We must remember the virtues of Western civilisation - Jonathan Ayling

Education should renew, not reject, the heritage that shaped our freedoms. Photo / 123RF

THE FACTS

• Western civilisation should be appreciated for its contributions, like human rights and the rule of law.
• Education should focus on renewing and understanding Western thought, history and tradition.
• Altum Academy aims to revive classical education, combining intellectual rigour with moral formation.

Dare to say you believe in Western civilisation today and watch people flinch. It sounds like code for something unusually sinister: exclusion, colonialism or cultural arrogance. Even the word civilisation itself is suspect. Some claim its unironical use could only be a dog whistle to white supremacy.

But what if it simply means gratitude for the best ideas we’ve inherited? And what if that is the key to retaining the unique peace, prosperity and stability we enjoy?

Philosopher Edmund Burke called society a contract between the dead, the living and the unborn. That is what civilisation really is: a chain of memory and renewal, linking the wisdom of the past to the hopes of the future. To defend it, then, is not to idolise it but to take up the responsibility of passing it on.

Fail to do this, and the chain of memory breaks, and the civilisation that relies on it is squandered.

True education links past wisdom with future hope. Photo / 123RF

One of the most important links in this chain is education. Yet our education seems less about memory or renewal than about incessant critique, half-baked histories and, at times, untempered disdain for our heritage.

True education seeks clarity, which means there is much we cannot avoid. Western civilisation must answer for its sins: racism and slavery, oppression and violence (particularly against indigenous communities – though not only), and attempts to erase other worldviews.

But clarity also lets us receive its virtues.

All civilisations traded in slaves. The West did so on an industrial scale. But it was also the only civilisation that sought to comprehensively end slavery. The violence Western empires inflicted across the globe is not yet fully understood; perhaps it never will be. Yet out of this very context of atrocity emerged the idea of derechos humanos, “human rights”, championed by the 16th-century Spanish priest Bartolome de las Casas. That, too, was once unthinkable: that all humans possess equal dignity.

By any fair reckoning, the civilisation that grew from Athens and Jerusalem, tempered in Rome and reborn in the Enlightenment, represents many of humanity’s greatest achievements. From it came the rule of law, the concept of the individual, and the conviction that power must answer to justice. It gave us the idea that truth can be discovered through reason and inquiry rather than decree or superstition. It gave us universities and parliaments, literature and law, cathedrals and symphonies.

But what do we hear of that today? What does a 15-year-old know of these rights, ideas and institutions? Far too little, I suspect.

CS Lewis wrote that “the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts”. True education, he meant, is not about hacking away at inherited beliefs but nourishing the moral and intellectual soil so that reason and imagination can grow. It’s a beautiful metaphor: and one that captures what a few of us are trying to do in a small corner of Wellington.

Altum Academy is a new classical school I am helping establish with others as a charter school to open in Term 1. We aim to recover that older vision of education; one that unites intellectual rigour with moral formation. Classical education is built on the premise that Western thought, history and tradition hold something worth retaining and renewing. This model is flourishing in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. I believe it will here, too.

Our curriculum is grounded in the great conversations of the West: Homer and Shakespeare, Plato and Augustine, Newton and Austen. But the goal isn’t nostalgia – it’s renewal. We want young people to engage deeply with the ideas that shaped our world, for better and worse, and to give them the tools to question, refine and extend that inheritance.

In a culture that often mistakes cynicism for sophistication, this can feel counter-cultural. Yet it is precisely this sort of renewal that civilisation depends on. Each generation must rediscover why freedom matters, why truth is worth pursuing, and why beauty nourishes the soul. It is better they rediscover these priceless truths through education, than by having to experience the alternatives.

To defend Western civilisation is not to wave a flag for the past but to light a lamp for the future. It is to insist our children inherit reason, virtue and imagination, and the freedom to make something new of them. It is not a haughty claim of superiority. It is the thankful deference to what we have been given, often bought at great price.

Western civilisation gave rise to universities, parliaments and the rule of law. Photo / 123RF

As Churchill said: “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.” In te ao Māori, the whakatoki “Ka mua, ka muri” expresses a similar sentiment: walking backwards into the future.

The story of human history is one of great suffering. All things considered, our society suffers little. This is not by chance but by design: a design that is not unbreakable. It’s time we expected more from education. It is not only a transfer of knowledge but a deposit of wisdom and virtue, and a reason for those who inherit the future to believe in themselves.

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