Classical Schools Don't Just Form Students | Andrew Ellison Pt. 2 | The Furrows

In Part 2 of his conversation with Ryan and Alex, Andrew Ellison—veteran classical educator and former headmaster—opens with something he couldn't wait to share: a bucket-list Tallis Scholars concert in Dallas that arrived at exactly the right moment. The story becomes a lens for exploring how classical education transforms not just students, but every person in a school building—teachers, administrators, and ultimately the families and communities around them. 

What's in This Episode:

• How a Tallis Scholars concert sparked a reflection on classical education's power to form everyone in a school building—including the headmaster
• Where graduates and non-educators can find real communities of lifelong learning once they've left the classroom
• What makes faculty common reading programs genuinely formative and what quietly kills them
• Why the shared faculty office is a non-negotiable architectural feature of a classical school
• How classical education's influence ripples outward from teachers to students to families and how it opened one educator's path to faith

Chapters:

• 00:00: Catching Up with Andrew—Health Update and a Bucket List Concert
• 05:30: The Tallis Scholars and the Revival of Renaissance Sacred Music
• 14:41: The Veritas Music Teacher Who Changed a Headmaster's Ear
• 22:00: Mortimer Adler on Leisure and the Purpose of Liberal Education
• 28:00: Well-Read Mom and the Quest for Lifelong Learning Communities
• 31:12: Faculty Common Reading—Power, Pitfalls, and What Actually Works
• 42:13: The Shared Faculty Office as a Non-Negotiable
• 47:20: How Classical Culture Ripples to Students and Families
• 53:20: Church Communities and Classical Schools as Cultural Seedbeds
• 55:55: The Way of Beauty—How Classical Education Deepened Andrew's Faith

Resources Mentioned:

• The Tallis Scholars
• Well-Read Mom
• "Labor, Leisure, and Liberal Education" by Mortimer J. Adler — The Imaginative Conservative
• Classical Learning Test
• Arcadia Education

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education.

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Furrows Podcast, a podcast where we talk to people who have been transformed by classical education. My name is Ronnie Klipak. I'm the director of search for Arcadia Education, and I'm joined by Alex Julian, the director of the classical backlaureate program over at CLT. I was extremely disappointed to miss round one with Andrew Ellison, but it was so good we had to come back for round two. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Alex, uh, where should we pick up? Well, so we're in we're in an interesting space where for us uh a decent amount of time is of time has passed, a couple months, but for you, the listener, it will only be a week between part one and part two. So we're gonna we're gonna do our best to uh simulate that. Um but uh I think we should start by just checking in with you, Andrew. Uh, how have things been and and what have you been up to recently?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Good. What I've been up to in the last week since our last year. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Yes, of course. Of course. Good.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Um, well, uh it's interesting you mentioned that, Alex, because here in the Dallas area we have a fantastic um early music scene. And two nights ago, I was just thrilled. It was like a bucket list item. I got to go see from England the Talus Scholars choir perform uh at an Episcopal church here in the uh in the Dallas area.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

And uh, I don't know if either of you are familiar with with the Talus Scholars. I I imagine some of our listeners might be. They are the world's preeminent ensemble dedicated entirely to a cappella choral music from the sacred music of the Renaissance, named after the great English composer Thomas Talas, uh, from the uh the middle and and late 16th century. And um I've been listening to the Talas Scholars for almost half my life now. Uh and I I consider myself as having come to them a little later than I would have liked to. Uh, but the story of the Talus Scholars, um, they were founded more than 50 years ago, right? And so the only guy who's still with them is the founder and the director of the ensemble, maestro Peter Phillips. Um and he founded them while they were uh while he was an undergraduate studying music. Um, I think it was at Oxford, but it probably was at Cambridge, because I'm probably getting it wrong, um, and then mortally offending. But he was in his early 20s, and he and other like-minded students of music looked around at the scene and were disappointed, really at that time, or early 70s, that a cappella sacred choral music from the Renaissance was just not a standard part of the repertoire, right? That if you went to college to study music, uh you would really begin with Italians from the 17th century, right? It was medieval and Renaissance, everything up to you know, 1640 or whatever it was, or 16, everything up to Monte Verdi was just, well, that's that's that weird early music. I mean, why would we sing that? Besides it's so churchy, right? Right. And Peter Phillips thought that was just a complete travesty, and they weren't singing it in any of the concerts that you know undergraduate music students were studying, and no one was teaching it. So he started his own amateur, basically a pickup choir, a garage band, if you will, uh, of like-minded 20-something uh uh singers uh at university in England. We said, hey, let's just learn this repertoire, let's sing it for ourselves. Um, no prospects of giving concerts, you know, no record releases or anything like that. 53 years later, the Talus scholars are still an ensemble in existence. Um, they have given, it said in the program, something like 2,300 concerts over the course of those 53 years. You know, all the the singers, right, have turned over multiple times since then. Some of the originals have in fact passed away of illness or other natural causes, right? Because Peter Phillips is in his 70s now. He's his septugenarian. But um they revolutionized um the music scene, uh, the early music scene, and really by themselves revitalized sacred choral music from the Renaissance as a living art form. And they have recorded, I think, 30 albums on their own record label, uh, Palestrina, Joscan, just all these, all the great composers, uh, English and otherwise, of sacred, really almost entirely sacred music. And um it struck me how what a kinship there is between what Peter Phillips and the Talas scholars did, digging up something old and ignored. And something that had been ignored uh for so many generations that it had sort of become thought blessed like every no one does sacred Renaissance choral music uh in music schools or in concert repertoire. And they rediscovered it on their own and started an ensemble dedicated to it. And decades later, it is a thing, right? Their sound defined a whole new approach to the music. Before I was telling my daughter about this, I have old like novelty recordings of sacred music from the 50s and 60s, and it's these choirs of 35, 40, 50 people singing it in like romantic style with very slow tempos and wide vibrato. And that's not Renaissance style at all, right? Um, and Phillips changed, he just he went back, he and his friends they changed early music uh as a living performance art and rejuvenated it and resuscitated it. And now those ensembles are everywhere. Um, and they've got record deals, and you know, it's just it's a wonderful thing how that happened.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

