Although I’ve never been a big fan of Bob Dylan, I’ve always appreciated his genius, and especially his ability to capture the cultural Zeitgeist. A piece by Rod Dreher titled “Bob Dylan On The Road To Damascus” explains why he was so good at this. We learn from Dylan’s Nobel Prize speech that several books he read in grammar school, Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Odyssey, among others, influenced the way he saw the world, and thus wrote lyrics. Dreher comments that
He goes on to discuss those three novels, and how they affected his understanding of the world, and in turn, his music. One of the greatest popular musicians of the 20th century, the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, got his start in what we now call classical education — one that gives the student “a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by.”
I came later in life to an understanding and appreciation of classical education. Prior to the 20th century, and the efforts of a certain intellectual named John Dewey in the first half of that century, all Americans were classically educated. That is, they were taught the great works and ideas of Western civilization. Dewey’s influence fundamentally changed this by turning education into a progressive program that taught pragmatism as the ultimate value. In other words, what works became the highest good, not what is true, good in itself, or beautiful.
Thank God Bob Dylan’s primary educational influence didn’t come from John Dewey because pragmatism doesn’t make for great inspiration. Nor does it make for great human beings. Growth in character and virtue are secondary concerns of modern education. The goal, post Dewey, is to teach things that will help a person get a job and make the world a better place. This fits with the progressive idea that reality can be manipulated by the educated to provide any desirable outcome they want.
By contrast, classical education teaches what Dylan understood, that human nature and reality are not malleable. As he says, there is “a standard to measure things by.” Reality in this view, including human nature, is something to be explored and understood and worked with as such. As Christians we know that Utopia does not and can never exist from the doctrine of the Fall, that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God the world became a place inclined toward ruin. God’s creation, still good, now has the centrifugal force of sin constantly pulling on it.
Recognition of this force is why classical education is so powerful and effective. The ancient Greeks and Romans, along with the biblical writers, knew that education is more about understanding and working with what we discover in reality, rather than trying to transform it. Plato, using just one example, tried to come up with the idea of the perfect Republic, and by the end of his endeavor realized it was impossible. Classical education helps us understand why this is so that we might create a better if not perfect society.
It also helps those so inclined to write lyrics to songs that capture the world as we find it, not as we wish it were. Dylan, for example, would never pen lyrics like John Lennon’s Imagine. The world Lennon imagined didn’t end up like he imagined it; it wasn’t heaven above or hell below us that killed a hundred million people in the 20th century, but men who imagined such places didn’t exist.
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