22 June, 2024
Dear Reader,
A very brief introduction from me this week, to introduce three things:
1. We proudly open with a guest article from James Franklin, Honorary Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and author of Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia, The Worth of Persons: The Foundation of Ethics, and other books.
2. A full Colloquium timetable.
3. A notice about our Summer Schools in January 2025
REPLYING TO THE NEWSLETTER
Sometimes people write to me personally by replying to the newsletter, but such messages are often corrupted and unreadable. I have no idea why. If you would like to write, please do NOT press the reply button, but instead start a fresh email.
Best wishes to all,
David Daintree
GUEST EDITORIAL – PROF JIM FRANKLIN
Something is seriously wrong with the generation who are now teens. Hospital admissions show massive increases in self-harm – in Australia and across the Western world. Figures for the increase over the past decade in depression, anxiety and other mental health problems are so consistent there can be no denying the problem. Educational achievement is declining, despite increasing money being spent. While there have always been a few people who felt themselves born in the wrong body, the present wave of socially-driven transgenderism among teens is new. All these trends were visible well before Covid.
What are the causes?
It helps to divide health into physical, mental and spiritual so that we can think about them separately.
Physical health is not the problem. More diseases are curable and the present generation does not have suffer the assaults of measles, arsenic in the wallpaper, blows to the head, car crashes without seatbelts, dental horrors and other problems which the generations now over-60 faced when young. Smoking and drinking are less than they were. Few are short of the physical necessities of life, like food and shelter. Some do lack physical safety, especially in remote communities, but the proportion is low.
Mental health, on the other hand, is a problem. Writing in May Quadrant, Nick Cater reviews two books, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness and Abigail Shreier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. Haidt blames mostly smartphones and absorption in the online world for creating “an anxious, demoralised, fragile and disconnected generation”. Shreier (author earlier of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters) blames social media too, but also and more so the therapy industry and lax parenting. Their evidence is sound. A teenager’s bedroom is a very dangerous place, with unfiltered porn, influencers, sextortion, tinder, scams, gaming and bullies ready to prey on their anxieties. It is harder, though, to evaluate if those are the only or the main causes.
But a focus just on mental health would neglect the spiritual aspects of well-being. Those are especially important in the teen years, between childhood’s taking the world for granted and adulthood’s absorption in job goals and family. The 12-year-old realises there are questions to be asked about ultimate meaning, and can become alarmed at the prospect of a meaningless universe. Previous generations had religion, but most teens now are at least two generations away from belief. Certain secular alternatives made an adequate replacement, up to a point, such as commitment to humanity via medicine or art. What cannot be expected to work is grievance-fuelled ‘activism’. Gratitude, self-examination and trying to understand other points of view contribute to spiritual health.
Resentment, moral vanity and organising to cancel political opponents create an internal spiritual desert – what a much older idiom would have called being possessed by the devil. That would be true even if all the political positions taken were absolutely right. Blame is toxic, and more so for the blamer than the blamee.
A reset is needed. Or at least a way of making available to teens some alternative options. Can teens fed up with their constricting online world find an online version of classical education which gives some quick insights into another world where the true, the good and the beautiful are valued?
They can, but it is not as easy for them to find as it might be.
Jim Franklin
FOR FURTHER READING
MORE ON ‘CLASSICAL SCHOOLS’
Here are some we missed from our last newsletter.
The Classical School, Mt Lawley, WA
Via Classica online tutoring, Australia
We would like to build up a register of Classical Schools in Australia and overseas. If your school or institution is not on our list and should be, do please tell us so that we can include you!
MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR EDUCATION
How useful is an Arts degree nowadays and where will it lead? The speaker in this video clip is certainly cruel, but is he also kind?
MICROCOSMOGRAPHIA
‘Master the art of superficial profundity and prosper in the knowledge that, in the end, it’s better to be superficially profound than profoundly superficial.’ Wit and wisdom from Steven Schwartz, our closing speaker at next month’s Colloquium.
PAUL VANDER KLAY
Very interesting US-based speaker in the reformed or protestant tradition. Here he speakssupportively of Jordan Peterson.
