How to Create Good Rulers
And Good Followers

Good Rulers and Good Followers...

You were everybody's teacher in every branch of literature....Our epic poets derived from you their lofty vein, our comic poets their humor, our lyric poets their musical art; from you the orator drew his rhetoric, the historian his respect for truth, the satirist his pictorial gift, the grammarian his fidelity to rule, the panegyrist his plausibility, the sophist his gravity of style, the writer of epigram his petulance and point, the commentator his lucid method, the lawyer his obscurity. Sidonius 461-467, Letter 1, Book IV.

Education for the elite was well-established in the late Roman Empire, but it was education for a particular purpose: to train its members to be conversant in the classics, for them to be able to quote them and to write and speak with charm and wit. Writes Ausonius:

You must open the pages of the Iliad's creator, study the works of the lovable Menander: with modulation and with stress of voice bring out "measureless measures" with a scholar's accent, and infuse expression as you read. Ausonius, The Epistles

Sidonius relates a dramatic occasion in which he extricated himself from a tight political spot by rendering his position into a witty fragment of verse, declaiming it on the fly. In that instance, he charmed the Emperor reclining to his right at the banquet. Education did not train him or his contemporaries to think independently, however, or to be critical, but their education did train them how to win favor.

Education for everyone else was a rather hit or miss affair. Public schools were not even thought of, but more Roman citizens could read a little, at least, than would be true again of a general population until the Protestant Reformation over 1200 years later. They were trained to be good followers. In the United States today, education, more than any other public institution, is an entrée into the ruling class. Why else do affluent parents in places like New York City and Washington, DC spend thousands of dollars to get their toddlers into the "right" pre-school? Pre-school, of course, is only the beginning. Why do parents in metropolitan areas pay premium home prices for "good" school districts? You must get your child into the best elementary school, or, if all the public schools are poor, you have to send him or her to private school, and not just any private school. Prep schools, and only the best ones, are the best gateways to the top colleges and universities, the Ivy Leagues. As one Internet site stated it, to enter an American prep school is "to be in relation with the future US and world elite." The past three candidates for president went to elite prep schools, even though two of them claimed to speak for the common man, and the third purposely spoke like one. And, of course, the path to political leadership is eased by attending a college like Yale or Harvard, or, in Bill Clinton's case, by winning a Rhodes scholarship and attending Oxford.

And what kinds of education are needed for leadership in this technological 21st century? You will find few engineers among American presidents (Hoover and Carter, neither of whom did very well). On the other hand, you will find many lawyers and many businessmen, and the latter have been trained in business schools, or have law degrees. This is interesting, because the leadership of the late Roman Empire was similarly educated, and similarly unschooled for the problems the Empire faced. Does either George Bush or Bill Cheney have the scientific background necessary to appreciate the studies on global warming, or alternative energy, or to understand what "scientific" really means? Did Sidonius have any background in military thinking, or anything that would have prepared him to face the upheavals of his era?

Since the previous chapter was on taxes, we should also be mindful of the financial aspect of education. In the late Roman Empire, the Roman equivalent of universities received monies from Rome, often in the form of professorial chairs, such as the ones established after Ausonius, who was a scholar/writer from the "university" of Bordeaux, before he became Emperor Gratian's tutor in the late fourth century.

In the US, today, of course, there are public and private schools, the public school and public university being one of the proud inventions of the American political system. Public schools are funded directly by local school districts, and by states and the federal government, but private institutions also receive public funds, although usually more indirectly. Since control of the public schools ranges from the local school district to the US Department of Education, the question of where the money comes from, and what it mandates, has become extremely important. What controls public institutions have over private schools has also become a significant issue.

As Sidonius' letter (above) makes clear, an elite education, (Sidonius' was completed at the school, or "university" at Lyon), was almost entirely concerned with literature, both Greek and Latin. Lyon had apparently dispensed with Philosophy and Law, and was light on Greek after the first two years. Because of the prominence of Ausonius in the previous century, the school at Bordeaux might have been Gaul's "Harvard" of the day, while other schools, at Toulouse and Marseilles, might have been the equivalent of Yale and Princeton. Lyon has been likened to a great regional university, perhaps the equivalent of Berkeley, or Michigan. The schools in Gaul in the fifth century were considered better than the ones in Italy.

