A Papal Pedagogy

Alexander Pope (1688-1744), portrait by Michael Dahl c. 1727

Despite my regular use in the classroom of a smart board, the Internet, and other technological inventions of the modern age, mine is a pedagogy steeped in history and, as recent reading and reflection have shown, are papal, although not in the sense you may be thinking.  Be warned, however, for what follows may take you into waters far from the current educational current.

A Papal Perspective

The adjective "papal" derives from the Latin word for "pope," which is papa, but my use of it here refers not to the Bishop of Rome but rather to the poet Alexander Pope, whose work I first used to open a speech nearly forty years ago and who has remained my favorite English poet all my life.  In the definitive, indeed magisterial, biography of Pope, Maynard Mack explores in one section the Essay on Criticism, which was published in 1711.  If you will, please indulge an extended excerpt from pages 170-174.

[T]he steady expansion of forms of individualism...[fractured] traditional consensuses, leaving most lines of authority apart from personal self-assertion tentative and insecure.  Partly, at least, in response to all this, the Essay shows a pervasive concern for corporateness:  for the responsibility of the individual member, whether a person, idea, work of art, or critical term to some sort of community or whole.  [The Essay on Criticism acknowledged] that the idiosyncrasies of individual intelligence must be tried, and normalized, against the collective principles of the community of educated men.

For since the ancients participate with the modern in this universal and permanent Reason and have left behind them works whose permanent and universal character many centuries have proved, ancient literature must likewise be considered one of Nature's manifestations:  "Nature and Homer were, he found the same" (line 135).  This in turn meant that the Rules -- the principles of effective writing that a long line of critics had derived from Homer and other poets -- were by no means impositions of a dead hand upon the present....

Pope does not intend by this a theory of servile imitation.  He means rather that every new generation must strive to assimilate the art of those whose success in rendering our common humanity...time has demonstrated; the individual talent must steep itself in the tradition; and in Pope's day, when the only internationally accepted literature was that of Greece and Rome..., Homer and Vergil naturally comprised the heart of this tradition.  Pope knows, of course, that criticism cannot afford to let a live tradition degenerate into formulae, dictating "dull Receits how Poems may be made" (line 115); or lose the contemporary élan...that alone enables it to discern and applaud the "Beauties...no Precepts can declare" (line 141).  But he knows with equal firmness that the individual writer's imagination must be guided by his judgment, reflecting the collective experience hived up in the principles of good writing....

[T]he positives...are humility in the presence of what is greater than ourselves and intelligence to rectify our personal vision by collective wisdom.

The 21st Century Classroom

With this I could not agree more.  As I have written, I share my classroom with a vast number of teachers, most of whom are dead, for Homer and Vergil, Aristotle and Cicero, Aquinas and Montaigne and Pope, all teach with me.  As Mack wrote above, we do not go in for servile imitation.  My students have their own voices and their own ideas and insights to express with them, yet it is my task and calling to help them do so in the best way.  Again, this does not mean following "dull Receits," but it does mean introducing to these young thinkers that how a thing is said can help it be heard with greater or lesser effect.  It means pulling back the heavy curtain of prosaic, mundane communication and revealing the intricate beauties of language that have been developed and perfected throughout the ages by the poets and philosophers, the authors and orators whose works have stood the test of time.  Yet again, Mack rightly points out that Pope's vision is to help us develop humility in the presence of that which is greater than we and the intelligence to rectify our own visions, which is quite literally to make them right and straight, with the collective wisdom drawn from the centuries of the human race.

Where Such Teachers

Alexander Pope, attributed to Jonathan Richardson, c. 1736

Toward the conclusion of this section of his biography, Mack quotes a few lines, with which I will conclude, from Pope's Essay as an ideal, one that applies to teachers as well as to literary critics.  He goes on to observe, "Pope shared with most us a total inability to attain this ideal; yet it is touching to see it so vividly sketched."  Unattainable it may be, but I have known many teachers who have spent their lives reaching for it, and whether or not they grasped it, their students were the better served for their trying.  Then again, as Robert Browning put it, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp/Or what's a heaven for?"  ("Andrea del Sarto, 97-98)

But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,

Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?