COLLOQUIUM 2024
Authentic Humanism
and the Crisis of Culture
PLACES STILL AVAILABLE – BOOK HERE
the Ninth Dawson Centre Colloquium,
on Saturday 6 July 2024
at The Italian Club, 77 Federal Street, North Hobart
PROGRAMME SATURDAY 6 JULY
8.45 Session 1
David Daintree
9.00 Session 2
Karl Schmude
A Transcendent Humanism: Recovering the Vision of
Christopher Dawson
9.45 Session 3
Bella d’Abrera
Undoing Australia: how the Australian Nation is being
Dismantled, One Statue at a Time
10.30 Tea Break
11.00 Session 4
Lucas McLennan
Western Perspectives in the Australian Curriculum
11.45 Session 5
Anna Krohn
Christian Paideia: For the Hearth and Road
12.30 Session 6
Richard Brown
Teaching Authentic Humanism in schools – is it possible?
An educator’s view
1.15 Lunch
2.00 Session 7
Anna Walsh
Without Hindrance or Fear of Reprisal: the attitudes and
experiences of NSW and Victorian doctors with a
conscientious objection to abortion
2.45 Session 8
Matthew Solomon
The Salvation of the West: A return to the Enlightenment
or the Embracing of Tradition?
3.30 Tea Break
4.00 Session 9
Natalie Kennedy
Cultivating a Posture of Awe and Wonder
4.45 Session 10
Archbishop Porteous
6.00 Pre-dinner drinks
6.30 Dinner with guest speaker Prof Steven Schwartz
MORE COMING EVENTS
DAWSON CENTRE SUMMER SCHOOLS, 6-17 JAN 2025
The Centre will again offer two language summer schools in consecutive weeks in January: Ecclesiastical and Medieval Latin and New Testament or ‘koine’ (common) Greek.
The Latin school is not designed to promote the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, but recognising that Latin is still the official language of the Western Church we aim to offer guided instruction in reading important and much treasured works, both poetry and prose, not only sacred but secular as well. Latin is arguably the mother tongue of Europe. Its literature is immensely rich.
There will also be an introduction to palaeography, including an opportunity to handle original medieval manuscripts. There will be a strong emphasis on the pronunciation of Latin in speech and music. The course is not suitable for absolute beginners: some prior knowledge of the language is necessary. That said, a committed person could, between now and January, achieve a sufficient standard by self-instruction to be up to scratch!
We can recommend many good modern primers that make that goal more accessible. Participants will never be embarrassed by their shaky Latin: the teaching method leaves the entire task of translation and exposition to the Lecturer. This approach has been useful to relative beginners as well as those who are more experienced.
On the other hand, the Greek course is intended for beginners who want to experience the excitement of reading parts of the Bible and early Christian literature in the original language. We shall read extracts from the Gospel and Epistles, as well as some important passages from the Septuagint (the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament), and some pieces from the early Fathers of the Church and the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. Even though prior knowledge of Greek is not essential, beginners are advised to begin the course with a comfortable recognition knowledge of the Greek alphabet, otherwise learning even basic grammar and vocabulary will be frustrating and inefficient. We shall provide some materials to assist with that as soon as you enrol.
Both courses are intensive. There will be four lectures a day on each of the five days, three in the morning and one after lunch to free up the afternoons for private study. To enrol and for further information contact David Daintree dccdain@gmail.com.
The fee for each course is $350 (concessions available). All proceeds will go to the Christopher Dawson Centre.
In former years we offered a third summer school, an overview of Western Civilisation, also five days in duration, covering Literature, History, Philosophy, Theology and Art. It was great fun and attracted large numbers, but in January 2024 we sadly had to cancel due to poor enrolments. I suppose it was a late casualty of Covid, which certainly made people more reluctant to travel, but ‘the tyranny of distance’, and the fact that more and more good things are now being streamed online, all worked against it. That said, we would consider running it again next January if there were sufficient interest.
ROME SUMMER SCHOOL, 30 June to 15 July 2025
With Campion College we are jointly planning a two-week residential Summer School, with two parallel streams, Latin and History, from 30 June to 15 July 2025. Campion’s last Rome school was before the in 2018, and the Dawson Centre held its own in 2019. We are thrilled to be able to collaborate with Campion in an exciting new venture.