceives or contemplates in the things that the eye or the imagination brings before it; and nothing that has any ugliness or disproportion about it can give any pleasure.

“What beauty, then, or what proportion of the parts to the whole, or of the whole to the parts, can there be in a book or fable where a lad of sixteen cuts down a giant as tall as a tower and makes two halves of him as if he was an almond cake? And when they want to give us a picture of a battle, after having told us that there are a million of combatants on the side of the enemy, let the hero of the book be opposed to them, and we have perforce to believe, whether we like it or not, that the said knight wins the victory by the single might of his strong arm. And then, what shall we say of the facility with which a born queen or empress will give herself over into the arms of some unknown wandering knight? What mind, that is not wholly barbarous and uncultured, can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full of knights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, and will be to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land of Prester John of the Indies, or some other that Ptolemy never described nor Marco Polo saw?

“And if, in answer to this, I am told that the authors of books of the kind write them as fiction, and therefore are not bound to regard niceties of truth, I would reply that fiction is all the better the more it looks like truth, and gives the more pleasure the more probability and possibility there is about it. Plots in fiction should be wedded to the understanding of the reader, and be constructed in such a way that, reconciling impossibilities, smoothing over difficulties, keeping the mind on the alert, they may surprise, interest, divert, and entertain, so that wonder and delight joined may keep pace one with the other; all which he will fail to effect who shuns verisimilitude and truth to nature, wherein lies the perfection of writing.

“I have never yet seen any book of chivalry that puts together a connected plot complete in all its numbers, so that the middle agrees with the beginning, and the end with the beginning and middle; on the contrary, they construct them with such a multitude of members that it seems as though they meant to produce a chimera or monster rather than a well-proportioned figure. And besides all this they are harsh in their style, incredible in their achievements, licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly in their arguments, absurd in their travels, and, in short, wanting in everything like intelligent art; for which reason they deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthless breed."

The curate listened to him attentively and felt that he was a man of sound understanding, and that there was good reason in what he said; so he told him that, being of the same opinion himself, and bearing a grudge to books of chivalry, he had burned all Don Quixote's, which were many; and gave him an account of the scrutiny he had made of them, and of those he had condemned to the flames and those he had spared.

The canon was not a little amused, adding that though he had said so much in condemnation of these books, still he found one good thing in them, and that was the opportunity they afforded to a gifted intellect for displaying itself; for they presented a wide and spacious field over which the pen might range freely, describing shipwrecks, tempests, combats, battles, portraying a valiant captain with all the qualifications requisite to make one, showing him sagacious in foreseeing the wiles of the enemy, eloquent in speech to encourage or restrain his soldiers, ripe in counsel, rapid in resolve, as bold in biding his time as in pressing the attack; now picturing some sad tragic incident, now some joyful and unexpected event; here a beauteous lady, virtuous, wise, and modest; there a Christian knight, brave and gentle; here a lawless, barbarous braggart; there a courteous prince, gallant and gracious; setting forth the devotion and loyalty of vassals, the greatness and generosity of nobles.

"Or again," said he, "the author may show himself to be an astronomer, or a skilled cosmographer, or musician, or one versed in affairs of state, and sometimes he will have a chance of coming forward as a magician if he likes. He can set forth the craftiness of Ulysses, the piety of Aeneas, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, the treachery of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, the generosity of Alexander, the boldness of Caesar, the clemency and truth of Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato, and in short all the faculties that serve to make an illustrious man perfect, now uniting them in one individual, again distributing them among many; and if this be done with charm of style and ingenious invention, aiming at the truth as much as possible, he will assuredly weave a web of bright and varied threads that, when finished, will display such perfection and beauty that it will attain the worthiest object any writing can seek, which, as I said before, is to give instruction and pleasure combined; for the unrestricted range of these books enables the author to show his powers, epic, lyric, tragic, or comic, and all the moods the sweet and winning arts of poesy and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be written in prose just as well as in verse."

