6 June, 2024
Dear Reader,
There is a list of Colloquium Papers at the end of this newsletter.
Last Saturday I went to a marvellous conference in Brisbane organised by Logos Australisin collaboration with the Australian Classical Education Society. The keynote speaker was Andrew Kern, founder of the Circe Institute, whose paper on humanity’s loss of certainty over the last 400 years (the ‘discarded image’, C S Lewis calls it) was as powerful as anything I have ever heard. Thankfully it was recorded and I hope to be able to give you a link to it soon.
The theme of the conference was Classical Education. We are hearing more and more about this emerging and fast-growing movement. It’s called Classical Education, but its meaning is transformed: it’s no longer the force-feeding of Latin and Greek to hapless school children, for the emphasis has shifted from a close attention to linguistics to a broad focus on those subjects that particularly distinguish humanity from the beasts: grammar, logic and rhetoric. The ancients called them the Trivium. The fact that our word trivialcomes from that says a lot about how education has confused its priorities! We might better explain and define them as communication, thinking and persuasion. They are the three activities that are exclusively characteristic of all that makes us human. They are the ‘liberal arts’ which define us as free men and women who, uniquely in creation, possess self-knowledge, who know that we know.
The subjects of the Trivium, unpacked, embrace literature, language, law, logic, politics and ethics, and within that embrace are all the specialities that have stemmed from them.
In my view the Classical Education movement is in essence reactive. It is a bulwark against galloping specialisation: its proponents are in effect saying that we’ve gone too far, that ‘the centre cannot hold’, that specialisations, though they have their value, are not the right place to start but rather should be built upon a sound initiation in the basics. There must be a return to teaching the foundational disciplines of communication and reasoning, the Trivium in fact, before we specialise in anything, indeed before we are capable of specialising capably in anything.
Over the past few years, ‘classical’ schools have mushroomed worldwide. Most of them are still small, sometimes very small, but they are growing fast. Yet hopefully not too fast. Small is good in a world where traditional ‘legacy’ educational institutions apparently see growth as their primary goal, the only indicator of success.
Classical Education sometimes runs into trouble in the current climate, for the ‘foundational disciplines’ of the Trivium have traditionally been based upon the three cultural pillars of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. It is thus hardly surprising that we are regularly exposed to accusations of Sexism, Eurocentrism – and its even more wicked stepdaughter, Colonialism. Several years ago the Ramsay Centre offered to fund courses in Western Civilisation at a number of leading Australian universities. Astonishingly some of the leading ones, including Sydney and ANU, declined the offer, despite the fact that they already hosted a wide range of specialised centres on their campuses. Yet they quailed before the prospect of taking what was widely perceived as a eurocentric viper to their bosom!
Apart from the strong links with Europe and with Christianity, supporters of Classical Education have another challenge to meet: the very word classical has connotations of excellence and superiority, and these are notions that are utterly repugnant to an intellectual tradition that has been corrupted by post-modernism.
But the Western Tradition which we have inherited has nothing to do with race, or with ‘gender’ for that matter: as Christopher Dawson reminded us, ‘Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’ The Christian Tradition is generally called the Western Tradition by a kind of historical accident. We sometimes need an effort of will to remember that the founders of Christianity were all Asians – Jews to be precise – and that there have probably been at least as many African and Asian saints and martyrs as European ones (and as many women as men). Let’s not forget either that the epicentre of Christianity was in Asia long before it spread to Europe, and that the greatest and most honoured of all human beings was a woman.
As to that ancient Eastern focus, I thought it very wonderful that our recent conference was held in St Nicholas’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, and that our host was Fr Stephen David, principal of St John Kronstadt Academy, Australia’s first Orthodox school in the Classical tradition. There is a superb short video embedded in the home page under the heading What is Classical Education?
REST IN PEACE JAMES POWER SNR
I have only just heard of the of the death on 22 May of James Power Snr, co-founder of Campion College. I had the honour of coming to know James well; I very much liked and admired him. Here is Campion’s obituary notice.
REPLYING TO THE NEWSLETTER
Sometimes people write to me personally by replying to the newsletter, but such messages are often corrupted and unreadable. I have no idea why. If you would like to write, please do NOT press the reply button, but instead start a fresh email.
I write this on the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, the allied landings at Normandy. We remember with respect those (on both sides) who fell on that day in defence of our freedoms, and pray that their lives have not been spent in vain.
