Teaching Western Civilization is not conservative. It is subversive. Every timeline is an act of defiance. Every primary source is a check on manipulation. That is why this course was dismantled.
Thank you Michael. I want real history not Marxist history of our universities. The western heritage takes time to study and appreciate. Modern scholars take the quick way and just destroy.
I would start with The Golden Thread -- Volume One by James Hankins. Second, I would highly recommend the Hillsdale Online Course: https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses
Once you eliminate history, intellectual history, mythology, classical literature, etc., it raises an interesting question: Do we even have a common cultural language or lingua franca, and if so, what would that be?
This is exactly the right question—and the answer is both clarifying and disturbing.
Yes, we have a common cultural language. It's not Shakespeare, the Bible, Greek mythology, or the American founding documents. It's Marvel movies, TikTok trends, and whatever Netflix is promoting this month.
The cultural references that actually function as shared vocabulary today are corporate-generated, algorithm-amplified, and designed to be consumed and discarded within a news cycle. A teenager is far more likely to understand a reference to a viral meme from last week than to recognize "crossing the Rubicon" or "Pyrrhic victory."
This replacement wasn't accidental. When you eliminate the traditional cultural inheritance—the stories, myths, historical episodes, and literary touchstones that used to form a common reference point—you don't get a void. You get whatever fills the attention economy most efficiently. And, of course, that can be easily weaponized.
The old lingua franca had depth, permanence, and couldn't be monetized by quarterly earnings reports. The new one exists primarily to generate engagement metrics. When cultural allusions come from texts that have been read for centuries, they carry layers of meaning accumulated across generations. When they come from last month's streaming series, they evoke nothing but the immediate emotional hit and lately they been used for social and cultural manipulation.
Here's what makes this particularly insidious: the old cultural language was available to anyone willing to pick up a book. It was genuinely democratic. You go to the library and check out a book. The new cultural language requires constant connectivity, streaming subscriptions, and algorithmic participation. It's corporate feudalism dressed up as pop culture.
Classical education's insistence on teaching mythology, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Biblical narratives is about giving students a cultural vocabulary that isn't rented from Silicon Valley, that can't be updated remotely, that connects them to conversations spanning millennia rather than minutes.
When students share Odysseus, Aeneas, Hamlet, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural as common reference points, they're speaking a language that resists commodification. When their only shared references are whatever Disney is marketing this quarter, they're speaking a dialect of consumerism.
So yes, we have a common language. The question is: do we want our children fluent in a tradition they can own, or in a product line they can only rent?
I remember when the iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook were first introduced. At that time, social media was far more of an experiment and a way to share ideas and connect with people in a worthwhile way. It was only after that relatively healthy phase that companies discovered, over time, that the interactions could be addictive; then made more addictive; and finally crystallized into a form of highly profitable techno-feudalism, creating the most wealthy and powerful companies the world has ever seen. Compared to those early days, it’s an entirely different phenomenon now, and has become quite destructive: psychologically; the destruction of magazines and journalism; the decline in literacy and the quality of published books; and so on.
Hopefully Substack will continue to be able to buck that overall trend and remain an oasis for serious ideas and meaningful discussion. The fact that the classical education movement is growing significantly is also an encouraging sign that people want to both protect and reclaim their minds, and the minds of their children.
As I mentioned in one of my articles, when Petrarch noticed that he was living in a time of cultural decline, he was like a one-eyed person in the kingdom of the blind. Others didn’t seem to notice the decline, until he brought it to their attention.
Fortunately, we now live in a time in which there many Petrarchs who can point out these issues, and you are certainly one of them.
Dismantling of Western Civilization courses and chronological history education didn't happen by accident. It happened through specific decisions by identifiable institutions and individuals. The research documenting this has been done and compiled extensively. Stanford eliminated its Western Culture requirement in 1988 after highly publicized protests. Columbia steadily weakened its famous Core Curriculum. The University of Chicago—once a bastion of Great Books education—has watched its core requirements erode. Teachers unions have consistently advocated for "skills-based" and "thematic" approaches over content knowledge. Politicians of both parties have cooperated, funding initiatives that prioritize educational fads over substantive learning.
