Why a teacher should be an Aristotelian, not a Platonist

Someone once said that we are all either Platonists or Aristotelians. What does this mean, and why should it matter to those of us involved in education?

Perhaps the best way to explain is to use a famous painting. In “The School of Athens,” Raphael portrays Plato and Aristotle walking toward the viewer. Plato is pointing up, while Aristotle is gesturing down. Raphael did this very intentionally to show us, in a picture, the different way the two men thought.

Plato thought that the things that were most real were ideas, while Aristotle thought that the most real things were things. Plato taught that everything has an essence or nature: every man shares a human nature; every dog shares a dog nature; every tree shares a tree nature; and so on. The natures or essences themselves were not in the things, but existed in a sort of heavenly realm, and every example of these natures in this world—every man, or dog, or tree—is an imperfect representation of the nature that exists apart from any actual thing in this heavenly realm.

It is this heavenly realm that Plato is pointing to in Raphael’s painting.

Aristotle, on the other hand, while he believed in natures and essences too, believed they resided in the things themselves. Human nature was not in some heavenly realm, but in each and every man; dog nature was in each and every dog, and tree nature was in each and every tree.

This is why Raphael has Aristotle gesturing down, toward the Earth.

In the Christian way of looking at things, which involves the idea of the Incarnation of God in the flesh, the essences, the natures (what have been called the “transcendent ideas”) are not completely transcendent: they are incarnated in the world.

There are a lot of implications to the thinking of these two great philosophers, but one of them has to do with how we teach. One of the great insights of classical education is that we often mistakenly try to teach from the top down rather than the bottom up. We start with abstractions and work downward toward the concrete rather than the other way around. This is one of the most egregious mistakes a teacher can make.

There is an order of knowledge and an order of learning—and they are different. In the order of knowledge, the most important things come first. In the order of learning, they often come last. Teaching commonly involves a very counter-intuitive principle: that you begin with the least important thing and work toward the most important.

This is what we do when we teach reading: we start with the least important thing—sounding out words—and work toward the most important thing: understanding what we read. In math, we begin with mere calculation, which, in the total scheme of things, is really not very important, and we work toward the mathematical concepts and principles.

The educational landscape is littered with the corpses of educational reform efforts that ignored this proper sequence. The whole language movement attempted to bypass the seemingly trivial skill of sounding out words in favor of the more important goal of “understanding.” The New Math committed the equally egregious sin of teaching children mathematical concepts before they grasped the less glamorous procedures of math. The result has been several generations who can neither read nor understand, and who can neither understand concepts nor calculate.

When it comes to teaching, we should be Aristotelians, not Platonists.

The Tiller murder

There is, of course, a lot of discussion regarding yesterday's murder of George Tiller, who made a living performing late-term abortions in Kansas. Although no one really knows yet, everyone is assuming the perpetrator is a prolife activist. That is, of course, a reasonable assumption.

Killing babies for a living has a way of making people think less of you.

There are a lot of ironies in this case, one being why a person who presumes to be an activist in an organization whose purpose is to save lives would act to take a life. But the world is full of ironies. I once saw a talk show on which the guest, a pacifist, got so aggravated at the host that he took a swing at him.

Another, perhaps more significant irony is that the very utilitarian logic that is the only rationale for such an action ("If I kill the abortion doctor, I will save lives") is the same logic that leads people like George Tiller to do what they do. But you can't fight utilitarianism with utilitarianism. It only breeds more utilitarianism.

Maybe there is a utilitarian argument for eliminating utilitarians, but only a utilitarian would be convinced by it.

Obviously the murder will be turned to the propaganda advantage pro-abortion groups. They will portray it as an example of where the prolife position leads, when, in fact, such actions are blatant violations of everything the movement stands for. That will give them the rhetorical advantage and benefit their case.

But how can you blame them? They're utilitarians. That's what they do.

Americans still strongly oppose same-sex "marriage"

Here is Robert Schlesinger in U. S. News on Gallup's latest poll:

According to the poll, a strong majority of Americans (57 percent) continue to oppose gay marriage (with 40 percent favoring it). The good news is that in digging deeper one can find some reasons for optimism.

First the bad news: Gallup notes that support for gay marriage has come a long way since it first asked the question in 1996 (when Americans opposed it by 68 percent to 27 percent), but the progress has essentially stalled in the last five years, with support in the low 40s and opposition in the upper 50s.

All you gotta do is replace 'bad' with 'good', and 'pessimism' with 'optimism'. Schlesinger is obviously impatient with Americans whose moral convictions are not directly indexed to constantly evolving convictions of the cultural elite.

In other words, if he doesn't like it, it's got to be good.

Herald-Leader on Jack Conway's potential conflict of interest on video slots

I was quoted in the Lexington Herald-Leader last Friday:

Martin Cothran, the head of Say No to Casinos, declined to comment on a potential conflict for Conway because he believes another legal opinion would be moot.

"Lawyers don't have the final say on constitutional amendments," Cothran said. "Voters have the final say."

