Keynote Speech presented at the conference, Fiat! Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Life of the Catholic Classical Educator, in Ave Maria, Florida, June 22, 2024
We’re constantly being bombarded with the latest studies on the ill effects of adolescent screen use. We hear about higher rates of anxiety and depression, poor attention spans, and the negative impact on reading and writing skills. But I’m not sure we take seriously the way in which screen time -- social media in particular -- erodes a young person’s love for the real. Consider an all too familiar issue: the news. A study in the journal Science estimates that false information spreads online six times faster than the truth. Surveys shows that 44% of our teens view YouTube as a reliable news source, and 30% aren’t concerned about what their media source is at all[1]. My own 12th graders confirmed that TikTok and Reddit are their typical go-to’s for current events. This is a preference for unreality that has very obvious real-world implications.
Subtly, the preference for existential unrealities, constructed via countless user profiles and avatars, grows. There seems to be a growing assumption that our lives would be better lived through the medium of virtual reality or at least hyper-augmented through a device like Apple Vision Pro. Visiting Apple’s website for the product, one is promised an experience that is “intuitive and magical,” blending “digital content with your physical space seamlessly” yet “all while staying present in the world around you.”[2] I have to wonder how our friends in Silicon Valley understand what it means to be “present” to the world. Perhaps “present” here is no more meaningful than saying Ready Player One’s protagonist, Parzival, is present to reality outside of the Oasis. And, like the Oasis, Apple claims to offer users an unreality that is “intuitive and magical” because implicitly, reality -- real reality -- is not. One columnist in the National Review quipped that “seemingly functional people are walking around wearing creepy $3,499 headsets and not enough people are making fun of them.”[3] Ordinarily, these Apple Daywalkers would be subject to social ridicule in a healthy society that knows “magic is right here, to be found in the quotidian!” Instead, the world our youth are inheriting is increasingly unmoored from what is. And while social commentators and psychologists fixate on the harmfulness of ceaseless and frenetic stimuli, the more fundamental problem is that adolescents are increasingly inhabiting a purely cognitive world, where their minds are disengaged from their bodies. It is an anti-incarnational world and thus can never be intuitional or magical. Unfortunately, many of our schools unwittingly offer students a world that is no less anti-incarnational and certainly not magical.
This year, I conducted an informal survey of students around campus. Many were taken off guard when I posed only one question: “Do you like school?” From there began a back-and-forth, question-and-answer session, as I attempted to clarify the amorphous thing called the “teenage thought process.” Affirmative answers were chiefly owed to the social opportunities afforded by school, though some admitted they enjoyed learning new things. However, students mostly stated that they did not like school. I pointed out that many younger children love going to school and that, if this were true for them, whether they could pinpoint when they stopped enjoying school. Overwhelmingly the answer was sixth grade. I asked them to recall what changed between 5th and 6th grade, besides hormones. Apart from social awkwardness, a greater emphasis on grades and a premature fixation on college preparedness, many stated that sixth grade was when they stopped having time for play, that lessons were no longer about discovering the world, or as one student observed: “School became about ‘getting things done’ rather than ‘trying to learn.’” These responses all have something in common. I’d call it a nostalgia for discovery and wonder at “what is." I believe their intuitions are correct. Yet I’d argue many of our schools offer students an unreality that, like Apple and Friends, assumes the primacy of mind over the integration of mind with body. To varying degrees of awareness, today’s educational process is chiefly cogitative.
In his Second Meditation, Descartes famously defines his existence as a thinking thing. He states “I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks; that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason—words whose meaning I have been ignorant of until now. But for all that I am a thing which is real and which truly exists. But what kind of a thing? As I have just said—a thinking thing.”[4] Any good Catholic educator ought to recoil at Descartes’ reduction of his being to the cogitative faculty, but do we not sometimes affirm this claim in practice? A quick survey of stated school values is telling. For how many are “critical thinking skills” identified as the most prized outcome of an education at that school?
Even in Catholic Classical schools, we must be careful about the temptation to overly rationalize the educational process. We have to be mindful not to allow abstract and unrealistic thought-experiments (think: the “trolly car dilemma”) or even seminars, to become so obtuse as to signal to students that education is merely cogitative, just head play. Otherwise, we merely offer the flipside to the unreality proposed by the digital world. When faced with a choice between two dualistic worlds -- the Metaverse or the modern Eduverse -- can we blame youth for choosing the flashier, more entertaining, of the two options?
Whether conscious of it or not, methods of education will always impact the whole of the learner. In the case of modern education, half of the learner is being neglected: the nonanalytical side. When a pedagogical approach neglects half of the learner, tedium eventually takes hold of the child, and we begin to understand why he or she might say, “I hate school!” This is an anthropological problem. Technology and modern education both have the potential to disconnect a child from reality, and this takes place in the context of a world which increasingly isolates us from nature.