In preparing for our recent issue devoted to grammar, I watched an hour-long documentary recommended by a colleague, Grammar Revolution, a well-done “indie” that investigated the debates among academics that contributed to the demise of formal grammar teaching. I was surprised to see segments with Lisa VanDamme, founder of VanDamme Academy (VDA) in Aliso Viejo, California, and the mother of a recent student of mine. This led to the discovery that the documentary was conceived, produced, filmed and directed by two teachers from VDA, David and Elizabeth O'Brien. I was intrigued – two elementary teachers put this together? I smelled a good story, and was not disappointed.

David and Elizabeth are adventurous spirits. “Fun” ideas not only attract them, but lead them to action. What they find fun is exceptional. They graduated from The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with degrees in Philosophy and Education respectively. After a summer’s work at Glacier National Park in Montana, they decided to tour the country. They had discovered some lectures on the philosophy of education by Lisa that impressed them, so they reached out to see if they could visit her school. They stayed several days, before continuing on their way. When they were in Florida, they got a call from Lisa asking if they would like to teach for her. “That sounds fun,” so they did.

During college, Elizabeth had discovered that grammar is fun; at VanDamme Academy, she found that teaching grammar to students is also fun. Elizabeth’s answer to why she is so passionate about grammar is, “I love grammar because I used to hate grammar.” Elizabeth had little exposure to grammar during her K-12 years. It mainly came up in high school, when composition teachers would speak of things like “verbals” and “adjectival clauses” as though students should know, but she didn’t even know what verbs and adjectives were. Her ignorance made her feel embarrassed and frustrated when she tried to explain grammar concepts to ESL (English as a Second Language) students. So she took a grammar course from an excellent professor who showed her that grammar makes sense, and that sentence analysis, aided by diagrams, becomes a fun puzzle exercise.

In 2008 she began sharing with other teachers her joyful, logical, puzzle-ing approach to grammar. Over the years she has served hundreds of teachers through her Grammar Revolution site. Most teachers of grammar expect students to memorize by rote and to learn pattern recognition for the sake of completing worksheets and passing quizzes. Elizabeth believes that diagrams lead to real learning and effective teaching. Diagrams help students visualize the logical connections among the elements of a sentence. Diagramming makes grammar meaningful for students, and makes them more active. They learn to attack a sentence as a whole, deconstruct it, recognize that nouns do noun jobs, and then that other groups of words can also do noun-jobs. David likened normal grammar worksheets to “those blank maps of the US where you learned to fill in the names of states. That doesn’t last. But if you were challenged to describe the shape of each state, you might remember it better.” Elizabeth pointed out that teaching grammar in connection with diagrams forces teachers to proceed in a logical, hierarchical order.

David’s journey into grammar began with teaching at VDA. “Learning grammar while teaching at Lisa’s school was eye-opening, a revelation! While I was studying for my philosophy degree, I fancied myself a word-smith. Looking back, I realize I was just cramming words in that sounded good, but the papers were really unclear.” David’s teaching of grammar became practically fruitful for him when he entered law school. He aced the Legal Research and Writing diagnostic quiz! A couple of internships during law school convinced David - “prematurely probably” - that it wasn’t going to be the right kind of fun for him; on the other hand, teaching philosophy and law at a classical high school – “Now that is fun!”

David had long been interested in another kind of fun – making a movie. Elizabeth suggested that grammar could provide an exciting movie topic. David agreed, and he was especially interested in further exploring ideological conflicts within education and within grammar. He had followed a series of essays referred to as the “grammar wars” in issues of the Atlantic monthly. The battle was characterized as one of descriptivists vs prescriptivists, that is, the new way of using grammar to merely describe how people speak and write vs. the old way of using grammar to train people to speak and write well.

“We were ignorant and wanted to learn,” said David. They were not only ignorant of the controversy, but also about making a documentary. But, having raised $25,000 through KickStarter – most of it from teachers who had benefited from Elizabeth’s work – David purchased some middle of the line equipment and paid for some hours of over-coffee conversations with people who knew how to film. Filming wasn’t too hard, but he learned later that post-production work was beyond him. “We should have been more ambitious in our Kickstarter campaign!”