That's amazing. I always thought it was uh it was the album chant from the 90s, you know, that uh where where you had the I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean that was a thing, right? The the Spanish monks.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yep. Uh and then the remix was like them floating right in the air.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

And you know, I'm sure Alex, you probably came to that through the um the discotheque remixes of the monks chanting over over house beats.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yes, that my that my boomer parents apparently liked.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Yeah, you know, when I think Ryan thinks we're making that up.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

No, I've just never heard of this, but I mean I came came through a very different musical route. But please say more about this.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Yeah, no, no, I mean in all seriousness, Alex, right? So you you do bring up something that happened, right? How Gregorian chant had a sort of a strange pop comeback uh in the form of this this these Spanish monks uh who had this this best-selling album. But talascholars have never had a pop crossover or breakthrough success. They've never had any disco remixes or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Which is probably good.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Uh uh Yes. Yeah. I I wouldn't I wouldn't want to to to hear anything about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

But um, you know, yeah. What do you think of Bardcore? This uh this like um old medieval style songs, uh, but um but like with pop music. It's the uh like Hildegard von Blingen on YouTube, I think is one of the most popular. Okay, we're gonna have to send some to Andrew.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Okay, I'm gonna pretend you didn't ask that question, Alex, because I don't I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm not sure I want to know. Uh I imagine it has some sort of AI thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

No, no, she is a she has been around for the last I want to say 15 years. Uh when I was when I was working at Old Veritas, not Old Veritas, but not quite so old Veritas, she became pretty popular because she was really important in sacred music. She has a beautiful voice, started in sacred music, and then did this this YouTube channel where she adapted pop songs into Renaissance style um songs. So so we'll make it this something you you have to that we'll send you after. If you're a listener, I highly recommend uh that you check it out. It is nowhere near the level of what Andrew is saying and is totally a distraction to what he's saying. Um but nonetheless.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

There's whole playlists of it.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I don't know. I don't know, none of this uh is familiar to me, anything that you guys are describing. I the 90s were a dark time.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

For some of us, for yeah, I mean there's some rocky years for for me in high school back in the 1990s.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Um but um Alex do you mean you rocked?

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Like that there were some years that where I was rocking and rolling uh uh pretty pretty hard. Uh but I mean in the 90s is when my Alex, we were talking about this on the on the last episode, right? That was when my my teaching career began. Uh back uh when I moved out to uh Arizona back in 1997 and started teaching at the um the Tempe Prep Academy. So um it I mentioned been listening to the Talus Scholars for almost half my life. And you mentioned uh uh working together, I mean you mentioned our time working at Veritas, Veritas Prep. And so I I wanted to share how I became aware of the Talos Scholars as a as a performing ensemble, um, because I think it's really illustrative about um how classical liberal arts education transforms everybody, including the staff, including the teachers. I had um, you know, uh back when when when we started Veritas in the very early 2000s, um, you know, I had done some music in high school and had sung in a church choir or two, or sang in a university choir for a year. I I would not have considered myself particularly well informed about um Western art music, right? Uh about the uh Led Zeppelin back catalog, yes, yes. Uh but and and and and and other other things of that genre, right? But um, you know, so then I I'm the headmaster of a classical school, and we got to teach music, okay? Uh and I walked into, I think this was the second or third year of the school's operation, and um I did a pop-in visit uh to a uh a music classroom, and this is a high school music teacher. And and I want to be clear, he was a basically a retired public school district music teacher, okay? Someone who had a full pension. Uh, and so what do you do when you retire at age 60 and get a full pension? You get another job. Right. And you do not forfeit your public school pension, right? So you get you get two salaries. Um, and he came and he taught music for us for a couple of years at Farrothouse. There was absolutely nothing that was classical about him in as far as his general philosophical or educational orientation. Um he was retired from the local elementary middle school district. Um, but he was a man of a different generation, right? And as we were kind of talking about in the last episode, um good education doesn't need a label on it of classical this or classical that. We in in in today's day and age, we we talk about classical ed to distinguish it from how bad everything else has become over the decades. Right. Um, but you know, if you were to go back 60, 70, 80 years, there was no such thing as classical education. There was just good or bad education, right? Um uh progressive or non-progressive uh education. And oftentimes in public schools, you could find the same thing under the same under one roof, you know, one room to another. Or in one room, you could have great education for 20 minutes. And then the teacher turns to some you know new teacher's college that's teachers college with no apostrophe in the word teachers, right? Uh no what happened to it. They don't know either. Uh uh, you know, who who who then for the last 20 minutes of class is doing some progressive ed stupid thing that they learned, you know, in teachers college. But so this guy, I'll I'll state his name. I honestly don't even know if he's still alive any any longer, but I'll give him a shout out. His name was Dr. Hugh Callison uh from Phoenix, Arizona. And I walked into his music class and he was showing a DVD. It was sometime in the early 90s, it was the Talas scholars singing Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass, the Missa Pape Marcelli, at Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome, in front of an audience uh where the first half was all cardinals. Oh. Right. You you you could see cardinals and monsignors, because it's cardinals wearing black with the red trim, monsignors uh wearing black with the uh the kind of pinkish-purplish sort of a trim, and then lay persons in the back. And it was beautiful, you know. This is the this is early 2000s, so we of course this is before flat screen TVs, Alex. The TVs on video parts were deadly, right? That if they tipped over on a student, there would be an ambulance, you know, right. Um, so I walked into his classroom and beautiful setting and choral music that I've just like I've never heard before. The sound was so pure. And what they were doing and what the Tala scholars continue to do with eight, nine, maybe in a big if they put a big ensemble together, they might have 12 total singers or something with lots of parts. Um, so I wasn't really familiar with with Renaissance sacred music. I certainly never heard of the Talas scholars, and I I didn't know a sound that could be this pure, just perfectly in tune, no vibrato whatsoever. It's like that can the human voice really sound like this amazing. So um my jaw just dropped, and I'm walking into Hugh Callison, retired public school teacher, uh, his classroom at at Veritas. And you know, I I went to go see him late and then they what in the world was that video? I've never heard or seen anything like that. He loaned it to me. Fortunately, I had a DVD player, I think, you know, mostly VHS at that particular point.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Borrowed it, took it home, uh, and became just became a huge fan. And um basically from that point, I would buy every Talos Scholars CD that I that I could find. Uh, and have been again listening to them for almost you know, well on 25, 25 years now. But I offer that as an example because I don't know how many experiences, Alex, you had like that when you were teaching or when you were running or leading a classical school. But you go in, no matter what your own formation is, you go in there, you're in the middle of this educational program that you yourself could never teach all of.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

