Grab Educating For Virtue Authored By Joseph Baldaccino Viewable As Edition

This is a good collection of essays on education, primarily written by paleoconservatives in the latter years of the Reagan administration, Thinking about the value of literature and the classics can be difficult for we moderns, Pushed towards STEM and taught the humanities through the

lens of antiWestern criticism, it is often hard to get a grasp on the value of the great works of the West.
The biggest mental obstacle we must break through is that which prevents us from revering our ancestors and heritage, When we break through that, we can finally call the West and its greats our own, They have reached the pinnacle of human thought and have described the experience of the human subject as none before or since,

The true value of reading literature is to gain a correct will and imagination, Western literature from Homer tohas a certain moral framework, a normative structure by which its readers would learn how to act, By reading the moral impulses of characters and the author's description of them, we learn what is right and wrong, We learn about how love atones man and woman and how it breaks we learn about wickedness and evil we learn courage, duty, and accepting one's fate from the warriors of The Iliad and we learn of vanity and greed from hucksters.
All characters in literature are types of humans, people whom we recognize in our daily lives, Through the author's moral framework of life, literature modifies our will so that it is properly balanced, We learn what to hate, what to despise, and what to love,

The will and its objects color our entire perception, A historian has a vague feeling of events before they decide what facts to write about and what sources to cite, Was the French Revolution an exercise in the futility of idealism, a point of progress away from outdated monarchies, or the beginning of decadent liberalism One certainly has a moral feeling, based upon one's will, before one selects the facts.
If a society does not educate the will, then it will become a heterogenous mess of conflict and strife, Although such unity remains an impossibility in our multiethnic societies, even in a homogenous society one must have a homogenous education, A duty to one's ethny, a reverence for patriotic heroes, and a righteous faith must be indoctrinated a doctrine is simply a teaching, all education is indoctrination, Without these moral teachings, the youth will become replaceable economic atoms, ready to maximize skills but without a proper framework to use them in, They will sacrifice their kin and country for shortsighted economic and technological gains, thereby destroying the stock that made them the person who they are, Literature taught in a reverential way is an essential part of such an education of the will,

Furthermore, literature enhances our experience by providing us with metaphors through which we can see the world, After reading characters' observations and descriptions of life, we can incorporate them into our own so as to get a clearer perception of people, events, and nature, We also gain a more intense and poetical view of life, Instead of treating the universe as dead matter which we should analyze, we begin to see beauty and poetry in nature, Our vocabularies expand and our rhetoric strengthens, Ultimately, literature enhances the human experience the experience of the inner self, Call it soul, spirit, or mind, the human subject has such possibilities for rich experience that millions of pages have been written about it, The most valuable descriptions are those that have survived the test of time, and therefore they should be read the most,

Ultimately, literature gives us heroes for us to emulate, Our heroes are Western heroes: those who fought for us to live today those who defended their culture and civilization those who triumphed despite the worst hardships, They defended the Faustian soul and all of its accomplishments, No culturespirit has ever had so much impact on world history, We best recapture the finest works of that spirit and incorporate their relentless striving into our actions today, Decadence surrounds us, and barbarians are at the gates, They will not read our literature, The Iliad means nothing to them, It is our duty to protect our heritage, and so we must, Education comes first, and next teaching, Spread the word of the West and its high spirit to the youth, Feel your soul expressed in the works of our high art, 'Tis all you can do and what you can do, you should do,

Postscript:

The high school history curriculum in the earlys was to study Classical history freshman year, Medieval and Modern European history sophomore year, English history junior year, and American history and government senior year.
It is sad that notof college students get this education throughout their postsecondary studies, It is a worthy goal to selfteach yourself this curriculum if you did not learn it in your earlier years, Great set of essays. Bring a lot of sense to the contemporary confusion of modern ed, Very good. The best essays are "The Humanities and Moral Reality," by Claes G, Ryn, and "The Ethical Purpose of Literary Studies," by Russell Kirk, Solveig Eggerz's "Permanence and the History Curriculum" is also quite good, All of the authors helpfully describe the role of moral formation in education, particularly in literature and history classes, In Educating for Virtue, five scholars address one of the most pressing issues of our time: the relationship between education and the development of moral character, With essays by Claes G, Ryn, Russell Kirk, Paul Gottfried, Peter J, Stanlis, Solveig Eggerz.

 

From the Foreword:

 

“If there is a single thread that runs through these essays, it is the recognition of a universal order that transcends the flux of human life and gives meaning to it.
Insofar as men act in accordance with this order, they experience true happiness and are brought into community with others who are similarly motivated, But men are afflicted with contrary impulses that are destructive of universal order, When acted upon, these impulses bring suffering and a sense of meaninglessness and despair the result is disintegration and conflictwithin both the personality and society at large, Yet so tempting are the attactions of these impulses that they frequently prevail and must be taken into account in any realistic assessment of human affairs, This tension within the person between competing desiresthe conflict between what Plato called the One and the Manyis the ultimate reality of human experience, To apprehend this reality, and to act in the light of the transcendent purpose with appropriate reverence and restraint, is the essence of wisdom and to help deepen and strengthen this apprehensionthrough philosophy, history, literature, and the arts and sciencesis the overarching purpose of any education worthy of the name.
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