Best wishes to all,
David Daintree
FOR FURTHER READING (AND VIEWING)
EXPLODING THE CLIMATE CHANGE MYTH?
If you are convinced that Climate Change is ‘one of the greatest threats facing humankind’ you will probably not enjoy this documentary. On the other hand, if you’re a climate sceptic or a ‘denier’ you will probably take more than comfort from it. It lasts over an hour, but we think you’ll want to keep watching after Greta Thunberg‘s passionate opening words!
MORE ON ‘CLASSICAL SCHOOLS’
Several of these new schools were represented at the recent Brisbane conference with Andrew Kern. St John Kronstadt Academy has been mentioned above. Here are some more:
Augustine Academy, NSW
St Benedict School, South Australia
Hartford College, Sydney
St John Henry Newman College, Brisbane
Toowoomba Christian College, Highfield, Queensland
There are many more. They’re all new and they’re all growing.
We would like to build up a register of Classical Schools in Australia and overseas. If you’re not on the list above and should be, do please tell us and accept our apology!
COMING EVENTS
REDISCOVERING HOPE
How did we lose it? How can we get it back?
The 5th Henry Baldwin Lecture Wednesday 19 June 7:30pm.
In the midst of an epidemic of mental illness, wars and political breakdown, the climate crisis, the rising cost of living, many of us are feeling anxious about our world. Hope is not lost. But where can we find it? Clinical Psychologist Dr Leisa Aitken on how hope has endured through the storms of human history, with practical advice on how we can have hope today.
St George’s Anglican Church, Battery Point
All welcome – free admission: BOOK HERE
ROME SUMMER SCHOOL, 30 June to 15 July 2025
With Campion College we are jointly planning a two-week residential Summer School, with two parallel streams, Latin and History, from 30 June to 15 July 2025. Campion’s last Rome school was before the in 2018, and the Dawson Centre held its own in 2019. We are thrilled to be able to collaborate with Campion in an exciting new venture.
HOBART SATURDAY 6 JULY
COLLOQUIUM 2024
Authentic Humanism
and the Crisis of Culture
the Ninth Dawson Centre Colloquium,
on Saturday 6 July 2024
at The Italian Club, 77 Federal Street, North Hobart
FREE STUDENT REGISTRATIONS
Due to the generosity of two readers we have two free Colloquium registrations available. Do you know someone who would like to come but can’t afford it? Please send nominations to me: director@dawsoncentre.org.
LIST OF PAPERS
Undoing Australia: how the Australian Nation is being Dismantled, One Statue at a Time
Bella d’Abrera
Teaching Authentic Humanism in schools – is it possible? An educator’s view
Richard Brown
Cultivating a Posture of Awe and Wonder
Natalie Kennedy
Christian Paideia: For the Hearth and Road
Anna Krohn
Western Perspectives in the Australian Curriculum
Lucas McLennan
A Transcendent Humanism: Recovering the Vision of Christopher Dawson
Karl Schmude
The Salvation of the West: A return to the Enlightenment or the Embracing of Tradition?
Fr Matthew Solomon
Without Hindrance or Fear of Reprisal: the attitudes and experiences of NSW and Victorian doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion
Dr Anna Walsh
The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies is an independent, not-for-profit think tank, dedicated to promoting enhanced awareness of the riches of the Christian Intellectual and Cultural Tradition.
Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) is considered to have been the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century. He is principally known for his powerful defence of the vital role of the Christian religion as a central strand of Western culture, but he also insists –
‘It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’
We in the Dawson Centre believe that every civilisation is shaped by a religious impulse, something fundamental to and inseparable from human nature, and that civilisations wither when this impulse is smothered or suppressed. In the twentieth century, and perhaps even more now, we have seen that nexus between Religion and Culture, between Faith and Reason, challenged by tyrannical forces of both the Right and the Left.
Not only is the belief in God as our ultimate reality widely denied, but our confidence in objective truth, goodness and beauty has been dealt a near fatal blow by the soi-disantintellectual elites that dominate the educational high ground. Our young people must be saved from this.
On Saturday 6 July the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies will host its ninth annual colloquium in Hobart, Tasmania. The Dawson Colloquium is a conversation, rather than a multi-stream conference. There are no keynote speeches, as all are considered important to the flow of ideas, and speakers are encouraged to attend all papers.
The Colloquium will be held again at the Italian Club, 77 Federal Street, North Hobart. The after-dinner speaker this year will be Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz AM FASSA, formerly Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University and currently Senior Fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.