But here's the thing: this transformation has been so thorough, operating across so many decades and institutions, that it now functions as a self-sustaining system. The professors trained in fragmented, theory-driven approaches train the next generation. The textbook publishers respond to market demands shaped by state standards committees. The accreditation bodies enforce progressive pedagogical orthodoxies. It's become monolithic—and naming every actor in a 700-word Substack article would turn cultural criticism into an academic treatise.
The point isn't to compile an exhaustive list of villains. The point is to expose the pattern, name the consequences, and offer parents and educators a path of resistance: teach Western Civ anyway. Teach chronology. Give students the timeline that makes them ungovernable.
The specifics matter for policy fights and institutional reform. But for parents wondering whether to enroll their child in a classical school, or the teacher deciding what to assign next semester, what matters most is recognizing the game being played—and refusing to play along.
Very good. New parents will not be able to get at the history of this last century of wanton destruction; they may not perhaps even be interested in anything but what you write about, that is, the value of a classical education to a bright child. Certainly, where blame is to be attributed, it is up to people like me (and perhaps you have a hand in it as well) to indicate the who, what, when and why.
But the villains must be named; and they began their destruction long before their influence tipped scales in the larger atmosphere of life. Just in the realmsof literature, music, poetry, the fine arts and philosophy, there were spouting ugly, ironic, nihilistic gibberish and were the darlings of of the pseudo-intellectuals in the academy: Eliot, Sartre, Pound, Stevens, Freud, Pound, Picasso, Satie, Heidegger, Schoenberg, et al. The list is very much longer than just these few. I have read and listened to them all over five decades of study and they all have impoverished my life by their exposure to my soul, which rejects them utterly.
They are all still studied and revered because they have become a canon for those whose lives as Leftists have always been devoted to the destruction of meaning, the denial of truth and the disfigurement of beauty.
that's quite an assortment of early-20th century artists and intellectuals. however, some of Picasso's earlier works are quite beautiful, as if after Guernica (1937) something changed, perhaps understandably so. also, some of Satie's compositions are quite enjoyable, even romantic, including his Gnossiennes (known for their 'enigmatic atmosphere, lack of classical structure and meditative character'). the others you named... context is important, including their own cultural background (Jewish) and the devastating effects of WW1. the real question is why and how their nihilist, pessimistic world view gained such lasting support.
I listed the few who came to mind quickly, although there are many more to name.
Yes, Picasso's genius early on was evident, but then he turned to chopping up his women. That's what I see because that's what he painted. He was a monster and I loathe his paintings.
Satie was an ironist. There's no there, there. I recall a marvelous essay, written in 1919, if I recall, that took Satie's work apart and exposed it. I can look for it, if interested in reading it.
It certainly wasn't a Jewish phenomenon any more than it was a gentile, nor Western more than Russian or Chinese, for they, too, destroyed much of their own.
It’s certainly garish to see Cubist paintings the first time!
I came to understand through my Western Civilization, English Literature, and Art classes that Picasso’s intention was to show multiple angles of the subject simultaneously. His work inspired Gertrude Stein to attempt a similar technique in writing.
Are they aesthetically pleasing? Well, beauty and the beholder’s eye, of course.
But as Mr Rose says, having the context of these historical trends and events certainly helps us appreciate their significance.
What you learned is the party line. It is that "canon," as it has been presented in higher education (which is, actually, pretty low) that has destroyed what they were presumably supposed to nourish, and which is always praised as "experimental," "ground-breaking," "disruptive," and the like. I reject the canon. It is a rigorous destruction passed off as a boon to mankind.
Stein, the writer, was a hack (as were those also lauded from that period, such as Fitzgerald and Anderson), and the stories of her personal life has led me to the conclusion she was, like Picasso, pretty rotten.