I currently live in Houston. I wake up and step out of bed onto vinyl flooring. I walk into my cement garage and get into a car with carpet flooring. I take an interstate highway to school, where I walk up a concrete sidewalk and teach on linoleum tile. I can go days without treading on dirt or grass. Consider your day-to-day contact with nature. Now, factor in screen time, and we have to honestly admit that most of our days are spent interfacing with artifacts, rather than creation. As educators, we have to recover practices that place the child back in contact with reality.
My reference to Descartes was not by chance. A pedagogical shift towards the privileging of analysis was already underway in his time, one that inadvertently downplayed the integrity of the human person. I won’t be surveying the history of education, but previous to the Cartesian Revolution there existed a mode of learning taken for granted by earlier generations. This has been called the poetic mode of learning, or poetic knowledge, and it is also a Marian mode of knowing, as I hope to illustrate. But first, let’s try our best to explore what poetic knowledge is, and to do so, I’ll be drawing largely on a book by that same name, Poetic Knowledge: the Recovery of Education, by Dr. James S. Taylor.
Taylor defines poetic knowledge as: “…an encounter with reality that is nonanalytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awefull), spontaneous, mysterious…when the mind, through the senses and emotions, sees in delight, or even terror, the significance of what is really there.”[5] From the start, we want to note that we’re not considering poetry, though from this definition, we can see an association between the two. But we also have to assert that Taylor is not concerned with Romanticism or the nature-mysticism of the transcendentalists. Instead, he is concerned with concrete reality that we can see, touch, savor, and delight in. Poetic knowledge is intuitive, integrating, and results in both wonder and access to the object considered.
Intuition here, is not the modern idea of a “hunch” or “gut instinct.” Taylor calls it the “spontaneous awareness of reality, that something is there, outside the mind but the mind cannot help but know.”[6] It is a receptivity to being that is prelogical and mediated by the senses. And integrity is a necessary concomitant with intuition, as my sensitivity—my receptivity—to being is a receptivity to the whole object that is before my gaze. The poetic gaze is not about seeking after the essences of things, but beings as they are. It is contemplating the stately Live Oak, watching worms find their way back to the grass after a good rain, or observing Mom making a pie in the kitchen. It is the stuff you and I were enchanted by as kids: not their parts, but their integrated being.
Let’s consider this more crudely, with something most people love: kittens. If you brought kittens into your classroom, how would your students react? How about if you brought a bag of kitten parts into your classroom? You would have a lot of crying children to deal with, and some parents, as well! Children love the whole kitten, not its parts. We do frog dissections in biology in order to better appreciate the beauty of the whole organism, its parts operating in symphony. Our analytical faculties exist for the purpose of more deeply appreciating wholeness in reality. Yet in a bifurcated Cartesian world, analysis, which is related to the word for dissection, becomes an end in itself, and we lose the object in the process. Taylor says, of the dissected flower:
When a flower is taken apart and examined as pistil, stamen, stem, and petals, each part is seen exactly and a certain curiosity is indeed satisfied; however, curiosity is not wonder, the former being the itch to take apart, the latter to gaze on things as they are. Curiosity belongs to the scientific impulse and would strive to dominate nature…with dissection or isolation there is no longer an experience of the flower—only parts—and the thing called a rose is gone.[7]
Conversely, the immediate, intuitive reception of the whole being gives birth to wonder and establishes a real connection between myself as the beholder, and the object beheld. Taylor reminds us that Aquinas classifies wonder as a species of fear. When we consider that most fears are based on the unknown, this makes natural sense. We also know that knowledge and understanding are the pathways out of fear. Awe-full wonder at the workings of creation gives rise to a desire to know and understand. Could we imagine our students having this sort of fearful wonder in the presence of reality? Imagine our students rediscovering a world that actually is “magical and intuitive.” This is the poetic mode of learning. This is a Marian mode of learning.
