Diversity in Classical Schools
Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Robert Garrow at Golden View Classical Academy to discuss diversity in classical schools. As I’ve mentioned before, I give a lot of school tours and it’s not uncommon for questions about curriculum, student population, and even staff population to come up.
These are tricky questions to address and I think that many find a classical school’s approach (or at least this classical school’s approach) to be a bit unconventional. I’ve learned, though, that there are few individuals as equipped to answer these kinds of questions as Dr. Robert Garrow. He kindly consented to an interview for the benefit of all CSC readers.
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Q: Depending on who you ask, you’re likely to hear that the curriculum taught at classical schools isn’t diverse. What do you think of that?
I think the first problem is that the question should be: is the curriculum good? You can have a good curriculum that covers any number of things. To say that it’s not diverse and therefore bad is, I think, a mistake. You could teach just Shakespeare and still have a good literature curriculum - because Shakespeare is good.
When people say that something is not diverse they may say it for a variety of reasons, but one is that they think a classical curriculum like ours is just white or male or European. But that’s just wrong - and wrong from the perspective of Europeans themselves. You can find Roman authors writing in 100 BC where they are afraid of the Germans because they were white, which means the Romans did not consider themselves white. So you can’t just collapse them all into “white, European, male.” That would be silly given our knowledge of history.
Even still, critics of classical schools have the burden of showing why something is bad because it’s white, male, or European. What is particularly bad about being white? What is particularly bad about being male? It is factually true that white people enslaved Africans in America. That is obviously true and obviously bad. It is also true that Africans enslaved Africans, Chinese enslaved Chinese, and Japanese and Koreans, etc. At some point, you can look at every civilization and say “They’ve oppressed people.” And then, you either have to throw out all of history and learn nothing or be intellectually dishonest and pick out things that you don’t like.
“There is an idea that in order for a curriculum to be legitimate, you have to be representative of every culture. You need a book for Australia, a book for Africa…But if we play by those rules then at some point we are going to exclude someone simply because of time constraints.
We have to choose, so how do we do that? We have to fall back on: What are the best books?”
Q: How do you think diversity contributes to schools and individual classrooms?
When people say “diversity” they mean race, gender, and class. That comes from the idea that those are the fundamental categories that shape your interests and - if we want to be extreme about it - shape your mind and ideas.
But if you back up and acknowledge that all people are created equal in their natural rights and they all have different minds, then diversity means the variety of ways that those minds are expressed and used. Now, people may think differently because of their upbringing, gender, and class; and I’ll be the first to admit that your background is going to give you certain opinions, but it isn’t determined.
If your parents got divorced when you were a young kid, that is going to shape how you look at relationships. Did you grow up poor and become rich or visa versa? Are you from another country? All of these things will shape some of what you think. But your experience doesn’t necessarily change your opinion of certain things - like well-defined truths. Take Algebra, for example. In a field like math, no one thinks that your class or race defines what’s true, or if they do, they’re wrong about what math is, and even about what knowledge is.
There may be an argument about what is valuable in a math class. Your background will help give you a sense of what’s worthy of study in a particular field. You can have two students with the same race, class, and gender but they will think completely differently. And that is where we want a lot of diversity - diversity of ideas.
Q: What would you say to someone who says you should prioritize a book like Cry the Beloved Country over yet another western, white, European book like Crime and Punishment?
Well, the fact that it is yet another white, European, dead guy doesn’t mean anything to me - and I don’t think it should mean anything to anyone. The fact that one author or character is European and the other author or character is not European is not the deciding thing. The deciding thing is who can make the best case for why this book should be studied to advance our understanding of human nature.
In modern times some have adopted a view that race is truly fundamental - that everything can be seen through that lens. When we do that in literature we fail to understand what an author writes in their own terms.
Now, if you have an author that is explicitly conscious of writing as a Latin American or African American then you can talk about their books from that perspective and there is merit in that. If you are trying to impose a lens on somebody and fit them into your view of race consciousness then I think you are doing violence to that author. In other terms, you are erasing them.
There is an idea that in order for a curriculum to be legitimate, you have to be representative of every culture. You need a book for Australia, a book for Africa - and then you have to look at which kind of African book, which country? But if we play by those rules then at some point we are going to exclude someone simply because of time constraints.
We have to choose, so how do we do that? We have to fall back on: What are the best books? Now, different schools can have different opinions about what is the best, and that is just fine - teach those books. But at least be honest about your reasons.
Q: How do you respond to critics who, after visiting a classical school, claim that the walls are “too white”? Meaning, the chosen photographs, paintings, etc. are not representative of all students?
This has the same core problem of “being representative of.” That would mean that I cannot look at a picture of Harriet Tubman and feel a connection to that person. I would end up looking at her and saying “she is a black woman and I am a white man - never the twain shall meet.” Rather I should look at her and say “Here is a woman who did incredible work because of her resilience, her physical fitness, and her commitment to the journey even when it became difficult.” You can look at that and feel a connection to the story, be impressed by it, and want to emulate those qualities without looking like the person.
Would you have the same indictment of the fact that 5th graders read The Wind in the Willows? That’s about animals. Some of the children align their opinions with Mole - some of them with Toad. But, under this thinking, that should be an impossibility. If you can’t even relate to your own species because they look a little different, how do you relate to a toad that talks and steals cars?
“That painting, or statue just invited us to have a conversation about slavery in America - which is a real thing and we need to talk about it always and forever. We want to give a full portrayal of the human experience…
…Every human being remains a human being and has vices. A statue of that person invites a conversation about that struggle.”
I also like having this conversation about Thomas Jefferson - he often gets picked out as someone that should not be hanging on the walls. So, I’ll ask “How does Thomas Jefferson not represent you?” and they’ll say “Well because he owned slaves.” And yes I’ll agree, but then I’ll ask “But what do you think about his writings on the Declaration of Independence?” and sometimes they will respond with “Well he didn’t mean it…” All of a sudden we can have a conversation. That painting, or statue just invited us to have a conversation about slavery in America - which is a real thing and we need to talk about it always and forever.
We want to give a full portrayal of the human experience - even the ones that invite questions and ideas about justice or injustice. It’s not one-dimensional - it’s very complex. Every human being remains a human being and has vices. A statue of that person invites a conversation about that struggle.
I think it boils down to misunderstanding statues and photographs as worshiping it, but we’re just inviting people to think about it. We’re inviting ideas not worship.
Q: How do you respond to those who ask: What does Shakespeare or Jane Austen have to do with us today? Especially if the “us” in question is not of European but of, say, African or Hispanic lineage.
They have as much to teach you as you are willing to listen to them. There is nothing about their deadness or their gender or their class that can get in the way of that.
Even though our grandparents or great-grandparents are dead, we can still look back on them and respect the lessons they had to teach us. Those lessons don’t go away just because a person has passed - in fact it’s sharpened by that fact. The fact that they look different or live in a different civilization or time misunderstands the general humanness of the thing.
It’s kind of funny, actually. People who say that something limits our view of human things because we don’t represent each culture, or really just a short list of cultures we want, have a very crabbed view of education and human nature. An education that thinks instead about what it means to be human doesn’t get caught up in those disputes because they narrow rather than expand a student’s view, from the beginning.