And you're surrounded by, if you've hired well, yeah, you're surrounded by amazing men and women who can teach these things that you can't, and from whom everyone can learn things, not least of whom the colleagues, the other staff, the headmaster, the fellow teachers. And when I think about how I discovered the Talos Scholars, because of a colleague of mine at a classical school introduced me to something I'd never heard of before. I I can't count the number of experiences I had like that in my career teaching or uh being a headmaster or working uh as a coach or mentor or or leader for for classical school headmasters. But the power of the thing to transform everybody in the building really uh came to my mind again this week when I got to cross seeing the talus scholars off the Ellison bucket list on Wednesday.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

That's such a good point. Um you know, when we talk about lifelong learning, because that's a that's a become a buzzword in in our space, I think what many of us imagine is someone who continues to read, someone who continues to uh listen to to mu good music, you know, consume the arts, those sorts of things. I don't think we think of people who intentionally seek out a community of learners after they no longer have to be in school. Um and uh you know, be because I think when when we imagine the graduate, we we imagine an individual going out into society doing individual things. Uh because that's that's like what America culture, American culture is.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Where would you find those community of learners if you're not a teacher? Well, I like I feel like I found the the oasis in the country by working at Great Hearts and stumbled into something I never would have found, or known I should have looked for. But where do you find that elsewhere?

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Yeah, that's um I I appreciate you bringing that up, Alex. When I go back and I revisit some of what Mortimer J. Adler was writing back in the 50s about what it means to live a life of meaningful, high-minded leisure. You know, he he he writes about what are the purposes of liberal education? Okay, uh, it's to train people for citizenship, uh, for work, uh, and for a life of leisure and learning, right? Uh and when he writes about the the last thing, the leisure bit, um, a lot of his examples actually sound like that solitary experience that you're describing, right? That um that the the well the liberally educated uh uh uh linoleum salesman, uh uh, you know, or asbestos tile salesman to go back really to the 1950s, um, uh, would uh you know sell carcinogenic kitchen flooring all day long, uh uh and then go home in the evening and after dinner with his family, uh, retire to his study where uh he would uh light up his pipe and uh turn on the radio and enjoy an opera broadcast and uh and maybe uh read some um um read some John Dunn or something like that. It was in the vision that Adler paints in a lot of his 1950s writing, it is a solitary experience. Um and yet he all Adler also gave us the quotation um solitary reading is like solitary drinking. Uh too much of it is is is actually pretty bad for the soul. And uh and it's always better to read and and uh uh and enjoy the conviviality with others, right? So if you are, we've all had that experience when you're working at a school, you're surrounded by all those like-minded people, and it's and it's really um there's too much, right? There's too many opportunities. You know, I great experience. When I first came to uh San Antonio to work for Great Hearts uh uh back in 2018, there I found there was this long-standing Great Hearts San Antonio tradition of probably about four or five times a year, uh sort of a a group of the faithful. And it was always open, right? It could be anybody, but it was it was a group of teachers drawn from multiple schools, uh, would get together and do a um more or less unprepared, uh totally unrehearsed, improvised, staged reading of a Shakespeare play, like on someone's back patio or in inside if the weather was bad, right? And um, you know what a wonderful thing that is to just have that community. And there's always you know various roast beasts and beverages and children running around and dogs and all that kind of stuff, right? But so, you know, Ryan asked the question where do you find that if you're not working at a school? Um I have one comment. I don't know, Alex, if you want to take a swing at answering Ryan's question first. Have you seen where people who don't work in schools or who don't have kids in a school? Because sometimes, you know, I I've done this a number of times, right? When I was teaching or or being a headmaster, right? Um, the school would put on like a seminar for parents, right? You can come, we're gonna read all Plato's Republic over the course of four weeks this summer. You can come and they're Would be like five really dedicated people who would. Right. Um, but have you seen other ways in which folks you know who who are looking for community in in liberal learning together can find that kind of community. What have you seen?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