We are finally well-positioned to discuss our Blessed Mother. I call poetic learning a Marian mode of learning for two reasons: First, this is the manner by which God willed to instruct her in His ways. Second, it is the means by which she teaches us. One easily finds many articles describing how Jesus’ ministry made use of Socratic questioning. However, we overlook that the first Socratic dialogue of the Gospels occurred in the sixth month, in a city of Galilee, to a Virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, whose name was Mary. We could say that the Archangel Gabriel makes a proposition to Mary: “Hail, full of Grace, the Lord is with you.” What follows is a dialectic about how—not whether—this proposition is true. We take for granted that the Annunciation account concludes with Mary’s fiat. Afterall, she says “yes,” and the angel departs. Yet have we ever wondered why her Magnificat didn’t take place just then? After all, she has consented to become the Mother of God. St. Gabriel actually extends the dialogue of the Annunciation by offering Mary an object for contemplation: her own cousin, Elizabeth: “For with God, nothing will be impossible.” With haste, Mary heads to Judea to find her cousin, pregnant, just as the archangel said. Once there, Mary has a poetic encounter with her cousin. In the presence of Elizabeth, Mary has a nonanalytic encounter with reality that is beautiful, spontaneous, intuitive, and mysterious. Beyond hearing, she enters into the reality that “for with God, nothing will be impossible” and from a stance of awe and wonder, she proclaims her Magnificat, in praise of God’s saving faithfulness.
While the Annunciation and Visitation offer the most obvious incidences, we can make out God’s poetic pedagogy elsewhere in the life of Our Lady. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, after the birth of Christ, Mary and Joseph are visited by the three magi. “Going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh” (Mt. 2:11-12). In its historical occurrence, who was this event for? The Blessed Mother. This event is another object of contemplation, whereby Mary can intuitively enter into God’s plan for salvation which includes the Gentiles. We could walk through each of the Joyful Mysteries and see this poetic knowledge at work. And while there is not a corresponding Magnificat for each, we are repeatedly told that Mary “Kept all of these things, pondering them in her heart.” I don’t believe this was mere ratiocination. In the end, the Apostles’ tendency to assume that things must always make logical sense contributes to their flight from the Passion. Conversely, Our Lady’s poetic formation allows her to stand at the foot of the cross and intuit her own union with Christ’s saving work.
It's said that we teach the way we were taught. So, assumed into Heaven, the poetic pedagogy by which God formed Mary has become her own. By this, I am referring to her various apparitions. These visits do not merely concern a task for the visionary who must think through logical steps for implementation. Each apparition is always accompanied by an image for us to behold, allowing us poetic access “inside” the message. We’ll focus on one: The Virgin of Guadalupe.
Being Queen of the Americas, the story of Guadalupe is one familiar to us all. About a decade after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Virgin Mary appears to an indigenous man: Juan Diego. She reveals herself as the Mother of God and requests a chapel to be built on the apparition site, previously dedicated to an Aztec Goddess (this, too, is loaded with poetic significance). We know how the drama of the story unfolds; Juan Diego eventually opens his tilma to let out a cascade of Castilian roses and simultaneously reveals the image of the Virgin.
As beloved as the image of Guadalupe has become to us, we forget that we are quite alien to the cultural context of 16th century Mexico. Arguably, there is an extent to which the Spanish clergy of the time would also have been a bit removed, as Spanish influence had only begun to permeate indigenous culture. The Virgin of Guadalupe came as an indigenous woman, and the image on the tilma is an indigenous image. Thus, to this day, gallons of ink have been spilt exploring the contents of the miraculous image. We tend to think of the image as being chiefly apologetic in nature, and, perhaps for the Spanish clergy, who were being asked to build a chapel, proofs were rightly needed. But for the indigenous people of Juan Diego’s time, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe would have been an instance of poetic formation. Looking at the image of the woman -- the tilt of her head, the sash about her waist, the moon beneath her feet which are lifted "just so," in dance -- all of this would have been perceived as whole and understood intuitively. Immediate access to Our Lady’s purpose and message was there before any words would be spoken to explicate the image’s details. The results? It’s estimated that 9 million indigenous persons came to faith within the decade following the Blessed Mother’s appearance. I leave it to my readers to look up any of the other Marian apparitions and find the poetic dimension. We teach as we are taught, and our Lady has implemented with her children the same poetic pedagogy that God himself employed with her. Poetic learning is Marian learning.
If we want schools and classrooms that are more Marian, then we should cultivate schools and classrooms that are more poetic. So, we should probably say a bit about our own schools and classrooms. As a lead in, I’d like to point out that poetic learning has been a journey for me: I’m still learning and I’m still applying. One could call it a sort of pedagogical conversion. Years spent as an AP teacher, drinking Kool Aid in the cult of critical thinking skills, and my own intellectual proclivities made me very much the Cartesian, hyper-analytical teacher that I’ve been criticizing, at least until recently.
Plato, in his Republic, tells us education begins first with the formation of the senses and emotions. At best, we treat as a developmental stage (say, K-5), something which should permeate our classrooms all the way through senior year and beyond. For those are familiar with it, can we ignore how effective the Pearson Integrated Humanities program was with adults? John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and their colleagues moved college students to dance, sing, and recite poetry. But I digress. What would this look like in our classrooms? The recovery of a poetic pedagogy should try to either reintroduce those activities which are truly “hands on” or invite a contemplative gaze on its objects of study.
