The Power of Story
Restoring the Lost Secret of Moral Formation
It is a truth long since forgotten that character is formed less by what students are told to think than by what they are invited to love, and that the first and greatest teacher of our affections is story. This was the great insight of Plato in his Republic, and it constitutes one of the primary distinctives of classical education. First and foremost, it is the immense responsibility of the classical teacher to instruct the hearts of students by sharing what is true and great through the vehicle of story, so that students can see the good, love it rightly, and become people whose own lives may make a story worth telling.
Perhaps there is no greater illustration of this difference than the simple fact that what in a classical curriculum is taught as “History,” in a typical school is taught as “Social Studies.”
Why is that?
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| Taught in such a way, the drama does the teaching. The imaginations of students are drawn to learn that we are not mere subjects to powerful collective forces but are men and women with moral agency who, if possessed of the right character and wisdom, can bring about equally great things. |
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“The modern educator is apt to dismiss the arbitrariness of a prescriptive [meaning moral] understanding of man,” wrote the classical educator David Hicks:
| | With revolutionary fervor, the social scientist affirms the world transforming benefits of his “new” method … a sort of science without reason predicated upon gnomic utterances like: “Data accumulation leads to pattern recognition.” |
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In the desire to make subjects that are taught seem more scientific, Hicks goes on to write, modern education has jettisoned the most potent vehicle by which the hearts, minds, and souls of students may be inspired and formed. This, ironically, has occurred at a time when cognitive science has rediscovered what Plato and the classical tradition had taught for over two millennia.
In an article written for the American Federation of Teachers, subtitled “The Privileged Status of Story,” cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham shared that there is something about story that researchers have come to recognize as “psychologically privileged.” Perhaps, he speculates, it is because, as a social species, we are hardwired to recognize human actions and intentions; but whatever the reason, we appear to be designed to intuitively grasp what is conveyed in the form of story, character, conflict, and resolution.
This critical role of story sits at the very heart of our classical pedagogy. And this is not only for academic effectiveness, but because this is how the heart of virtue flourishes.
“Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues,” wrote Vigen Guroian in his book Tending the Heart of Virtue:
| | A compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in such a way that it is attractive and stirs the imagination. A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions … and stories are an irreplaceable medium for this kind of moral education. |
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While the social studies teacher may be tempted to explain the fall of the Roman Republic as the convergence of so many sociological and economic factors, the classical history teacher understands that the most important lessons come from understanding such events as the result of individuals and a people whose choices and actions compounded to produce a once-great Republic’s demise. Likewise, the founding of our country was not driven primarily by socio-political and economic incentives, but by the actions of individuals and a founding generation who, amid those conditions, acted out of their own moral agency to bring about a new kind of Republic.
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| Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. |
Taught in such a way, the drama does the teaching. The imaginations of students are drawn to learn that we are not mere subjects to powerful collective forces but are men and women with moral agency who, if possessed of the right character and wisdom, can bring about equally great things in our own lives and in the lives of our fellow citizens.
It is an education our founders would have recognized.
In a recent faculty seminar titled “Stories for the Chest: How Story Orders the Loves and Forms Character,” we explored this power of story not just across all grades but also across all subjects. For behind even subjects like math, science, art, and music are the amazing stories of discovery and creation by those who contributed to the inheritance we share in every subject that we teach. In this way, story becomes not just a way to learn and a vehicle for the formation of character, but also, and just as importantly, an opportunity to grow in that most important virtue for a young student, the virtue of gratitude.
“The moral imagination is active for well or ill,” Vigen Guroian warns us. “The important question is not so much whether imagination is waxing or waning in youth today. The important question is what kinds of imagination our contemporary culture is engendering.”
At CRLA, we take this warning very seriously, and we believe that at the very heart of our manner of instruction lies the remedy for a generation of students ready to return to what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful.
On behalf of the community of CRLA, Mike Davis Director of School Culture and Development |
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