I mean, I it takes a person uh it takes a person initiating a group like that, I think is what I've seen. Like someone saying, hey, let's do a book club, but not let's not do the sort of book club that you think we're doing. Let's let's go tackle this book that I've always wanted to read. Um a shout out to CLT. They actually have a quarterly reading of great books um where they buy the book for all the employees, and every Monday morning, you know, we read through it and discuss it. Now that's a company culture for a company that is the classic learning test. You know, so it's not quite the same thing as in your local space. I think at the local diocese or at the local parish, you'll you'll sometimes see someone um running a book club or doing sacred music uh that you that you can come and attend. But that's pretty much all I've seen.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah, I I've seen things in happen in churches too. Um I want to make a comment about that in a moment, uh, which won't necessarily win me any friends. Um I I am an avid churchgoer, uh and and um not like Winston Churchill. You know what Winston Churchill said about himself vis-a-vis the church? He said something like uh, I am not a pillar of the church, uh strengthening it from within. I am more of a flying buttress from without. But no, no, no, no. Uh I'll speak about church groups in in just a moment. Uh have you ever heard of the well-read mom?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah, so uh my wife is um is a very, very hardworking teacher, insanely hardworking, um, and uh doesn't have a whole lot of time, hasn't had a whole lot of time since she started teaching K2 art to do anything other than prep for K2 art.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yep. Uh but that's not that's like 300 students.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

A day, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

A day.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

Yeah. And then the other 300 tomorrow, right? And then the first 300 the day after that. But yeah, it's yeah, there's a lot of you know, trimming of paper and making of mosaic tiles and and all. I don't want to think about it. But um, a couple years ago, she was active in a well-read mom group that uh an old, old friend uh was doing here in town. And it was um, you know, it was sort of co-workers, right? But they didn't all work in the same building, and they weren't, you know, only I think only one of them was an actual teacher, and that was and that was my wife. But um, you know, those things didn't exist 30 years ago, right? Because there was no internet to facilitate, there was no uh way to disseminate. Here's the list of books that we suggest this year, and here's a syllabus for how long to spend on them, and here are guided discussion questions for group leaders and things like that. Um there are such things now, it doesn't make them any harder to stick to or commit to, uh uh, but at least they're there.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Yeah. No, go ahead. No, please, please. Well, one thing I'm curious about is making sure it happens in a school because what you brought up about this wealth of knowledge, this great potential energy of wisdom that is in a school space, I I think it often goes squandered even in classical schools. People show up to do their job, to look to work in their discipline, and if you have a really annoying headmaster, he's gonna make you read some great books with everyone, uh, you know, which is good. And a lot of uh some people like that, some people don't. Um but I I don't I don't think there's really a pervasive culture of okay, I'm a lifelong learner, and I get to potentially be part of this qu this faculty choir, or act in the play that the kids are putting on, or some of these other things. So I'd love to hear how you, when you were a headmaster, started to make that part of the culture of the schools that you were in, because I as a teacher noticed that coming in right away that there was a culture of that already.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah. Yeah. So I um I I I I first of all, I don't want to I don't want to take, I don't want to claim any sort of bold visionary credit for anything here, right? Um it was made clear to me uh in my sort of apprenticeship period uh that one thing a classical school must always do is have one ongoing minimum, minimum, one ongoing common liberal learning syllabus slash project for the entire faculty, no matter what they taught, to engage in all year long. Um, and as I understand it, that mentorship or that expectation, which was imparted unto me, uh was was uh an essential sort of organic feature of the Trinity schools uh uh which had been founded back in South Bend Indiana back in in 1980. Um that was just a thing that they did. And it was uh uh the headmaster, or uh later on when there was a Trinity Schools, Inc., it was the president who would decide what all of the schools, you know, and for 20 years there was one, no, 10 years there was one school, and then they had two schools, and then they had three, um, would decide what everybody, all the faculty were gonna be reading in common at all of the schools. And one year it might be a novel, uh, and then another, you know, it would be a classic novel, but something not in the curriculum, right? It would be, well, we're gonna read Madame Bovary this year. Yeah we don't do it with high school students, but we're gonna do it as a faculty. Um or another year it might be uh uh a work uh uh, you know, and it would it would stretch, you'd get people out of their comfort zone. It'd be one, you know, one year we might read uh Michael Polanyi's uh personal knowledge, right? Uh a challenging book of phenomenological scientific epistemology, right? Everybody has to do it. The sixth-grade math teacher has to do it, the ninth grade art teacher has to read personal knowledge, but not just read it, right? That um, and this is a piece that's so important. What then happens after it is read? What is the structure of accountability uh and um formation around that reading? And you know, you you you kind of spoke uh earlier, everyone, you know, when you say book club, everyone goes, Oh, yeah, book club, right? Nobody read it. People get together, they drink wine, they have snacks, they talk about their lives, right? With the book sitting on the coffee table closed, right? Um, I I I mentioned I was gonna say something that wouldn't necessarily endear me to many people about church reading groups. Uh we may have time to circle back to that. Maybe not. Um There's a different problem I see in church reading groups that I have experienced many times in church reading groups that set out to be liberal learning groups, but they quickly turn into something else. Again, I might come back to that. Um what whether or not there is a a book or a common project of study that the faculty at a classical school are going to do all year long? That's one thing. That's a necessary but not sufficient condition. But then what does the class look like? Right. Um who, you know, how how many how many separate groups meet for class sessions? When do the class sessions occur? How long are they? How frequently do they occur? Does each class session for your teachers, does it consist of the same group of people, or are they mixed up every time? You know, if it's a faculty of 20, you can just do one class, one continuing education class, and everybody can be the same. But if you've got a school with 40, 50, 60 employees in it, you can't just do one. Um is it gonna be the same, you know, five different groups, each with the same 10 people in it? Or are they gonna mix up every, you know, every time? Um, who's leading the classes for the faculty? How have those people been trained? Um, is the same kind of thing existentially happening in each one of those separate classes? Um, it's not an I I'm raising all these questions because what I've seen is that um it's one thing to say, we're all gonna read uh uh Michael Polanyi's personal knowledge this year. Okay, that's great. But then what? Right? How often do you meet as a faculty to discuss it? How do you make people want to do the reading? You know, how do you make people afraid of not doing the reading? You can't treat them like 14-year-olds. Uh so what what tools, what leverage, what influence do you have? Um uh how long are the sessions? You know, is it reasonable to expect people to stay 90 minutes after, you know, past the work day? Uh you know, you know, are you gonna do it at someone's house in the evening? Is there gonna be, you know, uh libations or things like that? Um I've seen schools in my day commit to doing this thing, this ongoing formation thing, and yet make a lot of choices along the way about how often to meet, how long to meet for, um, how big the groups are, who leads the groups, how prepared they are. I've seen schools make a lot of choices along the way that can really compromise the formational impact that those activities can have. Yeah. Really compromise it. Yeah. I mean, worst example I've ever seen, I'll say this one last thing, is a school, and I've seen it happen more than once. Um, the idea is, well, you know what, we should have electives, right? There is a program of common liberal learning this year. You choose which of the six groups you want to belong to, right? And I uh there's something very appealing about that, on the one hand, um, but talk about a squandered opportunity and something that just results in little clicks uh of people, you know, rather than liberal learners growing together, it turns into little subgroups or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Have you noticed that, Ryan?

