There are really two questions, I think. One is whether or not tutoring is a good way forward. The other is about the classical curriculum and methods that the tutors used, but that were also used in non-tutoring contexts (Roman primary schools, Medieval universities, etc.).
I think your info is mostly about the second thing.
Re: what changed in the Renaissance and Enlightenment: Enlightenment tutors tended to do much more geography and be more on the more aggressive side about teaching Euclid. There was also probably on average some easing up on the later elements of the trivium, with someone like Locke (qua tutoring) easing up a lot and traditionalists much less so. (You can also see some easing in De Ingenuis Moribus.)
To your point, I don’t think the Renaissance works really change much about the classical approach to education. What most of your post illustrates is the extreme, multi-century stability of the Trivium approach, which was true in both tutoring and non-tutoring contexts. What’s shocking about the Enlightenment is that education doesn’t really look much different, except in the very upper edge of the research university context.
Part of the reason for the extreme stability of the ancient curriculum is that rhetoric was stable as the one and only master-skill of the elite, the power tool for gaining wealth and influence. That’s not true anymore, which is one of many reasons to be skeptical of any sort of simple applicability of the ancient approach to today.
Strongly agree this info is mostly about what tutoring was, but I have been struck recently by how far-reaching this idea of ‘rhetoric’ is. I have found it very easy throughout my life to think about this classic notion of rhetoric as mere speaking well and persuading. But the way it is talked about and the way the curricula of Cicero, Quintilian and Renaissance thinkers seem to think of it, as you say, as the master skill of the elite. Is it not true anymore?
It depends on how we define this master skill. What exactly was this skill, if it is broader than mere persuasion? Rhetoric has its roots in law, political, persuasion, and the courts so we might call it ‘public advocacy.’ But it concerns not so much what to advocate so much as how to advocate. So at minimum it requires a knowledge of law, persuasion, and politics.
What might rhetoric have to do with progress studies?
Today, the good public advocate needs also knowledge of technology, economics, and maybe something else, and an eye to how more good can be done. But the key factor of a modern rhetoric would be the study and practice of mechanisms and method for getting stuff done: soft networks, legal process, fundraising, think tanks, legislative interventions, startup pitches, nonprofit organization, policy drafting and implementation, management science.
Since I believe that organizational and structural barriers are currently a bigger limiting variable on progress than invention and technology, a new version of rhetoric might be called for.
One alternative view is that I am just abusing the term and rhetoric is as obsolete as wooden wheels.
There are really two questions, I think. One is whether or not tutoring is a good way forward. The other is about the classical curriculum and methods that the tutors used, but that were also used in non-tutoring contexts (Roman primary schools, Medieval universities, etc.).
I think your info is mostly about the second thing.
Re: what changed in the Renaissance and Enlightenment: Enlightenment tutors tended to do much more geography and be more on the more aggressive side about teaching Euclid. There was also probably on average some easing up on the later elements of the trivium, with someone like Locke (qua tutoring) easing up a lot and traditionalists much less so. (You can also see some easing in De Ingenuis Moribus.)
To your point, I don’t think the Renaissance works really change much about the classical approach to education. What most of your post illustrates is the extreme, multi-century stability of the Trivium approach, which was true in both tutoring and non-tutoring contexts. What’s shocking about the Enlightenment is that education doesn’t really look much different, except in the very upper edge of the research university context.
Part of the reason for the extreme stability of the ancient curriculum is that rhetoric was stable as the one and only master-skill of the elite, the power tool for gaining wealth and influence. That’s not true anymore, which is one of many reasons to be skeptical of any sort of simple applicability of the ancient approach to today.
Confidence level: 30%
Strongly agree this info is mostly about what tutoring was, but I have been struck recently by how far-reaching this idea of ‘rhetoric’ is. I have found it very easy throughout my life to think about this classic notion of rhetoric as mere speaking well and persuading. But the way it is talked about and the way the curricula of Cicero, Quintilian and Renaissance thinkers seem to think of it, as you say, as the master skill of the elite. Is it not true anymore?
It depends on how we define this master skill. What exactly was this skill, if it is broader than mere persuasion? Rhetoric has its roots in law, political, persuasion, and the courts so we might call it ‘public advocacy.’ But it concerns not so much what to advocate so much as how to advocate. So at minimum it requires a knowledge of law, persuasion, and politics.
What might rhetoric have to do with progress studies?
Today, the good public advocate needs also knowledge of technology, economics, and maybe something else, and an eye to how more good can be done. But the key factor of a modern rhetoric would be the study and practice of mechanisms and method for getting stuff done: soft networks, legal process, fundraising, think tanks, legislative interventions, startup pitches, nonprofit organization, policy drafting and implementation, management science.
Since I believe that organizational and structural barriers are currently a bigger limiting variable on progress than invention and technology, a new version of rhetoric might be called for.
One alternative view is that I am just abusing the term and rhetoric is as obsolete as wooden wheels.