Most Catholic schools have service hour requirements, and these requirements are often entirely detached from what happens in the classroom or the chapel. Unsurprisingly, students seek to check the box in the safest, most expedient way possible. Are their hearts changed by such programs? I’m not so sure. Imagine a program that designs various Christian service opportunities throughout the year which map onto what is being taught in the various disciplines. Science classes immediately stand out as an area of integration outside of the humanities. What about volunteer opportunities at soup kitchens when studying the Great Depression, or crisis pregnancy centers when studying the right to life? If a literature class is studying the concept of Xenia, have students actually engage in hospitality. Assign a project where students plan, prepare, and serve their families. Encourage them to invite friends over or find a way to do this in the classroom, without it becoming a typical class party characterized by Takis and Cosmic Brownies. When studying Byzantium in history, have students make an icon or, better, spend time in prayer before them. I would argue that students are better served when we stop erecting fences around such activities as though they are the sole domain or art or theology class. For science, get the students back outside to observe the world they inhabit. I imagine most of us had to chart the lunar cycle at one point. This was magical. Whatever they are studying, try to have them find it in the real world and give them the space for wonder. I regularly attempt do this in my theology classes.
Depending on the unit, I regularly create assignments where the students have to observe the principles “in fact:” look for billboards, bumper stickers, pay attention to conversations at the dinner table, and record and reflect on them. I especially lean into these activities when I teach logic, as students sometimes complain that logical principles have nothing to do with “real life”. There will always be those stubborn children who insist on becoming the Square of Opposition. When teaching Christian anthropology, I have students “live the proposition.” For example, when I am teaching that we are made in the image of the trinity, a giving and receiving love, I ask them to consider deliberately giving and receiving love, and I invite them to record and reflec on their etxperiences.
I would also recommend the recovery of the common place book. What if, at the beginning of 6th grade, and again at 9th grade, each student was given a beautiful journal for the purpose of common placing. This would be a sacred space, set apart from strictly academic notes, where students can write down, or even illustrate, that which moves the heart. We know where most of our students’ notebooks end up at the end of the year. But a well-cultivated common place book would become an extension of the student and more likely a keepsake. In the same vein, imagine applying the steps of lectio divina to non-theological texts. What if students took an excerpt from Walden Pond or Middlemarch or even a speech by Lincoln or Churchill and read it contemplatively, as though it really did contain a treasure meant to enrich their souls, personally. And lastly, have students “get inside” the historical event or literature movement by bringing back recitations, across the grade levels. This is something that classical schools tend to do well already.
Professor James K. Smith, in the first of his Cultural Liturgies trilogy, states that, as humans, “our fundamental orientation to the world is governed not primarily by what we think but by what we love, what we desire…” and because this is so, poetic formation as outlined, “makes such formation all the more powerful and effective.”[8] The practices that I’ve described will only be effective if they exist in the context of a larger school culture that becomes more Marian, embracing the poetic mode of learning. We teach as we are taught, and for this reason many of our schools today, especially at the secondary level, operate as public schools with a theology requirement and a Kairos retreat. Are we reflective about our bell schedules? Are we reflective about why we have bells to begin with? Must order and efficiency always be the best reason for our decision-making? Does the “feel” of the school actually change with the liturgical season and are festivities properly marked? In other words, do we immerse our students, body and soul, into a rhythm of sacred time to which academics must be subordinated, because it is no less real—not mere play acting? What about the artwork that adorns our walls, and do our students have time to contemplate it, or are they caught in a frenetic race from activity to activity?
In a recent article reviewing James Smith’s work, Christoper Perrin muses,
Could it be that our children are being shaped to love a version of the good life that is primarily determined by the “liturgies” of the mall, football stadium, TV sitcoms and the iPod? Could it be that our schools privilege direct engagement with the mind, and the presentation of ideas and a Christian worldview, but are nonetheless failing to thwart the power of these other shaping influences?[9]
We began, similarly, observing society’s willingness to allow Silicon Valley to dictate reality to our young people. Worse, we’ve participated in the assertion that what is real is primarily what is intellectual. Consider that much of the recovery effort in Christian education concerns imparting a “perspective” or “worldview.” This is nothing more than a subtle assertion that viewing the world as a Christian is just about putting on a different VisionPro headset, as opposed to an immersion in the real. And in a choice between this Cartesianism or the former, we stand no chance. But by sitting at the feet of our Lady, who is the Seat of Wisdom, by meditation on her actions and dispositions, allowing her to tutor us, we may begin to recover a poetic pedagogy that will transform both our schools and the hearts and minds of our students.