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Well, what, the clicks, or there are ways to squander the opportunities? Well, all I can think about is how beneficial it was for me as a teacher who had no classical background to jump into those. But I'd I'd love to hear more from you. What's what's the ideal if you if you could custom set uh your environment or your program for your teachers? What that looks like and why.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Yeah. So, you know, I've already kind of spoken about one thing, right? It needs to be the same thing for everybody. Yeah. Right. Uh it can't be six different books that people get to choose and stick in all year long. Working back on.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Say more on that part. Why does it have to be the same book?

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Because if it's one book, then everyone's focusing on the same thing and growing in the same way, uh, and able to talk about the same thing outside of the context of those four times or five times or six times that you're meeting for those classes, if you were. Um the same arguments for why a classical education should, in its fundamentals, consist of the same syllabi for every child, right? And I know that in the world of classical ed, there's a lot of different practices around that. Some classical schools approach in the high school the arts like electives, others require them of everybody. Uh I would, you know, some classical schools offer AP versus other subjects, you know, in which case it's not quite the same thing. But I would hope all classical educators could agree that when it comes to, for example, the great books, capital B, uh, capital G, capital B, um, there should be a common syllabus that every single student in the school is reading, right? Uh, and there are social reasons for that. There are uh just you know, reasons of, hey, if this is important for some people to read, it's important for everybody to have to read. All those arguments hold the same for a faculty in a classical liberal arts school. Um working again backwards. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

On that point, uh that so that that culture of we're going to try to talk about this outside of the mandatory time in which we have to talk about this, that's the that's the culture you're reaching for.

unknown 35:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

I I mean, we talk about this great conversation as well, it's the books speaking to each other, and we're just you know, in part of it. No, the great conversation is we're bringing this thing into existence here and now, right? And and that that they're incredibly useful for our daily life in our normal conversations, that like they are the thing of which a school culture is made. You know, that if your headmaster isn't referring to the thing you're reading uh outside of the group of you uh of you reading it, then there's a missed opportunity there.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Yeah. Or or if or you know, if if Alex, you know, 26-year-old Alex is uh you know, he's he's in between his his his classes, he's got a prep period, uh, and he's walking around carrying you know Michael Polanyi's personal knowledge, uh because seminars tomorrow and he has 180 pages to read, right? And and he's not alone, right? And then if you're a faculty member and you're going, man, I I don't know if I'm gonna be able to read all that Polanyi, then you see Alex walk by and he's got his nose buried in the book. You're going, okay, right, well, I can I can do it too.

unknown 36:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Right. Or if you see Alex has got his copy of Persuasion by Jane Austen uh in in the lunchroom while he's waiting for his mac and cheese to heat up, right? Uh just kick off a conversation. Hey, did you did you get to chapter seven yet? What did you think about that, right? Those are things you can't mandate, but they happen in a living, breathing school culture where you got a math teacher and a Latin teacher who don't overlap in what they teach on a daily basis. But if they're all reading Jane Austen for faculty seminar on Friday, now they've got something they can interact about. Now they got something they can talk about at the microwave.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

And in the physical space, uh stepping into Veritas, there was that shared faculty office. Was that a Trinity Schools feature as well?