They were surprised by how easy it was to get interviews with big names in the controversy.  They started with John McWhorter, cultural commentator and professor of linguistics at Columbia University. “Once he agreed, it opened the doors to others.” But David and Elizabeth were humbled and surprised by the interviews. “When we started, we were motivated by the desire to defend prescriptive against descriptive grammar. But the conversations showed us how intelligent, reasonable, and above us all the thinkers were.” It also revealed that the major thinkers didn’t disagree as much as they had thought. “Everyone interviewed agreed that standard English should be taught, except the education professor, who saw teaching standard grammar as imposing a power structure. The others recognized that standard English is the language you need to succeed.”

David and Elizabeth learned a lot about grammar and language. “Grammar debates are not like mathematics, where there is a clear difference between correct and incorrect answers. Standard English is a preferred dialect, but its usage is not always simply right. For example, in other languages, double negatives are standard.” They point out that what is standard in English has changed over time. Change is so natural to language that it has patterns. Garner’s Modern American Usage details five stages of language change, from when some usage is a mistake to when it becomes widely accepted.

“In spite of the agreement on the need to teach standard English, many linguists are oblivious as to the actual consequences of their denigration of Standard English.” David pointed me toward one segment of bonus footage available from the documentary. After hearing from Bryan Garner about the importance of grammar for maintaining the literary traditions of standard English, and Steven Pinker about the impossibility of actually slowing down the change taking place in usage, the camera turns to a student at the University of Minnesota in the linguistics department and the education department, who was uncomfortable with the idea of teaching standard grammar at all. “Of course, there is more than mere linguistic anti-prescriptivism behind the student's hostility toward Standard English and literacy, but it has had an impact on her.”

Elizabeth and David are happy that their efforts are helping those who want to teach grammar make it fun and fruitful for their students. “Even more than its practical effects, grammar shows you how beautiful and interesting language is.”

Dear Reader,

In this issue of the Arts of Liberty Bulletin, we continue to reflect upon issues related to grammar, as well as get to know some amazing teachers. Traditionally, grammar referred directly to the art of crafting and analyzing sentences, but more generally to the art of learning to read great works well. In our last issue, we looked at the liberating effects of learning the art of grammar and the help that diagramming offers. This issue features an interview with a pair of teachers-turned-producers of a “revolutionary” documentary on grammar, and another with an AoL collaborator, who shares insights from her experience of  teaching literature as both a scholar and fiction author. We also draw upon Don Quixote for literary insights of his creator, Miguel Cervantes.

The past several months have begun a new journey for the Arts of Liberty Project. Over the decade and a half since its founding, the project has received tremendous assistance from the Center for Thomas More Studies and the University of Dallas. In November, we decided to take the difficult but important step of founding our own independent institute. We believe this will enable us to better fulfill our mission of providing leadership and instruction to the growing number of teachers and scholars involved in the educational reform movement in our country and around the world. We will provide more information in the coming months.

In other news, AoL Senior Fellow Erik Ellis completed his first semester as an assistant professor of education in the new Master’s of Classical Education program at Hillsdale College, and was introduced to the community in an interview in their student newspaper. Erik spent the past three years at Universidad de los Andes (Chile), where he helped launch a Great Books program, and is looking forward to helping promote liberal education efforts in South America. Jeff Lehman, Erik, and I participated in the Center for Thomas Studies annual conference. I gained a much greater understanding of the role of Providence in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy through our discussions; my paper, “Drawing Near to God: Lady Philosophy as Physician in the Consolation” will appear in an upcoming edition of Moreana.

Let us continue to labor to form ourselves in the Arts of Liberty, and extend the blessings of liberty to the next generation.

Dear Reader,

This month’s Arts of Liberty Bulletin focuses on the study of grammar, one of the traditional liberal arts that has been neglected and rejected in the recent past. I give my reasons for thinking traditional grammar study performs a crucial role in training the mind and forming the soul. I also am happy to share a delightful essay on the beauty of diagramming sentences by Jared Dyzbinski, which he wrote for my summer Trivium course.

President Jeff Lehman and I had a busy summer, including a week in Rome laying the groundwork for what we hope will be future programs. The highlight was an architectural tour of San Clemente, which is built over earlier churches and structures going back to the time of Nero’s fire.

I was pleasantly surprised to be named the winner of the Circe Institute’s Paideia Prize honoring those who have contributed significantly to the revival of liberal arts education. Past winners include Eva Brann, Wendell Berry, Laura and Mark Berquist, and David Hicks.

