You know, not to argue, but the classics you named are a far cry from how I learned. Mine was a mediocre school in a one horse town. But we had teachers that knew us as individuals and guided us. And I read and read, but never those classics. I don’t think you need to be able to sit around and ponder the nature of mankind to figure out what is what.
Actually, Rush Limbaugh taught me more about government, laws, the basis of our government., etc. back when I first started listening to him in the 90’s. He was a fireball during the Clinton years on right and wrong, civics, etc.. He get’s off on trivia a lot now, but he is still a wealth of knowledge.
I say “Classics” because they never confused Good and Evil. Today’s entertainment and most novels, glorify evil behaviors and ridicule the Righteous—the good behavior which leads to happiness—long term meaningful relationships with spouse and children.
You were lucky and had adults who promoted true Virtue. That was common in all schools prior to Dewey. That is rare in today’s media controlled environment and pagan schools where kids are lucky to have two parents and not raised by TV. Classical Education is their only chance.
The Classics would give these children guidance to the Moral, Good, Active life. The emphasis was always on character development and growth-—never the sexual instant gratification of today’s culture which destroys all long term relationships and the ability to be happy, productive adults. It creates a culture of victims, addicts and people unable or resistant to taking responsibility for any of their actions.
Freedom can only exist with Virtuous people....Our Constitution was built with that ideology. Classics instill it-—that is why the Marxists yelled at Stanford—Hey Ho, Western Civ has got to go. They want chaos that immoral people create-—all the anger, jealousy, mistrust, and fear—that is always in Communist countries so Nanny is needed.
Worldview of the pagan/occult/Marxist culture of dependency that we have now, is the opposite of the honor, duty, wisdom and moderation prevalent in the Western Canon prior to the Atheist/Marxist Postmodernist takeover of culture where they killed God (and all morality).
With promotion of all the modern “literature” which confused Good and Evil and in many instances like The Beats-—glorified somdomization of boys.
Very sick ideas entered the universities by the 60’s and led to the sexual revolution with the promotion of The Beats, Marcuse, Kinsey and Hefner. The glorification of evil ideas—was in full force by the 70’s-—Values Clarification in public schools—to destroy Christian Ethics in all children so we could have The Brave New World of children masturbating and jumping everything in sight. Not the Founders idea of Freedom-—I would say.