SPEAKER_02 37:43

It was. Yeah, yeah, it it was. It was to resist the culture, the public school culture of every teacher has his own room.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

And the break room is just where you come to to to complain and get coffee, right? Um when you devote a space, and and we, you know, I know classical schools have to deal with um oftentimes significant uh facilities and real estate limitations and pressures. But um to take a stand and say the largest single space in the building other than the gymnasium, uh-huh, uh equal in size to the cafeteria, will be the faculty office space. What? We could turn this into three classrooms, and if you know the architects are saying we've never seen a school like this, teachers never have an office. Teachers always have their own classrooms. You could fit three more, four more classrooms in here, that's four more sections of 25 students. Think of all the revenue, right? Um, well, there are some choices that have to be made because they are expensive, not because they are lucrative choices. Yeah. Um, and that was certainly one of them. I know you had experience working in that office for for a long time, and you worked at at least, I think, two other classical schools that again had had a common faculty office, right? That that's just a non-negotiable feature of the building.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah, one of uh so I didn't get to work at Veritas, but I got to work with the guy who worked at Veritas and so many people who worked at Veritas who brought in that tradition into Cicero. And one of my favorite things about that setup, that space was inevitably it leaks out into the hallways. So there were times where uh Dominic Martel and I would run into each other, uh, and we're we're just in the middle of conversation about you know, X, Y, or Z or what we just read. Uh in best case scenario, we got in a heated argument over something. And then my kids stop and they watch us have this conversation. Yes, and they're engaged by it. And all of a sudden, you know, lunch, lunch bell rings, we're gonna, we're gonna y'all go do your thing, we're gonna keep fighting in this room. Four or five of them would come in and inevitably just watch the show and just wanted to see really high-minded conversation happen. And then inevitably they keep coming back, and it turns into his own little mini subset of culture. The the overflow was profound. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Yeah, yeah, and for the kids to see the teachers having to do their own homework, right? Who was walking around carrying this book? Mr. Ellison, why was Mrs. Rasberg the music teacher? Why was she carrying around a copy of Euclid? She teaches music. Why has she got Euclid's elements? It's like, well, you know, as a faculty, we're all working through the first 12 propositions together, you know. Yeah, for the ninth graders to go, oh yeah, that's so awesome. I would love to see my art teacher try to do Euclid. Right. And it makes the kids feel like the faculty are authentically in it. Like we've got skin in the learning game, too.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Yeah, I wish we could say the phrase we get high on our own supply more in schools when it comes to classical education, because it's really the best version. So I kind of say we we buy what we're selling, you know, but but really getting high on our own supply is better. Yeah, because because when you think about it, there's this assumption from kids and parents that, okay, this is a job, and so you only do this because you're you're being paid to do it. And and maybe you love teaching, maybe you love kids, uh, but you love the things you're teaching, and you want to do those things and talk about those things when you don't have to, and you love the things you're not teaching. Like I that I think is transformative for kids. And I know it was transformative for me as a young teacher, where when when I was working for Andrew, he could have put all the teachers in just uh in just the the classrooms in that church building. But instead we had a portable, a portable the wherever the faculty office was, and we shared desks. And uh like my formation that year would not have been the same if I wasn't, you know, like a diamond being uh f physically like pushed together by the ideas and the people around me.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Yeah, yeah, and and it's yeah, it's not just the ideas, it's also how do you deal with the kids, right? How do you how do you answer your first angry email from a parent? Uh how do you mollify without collapsing, right? Uh how do you uh, you know, everything having to do with the craft, the labor, the work of teaching. You get all that from being at close quarters with your fellow teachers. Um, learning from the veterans, uh uh, learning, maybe in some cases, what not to do from the veterans. Uh yeah, yeah. But that, you know, yeah, the the the point is um a an educationally vibrant culture shapes everybody who's in it. Uh, it shapes the kids first and foremost, but it shapes the adults who are working in the building. And as as many listeners will know, you can be a parent of multiple of kids in a classical school, the more so if you have multiple kids at multiple grade levels. But even if you just have one kid in a classical school, you're not in the building, you're not on the campus, you're not soaking it up with everybody on a daily basis. But what your kid is getting out of that environment does come home. It does change the home, it changes the car ride home from school. Uh when the kid says, Hey, can we put on the classical music station, Dad? You know, instead of the stupid 90s hits station that you always listen to. Uh or uh, yeah, it's like I hate Van Halen. I want to hear Van Beethoven. You get things like that. And my 15-year-old son changed the radio station on me the other day because he wanted me to get back to the classical music station. Of course, it's pledge week on North Texas Public Radio, and then he saw why I was not listening to the classical station. Oh, right. Because they're just talking about how wonderful classical music is and give us money and all that. But um yeah, it you know, it it affects everybody. It affects everybody.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Speaking of that, the effect and um that a student that it has on a student when they're on campus. Ryan, you were talking about listening to part one and Andrew, when he was mentioning the teacher in his middle school kind of being a change agent. Do you mind digging into what we were saying?