Unbiass'd, or by Favour or by Spite;

Not dully prepossesst, nor blindly right;

Blest with a Taste exact, yet unconfin'd;

A Knowledge both of Books and Humankind.  (lines 631-634, 639-640)

Custom-Made Education

 

The ad verecundiam fallacy comes up when we claim something is true solely on the grounds that someone who is not an authority says it is true.  This fallacy underlies much celebrity-based advertisement and it is why I am not inclined to accept uncritically the ideas of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or even those who sit on boards and committees of education.  Yet a good friend sent me this video of Musk's thoughts on education, and after watching it I couldn't stop pondering what he had to say.

Hand-Crafted

Musk's approach to education is not to front load terminology and the foundational facts of a subject, but rather to set up situations in which students can explore and discover the things to be learned.  There is nothing new in this, and we have a term for it:  inductive learning.  Using an automotive example, he argues for introducing students to an engine and then, when they have to take it apart and are searching for the best way to do it, introducing them to the concept of the wrench.

There is much appeal to this approach, and we all use it at one time or another.  There was a time when I didn't know the difference between a Roman Ogee and a Roman O.G.

As I did more wood working in my garage, I eventually learned the name for the router bit that makes such an elegant curve along with all sorts of skills involving table saws, scroll saws, and more.  I learned what I needed when I needed it.  I moved at my own pace and gained much from trial and error, and this is precisely why Musk advocates for this style of learning.

There are, however, key requirements for this to be a successful method of education, including both the interest and the disposition to learn, but the two I want to focus on here are time and size.  "Had we but world enough and time," wrote Andrew Marvell in "To His Coy Mistress," there would be no rush in romantic affairs and, I would add, in educational ones as well.  As I have developed my woodworking skills over the years, I have labored under no time pressure, and this has given me the space to make mistakes and to learn from them.  As for setting an engine in front of a group of students and allowing them to discover the need for something like a wrench, a low student-to-teacher ratio is not merely important, it is essential.

Mass-Produced

In the fall of 2021, there were approximately 49.5 million preK-12 students enrolled in public schools, which of course says nothing about the number of students in private, hybrid, and homeschool models.  Although these tens of millions of students are not evenly distributed across the country, thus creating some schools with very large enrollments and some with very small, the need is simply too great for each and every one of these students to participate in an inductive, discovery-based model of learning in all areas.  Let us be clear.  This does not mean that such a method cannot work at all in larger schools.  It may be well suited to certain subjects or certain units within certain subjects, but the time and low student-to-teacher ratio necessary for the success of this model cannot be obtained in the schooling of nearly 50 million children across twelve or more years in reading, writing fiction, writing nonfiction, earth science, biology, anatomy, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, calculus, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, choir, band, orchestra, 2-D art, 3-D art, coding, and the nearly endless list of curricular offerings.

When I say that time constraints and human ratios are of necessary importance for this model, I mean that unless they are gotten right, the model will not work.  Let's start with time.  We continue to find ways for time not to be an obstacle to learning, but in a large school setting, we simply cannot serve the time needs of each and every student.  Student A may need more time to grasp a concept, but Student A cannot remain in the classroom of Teacher X to do so if Student A is required to be present in another class and if Teacher X must likewise teach another group of students.  However much we are able to accommodate the time needs of Student A, and perhaps even Students B through G, we will come to a point where practicality sets in and we will not be able to meet the need for Student H.

This challenge is a function of the other necessary factor at work here, student-teacher-ratios.  Most schools are limited in the number of teachers they can employ.  To reach a workable student-teacher-ratio for the model Musk describes, a ratio that will differ depending on the subject and needs of the students, far more money would be required than even the most ardent supporter of school funding considers, for not only would more teachers need to be hired, but there would have to be significant increase in building space in which teaching and learning would be done.  To educate 50 million children across fifty states from more than twelve years, practical forces, unlikeable though some may be, shape what we can and cannot do, and those forces have brought about the form of education that most people think of when they consider education at all, a form that can seem more like an assembly line of mass-produced parts than a hand-crafted work of art.

Salad Bowls and Melting Pots

My wife, an educator with more than thirty years of experience in the classroom and in administration within a variety of public, private, and hybrid models, is fond of saying that things are "both-and" and not "either-or."  As I referenced earlier, there are traditional, public school models of education in our country alongside private, hybrid, and homeschool models.  Some are better for some students, others work better for others, and there is no reason they cannot all sit side by side.  The entrepreneurial spirit that has been so much a part of the United States since its inception must surely celebrate this.  At the same time, even when practical factors within a large school setting limit some of what can be done, they do not limit all, and it is not only possible but in fact takes place every day in classrooms led by the best teachers that students learn from blended experiences that make excellent use of deductive and inductive education.