Thank you Michael. I want real history not Marxist history of our universities. The western heritage takes time to study and appreciate. Modern scholars take the quick way and just destroy.
Wonderful essay Michael. Suppose I wanted to at least give myself a reasonable course in Western Civ, where would start?
I would start with The Golden Thread -- Volume One by James Hankins. Second, I would highly recommend the Hillsdale Online Course: https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses
Thank you so much!
Once you eliminate history, intellectual history, mythology, classical literature, etc., it raises an interesting question: Do we even have a common cultural language or lingua franca, and if so, what would that be?
Any thoughts?
This is exactly the right question—and the answer is both clarifying and disturbing.
Yes, we have a common cultural language. It's not Shakespeare, the Bible, Greek mythology, or the American founding documents. It's Marvel movies, TikTok trends, and whatever Netflix is promoting this month.
The cultural references that actually function as shared vocabulary today are corporate-generated, algorithm-amplified, and designed to be consumed and discarded within a news cycle. A teenager is far more likely to understand a reference to a viral meme from last week than to recognize "crossing the Rubicon" or "Pyrrhic victory."
This replacement wasn't accidental. When you eliminate the traditional cultural inheritance—the stories, myths, historical episodes, and literary touchstones that used to form a common reference point—you don't get a void. You get whatever fills the attention economy most efficiently. And, of course, that can be easily weaponized.
The old lingua franca had depth, permanence, and couldn't be monetized by quarterly earnings reports. The new one exists primarily to generate engagement metrics. When cultural allusions come from texts that have been read for centuries, they carry layers of meaning accumulated across generations. When they come from last month's streaming series, they evoke nothing but the immediate emotional hit and lately they been used for social and cultural manipulation.
Here's what makes this particularly insidious: the old cultural language was available to anyone willing to pick up a book. It was genuinely democratic. You go to the library and check out a book. The new cultural language requires constant connectivity, streaming subscriptions, and algorithmic participation. It's corporate feudalism dressed up as pop culture.
Classical education's insistence on teaching mythology, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Biblical narratives is about giving students a cultural vocabulary that isn't rented from Silicon Valley, that can't be updated remotely, that connects them to conversations spanning millennia rather than minutes.
When students share Odysseus, Aeneas, Hamlet, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural as common reference points, they're speaking a language that resists commodification. When their only shared references are whatever Disney is marketing this quarter, they're speaking a dialect of consumerism.
So yes, we have a common language. The question is: do we want our children fluent in a tradition they can own, or in a product line they can only rent?
That does seem to be the case.
I remember when the iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook were first introduced. At that time, social media was far more of an experiment and a way to share ideas and connect with people in a worthwhile way. It was only after that relatively healthy phase that companies discovered, over time, that the interactions could be addictive; then made more addictive; and finally crystallized into a form of highly profitable techno-feudalism, creating the most wealthy and powerful companies the world has ever seen. Compared to those early days, it’s an entirely different phenomenon now, and has become quite destructive: psychologically; the destruction of magazines and journalism; the decline in literacy and the quality of published books; and so on.
Hopefully Substack will continue to be able to buck that overall trend and remain an oasis for serious ideas and meaningful discussion. The fact that the classical education movement is growing significantly is also an encouraging sign that people want to both protect and reclaim their minds, and the minds of their children.
As I mentioned in one of my articles, when Petrarch noticed that he was living in a time of cultural decline, he was like a one-eyed person in the kingdom of the blind. Others didn’t seem to notice the decline, until he brought it to their attention.
Fortunately, we now live in a time in which there many Petrarchs who can point out these issues, and you are certainly one of them.
"We" did nothing of the kind. I was not part of the destruction and I'm guessing neither were you. They were. Identify and name them.
Dismantling of Western Civilization courses and chronological history education didn't happen by accident. It happened through specific decisions by identifiable institutions and individuals. The research documenting this has been done and compiled extensively. Stanford eliminated its Western Culture requirement in 1988 after highly publicized protests. Columbia steadily weakened its famous Core Curriculum. The University of Chicago—once a bastion of Great Books education—has watched its core requirements erode. Teachers unions have consistently advocated for "skills-based" and "thematic" approaches over content knowledge. Politicians of both parties have cooperated, funding initiatives that prioritize educational fads over substantive learning.