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Well, it's just so interesting that you were uh you were explaining the dark side of that version that you were exposed to as a student, where you had the top gun reference being the entryway into the lesson. And uh that teacher was a change agent and was leading you down a path that was kind of banal and transient. The guy who was the DJ.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

The DJ, the the guy who was the DJ for all the school dances.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Yeah, yeah. Yep. That's right. Uh but that that power is never lost. It's it's just as strong in this classical school. The teacher is the change agent, uh, but for the good. But what's what's interesting to me too that I hadn't thought of before is you had described so we're describing this uh you have this this core of a faculty culture at the very very center, leaking out to the teachers, leaking out to the kids, and then making its way out to the families. Um it's a little startling to see how profound and extensive that role of change agent really is. Um and I'm I'm wondering if that's why a lot of those um those spaces that we're talking about, as far as like where do you find those liberal culture spaces? As you guys were talking about them, I've I've only been able to recall those sorts of spaces where teachers were making up the majority of the body, or at the very center of them. Uh so I I just can't help but wonder um if what these liberal arts, these classical schools are right now are fun functioning as those little pockets of of culture that uh are the remaining salt as the Roman Empire collapses. Like no, the very role, the very essence of the school is to be the change agent of the culture.

unknown 46:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Um, and and you know, it may be the case that 30 years ago, 25, 30 years ago, right? Um, it was only happening at schools, right? But now, you know, those schools have have had legions of graduates, you know, who are not working in education now, uh, but who have had some kind of experience of a community of high-minded liberal learning. And by no means would it even be a majority of graduates of classical schools, but I know that there are some out there, right, who are seeking to recreate in their own homes, um, in their own communities, uh, some experience of liberal learning in community. Even if they're living in a place where there are no classical schools, public or private, that they can send their kids to, um, those people, those adults, those men and women, parents, uh now, right? My students, your students, Alex, 20 years ago, now they're parents. Um, you know, I guarantee that they're the ones who are starting book groups in their churches or in their communities, or um are uh, you know, trying to get uh uh you know uh adult learning programs going in the public library, or uh those are the ones who are taking their kids to Talos Scholars concerts, right? Uh and and making sure that there are at least three people in the audience under the age of 50. Um they are the ones who are renewing the readership and um patronizing concerts and art events and buying books and and um yeah, you know, it's it it starts somewhere, but it it never stays there, right? It doesn't just stay there. And uh I mentioned earlier, you know, now kind of circling around the issue, church groups. Um I will say that in church congregations where there is a strong affiliation with some form of classical education, whether it's a school that is actually affiliated with the church, uh, or whether it is a classical school where a plurality of families also attend a particular church together. And that's, you know, people go to places because their friends go there. Oh, you heard about this new school. Oh, I'm gonna send my kids there. Next thing you know, you got 20 families from one church who are all sending their kids to this other school. We were, Alex, in episode one, we were talking about the Trinity School in southern Indiana and how I came to that, right? And it was the the church, the the um Christian Reformed Church, Dutch Calvinist CRC, that my family was attending at the time, was kind of known as the Protestant Notre Dame Professor Church, right? And and then a reasonable group of these people, you know, these folks who I just knew of as my parents' friends, but were world-class philosophers and historians and Dead Sea Scrolls scholars and things like that were sending their kids to this weird liberal arts school where they read Dostoevsky and make you do Latin, right? It wasn't affiliated with the church, but it just was a school where a like-minded group of folks in the church all were sending their kids, you know, in another part of town. Um, when that happens, schools become eleven in their in their religious communities too.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Uh they become eleven in their local performing arts scenes, local theater culture, local youth theater, suddenly sees an influx of families uh who want to do Shakespeare, you know, instead of uh uh you know um Lion King or something like that, right? Um when classical education happens at some kind of a scale. And when I say scale, I'm not talking about thousands, I'm talking dozens of people, right? It starts to transform all kinds of things in a community, uh in small ways or or even in larger ways.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

I th I think I'd I'd love to spend our last bit uh talking about how it worked on deepening your faith and your faith life, classical ed, um, and life of the mind.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Sure, sure. Well, um you know, I uh I was formed by the Trinity schools, formed in a Protestant Christian church, formed in the Trinity schools, which was a a robust high school culture of Christian humanism, is how I would describe it, right? It was a humane education uh in the arts and sciences, in philosophy and history, but also theology, language. Um, but it was it was a fundamentally Christian humanism uh uh through and through. And that left such a deep imprint upon you know my my mind and my soul and my my moral sensibilities and my moral imagination and all that. But um, you know, things happen, you get into young adulthood, you go into college, you wander a bit. Some people wander, I did, I wandered pretty far. But um I I came, I entered the Catholic Church uh directly as a result of my experiences in public non-sectarian classical education. Right. Um and there really were two elements to that, right? Uh and I wasn't the only one, right? I knew people, I knew kids who were entering the Catholic Church through experiences uh in non-sectarian publicly funded classical education. I knew teachers who were uh I knew uh yeah this particular school that I was working at, we mentioned it several times, Veritas, right? It had not in its intention, not in its plan, not in its uh charter, not in its business plan or contract with the state, in its existence, it scooped up a large number of families from a couple nearby Catholic churches who, for a variety of reasons, were really unhappy with the Catholic parish schools that were available to them. Really, really unhappy. Um for reasons that were not hard to understand back in the 1990s or or early 2000s. Um and that meant that there was a uh a very vibrant uh faith-filled uh element in the school population that was there from the beginning. And they weren't the only ones in the school, you know, they weren't the only families, uh, but uh they were very active. And uh, you know, Christian charity and uh the theological virtues being what they were, um you know, oftentimes the presence, this the spirit that that these you know really vibrantly, joyfully faithful Christian families were bringing to the life of the school was a vibrant and joyful Christian spirit that was very attractive to be around. Um, you know, and and these are the families who, when your wife had a baby, uh would bring you meals for six straight weeks, um, you know, uh because that was families. That was just what they did, right? Yes, of course, of course. Because they were used to doing it for themselves, because they'd all had nine babies and even you know, had eight other babies, you know, children to feed and teenage boys and all that, right? So um being in and around a particular milieu of uh of Catholic Christians was really formational and important for me as a teacher, uh, and then uh later on as a as a school leader. But that wasn't all, right? It was also the sustained experience that I was having either as a teacher or uh just as a um a member of a learning community uh of the life of the Catholic mind.

unknown 55:28

Right?