In the Late Roman Empire, only the elite went to a university, after having tutors from an early age, but basic literacy was widespread, at least compared to the barbarians, few of whom could read and write, including even their kings and princes. Barbarian kings employed scribes, usually Romans, for any writing that had to be done.

Romans were a literate society, and the sons of Senators, in their late teens, typically went to live with their professor in the nearest university town. They followed a prescribed course of study, and until the Empire was nearly bankrupt, universities were granted funds for chairs.

What did Sidonius study? In the first several years Senators' sons were enrolled in the school of Grammar, where they studied great works in Greek, such as Homer's Iliad and Hesiod's Theogony, and comparable works in Latin such as Virgil's Aenead, Cicero's orations and letters, and the Greek and Latin poets. Professors read, explained, and commented on the style and allusions of these works. Students committed long passages to memory.

Wealthier students continued on to a second level of study in the school of Rhetoric. At this higher level, students were expected to learn to write and to orate like the great masters (Greek or Roman), as for example learning to give speeches in the style of Cicero, peppering their orations with allusions to Virgil, speaking perhaps on an episode in Homer's Ulysses. Understand that Virgil and Cicero had written over 500 years before, while Homer had composed his stories more than 500 years before that, and yet these were the models for Sidonius and his contemporaries. And remember, too, that it was the student's style that mattered, not the substance of what he said or wrote. This fixation with style carried over into the expression of the Empire's most prominent citizens; there are many instances in Sidonius' letters when he laments his own poor style, even though his contemporaries praised him for the elegance of his letters, and compared him to Pliny (his most conscious model). Later, after he became a bishop (and not long before the fall of Rome) he declared that he must write in a simpler manner, to make his letters more accessible.

At first glance, the American system of education could not be more different; it is publicly available from kindergarten through graduate school, it is highly varied, with courses of study in virtually every specialty, technical, scientific and professional, as well as in the Liberal Arts, and it is funded by all levels of government and by business, foundations, churches and private individuals. It really is a very different system, and one that is much superior to the education available to fifth century elites like Sidonius, and much better still than the education that had been available to the average Roman citizen.

And yet, over the past generation there have been significant trends in education which have tended to make the American education system more like the education of late antiquity.

Take access to a good education: for most Romans, instruction beyond basic literacy was rarely possible; it was unaffordable, and besides, it was unnecessary, and yet almost anywhere in the empire the elite could gain what would now be considered a somewhat artificial, stilted, but still acceptable Liberal education. In the US, during periods of educational expansion, the local, state and federal governments granted scholarships, fellowships, or created open access through institutions like New York's City College (CCNY). There was a tremendous expansion of college education provided after World War II, when Veterans Benefits paid tuition and stipends to all returning vets who matriculated at accredited schools; I was a Vietnam era beneficiary of the program.

Because of institutions like CCNY, many sons and daughters of immigrants, and some immigrants themselves were able to gain high quality university educations in all fields. In an even more revolutionary democratization, CCNY adopted an open admissions policy in the 1960's, which opened up the possibility of college educations to minority communities. More Ph.D's were given at CCNY at the height of the open admissions era (1983-1992) than at Columbia University, and yet the conservative revolution made it seem natural and necessary to reimpose admission standards in 1992. Since then there has been some reduction in minority enrollment, probably also caused by an escalation of fees and tuition costs. Other institutions in other states have undergone the same or similar changes, shifting open admissions policies to community colleges, for example, and reimposing admissions standards at four-year colleges, or establishing a hierarchical system of admissions.

In the same period there has been a reduction in the availability of scholarship funds such as Pell Grants, and state funds for college programs in places like prisons and drug rehab centers. This was part of the "conservative revolution," which I experienced first-hand when the college programs in several prisons were summarily canceled by the new Republican governor in N.Y. in 1994.

Why were they canceled? Studies of the Marist College program had shown that the approximately $1500 a year in cost per student had more than paid for itself because those participating had only half the rate of recidivism to prison compared to the general prison population. One year in prison cost the state about $30,000 per inmate, and the participants were a broad cross-section of prisoners as a whole.