Any Road Out of Town

There's an old saying that if you don't know where you're going, any road out of town will do.  So it is when it comes to pedagogy.  For example, one Latin textbook series begins introducing war vocabulary in the first year to prepare students to read Caesar's De Bello Gallico in the second.  My favorite elementary Greek text introduces the vocabulary of Xenophon so students will be able to read his Anabasis.  

A friend shared with me a recent article, "Classical Schools Aren't Really Classical" by Jonathan Roberts that contrasts grammar-based methods of teaching Latin with comprehensible input.  It begins with a passage from Surprised By Joy by C.S. Lewis in which Lewis describes the thrill of being able to read extended passages of Homer's Iliad in Greek.  Roberts goes on to suggest that the human brain will come to understand a language without being taught explicitly to analyze its architecture as is common in the grammar-translation methods.

From there Roberts discusses the Classical education movement, inspired largely by an essay from Dorothy Sayers and put into practice by a growing number of Christian schools and homeschool communities.  He cites examples of why the grammar-translation method is hailed in such schools and then refutes the arguments for such pedagogy.

The title of his article is partly correct and partly incorrect.  It is true that ancient Roman children did not learn their own language, at least initially, through grammatical analysis.  St. Augustine famously talks about this in Book I of his Confessions.

cur ergo graecam etiam grammaticam oderam talia cantantem? nam et Homerus peritus texere tales fabellas et dulcissime vanus est, mihi tamen amarus erat puero. credo etiam graecis pueris Vergilius ita sit, cum eum sic discere coguntur ut ego illum. videlicet difficultas, difficultas omnino ediscendae linguae peregrinae, quasi felle aspergebat omnes suavitates graecas fabulosarum narrationum. nulla enim verba illa noveram, et saevis terroribus ac poenis ut nossem instabatur mihi vehementer. nam et latina aliquando infans utique nulla noveram, et tamen advertendo didici sine ullo metu atque cruciatu, inter etiam blandimenta nutricum et ioca adridentium et laetitias adludentium. didici vero illa sine poenali onere urgentium....

Why, therefore, did I hate Greek grammar singing also such things?  For Homer is skilled at weaving such tales and is sweetly entertaining, but to me as a boy he was bitter.  I believe Vergil is the same for Greek boys when they are forced to learn him in this way as I was Homer.  Indeed there is a difficulty, entirely the difficulty of learning a foreign language as if someone spread bitterness over all the Greek sweetness of those fabulous tales.  For when I was an infant, I knew no Latin, but nevertheless I learned it by paying attention and without any fear or punishment, among the coaxing of my nurses and the jokes of those who laughed with me and the happiness of those who played with me.  Truly, I learned it without the burdensome penalty of people forcing me....

Yet Augustine also makes it clear that a grammar-based approach was precisely what he had experienced when it came to learning Greek.  One could then argue both ways, that it is and that it is not Classical to teach with this pedagogy.

The question, of course, is not merely what did the ancients do, but what is best for our children.  Roberts cites arguments for the grammar-based approach that are easily refuted, as he indeed does, but there is more to consider here, and that is the question at the beginning of this post.  Where are you going?  Once you know that, you can pick the best road to travel.

If your goal is to read Homer and Vergil with the speed and facility with which you read a contemporary author, then comprehensible input will likely get you there more quickly.  If, however, your goal is something else, one Roberts does not consider, then the grammar-translation approach will serve you better.  This goal is developing an appreciation for beauty, in this case linguistic beauty, that will nourish the spirt and inspire further reading and study, whether in translation or in the original languages.  For more on this, see my article "Difficile est transferre hanc sententiam Latinam in Anglicam: The Depth and Charm of Latin Translation," The Classical Outlook, Volume 84, Number 1, Fall 2006.

Consider now the tale of two students.  One completes a four year high school program in Latin using the grammar-translation method, and the other does the same but with comprehensible input.  They both then pursue an undergraduate degree in Classics.  At the end of eight years of study, they will be indistinguishable.  They will both be able to read fluently and to appreciate the nuances of composition that make the works of Homer and Vergil true works of art.

