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KulakRevolt  1yr ago (anarchonomicon.substack.com)   3072 thread views

Crowned Masterpieces of Eloquence: We used to be a Civilization

anarchonomicon.substack.com

A piece I wrote on one of the most fascinating and incredible thriftstore finds I've ever stumbled upon.

The Edwardians and Victorians were not like us, they believed in a nobility of their political class that's almost impossible to understand or relate to, and that believe, that attribution of nobility is tied up with something even more mysterious: their belief in the fundamental nobility of rhetoric.

Still not sure entirely how I feel about this, or how sure I am of my conclusions but this has had me spellbound in fascination and so I wrote about it.

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Hitler was perhaps the greatest case study in the power of a classical education and self-directed study, as well as its weaknesses (should have studied logistics and naval warfare (every other battle would have been decided if he’d won the battle of the Atlantic))

And to this day post war education is built around preventing anyone from learning the lessons he learnt (which now extends to 2+2=4 in some classrooms).

Of course no American, English, or German school boys learns anything resembling classical military history any more, no one studies classical languages, even geography is notably lacking —though there in the American case, its seems geography isn’t taught so that Americans might be compliant with their wars instead of concluding, as every generation of Americans did pre-1945… that Eurasia is entirely irrelevant to them.

The western world responded to the Nazis by burning down all the cultural institutions of western civilization, since some aspect of western civilization must have been to blame… somehow

Aside from other things I disagree with, I think this is a complete misdiagnosis of the causes of the decline of classical education. At least in Britain, the main driver in that regard was surely economic, not just in the sense that giving people such an education is expensive but more pertinently that in the post-war political environment education fundamentally became about preparing students for the modern economy, hence the tripartite system; a basic comprehensive education for unskilled workers, a technical education for those doing skilled manual labour, and grammar schools for managers and administrators (indeed, grammar school students often did, and to some extent still do where they still exist, get a fair amount of 'classical' education).

Moreover, plenty of the current British political class did have a firmly classical education. Boris was Eton educated and an Oxford classicist, but his speeches, while occasionally having some of the bizarre Trumpish quality are generally pretty rubbish, while for my money the best political speaker in 21st century Britain, Gordon Brown, was comprehensive educated. While I do think there has probably been a decline in the quality of political speech-making (though not nearly to the extent you suggest, and certainly not across the whole post-war era; see for instance just wrt Britain, in various decades, Heath's speech against the death penalty, White Heat of the Technological Revolution, Weapons for Squalid and Trivial Ends, Brown's famous conference speech and his speech on Scottish independence, Howe's resignation speech, Winds of Change and, outside of politics, Tim Collins' eve of battle speech), I don't think the decline in classical education is really the cause.

I think it’s more an Industrial Revolution thing. In order to turn a human into a meat machine, it’s best that he never learn to use his brain to full capacity. Compliance is much more difficult if the human in question doesn’t think too deeply.

This seem far too conspiratorial. Comprehensive educations in the 50s weren't basic because they were afraid people might be less compliant, it was simply felt that that was all they needed if they were going to go and work in a mine or steel mill, and resources are always scarce.

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