Were the programs canceled as a short-sighted economy measure? No. Governor Pataki had made it very clear: prison programs were canceled because prison was supposed to be a punishment, not a reward. When the state was flush with money several years later, there was no move to reinstate the programs. Some prison reformers opined that college prison programs were too successful, and the people administering the prisons didn't want to see the sources of their clientele--the inmates--dry up and fly away. Pataki explained it simply in terms of vengeance, or, "paying the price" for breaking the law.

However, closure of prison programs did not take place in a vacuum; it was part of a larger picture in which state largesse was being withdrawn and "free market" forces were expected to sort out who would get a decent education and who would not. In other words, the restriction of Pell Grants, the cancellation of prison programs, the re-establishment of admissions standards (at places like CCNY) were simply part of the same trend in which conservatives were determined to cut back on Head Start funding, provide openings for private corporations to manage (and de-unionize) schools, and offer vouchers for private schools as an alternative to the public institutions.

Why were these all "conservative" initiatives? All of them, every single one, reduced poor and middle class accessibility to a superior education. Vouchers, for example, provided much less than would really pay for a quality private education, but took money out of the public schools, thereby creating both poorer public schools and private academies that were inferior, while helping those with some means to pay for their increasingly costly private education at excellent schools. Private corporations contracted to run public schools have succeeded in weakening teacher unions, and realizing profits, but usually at the expense of their pupils. It has not been proven that their management has resulted in a higher quality education for students whose schools had failed.

It would seem that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) would belie this trend, at least according to its apologists, but what does the act do, really? One critic said: "NCLB is designed to produce bad news about public schools." Many critics have also pointed out that the kind of education it fosters will discourage critical thinking, and train students to be compliant employees.

The law requires that all students in grades 3 through 8 take standardized tests once a year in every public school in the land. It requires that rising percentages of students each year should score at proficient levels in Math and Reading, 35% in Math and 45% in reading in 2004, 45% in Math and 54% in reading in 2005, and so on; 100% proficiency is required by 2014. It also requires that subgroups (ethnic, economic, special needs) within the schools meet the same targets. It provides $400 million a year simply for the testing, which is to be developed by each state to measure progress within their state curriculum, and the law also sets up a national assessment, in order to compare states across the nation.

What NCLB does not do is provide enough money to actually improve teaching in schools, or even to repair leaky roofs. There is a $9 billion hole between federal funding and changes mandated by the law. Schools with large minority populations that somehow significantly improve their test scores are singled out as "blue ribbon" winners, while other schools (with or without large minority populations) that do not improve their scores will be sanctioned.

The failed schools will lose federal funding, and parents will be given vouchers, or options to enroll their children in other, better schools. In other words, whole school districts may end up being punished, although the fault probably lies in the poverty of the district and the extra handicaps (non-English speakers, unstable families, poor nutrition) faced by its student population. To compound the problem, the vouchers will not be adequate for most private schools, except for religious ones, nor can decent private academies handle the potential numbers involved, nor can the other, "better" public schools to which a few of the students might be bused. For those who remain at the sanctioned school, they will have to make do with even fewer resources, or perhaps endure "reorganization," or privatization.

In addition to the clear class bias of the NCLB funding and sanctioning structure, the Act also promotes an education for passive followers, not active citizens. Teachers in public schools, especially in public schools with the threat of sanctions hanging over them (the threat is greatest in poorer districts), will reduce their education to "teaching to the test." This means that students will be discouraged from asking questions, to follow their interests and curiosity, to challenge the teacher, or to take initiative; instead they will be taught to learn the answers and take them as given. They will have to learn the "right" answers, and those answers are correct because the teachers and the test guides and the testing companies say so. Questioning right answers or refusing to answer them as expected will only be marked as "wrong."

It is so much more convenient--for a ruling class--to have a citizenry that is taught to be passive, that learns not to ask questions. An education dominated by "the test" is also compatible with a passive, compliant, uncomplaining work force. This kind of education is reinforced by entertainment that involves only watching not participating.

The defeat of "progressive" education a la Dewey, and the triumph of "traditional" or "basic" education is another aspect of this same educational trend. Progressive education, which emphasizes open classrooms, sometimes without desks, or with desks in clusters may look extreme in some of its incarnations, but the basic principles are still applied in the best schools, including formal prep schools: taking advantage of children's natural curiosity, stimulating discussion and hands-on experience or research, encouraging questions, and "thinking outside the box." Since the NCLB concentrates exclusively on the "basics" of Math and Reading, and on rote regurgitation of answers, it represents the ultimate triumph of "traditional" or basic education.

