the republic

Last night we went to my parents' house in Chappaqua for dinner. We ended up staying late, as we usually do. My father, who has been a businessman all his working life, loves to talk about my company. He is also a great talker and I think even Ellie, who hears enough about the company as it is, enjoys these talks.

"Has running your company made you want to join the foreign legion yet?" he'll say. "What's the latest scandal?"

Then he will seriously listen to the issues I'm facing and often give me good advice.

I don't always talk about my goals for the company with my chief academic officer the way I do with my father. The fact is, in spite of my dream of reforming the classroom, I really want to preserve and revitalize the best parts of traditional education, not replace them, and it's hard to talk about this with modern educators.

For instance, while I argue for leading students to make discoveries for themselves through small lesson modules, I think that students should be able to comprehend and absorb larger narratives-and this is essential to any study of the humanities. My previous post against traditional education may seem to contradict this, but that's because I simply overstated my case.

What's more, modern educators don't give much thought to preparing students to decide how to live life. They are primarily concerned with making students more competitive as workers. This leads them not only to design narrow curriculum, but to read narrowly. I was surprised when my CAO admitted that he had never read Plato's Republic. He can tell you anything you'd like to know about Piaget or John Dewey, but he doesn't know the first thing about Plato's Republic.

"Dad, what do you think Plato would say about our educational system?"

He raised his brows and looked briefly towards his library, which was just on the other side of the hall.

"Well, I think he'd say it's a shame people aren't reading his books."

No doubt.