Invisible Academies

Education for the next civilization

This is the first in a series of reports documenting current efforts to create parallel societies. Education is commonly held to be one of the cornerstones of our civilization. It can be defined as the sustained transmission of a specific body of knowledge across time. In order for this to occur, such knowledge must be stored in a medium that is both durable and stable, in our case books. A civilization can be held to be rising, if this body of knowledge grows, and falling if it shrinks. In the last few centuries, the amount of information held within the records available to Western civilization has grown exponentially. This is responsible for the industrial and scientific revolutions. Unfortunately, if nothing changes, this process will first cease and then slowly but surely reverse. Many of our leading institutions have decided to replace books with digital storage, a medium notorious for decay and mutability. Such institutions can therefore no longer be trusted. It will soon be necessary to construct alternatives.

For this reason, the construction of parallel societies is most advanced in the area of education. I suspect this process has begun because decay is perceptible in this area even to those without special knowledge or training. This article will review a series of educational endeavors which broadly promote the reading of great books. They have been chosen on the basis of their policies with regards to technology rather than any other social criteria. However, a more significant step than participating in these alternative educational structures is removing smartphones or tablets from the lives of your family and yourself.

As much of education takes place outside of school, we review a wide variety of educational institutions. Not all of these efforts are at the same state of development or scale. Of the various forms of educational institution, schools seem to be the most developed, with universities a close second. Private libraries, while impressive, still remain rare and hard to find. Efforts at creating parallel trade and engineering schools are still but in their infancy. There is a deeper problem, in that those institutions devoted to science and mathematics are the very ones most plagued with digital involution. We will only begin to build the foundations of the next civilization when the brightest among us are directed towards a path of physical invention and discovery, and away from the silicon labyrinth.

There are many independent schools devoted to the reading of physical books, and the preservation of those works essential to our civilization. Since this is an overview, we will be examining systems of schools, most of which are present in multiple states. Thales Academy is the first we shall mention, since it stands out for its integration of engineering with a classical curriculum. Hillsdale College also manages a network of classical charter schools, which is perhaps the largest of the networks we will discuss. There are several Catholic systems, the most prominent of which are the Chesterton Academies, which require Latin, and have a clear policy banning smartphones. While the Chesterton system only covers the high school years, there is another organization called the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, which includes both elementary and high schools. Most of these seem to ban smartphones. The Association of Classical Christian Schools is perhaps the largest Protestant classical school system, and is present in most of the 50 states. The Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education, while much smaller, is remarkable for operating in thinly populated rural areas that might not be covered by other networks. Emet Classical Academy is the only Jewish example of this type of school, although it already seems to integrate science with a classical education well. The Society of Classical Learning provides a good map of schools covering most of the networks described here, and some schools not included within them. In conclusion, it must be said that there are already many well developed networks of schools resisting digital involution in most areas of the country. If you are living in an urban area, it should be possible to find at least one. However, it is far more difficult to find such a school in a rural area. Public schools in such regions usually cannot be trusted either, as they are still for the most part aggressively promoting one-to-one laptop or tablet programs. While virtually all of these independent systems are handling the humanities well, advanced math such as calculus in only offered consistently in the Thales, Hillsdale, and Chesterton systems. Science and mathematics are still for the most part isolated from the humanities and are not taught in a way significantly different from the public system.

Homeschooling is another effective way to avoid digital involution. Since the homeschool system is by nature fragmented into thousands of different organizations, it was impossible to cover them within the scope of this report. There are programs which are focused on literature such as the Great Books Academy. It is also very easy to obtain free books from such websites as OpenStax or Project Gutenberg. In some sense, the homeschool organization system is the most extensive, as such organizations are present even in the most remote rural areas.

The number of universities focused on the preservation of classics is still small and needs to grow. The most prominent among them is Hillsdale College. Most of the Catholic Newman Colleges seem to be devoted to this end as well. The University of Austin Texas is an interesting case, as it seems to have attracted many renowned scientists and other thinkers. One of the most interesting efforts is the Catholic Polytechnic University which although still in its infancy, seems to integrate classics with science. Universities outside of the silicon labyrinth are still few and far between, and most seem to be devoted to the humanities. What is truly needed in our age is a classical engineering school, which has yet to emerge.

The issues regarding libraries are discussed at length in Great American Libraries, but fortunately, one of our readers has provided information regarding one such organization of private libraries devoted to the preservation of knowledge. Biblioguides is an organization which provides a convenient directory of currently existing private libraries. However, it is still relatively sparse, and is not even present in most metropolitan areas. If you do not have access to one of these, the Little Free Library system is another type that is easy to set up. These are small outdoor boxes of books in which visitors can either donate or receive volumes, and are present even in remote rural areas. Used book prices have never been lower. If you are involved with an independent educational institution, go start a library today.

Lastly we cover trade schools, an often overlooked component of education. The only efforts we have located that seeks to integrate trade schools with classical education is the Catholic San Damiano College for the Trades, located in Illinois, and the College of Saint Joseph the Worker, in Ohio. San Damiano College is not yet operational, but will be next year.

There is great hope in these efforts, and doubtless in many others we were unable to locate. At you are reading this, there is a quiet but steady flow of knowledge in the form of old books from legacy institutions that no longer value them to new ones that do. Indeed it is not unlike the efforts of Irish monks to preserve classical knowledge during the Dark Ages. At this point in time, it seems that the survival of the humanities is more assured than that of the sciences. There is not one complete engineering or scientific institution listed among those discussed here. Therefore, this gap is most logically filled by a series of independent technical institutes, devoted to experiment rather than simulation. Mankind was not meant to wither in a darkness of his own creation. The victors in the battle against digital involution will be remembered by myriads in centuries to come.