Yet the best schools do not teach that way. Prep schools like Northfield Mount Hermon, Philips Andover and Exeter do not teach "to the test," since their schools don't administer them, and don't receive federal funds. Instead, they encourage their students to ask questions, to do independent research for papers and for science projects. At NMH they even have joint classes with teachers from different fields: History and English, for example, so that students have a wide variety of research topics to choose from, and they see teachers questioning each other. At Exeter they have the "oval table" around which sit the students and the teacher, obviously encouraging discussion and give and take. There are tests, of course, but almost all of them are essay exams, not multiple choice. And there are many papers.

Multiple choice exams require little thought, but of course they are cheaper, in that they require little time for grading, and therefore make it possible for one teacher to teach a much larger number of students. A good test taker (I was one) doesn't really have to know the subject for a multiple choice test; he only has to recognize the patterns, the right answers. An essay exam requires thought, and if it is well formulated, will actually cause the student to learn something new, to get her to see something, parallels, contrasts, how something relates to something else, that she didn’t see before. It also requires coherent writing, of course, but just as important, it requires the student to figure it out for themselves.

These are skills you would want leaders to learn; they are also skills that you would want in an alert and informed citizenry. However, if you see the masses of people as simply subjects to control and manipulate, then you would not want to teach them to think for themselves.

How Ausonius dealt with his personal servant in the late 4th century shows what it looks like when you have a well-educated elite and an ignorant majority:

Up with you, you waster! What a thrashing you deserve! Up, or a long, long sleep will come on you from where you dread it least….

Hi, boy! Get up! Bring me my slippers and my tunic of lawn: bring all the clothes that you have ready now for my going out. Fetch me spring water to wash my mouth and eyes… Ausonius, The Daily Round

Such blatant class differences are not acceptable in the 21st century, at least not yet. When they are attempted, violence can result, as when my venerable Venezuelan aunt, who was used to treating her servants little better than this, was murdered by a man who worked for her in her garden. But if you train them right….

Some have laid the blame for our educational shortcomings on progressive education, but it was not the educational theory that was to blame, but the poverty of resources. Progressive private schools, unless they have completely jettisoned standards, have provided as good an education as traditional ones; better in some ways, their students more intellectually flexible and open. (That may be one of the problems: open minds prompt people to ask embarrassing questions.) The problem with progressive education as a model for large, poor public schools is that in order to carry it out effectively, much too much money would be needed, because classes would have to be small, and teachers would have to be well-trained. One of the reasons why the fabled one-room schoolhouse could provide good education if the teacher was good (a crapshoot in those days) was because its classes were tiny. Since we wanted education for the masses on the cheap, however, "progressive" education became an excuse for a relaxation of all standards, for automatic promotion, for the neglect of the basic tools needed for any educated person.

Unequal education really goes back to unequal resources. How are public schools funded? The great majority of funding comes from school taxes based on the property tax. These, in turn, depend on the value of the properties within the district. If a school district is in the poor section of a central city, then it will be unable to raise as much money as a wealthy suburban district. In a number of states the traditional method of school financing has been successfully challenged by lawsuits brought by poor parents, but in many the state legislatures and governors have resisted correcting the funding rates. Yet if poor school districts are to gain the money they need, it is the states that will have to provide it. Here's why.

The per student expenditure in a wealthy suburban district tends to be higher than monies spent on students in poor inner-city districts in 37 out of 50 states. This even is true when the poor inner-city school district taxes its residents more heavily than the wealthy suburban district (in some cases at twice the rate), because their assets are worth so much less. To achieve fundamental fairness in public school financing, apparently, the state as a whole needs to provide substantial funds, either as the sole source of revenue, as it does in Hawaii, or through large subventions to the districts, as in Oklahoma and Nevada, where poor districts actually have higher expenditures per pupil than wealthy ones, probably because of their greater perceived needs. Only three states achieve this.