AP runs quotes on slots at tracks

The Associated Press quotes me in its story on slots at tracks on Sunday. It was picked up by Phillyburbs.com:

"We have Kentuckians who are losing their jobs, who are being put on furlough by their employers, and who can't pay their mortgages," Cothran said. "The solution to that is not fattening the bank account of Churchill Downs. This is a millionaires' bailout."

"Did you say Heidegger?"

I attended a wedding this weekend in which my son, Thomas, who is a fair expert in the philosopher of Martin Heidegger, was the best man. Upon arriving at the reception, he told me a funny story.

While back at the wedding, the groom reminded him that, as the best man, he was obliged to offer a toast at the newlyweds. "That's fine," he said. "But you do realize that I always mention Heidegger when I give a speech?"

"No one cares about Heidegger," said the groom, dismissively--at which point the minister, standing behind them and catching the last part of the comment, said, interested, "Did you say Heidegger?"

Obama adds another Ivy Leager to the Supreme Court

As S. M. Oliva at the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out, in regard to Obama's new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Obama has contributed to diversity on the Court by ... appointing another Ivy League judge.

And everyone knows how under represented they are on the Court.

My opinion piece on the unconstitutionality of video slots runs in Herald-Leader

Well, I didn't even notice it until yesterday, but the Lexington Herald-Leader ran my piece on the unconstitutionality of video slot machines at horse tracks last Thursday.

The Health Care Competiveness Fallacy

From Harvard economist Greg Mankiw's Blog:

A common argument, often made by ostensibly sophisticated commentators, is that the United States needs to reform its health care system to maintain its international competitiveness. Regardless of your views of health care reform, this particular argument is, to put it bluntly, nonsense.

His article is a commentary on Paul Krugman's piece in the Foreign Affairs.

"Looking for an Honest Man: Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist," by Leon Kass

Leon Kass, one of our now 11 Modern Wise Men, in his 2003 Jefferson Lecture:

Everyone has heard the story of Diogenes the Cynic who went around the sunlit streets of Athens, lantern in hand, looking for an honest man. This same Diogenes, when he heard Plato being praised for defining man as “an animal, biped and featherless,” threw a plucked chicken into the Academy, saying, “Here is Platonic man!” These tales display Diogenes’ cynicism as both ethical and philosophical: he is remembered for mocking the possibility of finding human virtue and for mocking the possibility of knowing human nature. In these respects, the legendary Diogenes would feel right at home today in many an American university, where a professed interest in human nature and human excellence—or, more generally, in truth and goodness—invites reactions ranging from mild ridicule for one’s naiveté to outright denunciation for one’s attraction to such discredited and dangerous notions.

Tracing the stories about Diogenes the Cynic to their source, in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, one discovers that the apocryphal story is somewhat embroidered if not incorrect. Yes, Diogenes lit a lantern in broad daylight, but he did not say he was looking for an honest man. What he said was, “I am looking for [or ‘seeking’] human being”—anthrôpon zeto—either a human being or the human being, either an exemplar or the idea of humanity, or both. To be sure, purporting to seek the answer by means of candlepower affirms Diogenes’ badge as cynic. But the picture also suggests a man who refuses to be taken in by complacent popular beliefs that we already know human goodness from our daily experience or by confident professorial claims that we can capture the mystery of our humanity in definitions. But mocking or not, and perhaps speaking better than he knew, Diogenes gave elegantly simple expression to the humanist quest for self-knowledge: I seek the human being—my human being, your human being, our humanity. In fact, the embellished version of Diogenes’ question comes to the same thing: to seek an honest man is, at once, to seek a human being worthy of the name, an honest-to-goodness exemplar of the idea of humanity, a truthful and truth-speaking embodiment of the animal having the power of articulate speech.

Read the rest here.

New federal hate crimes legislation taking liberties with (and in violation of) the Constitution

Why don't we just suspend habeas corpus while we're at it:

Under current law, crimes motivated by bias against a victim's race, color, religion, or national origin can be prosecuted by the federal government, so long as the victim had been engaged in a "federally-protected activity" - attending a public school, for example, or being in a place of public accommodation or entertainment. The proposed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which passed the House last month and is pending in the Senate, would significantly broaden the federal government's reach.

The bill, named for a gay college student beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998, would add four new categories of hate crimes to the federal code: those committed because of someone's sex, sexual orientation, gender (or transgender) identity, and disability. It would eliminate the prerequisite of a "federally-protected activity" and require instead only the loosest connection to interstate commerce. And the proposed legislation would make it far easier for defendants acquitted in state court to be retried at the federal level - a circumvention of the Fifth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy that has prompted four members of the US Civil Rights Commission to publicly oppose the bill.

See the rest of Jeff Jacoby's article about new federal hate crimes legislation here.

What health care could cost when it's free

Increasing evidence that P. J. O'Roarke's warning ("If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free") was right on target:

To pay for an overhaul of the nation's health system, Senate leaders have formally laid out proposals for new taxes on everything from employer-sponsored health-care benefits and nonprofit hospitals to alcohol and sugary drinks.

A bipartisan outline released Monday by the Senate Finance Committee suggests peeling back a number of tax exemptions to pay for expanding health insurance to the nation's 46 million uninsured. They are just options at this point, but they signal where lawmakers are headed as they try to pass a health-care package by August.

Read more here.