As I am about to launch an experiment in providing private college-level classes, going public tomorrow at at a 9/11 commemorative event, Titus’s post below on education and young men seemed coincidentally propitious, and to call me to lay my plans out here on Pomocon. I’m marketing the classes as “classical education,” and using slogans like these:
Great-Books Centered!
In-Person!
“Aristocratically-Populist”
Our first course will be one on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, beginning this October, and I hope to soon thereafter offer a shorter, eight-session course on the lives of Abigail and John Adams. If you’re a young man, or woman--or an older one too!--, in Utah’s Wasatch Front Area, you might want to attend. 5-7pm M & Th for the Toc. course. I already host the Provo Great Books Club (see our fb page), but this new venture will involve payments, albeit ones so inexpensive as to be mostly pro-forma.
If you’re interested, I’ve pamphlets but no web-page yet, so leave an inquiry in our comments, or write me, Dr. Carl Eric Scott, at 3214 N. University Ave., #231, Provo, UT 84604
I’m also marketing the classes as conducted entirely apart from the internet and as respecting free-choice on Covid-19 issues.
(All of the Utah public universities have recently foisted vaccination requirements on their students, and while it looks like recent Utah legislation will require these institutions to honor any student’s official request for a religious or a personal exemption, it’s not so clear how that will work. The student determined to get an exemption is likely going to have to submit some forms, and perhaps may have to stretch the truth--say, about what their religion explicitly teaches--if they are determined to get the exemption. I’m in any case hoping to lure some students away who are offended by this gross insult to their dignity and freedom.)
My model is basically as simple as the medieval one of, “Here’s a scholar, and if you want to hang out with him and get some instruction, here are the rules.” Here’s some more bits of my promotional language and class details:
No official credit, but a letter is written for the student who completes a course...
Meeting Places: Initially, at local eateries or other public locations.
AP&P is a supplement or alternative to institutional higher-ed. It can also serve the needs of more advanced high-school students. Home-schoolers and adult learners are welcome…
Higher education is in the early stages of a radical transition, which will likely see many institutions fail and/or become systematically hostile to non-conformist students. I estimate that 95% of them are too corrupt to be reformed; thus, it is not clear that in 20 years, their class credits and degrees will be all that valuable…
Grounded in populist-conservative political principles and Biblical religion.
If those who meet through my classes go on to establish political groups, or to become more serious about religion, I will welcome either development.
On that score, here is some language I have not put in my present pamphlets, but which does convey my view on the unavoidable connection b/t politics and education these days, something that Titus’s piece also hints at:
The ultimate aim of these classes is wisdom about the most important questions raised by human life. In better times, the labelling of AP&P’s principles as in some part “conservative” would be a distraction from this aim. However, due to the advanced corruption of 21st-century America, two facts confront students who want real liberal education.
First, such education is now largely absent in our colleges and universities, and finds itself struggling against the current whenever it seeks to reassert itself within them. It is telling that among the handful of schools that remain dedicated to classic liberal education…we notice at least one of the following commitments: a) a faculty not divided into departments (which means no distinct “majors”), b) governance by leaders sworn to foster Biblical religion, or, c) governance by leaders sworn to foster political conservatism. The current that is pulling higher education down into left-dominated and administrator-centric ruin has become so strong, that apparently, only schools with commitments that firm can resist it.
Second, the danger that American democracy will fall, leading to a splitting-apart of the Union or an imposition of despotism over all of it, has become an all-too plausible one, such that the alert student naturally feels a duty to think about how to best fight for America’s survival, and how to best prepare for the possibility of its collapse. This fight, if it is to have any healthy outcome, cannot be the hate-fantasy of “civil-war,” where “conservatives” finally get to put the words aside, and let the fists and bullets fly. …the truly key battle-fronts are ones of organization and education, and would remain so even in the worst-case scenarios of collapse. AP&P classes are designed for those wanting to be ready for the hard thinking that an era of fundamental political turmoil would impose. More generally, they are a response to the fact that if Generation Z becomes as poorly-educated as the Millennial one has been, democracy will fail in America.
Please let me know, PostmodernConservative readers, what you think of all that. And, here’s a puzzle for you: why do you think I’ve named this experiment Abigail, Plutarch & Paul?
(Originally, I toyed with the idea of Old-School, but despite the catchiness and ironic tilt, I just couldn’t go there… …the times cry out for the New.)
And say a prayer for this venture, if you’re religious. I’m quite aware that I could simply fail to get the word out to enough students, and that the odds against my AP&P are steep!
P.S. For those who want to pass on this info to any prospects--and no, to reiterate, this is not going to be a “long-distancing learning” Zoom-thing--here are a few of the course descriptions in the pamphlet:
Tocqueville Course (Fall 21)
A study of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which one scholar has called the “best book ever written on America, and the best book ever written on democracy.” We read the whole text, seeking to understand its prescient warnings about modern democratic society, and its vision for the practice of liberty. We also study a commentary by Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy. All in all, an opportunity to “sit at the feet” of one of the true sages of modern politics and sociology.
The King Course
22 sessions. Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. Reading-intensive--texts from Ellison, Branch, and Martin Luther King. We seek to understand Afro-American identity politics prior to our era of “Woke,” and the character of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.
American Principles Course
10-12 sessions. Declaration of Independence, other Founding-Era Documents, select Lincoln speeches, Supreme Court cases. America’s Founding considered both according to the “natural rights republic” thesis, and the “amalgamation” thesis.
Plutarch & Paul Course
24-26 sessions. Two giants of post-republican antiquity. 2/3 of course is devoted to Plutarch’s Lives, remainder to Paul’s letters and a biography.
Good luck with the venture, Carl. I like the title: Abigail (democracy), Plutarch (aristocracy) & Paul (Christianity). Looks to me like a great (pomocon) course on the meaning of virtue.