Yet how many will pursue those additional four years of an undergraduate degree in Classics?  Most high school Latin students will not, and at the end of their high school careers, our two hypothetical students could not look more different.  The one, presumably, would have a deep appreciation for, in Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" as expressed in Classical literature.  The other would have the skill and pleasure of reading that literature with ease and rapidity.

"Knowing how way leads on to way," to quote Frost, I doubt that many of those who can read Classical languages fluently at eighteen will continue to do so.  Notice that I said I doubt many will do so.  Some may, but most, I imagine, will not.  On the other hand, I have had a great number of my former students continue their Classical interest and studies, whether through an undergraduate minor, additional Classics courses, or merely personal reading, and they have all experienced the grammar-based instruction of my classroom.  Notice again that I did not say all of my students have done this.  At the end of the day, however, I still champion and use the grammar-translation approach, not for the rigor of analysis it supposedly instills in students comparable to the study of geometry or physics, and certainly not for linguistic gains in word study and derivatives.  I use it it for the following reasons.

First, it quickly gets students into the language.  Second, it allows them to explore more deeply the beauties and intricacies of truly great authors.  Third, our English discussions allow us to go deeper and more quickly into the heart of the works themselves.  Fourth and finally, thirty years of teaching have shown that students who are exposed to this particular pedagogy have multiple roads to take toward whichever destination they choose, whether it be fluency, enjoyment, further study, or anything else to which they have been inspired.  Since giving my students multiple options is where I want to go, the grammar-translation road is the one I choose.

Technicolor Latin

When the anthropologist father of one of my former students shared an article with me titled "Why Students Of Color Don't Take Latin," I was immediately intrigued.  

The author of the article is John Bracey, "one of few people on the planet who can call themselves both black and a Latin teacher," and he makes two points with which I completely agree.  He states, "We must resist the temptation to use standardized test scores, such as the Latin AP exam, as a mark of program quality."  No one of reasonable intellect thinks that test scores are the measure of anything other than the number of questions students answered correctly, and I have written about this here and here and here.

Mr. Bracey also advocates for hiring more Latin teachers of color.  "[W]e need to train and hire more teachers of color. Department chairs and their Latin teachers can start by reaching out to local colleges and universities inquiring about Classics majors of color who might be interested in becoming Latin teachers. Make it known that your school is actively looking to increase diversity and views this as a real priority. Also, if you are fortunate enough to have a qualified applicant of color for a Latin position at your school, hire them! If you are not the one doing the hiring, make sure that your admins know that you have a strong interest in adding a teacher of color to your team. Ultimately, we won’t make significant progress in this area unless we start attracting and retaining students of color in secondary and post-secondary programs."

He is right in this, but it is increasingly difficult to attract anyone of any color into teaching, and with poverty afflicting American Indian/Alaska Native and Black/African American citizens the most harshly, it is reasonable for those who do escape its clutches to want more than a public teacher's salary.  Still, I join him in his call for more Latin teachers of color, for he is right when he answers his students' questions about the reason for taking Latin by saying, "I tell them that it is a beautiful language that unlocks a world of wonder. From the ancient Romans to the modern day, Latin has been an international language of art, music, science, math, law, government, medicine and everything in between. Whatever the student’s passion is, Latin will definitely help."  If seeing teachers that look like them and share their experiences helps even one student claim the intellectual and cultural wealth that is no longer strictly Greco-Roman but has passed into the human treasury, riches that are that student's birthright as a human being, then every effort should be made to make that happen.

Where I would disagree with Mr. Bracey is regarding what that effort should include.  He asks, "[W]hy don’t more students of color sign up for Latin in middle or high school?"  This is, of course, an important question to ask, although completely different from what is implied in the article's title, which suggests that students of color do not take Latin at all.  This is patently false as the more than thirty percent of the Latin students at my school of nearly 4,000, where Latin is the third largest in enrollment of seven languages, will attest.  It can only be assumed that Eidolon chose a provocative, if misleading, title for Mr. Bracey's article to garner attention.

