26 Educational Truths Schools Desperately Need but Studiously Avoid
A contrarian defense of unfashionable educational concepts that are quietly indispensable, routinely dismissed, and increasingly out of step with the trends that claim to replace them.
My new book, The Subversive Art of a Classical Education: Reclaiming the Mind in an Age of Speed, Screens, and Skill-Drills, is now available on Amazon. This book is the culmination of years spent leading a classical school and witnessing firsthand how tried and true perennial practices of learning offer the most powerful resistance to the forces fragmenting our children’s minds and souls.
Get your copy on Amazon today.
Knowledge
The unfashionable belief that students should actually know things.Memorization
Once an important part of learning; now treated as a moral failure.Mastery
The idea that you shouldn’t move on until you can do something well.Discipline
Not punishment. Just the steady formation of habits, which feels suspiciously old-fashioned.Authority
Someone in the room actually knows more than the students.Standards
Objective measures that do not adjust to feelings.Difficulty
The necessary condition for growth, now flagged as a design flaw.Failure
Something that teaches, not something that traumatizes.Attention
The ability to focus on one thing for more than 30 seconds.Silence
An environment where thinking can occur.Reading Slowly
Especially when the text is old, demanding, or unwilling to be “accessible.”Writing Clearly
Saying exactly what you mean, without a slide deck.Accuracy
Being right, not merely interesting.Truth
A concept now treated as negotiable or “context-dependent.”Canon
A shared body of works worth knowing before you critique them.Tradition
The accumulated wisdom of people who didn’t have EdTech consultants.Imitation
Learning by copying the best before attempting originality.Practice
Repetition—the least glamorous path to competence.Assessment
Finding out whether learning actually occurred.Excellence
A standard that implies not everyone reaches it.Grades
Imperfect, but less confusing than vibes.Content
The inconvenient substance beneath all the skills.Homework
Learning that continues after the bell rings.Teacher Expertise
Deep subject knowledge, rather than facilitation techniques.Moral Formation
The belief that education shapes character, not just résumés.Wisdom
The ultimate educational aim—quiet, demanding, and deeply out of fashion.
plus a mega-bonus:
Beauty
The dangerous idea that some things are worth loving simply because they are good, true, and well made.
If you enjoyed this, I think you’ll enjoy my new book, The Subversive Art of a Classical Education: Reclaiming the Mind in an Age of Speed, Screens, and Skill-Drills. It is now available on Amazon.
Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of The Art of Being Human, Ugly As Sin and other books. His latest book is The Subversive Art of a Classical Education (Regnery, 2026).
Bravo! I received a classical education in high school, one that shaped me far more than my subsequent English major at Stanford. Of course Stanford offered more depth and variety, but it lacked that formative ethical and moral seriousness, as well as any over-arching sense of cultural continuity. Then again, it was the late 1960s: enough said!
Excellent!