Last month, Dr. Lehman and Fellow Erik Ellis presented their plans for an anthology of foundational texts on the quadrivium at a gathering of leaders in classical education at the Davenant House in South Carolina. We look forward to announcing more quadrivium initiatives in the coming months. Later this month, I will be in San Diego to lead an academic retreat on Christopher Dawson’s Crisis of Western Education for the Valor Institute.

Let us continue to labor to form ourselves in the Arts of Liberty, and extend the blessings of liberty to the next generation.

"It Changed My Life!"

State Senator Paul Boyer (R-AZ) attributes his introduction to liberal education to politics -- in a very accidental way. The day he was sworn in as a state representative was the day, according to Arizona’s Constitution, that he had to resign from his much higher paying job as spokesman for Mesa Public schools. Teaching remains the only exception to the Arizona ban on public employment for elected officials, so Boyer began teaching at Veritas Preparatory Academy, the first of the Great Hearts Academies network of liberal arts schools whose motto is “Where ancient books live and breathe”. Boyer was hired to teach the tenth grade Humane Letters course – 500 years of modern European history integrated with daily two-hour seminar discussions of authors ranging from Plato to Mary Shelley to Rousseau to Dostoevsky.

Boyer had never encountered anything like this course in his own education so he had to spend hours and hours reading to prepare for the discussions. “Thankfully, I had some reading time built in – state representatives never stop talking until each one has said everything everyone else has already said. So I spent much time reading great texts in the Members’ Lounge rather than hear the same floor speeches several times.”

Though his first year was tough, he discovered he loved teaching. He also noticed that the more he read great authors, the more he led discussions of them, the better he became as a legislator. The daily process of asking questions, listening attentively, and looking carefully at difficult texts developed habits of mind that carried over into investigating challenging policy areas, conversations with lobbyists, and speaking persuasively. Recently Boyer has been working to address Arizona’s pressing water concerns, collaborating with Mexican officials to work out details of a possible multi-billion dollar desalination plant in the Sea of Cortez.

In 2017, Boyer entered the University of Dallas’s Masters of Classical Education program. “I have gained much greater depth in my understanding and practice of liberal education. The professors have helped me begin to see the layers of meaning in the texts of master teachers like Plato and Augustine I would never have arrived at on my own. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave made me wonder how much of what we discuss either on the campaign trail or in the chambers of the Senate itself are merely shadows of artifacts, three times removed from reality, and thus inconsequential. So I always attempt to focus on things that matter.” With success -- a September article in Arizona Central credited Boyer with three of 2021’s most impactful pieces of legislation.

Boyer says he thinks much more clearly now because of the training he received in the Trivium course. “I had never diagrammed sentences before; now I can provide a complete grammatical analysis of Shakespeare’s St. Crispin Day speech!” Boyer’s study of rhetoric made him understand that persuasive power must always aim at educating in truth. He discovered that education should turn the inner eye of students to reality, so that they will become free and capable of governing themselves.

Boyer is not hesitant to encourage Veritas graduates and others blessed to have had a serious liberal education to enter politics. “We need good people in politics that have the courage that made Socrates vote against popular but unjust convictions. Not only has my UD program made me more articulate in how I communicate ideas in committees and during Floor debates, but it’s also helped me to place an emphasis on the true, the good, and the beautiful, giving me more conviction as I argue for timeless truths in the public arena.” He himself is going in another direction -- he plans to devote himself to full-time teaching after the end of his current term. “If Plato and Aristotle are right about how democracy morphs into tyranny, then we’re in trouble as a nation unless we make some major changes, I think starting with our approach to K12 education in particular as a country.”

"Where a Passion for Liberal Learning Leads"

Winston Elliott III has always been driven. From his youthful engagement in politics, to his passionate pursuit of money, to his devotion to promoting free market constitutionalism, Elliott has done nothing with less than 100% intensity. For the past 15 years, his passion for liberal learning has led him to a Master’s degree from St. John’s College, to organizing hundreds of Great Books seminars, to founding a successful online journal of public discourse, to the board of Wyoming Catholic College, and finally to teaching the books he has come to love.