Still, the question Mr. Bracey asks is important, but I disagree with his claim that pedagogy is a contributing factor.  He writes, "Unfortunately, far too many Latin programs have embraced exclusivity rather than seeking to counteract it. Often this takes the form of making pedagogical choices that advantage a select few students and disadvantage the rest.  [C]ertain practices have and will continue to create exclusive programs, regardless of intent."

The pedagogical approach he finds problematic is the grammar-translation method that "generally consists of learning grammar rules, learning grammar terminology, memorizing paradigms, and translating Latin into English primarily to demonstrate grammatical accuracy."  The first part of this definition is fair enough, but that its goal is "primarily to demonstrate grammatical accuracy" through translation is not.  While some instructors may make this the summum bonum of grammar-translation classroom, it need not be the case.  As I recently wrote, and published several years ago, there are many artistic and creative explorations that go far beyond mere grammatical accuracy and that should form the basis of a rich language classroom.

With this slanted understanding of what the grammar-translation classroom can be, Mr. Bracey continues.  "The challenge that the grammar-translation approach poses to inclusivity is that it takes language, something universally accessible to all, and creates a series of unnecessary and onerous roadblocks that render it accessible to only the few. For example, using a comprehension-based approach, with no direct grammar instruction, all of my 7th grade students were able to read novice-level chapter books in Latin by the end of the year. With a grammar-based approach, those same results would be considered totally invalid unless accompanied by the ability to decline mixed-declension adjective-noun pairings, or to identify the difference between ablative of means and an ablative of manner."

It is unclear why the grammar-translation approach is "accessible to only the few," and the article never explains this.  Is the approach one that only the brains of people with certain physical traits can comprehend?  This would seem to be the logic behind such a statement, but that is surely not what Mr. Bracey intended.  Still, pressing on from this curious statement, he suggests that the teacher who uses the grammar-translation approach would invalidate the achievement of students in one area if they were not successful in another.  This, too, is perplexing.  The G-T teacher may well expect students to identify a particular ablative use, but their failure to do so would not prompt that teacher to discount their other achievements.  Surely a teacher would not claim students knew nothing about the labors of Hercules if they simply mislabeled the lion as being from Lerna and the hydra from Nemea, yet beautifully retold the myth in a modern setting.

At this point Mr. Bracey's argument seems a bit slanted and confusing, but it takes an egregious turn when he proclaims, "Grammar-translation and its demands have served as something akin to voter I.D. laws in the United States.  Insisting that Latin students have a solid understanding of Latin grammar also seems harmless, but it can result in limiting access to students of color in the name of providing skills that are not necessary."

Again, it is unclear why students of color should be limited by a solid understanding of grammar.  Mr. Bracey himself possesses such an understanding.  Is he an exception?  Yet one of the strongest refutations of such a claim is the 1st century A.D. Roman rhetorician Quintilian, who wrote, "Nomina declinare et verba in primis pueri sciant:  neque enim aliter pervenire ad intellectum sequentium possunt."  "Let boys especially know how to decline nouns and verbs, for otherwise they cannot come to understand what follows."  (Institutio Oratoria I.4.22)

The grammar-translation method has stood the test of time because of its effectiveness.  Students typically begin their Latin studies rather late in life, in their early to middle teen years  While some teachers have undoubtedly made of it a thing of pedagogical abuse, this can be said of any bad teacher's mishandling of anything, and the fault rests squarely with those who have misused it.  The grammar-translation method is an excellent approach for helping them achieve precisely what Mr. Bracey wants them to achieve, engagement with authentic, Roman-authored Latin.  Their engagement with authentic literature after having learned Latin through the G-T method is rich and full, for when they come to Cicero or Horace, Ovid or Vergil, they possess the linguistic framework with which to plumb the depths and explore the marvelous intricacies of meaning and style brought forth by authors who have rightly earned their place in the world's pantheon of writers.

Is there more that Latin teachers and Classics departments can do to help students of color hear what may be their calling into the tradition of passing along the world's cultural treasures to the next generation?  There most certainly is.  We begin by inspiring all of our students as we immerse ourselves and them in the richness of the Classical languages.  We allow students to take over our classes and teach their peers.  We encourage those in whom we see the spark of the magister or magistra to pursue one of the most noble of all human callings, in spite of educational systems designed to dehumanize the enterprise of learning.  And we do all this because we believe, in the words of the Latin playwright from North Africa, "homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto."  "I am a human being:  I think nothing that belongs to humanity to be alien to me."  (Heauton Timorumenos, 77)

Teach What You Know

A teacher must be both a magister and a paidagogos, both a master of subject content and a leader of students.  The latter sense of a teacher's craft is explored through pedagogy, and while this is important, it seems to be the focus of many professional educators at the expense of subject expertise.  Many blogs and podcasts, workshops and professional development activities, focus entirely on how to teach, and even the sessions at content-specific conferences often present tips and strategies and ideas on the presentation of that content.