But, if the goal is to train employees from the masses and leaders from the classes, then our mixed public/private school system does an admirable job. A friend told a story of when he competed on a winning public school wrestling team against the team at Philips Andover. Andover knew the public school team could beat their varsity, so they only allowed it to compete against their junior varsity. They showed the public school wrestlers to the "guest locker rooms" far superior to anything the visiting team had ever seen, but not mingling with their competitors. They also fed them in "a guest dining room," never allowing them even casual contact with their Andover counterparts. Even now, prep schools like Philips Andover send large portions of their graduating classes to the top Ivy League schools, what Ross Douthat characterizes as privilege in his book Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class.

It is in the top Ivy League universities and colleges that privilege is passed on to the next generation, but it is still a relatively more open system than the one that obtained in the Fifth Century. According to Andrew Hacker , even at Harvard and Yale, only 30 to 40% of legacies are accepted, and new elites, such as the higher and higher percentage of Asians (27% at Stanford, 20% at Columbia) are coming into Ivy League schools.

However, tuition at Ivy League schools averages above $30,000 a year and Hacker points out that there must be an unspoken agreement among them to maintain their rates at comparable levels, since Harvard, with its huge endowment, could easily cut its tuition substantially. Even top state schools are over $25,000 a year, and remember this is just tuition, not boarding costs. Comparable schools in Canada like McGill and Queens, on the other hand, charge their countrymen only about $4,000 a year, and even foreigners pay less than $10,000.

Leaving aside the reasons for these high charges (Hacker points to lopsided pay structures heavily slanted towards full professors and academic stars, who teach very little, especially in undergraduate classes), the obvious effect is going to be the exclusion of students who don't have the very highest SAT's and high school grades, or glowing recommendations from good prep schools, or parents wealthy enough to pay full freight.

Since public scholarships of all kinds have been declining in terms of the actual costs of a college education, the accessibility to a top higher education is also narrowing. The conservative revolution in education has not yet created a closed caste system, possibly because even the most conservative Americans realize we need to infuse the coming generations with new blood wherever it will come from (now a lot of it appears to be coming from Asians, who are viewed a little the way Jews were seen in the last century's 20's and 30's--don't want to have too many of them, do we, or they'll take over). But the imperative to create a new generation of leadership that looks like the rest of the country (the idea of affirmative action), has become rather unfashionable.

Years ago you may have seen the bumper sticker: A Closed Mind is a Wonderful Thing to Lose. Anna Quindlen pointed out in a May 30, 2005 Newsweek opinion piece that Columbia's graduates, the ones who entered college just before 9/11, had learned the opposite: "America has become a country that sets its young people the terrible example of closed minds. The terrorists wanted to kill infidels. We only aim to silence them." There have been media campaigns against academics in some of the most prestigious schools because they expressed controversial views about Israel and the Palestinians, for example. Because professor Khalidi, a Middle East expert, outspokenly favored the Palestinian cause in discussing Israel, Campus Watch mounted a campaign to prevent his transfer from Chicago University to Columbia. Since then, Khalidi has managed quite well at Columbia, and may move on to even higher pay at Princeton, but other professors have been harassed by something called the "David Project," which produced a film purporting to show their harassment of students for being pro-Israel.

It's not clear who has been harassing whom, but the effect of these campaigns, and others enforcing "political correctness" and "objectivity" or "even-handedness" has been to make university and college administrators chary of political controversy, and therefore has put pressure on professors to watch what they say. No longer are universities comfortable places for dissent.

We should keep in mind the models contemporary American universities are tending towards: in the latter part of the fourth and into the fifth centuries schools of philosophy were under attack, because, like Liberal academics today, they were dominated by an embattled minority, neo-Platonist Pagans. It was during this religious onslaught that the library of the Serapeum at Alexandria was burned down, because it was a center of Pagan learning, and also when a celebrated female mathematician and philosopher was torn apart in the streets of the same city, because she represented unrepentant Paganism. Elsewhere repression was not as spectacularly violent, but just as effective. Only Athens remained a center of non-Christian thought into the sixth century. Everywhere else, Christianity in its increasingly intolerant form became the only acceptable ideology.