Winston became a reader partly as an act of rebellion from a family that had no interest in books. He enjoyed reading beyond his grade level -- The Godfather was a major achievement during his elementary school years -- but he never dreamed of discussing them with others until his 9th grade teacher arranged for weekly Junior Great Books sessions. “I had a lot of first dates after that, because I would always bore them by talking non-stop about some book I was reading.”

Two of those books determined the early course of his life. Allan Drury’s political thriller, Come Nineveh, Come Tyre, led him at 15 to found a Young Republicans group to fight communism. Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead inspired him more profoundly. He picked up Rand because an idealistic Congressman featured in the Washington Post named her as a favorite author. Her ideals captured his soul.

Elliott is not the first I have known to have been challenged or inspired by the secular, libertarian visionary. Elliott explained the fascination. “Rand’s heroes are like secular saints. They are completely devoted to being rational and productive. In their own way, they are virtuous men and women of high ideals, totally committed to achieving success and happiness through productivity. They don’t let any ties of family or romance hold them back. Atlas Shrugged ends with the formation of a community of such heroes -- how could I not want to be a part of that?” Elliott became an atheist evangelizer, even getting himself invited to church meetings so he could proselytize Christians. “Thankfully, I never succeeded with people who really had faith, only with those who didn’t, or who felt they had been betrayed by Christianity.”

Elliott went to a liberal arts college, but he later realized he hadn’t been liberally educated. “I majored in history, but really knew nothing about other branches of learning.” Immediately after graduating, he drove to Houston, whose entrepreneurial freedom would provide the perfect environment in which to pursue his Randian dream of making billions. Ten years later, he was well on his way, having founded a multi-million dollar computer company with 40 employees, while simultaneously completing his MBA. “The MBA helped a lot with my business. But it also made me realize that I loved the theory of making money more than the 80 hour weeks necessary to actually make it.” So he sold the company.

After a brief retirement playing tennis and reading Austrian economists, in 1992 Elliott became President of the Free Enterprise Institute, where he organized large and small seminars aimed at promoting libertarian constitutionalism to teachers. Yet he found himself most interested by the speakers who stepped beyond the boundaries of free market capitalism into broader issues of history, literature, the liberal arts, and culture. He began reading Russell Kirk, whose conservative vision was formed by the likes of poet and critic T.S. Eliot and religious sociologist Christopher Dawson. At the same time, he was questioning his Randian ideals. “I began to realize that, if I died, I would not want anyone that I knew to raise my children. Free market libertarians are smart and often succeed, but they are not nice. Rand preached and lived the ‘virtue of selfishness’; the world beyond her heroes consisted of the enemies of heroes and the despicable rest.”

Elliott came to Jesus while reading the “Genius of Christianity”, a chapter in Kirk’s The Roots of American Order over breakfast at Denny’s. “I freaked out when he described Augustine’s conversion. Tolle lege! I stumbled out into the parking lot, called Barbara (his future wife), and said, ‘You know that whole prayer thing you do. Can we do that now?’”

Kirk continued to form Elliott intellectually. “I hope our conservatism will be... a conservatism illuminated by the wisdom of our ancestors and inspired by a revived consciousness of the moral nature of society." Elliott began reading more broadly in the great books pointed out by writers like Kirk. Gradually he became convinced that discussing great books was the most effective way to learn. “As head of FEI, I brought in the best lecturers available. After 15 years, I realized I was just providing intellectual entertainment. So often, the more appealing the lecture, the less anyone remembered its content.” So he turned FEI’s programs into great books discussions. “Not only does the participant benefit from the reading, but through discussion its impact is felt and remembered long after they have returned home.”

Reading and discussing has had a great impact on Elliott himself: “To paraphrase the historian Will Durant:  We study great books as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists,  poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach, carve, and sing.” Elliott evidently delights in passing that on to others, through FEI seminars, The Imaginative Conservative journal he founded in 2010, and now teaching his favorite books, like The Acts of the Apostles, at the Honors College of Houston Baptist University. “I make my students face the radicality of the ancient church. They don’t like that the early Christians sold everything and tried to live communally. But they need to see that Christians need to be 'all-in' on Christ.” Elliott certainly is.