So let's talk about the importance of content mastery for a moment.  This means more than reading the chapter the day before the students do, and while we can certainly acquire good material from our colleagues, I am talking about more than asking your neighbor to send you the PowerPoint slides on a lesson you both teach.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

In 1711 Alexander Pope published his poem An Essay On Criticism about the relationship of the literary critic to the poet, yet many of his lines speak to education and the importance of content mastery.  Early in the work he writes,

Let such teach others who themselves excell.  (line 15)

We talk a lot in education about student-led approaches to learning, and this is fine, but at the end of the day, the teacher should be the content master, the magister.  Yes, students can access raw data from the Internet.  Yes, students can teach their teachers, and I have certainly learned much from mine.  Yet I must be a recognized master of my content for one very important reason.  My students need to have confidence in me.  Not only must they be confident that I what I teach them is accurate, but they must also be confident in approaching me with questions.

So how does one become a content master?  Is a college degree in that area sufficient?  At best it is a starting place.  There is simply no substitute for deep, ongoing reading.  

Be Homer's Works your Study, and Delight,
Read them by Day, and meditate by Night,
Thence form your Judgment, thence your Maxims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their Spring;
Still with It self compar'd, his Text peruse;
And let your Comment be the Mantuan Muse.  (lines 124-129)

Commentaries are good, but read the text.  Read the laws and the primary sources if you are a history or social studies teacher.  Read the poems and the novels if you teach English or a world language.  Listen to and perform the music of great composers, contemplate the great artists and create your own masterpieces.  Come to understanding through other great works within your discipline, not merely through the study guides and commentaries and lesson plans of your contemporaries.  When Pope counsels comparing the text of the Mantuan muse, by which he means the Roman poet Vergil, with itself, he is suggesting exactly this.  As a teacher, a magister, you want the richest possible understanding, and this comes from drinking deeply of the original springs.

By doing this, a teacher moves beyond mere instruction and discovers the art and craft of the calling.

Musick resembles Poetry, in each
Are nameless Graces which no Methods teach,
And which a Master-Hand alone can reach.
From vulgar Bounds with brave Disorder part,
And snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art.  (lines 143-145, 154-155)

When Pope speaks of art, he is using the word in the sense of its Latin origin, meaning a skill.  Skills can be taught, and every craftsman must first learn them.  Yet true artists in any endeavor move beyond the "vulgar bounds" of mere methodology.  Teachers do this when they have become what they teach, when they embody the content and students can no longer tell where the content ends and the teacher begins.

You may be asking whether an 18th century British poet truly has anything to offer the connected, modern educators preparing students for jobs yet unknown as visions of technology dance in their heads.  This question betrays one of the most regrettable aspects of contemporary education.  We value nothing that was said more than five minutes ago.  With staggering arrogance we assume that we know more than those who have gone before us, yet with regard to what Edgar Allan Poe would later call "the glory that was Greece and that grandeur that was Rome," Pope cried,

Oh may some Spark of your Coelestial Fire
The last, the meanest of your Sons inspire
To teach vain Wits a Science little known,
T'admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!  (lines 195-196, 199-200)

Humility is a key disposition for learning, and if teachers are to become the content masters they are called to be, they, like their students, must be willing to learn from those who know more and whose knowledge has been tested and proven by the passing of time.  No matter how robust the data supporting the latest published strategies, nothing is as valuable as time-tested, time-approved wisdom and understanding.

It is human nature for each person to think he or she knows it all.  It is, and there is no point in denying it.  Pope certainly did not.

We think our Fathers Fools, so wise we grow;

Our wiser Sons, no doubt, will think us so.  (lines 438-439)

Yet he leaves us with a wistful, hopeful plea that continues to call out to educators today.  Perhaps you can be one of those magistri who will answer it.

But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,

Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?  (lines 631-632)