Classical Principle 2: Much Not Many

The second principle of classical education is Much not Many (or in Latin multum non multa). Its about the principle of 'Less is More'

If you do too much, you can really kill a student's love of learning. The second principle of classical education warns against this and advocates students do less but master it well (as in principle 1).

Don't spread student's time too thinly, otherwise, it will have the same result as watered-down soup. It will taste no good.

But let them spend more time on a topic, learning it well and going deeply as they master the subject. Essentially, don't dabble in many and master non.

The video by Classical Academic Press gives the example of a Spanish student who says, 'Well, yes. I took Spanish in high school - but, don't ask me to say anything'.

This principle of classical education also has something to say about cramming. The practice should be discouraged in favor of encouraging a more sustained learning habit.

Children should have time to go deep into their subjects. For example, when you study English literature, instead of giving your children a bundle of novels to learn, pick a few and go into them deeply. This means they have a lot of time to study each one well.

And busyness is a reason we are no longer excited about Shakespeare. Most people I know don't enjoy Shakespeare, even though most were made to study a book of it in their high school days (my husband did Othello; I did Hamlet).

The reason we didn't enjoy it was because we covered it so quickly that we didn't get a chance to go into depth with it, and didn't understand a lot of it.

But, you need time to learn the old English, and time to learn the historical context of the play.

If you were given adequate time to 'get Sheakspeare', you would like him, and like him a lot, because he was a master writer.

If we fail to give students this time, we put them in danger of feeling discouraged as they never really getting a chance to master great literature. Therefore, they

1) give up on learning great literature, as

2) it all seems to hard for them as they were

3) never able to 'get it' as

4) they didn't have enough time!

The idea with multum non multa (literally 'much not many'), is that we will learn more from few subjects we study deeply than we would if we were learning a great many subjects lightly.
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