Jon Fennell: A Rationale for Classical Education
The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Hillsdale College
4.8 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2023
⏱️ 53 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Guests: Jon Fennell, Joe Kennedy, & Christopher Busch
Host Scot Bertram talks with Jon Fennell, professor emeritus of education at Hillsdale College, about the reasoning for classical education and his article for Principia titled “An Epistemological Rationale for Classical Education.” Joe Kennedy, author of Average Joe: The Joe Kennedy Story, describes the years of difficult litigation behind his victory for religious liberty in front of the Supreme Court. And Christopher Busch, professor of English at Hillsdale College, continues his series on the poet Robert Frost, this time discussing the themes and images in his work.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. |
| 0:25.1 | Part of the job of an educator is to order our loves, in other words, to put them in some sort of |
| 0:30.4 | ranked order, and see to it that we are primarily committed to the loves which are most worthy. |
| 0:36.8 | This is your host Scott Bertram, and that's Dr. John Fidel, Professor Emeritus of Education at Hillsdale |
| 0:42.9 | College, and also co-author of a new paper at Epistemological Rationale for Classical |
| 0:48.4 | Education. We talk about classical education and Dr. Fidel's work today on the show. Dr. Fidel, thanks so much for |
| 0:55.9 | joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Well, it's my pleasure to be with you today. |
| 1:00.6 | The title of the paper that you wrote is, an epistemological rationale for classical education. |
| 1:07.0 | What is epistemology? What does it mean to have an epistemological rationale? |
| 1:12.7 | Well, one of my dictionaries defines epistemology as the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge. |
| 1:20.5 | In other words, epistemology is an account of what it is to know, how we know, etc. |
| 1:26.0 | And rationale has really two meanings, depending on the |
| 1:29.4 | context. One context is explanation. So a rationale can be an explanation of how something works. |
| 1:37.1 | The second context is justification. So rationale there could be a justification for a proposed |
| 1:43.3 | objective or some end. |
| 1:45.7 | In our paper, my co-author, Tim Simpson and I, aim to provide both. |
| 1:51.6 | We want to provide an account of how we know, especially how classical education enables people, |
| 1:57.6 | builds character, et cetera. |
| 1:58.9 | And also we want to provide an argument that we ought to adopt classical education. So our paper, in providing an epistemological rationale, is both an explanation and a recommendation. |
| 2:09.6 | In this paper, which people can find online in Principia, it's volume two, number one, You refer to the sort of person we would like to see emerge |
| 2:20.0 | from schooling. What more can you tell us about that? Well, I used to teach philosophy of education |
| 2:24.9 | at the college, as you know, and I always emphasize that educators, whether they realize it or not, |
... |
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