SPEAKER_02 55:29

And the Western tradition is bigger than just Catholic Latin Christendom. It's bigger than that, right? The roots of the Western tradition and you know antedate the Christian church. Um, the Eastern churches, the Protestant churches, the secular humanist movement, right? These are these are branches on the tree of Western civilization. They exist, they're real, right? And there's great value to be found in all of them. But um, you know, uh a good classical school is gonna teach Dante, right? Uh alongside Rousseau, uh alongside Milton, and um, you know, experiences of reading Aquinas more seriously than I ever had in my life because I had to teach him, you know. Uh that that if you're paying attention, that can change your thinking. If you're not willfully obstinate, uh that can have some impact upon you. Um, the aesthetic experience of reading Dante. I mentioned the Talus Scholars, okay, right? So um, you know, my wife was a cradle Catholic, and and and we were married at that point and attending local Catholic churches. And uh to say that the music in most Catholic churches in the early 2000s was disappointing would be an understatement. Um to be introduced to the Talas scholars and find out that actually, no, the the whole Mass, you know, there are hundreds of polyphonic settings of the of the ordinary of the Mass that were written in the 16th century, right? Uh and you know, it's all in Latin and it's all just achingly beautiful. Oh, and by the way, actually, did you know that nothing in present liturgical law uh prevents any of those musical settings of the Mass from being sung at ordinary Sunday Mass at any American Catholic church, instead of uh, you know, the traveling band of uh of out-of-tune guitarists and tambourinists, right? Uh singing the same six songs week after week after week, right? To have discovered the um the Roman Catholic aesthetic tradition through through classical education was huge for me, Alex. And it's the way of beauty is not the way in for everybody. I think of our friend Eric Twist, right? Who who, you know, he's he's Mr. Theology and doctrine and dogmatic content, right? For him, it was truth. It's this, not that. This is an error, this is true, right? Um, I'm not saying truth doesn't matter to me. I'm not saying I'm insensible about those kinds of things. Uh but Palestrina was at least as important as Aquinas.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

Um, and and that to sort of end up where we began, right? When I walked into Hugh Callison's music class and discovered the Talos Scholars on, you know, a TV cart uh that he was playing for his kids. And I'm sure it was just going way over their heads, right? Um experiences like that happened through classical education. They certainly were not happening at the Sunday parish life.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:51

They were not. Um Flair Connor, it was, who said back in the 1950s or 60s, you know, it is a truth of the modern world that one must suffer more because of the church than for her, at least these days. Right. Um Christian churches everywhere uh have always struggled, right, in their um in their leadership. They still do. You know, not a week goes by without another scandal in a church somewhere, and that's heartbreaking. My um my parents are very active in a Protestant church where they live, and um for they've been around the block a few times, for the second time in their adult lives, they are dealing with um a scandal involving the senior pastor at the church and uh and and um sexual misconduct, right? For the second time in their lives. Uh, and and you know, we certainly, as those of us who are Roman Catholics, don't have to remind ourselves of the uh scandals that are still with us, the legacies uh of priestly abuse. Diocese of El Paso in Texas just filed for bankruptcy, right? It's not over, not over yet, and it's not all the same old things, right? The Christian churches have always found ways to make the gospel profoundly unattractive uh in the world because of the fallenness of the members of the Christian church. And I include myself in the list of fallen members of the of the Christian church. But um, some things are easier to fix than others. The ineffable mystery of evil is hard to fix. Really awful music is easy to fix, I think, by by comparison. And when we think about, and well, I maybe that's that's just a uniquely modern 20th, 21st century way in which the Christian churches managed to succeed in making the faith less attractive than it ought to be sometimes. Um certainly wasn't a problem uh in any cathedral of the Renaissance, you know, or uh or the Baroque era or anything like that. There are treasures lurking everywhere in the cultural patrimony and heritage of the Christian churches. And I I use the word plurally and ecumenically. Um there are cultural treasures lurking in uh you know in Eastern Orthodoxy that many more of us in the Latin churches need to know more about. There are cultural treasures, artistic, architectural, calligraphic, um in the Jewish tradition in the West that we need to know more about. Um and and when these elements in religious tradition are allowed to breathe and radiate and resound, um, they make the faith more attractive to everyone, I think, who comes in contact with them.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

Well, I don't know of a better uh statement to end on than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

No, and uh, great thing about having Andrew Ellison on is we never get to what we had planned to talk about, which means that we're inevitably season two wind up for part three. Season two. So it's well season two.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

But you guys get any cancel get any cancellations, just give me a ring.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

No, we'll have you back for season two. You'll be our regular season contributor. Thank you, Andrew.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Thank you for the episode of the Furrows Podcast. Andrew, thank you so much for your generosity and time and thought. We'll catch you guys next time.