Ep. 14 - Chapter Seven of Norms and Nobility: The Ennobling the Masses

This is Episode 14 of The Everlasting Education Podcast, a Kepler Education Production.

In this episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait discuss the importance of bringing an "aristocratic" education to a "democratic" people. "Classical scholars," says Hicks, "recognize that material efficiency may make life possible, but it does not make society civilized or life worth living, nor is it alone capable of preserving the democratic ideals." We need to recognize that Dewey was wrong and that we should not allow democracy's tendency to race to the bottom influence education. Instead, we need to make normative learning (liberal arts learning) a universal goal.

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David V. Hicks's, Norms and Nobility was first published in 1981 when it won the American Library Association's Outstanding Book Award. Since that time, it has gone on to become one of the most influential books in the Classical Education movement. Hicks's "purpose in writing the book is to offer a personal interpretation of classical education—its ends, as well as some of its means—and to respond to the objections of those who might approve of the goals of such an education, but who believe that it cannot meet the needs of an industrial democracy ro that it is not feasible as a model for mass education."