Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com   

Most veteran educators will tell you public education often falls in love with shiny, new trends. A school administrator goes to a conference and comes home with the latest, greatest idea, and is convinced every classroom should implement it immediately. 

It happened so often we called it the “flavor of the month.” Trends like the Madeline Hunter method, Cooperative learning, McRel, Open classroom, and Individual learning, are just a few examples. All had their day in the sun and died a slow or quick death.

There’s nothing wrong with educators returning from a conference with fresh ideas to try. The problem is when those ideas become mandatory for every teacher. That still happens today. 

Force-feeding ideas into a classroom rarely works. It’s like when I was in grade school and forced to eat school lunch, stewed tomatoes. My response left Mrs. Robins wearing red shoes for the rest of the day.

Each teaching method had pluses and minuses, but when well-meaning, but heavy-handed administrators forced them on teachers, they often had a short shelf life. Teaching is both art and science. These canned methods concentrated on science and shortchanged the individual art, joy, and style each teacher brought to teaching.

Teachers survived “flavors of the month,” because deep down we knew, “This too shall pass.” We also knew we were free to adapt, modify, and ignore, since the administrator with the great idea wasn’t in the classroom daily. But these methods were at least based on some research and developed by educators. 

Now, governors and legislators increasingly try to mandate curriculum, believing if they attended second grade, they know how to teach it. They don’t. 

Classical education is one of those shiny new ideas that Florida quickly enacted into law. My guess is Iowa will see similar efforts during the 2025 legislative session. 

After all, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds were practically joined at the hip before the 2024 Iowa caucuses, and Florida has offered previews of many “coming attractions” for Iowa culture warriors.

So, what is classical education? At first glance, most would guess it’s a curriculum focusing on world literature, science, history and civics. But the opposite is true. Its only focus is on Western ideas—and I’m afraid Western really means American culture first. 

Andrew Atterbury reported for Politico on how Florida “has become a haven for classical education,” a model “that fosters ‘principles of moral character and civic virtue’ in students through studying liberal arts and sciences, relying heavily on Western civilization’s classic texts and ancient history.”

It’s seen by some proponents as a counter to how traditional public schools and even colleges are teaching students, particularly on social issues like race and gender ideology. Critics of this schooling model, though, charge it whitewashes history.

DeSantis constantly rails against “wokeness” and “indoctrination” in the education system, and has said that classical education aligns with “how the founding fathers were educated.” […]

“Classical really recaptures what’s been lost in some of the political mumbo jumbo that we’ve seen over many decades infiltrate our universities and our K-12 school system,” the GOP governor [DeSantis] added.

I suspect it’s called classical education because that sounds better than “anti-woke.“

Keri Ingraham, director of the American Center for Transforming Education (a conservative think tank), praised Florida’s approach. She told Politico, “It’s going to be not that far off for other states that are conservative-minded to adopt policies like this.”

There’s nothing wrong with teaching Western ideas. By the same token, there’s nothing classical about teaching only those ideas. The founders lacked access to many other cultural traditions—but that’s not true today.

Many conservatives accuse teachers of being “groomers.” Now this so-called classical model attempts to indoctrinate students by teaching ideas and culture from just one part of the world.

It isn’t just a “flavor of the month.”

It would be malpractice made law. 

Public education needs to be broad and encompassing. Students deserve the opportunity to explore a diverse range of ideas and cultures. If not, we’re cheating our future.