The education offered many fifth century Roman peasants and plebeians might soon look familiar to many students in our nation's midsection: it was largely a repetition of religious dogma. The Roman peasant and the city commoner weren't taught to read by the Church; they were taught the Bible stories orally. Students in places like Kansas, Ohio, Texas and western Pennsylvania may still learn to read, but they aren't being taught things like how scientific theory works. Instead they are taught that Creationism, i.e. the creation story of the Bible, or its slightly updated version, Intelligent Design, is a scientifically acceptable alternative explanation of how we got here to that of Evolution--since evolution is "just a theory." What is not taught is that "theory" in evolution's sense means a framework for an explanation that is testable and changeable as new data is discovered. Creationism and Intelligent Design, by their very nature are not scientific theories because they are based on faith and therefore not testable. If the overall good, as seen by the selfish class, is to train the mass of people to be passive consumers and followers, then to convert most schools, even public ones, into teaching religious dogma looks like part of the plan, or at least is fully compatible with it.

The best comment on the evolution controversy was a cartoon showing two South Koreans cheering at the idea that they wouldn't have to compete scientifically with Americans any longer.

Of course the "science" of fifth century Rome did not include evolution, but earlier, in the classical period, the Greeks had made major strides in science, measuring the earth, determining that it was round, even estimating its distance from the sun. The problem was, however, that those ancient Greeks were Pagans, and therefore their insights were discounted, unless they could be "baptized." Intelligent Design is a little like an attempt to "baptize" some aspects of evolution in order to make Science doctrinally acceptable. St. Augustine wrote in the fourth and fifth centuries (he died while the Vandals were besieging his city of Hippo in 430) and his greatest work, The City of God, went a long way to Christianize Platonist teachings: in that way his work is symptomatic of his era--but possibly also of ours. Philosophy and knowledge in his period was becoming acceptable in the schools only if it had been Christianized. Intelligent Design is a similar construction, i.e. an attempt to Christianize evolution so that it can be taught to the children of the Faithful, who reject Science when it conflicts with Biblical teaching.

You won't see the top prep schools teaching Intelligent Design, however, which makes our times different from the fifth century: today the elites still know that Science will continue to be important to their control of the nation and of the world. It's all right for the ignorant masses to insist on compounding their ignorance, but when it gets down to what their own children are taught, most of the elite will opt for the best education money and influence can buy, including a sound scientific background, even if they should then go on to Humanities or Social Sciences in college, and business school or law school afterwards.

What can we do to reverse the drift towards an educational system that looks more and more pre-medieval?

The real need is for more resources at all levels of education to go to teaching students to think for themselves. This will require changing incentives away from the test-based system developing now, and moving towards one in which reasoning counts for more than knowledge of given "facts": an empirical study will arrive at a proven result regardless of whether the researcher knows what result it should reveal; in fact, prior "knowledge" may even be counter-productive; it could prompt researchers to falsify results, which more scientists seem to be doing, many because of the pressure to succeed.

I'm not arguing against knowledge per se; what I am arguing against, as a model of education, is the stuffing model of knowledge, in which students are stuffed with facts that they are expected to regurgitate when called upon to do so. They don't know how the facts were arrived at, and they don't care; all they care about is whether it will be on the test. When students write research papers, when they prepare to speak about topics in class, when they discuss the topics at hand with their teachers--as they are forced to do at Exeter, for example, around that "oval table--" when they write essay exams, they have to do more than regurgitate: they have to think. That's what education should be about: teaching students to think for themselves, and reasoning from hypothesis to conclusion.

For public education to be taught this way may take more money, first of all in cutting class sizes, which means hiring more teachers, but it could also mean paying less for ascending tiers of the hierarchy, spending less on administrative experts and more on teaching in the classrooms. This should also go for higher education: as I pointed out earlier, the escalating costs at universities, especially, are going into the salaries on steroids of the full professors, especially the academic stars. But they hardly ever teach undergraduates, and when they sometimes do, they make a bad job of it, because it's not what they want to be doing.

In order to provide equitable educations public schools ought to be financed through state, or even through Federal income taxes, not from local property and sales taxes, which are dependent on how poor or wealthy the local district happens to be. In fact, states ought to finance education on the basis of need, but school districts should be even more local than they are now, so that oversight by informed parents and the community is even more possible.

As for a climate of openness and debate rather than censorship and fear, this is a broader problem, not confined to education, and is related to the dialogue, or lack of it, on terrorism, war and empire. In education this struggle tends to be on the defensive: defending tenure, defending academic free speech, defending secular science, defending liberals (!). It won't be possible to win this, unless the overall struggle against a fearful selfish class begins to gain traction.