But here's the thing: this transformation has been so thorough, operating across so many decades and institutions, that it now functions as a self-sustaining system. The professors trained in fragmented, theory-driven approaches train the next generation. The textbook publishers respond to market demands shaped by state standards committees. The accreditation bodies enforce progressive pedagogical orthodoxies. It's become monolithic—and naming every actor in a 700-word Substack article would turn cultural criticism into an academic treatise.
The point isn't to compile an exhaustive list of villains. The point is to expose the pattern, name the consequences, and offer parents and educators a path of resistance: teach Western Civ anyway. Teach chronology. Give students the timeline that makes them ungovernable.
The specifics matter for policy fights and institutional reform. But for parents wondering whether to enroll their child in a classical school, or the teacher deciding what to assign next semester, what matters most is recognizing the game being played—and refusing to play along.
Very good. New parents will not be able to get at the history of this last century of wanton destruction; they may not perhaps even be interested in anything but what you write about, that is, the value of a classical education to a bright child. Certainly, where blame is to be attributed, it is up to people like me (and perhaps you have a hand in it as well) to indicate the who, what, when and why.
But the villains must be named; and they began their destruction long before their influence tipped scales in the larger atmosphere of life. Just in the realmsof literature, music, poetry, the fine arts and philosophy, there were spouting ugly, ironic, nihilistic gibberish and were the darlings of of the pseudo-intellectuals in the academy: Eliot, Sartre, Pound, Stevens, Freud, Pound, Picasso, Satie, Heidegger, Schoenberg, et al. The list is very much longer than just these few. I have read and listened to them all over five decades of study and they all have impoverished my life by their exposure to my soul, which rejects them utterly.
They are all still studied and revered because they have become a canon for those whose lives as Leftists have always been devoted to the destruction of meaning, the denial of truth and the disfigurement of beauty.
that's quite an assortment of early-20th century artists and intellectuals. however, some of Picasso's earlier works are quite beautiful, as if after Guernica (1937) something changed, perhaps understandably so. also, some of Satie's compositions are quite enjoyable, even romantic, including his Gnossiennes (known for their 'enigmatic atmosphere, lack of classical structure and meditative character'). the others you named... context is important, including their own cultural background (Jewish) and the devastating effects of WW1. the real question is why and how their nihilist, pessimistic world view gained such lasting support.
I listed the few who came to mind quickly, although there are many more to name.
Yes, Picasso's genius early on was evident, but then he turned to chopping up his women. That's what I see because that's what he painted. He was a monster and I loathe his paintings.
Satie was an ironist. There's no there, there. I recall a marvelous essay, written in 1919, if I recall, that took Satie's work apart and exposed it. I can look for it, if interested in reading it.
It certainly wasn't a Jewish phenomenon any more than it was a gentile, nor Western more than Russian or Chinese, for they, too, destroyed much of their own.
It’s certainly garish to see Cubist paintings the first time!
I came to understand through my Western Civilization, English Literature, and Art classes that Picasso’s intention was to show multiple angles of the subject simultaneously. His work inspired Gertrude Stein to attempt a similar technique in writing.
Are they aesthetically pleasing? Well, beauty and the beholder’s eye, of course.
But as Mr Rose says, having the context of these historical trends and events certainly helps us appreciate their significance.
What you learned is the party line. It is that "canon," as it has been presented in higher education (which is, actually, pretty low) that has destroyed what they were presumably supposed to nourish, and which is always praised as "experimental," "ground-breaking," "disruptive," and the like. I reject the canon. It is a rigorous destruction passed off as a boon to mankind.
Stein, the writer, was a hack (as were those also lauded from that period, such as Fitzgerald and Anderson), and the stories of her personal life has led me to the conclusion she was, like Picasso, pretty rotten.