• About Dr. Anika Prather

Joe Wysocki:
Good morning, my name is Dr. Joe Wysocki. I’m the dean of the honors college here, and welcome to the Conversatio Podcast, the podcast at Belmont Abbey College. Today I am absolutely delighted to be joined by my friend Dr. Anika Prather, who was with us two years ago. I think, now in the midst of COVID, she was our virtual speaker for a Jack Miller conference, but so wonderful to have her back, and we’re going to have a great conversation in the way of a brief introduction. Dr. Anika Prather earned her bachelor’s degree from Howard University in elementary education.

Joe Wysocki:
She also has earned several graduate degrees in education from New York University and Howard University. She has a Masters in liberal arts from Saint John’s College in Annapolis and a Ph. D in English, theater, and literacy education from the University of Maryland. Her research is on building literacy with the African American students with African American students through engagement In the books of the Canon, and self-published her book Living in the Constellation of the Canon, the lived experiences of African American students reading great books literature. She’s also coauthor for the black intellectual tradition with Dr. Angel Parum, She’s served as a teacher supervisor for student teachers, director of education and head of school. Currently, she’s a sought after speaker on the topic of the relevancy of Classical studies to the Black community. She teaches in the English department at Howard University, serves as director of high quality curriculum instruction at Johns Hopkins University, and as founder of the Living Water School located in Southern Maryland. The Living Water School is a unique Christian school for independent learners based on the educational philosophies of Classical education in the Sudbury model.

Joe Wysocki:
In the spring of 2022, Anika and her husband Damon opened the Living Water Center where activities for the living, where activities for the living water, school, book talks and other events are hosted. Um, I am sorry, Dr. Prather is married to Damon, Rather, an engineer and has an M who has an M. B, A from Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Prather and I serve on a couple of boards together, but we usually just get to see each other in the context of these meetings. And so it’s wonderful to have you back for a conversation. I just want to begin with. Just sort of asking you to tell us a little bit about your journey to all of that work that I’ve just laid out in terms of the black intellectual tradition and great books. And yeah, tell us a bit about yourself.

Anika Prather:
Yeah, well, I, my journey started through my parents. I feel like everyone knows my parents even though people have not met them personally because I talked about them so much so inspirational in this journey. You know, growing up, they wouldn’t have called it classical education. I don’t think they realized that’s what they were doing. My brother and I both went to Christian schools, but at home they would extend that education to us just reading all types of literature, especially various works of the cannon. Um, and a favorite of our family would be Tolkien or C. S. Lewis, but many others Shakespeare. You know, I grew up just doing all of the you know, all of these great works and authors, and also ancient theologians, as well. My father was really big on just having access to that and they just fed us this, and growing up I didn’t realize this is what they were giving me until I started my dissertation. That’s what they had done, and so fast forward from my growing up years when I was in grad school at N. Y. U. they decided to start a classical school in a predominantly black and low income neighborhood here in PG County. And forgetting that upbringing I thought what are you doing? Like this literature is irrelevant to our people, and it’s so interesting that I felt that way because you know every house I grew up in.

Anika Prather:
I remember my mom when we would look. I lived in like two different houses, and every time we moved my mom would look for where she could put a library. Or if the house had a library already. The library was the center of our family and it’s always been massive and it always was unsegregated. It was just you know, I might have a Bible next to the Book of Mormon, Malcom X next to Shakespeare, Angela Davis next to Watman Nee, You know, and they had this massive library that I grew up paying attention to. I would pull books off and kind of read through things and learn for myself. And so it makes sense as I started my research on my dissertation about the relevancy of this. It made sense that my parents would eventually want to start a school, and so they chose classical education because they were at a Christian conference. We all were at a retreat center and they just saw this little pamphlet from the Association of Classical Christian Schools that said How to start a Classical school. Something like that, my mom took the It’s a little rectangle pamphlet and she and my dad read it that whole week. We’re at the conference. They got home from the conference and contacted ACCS and ACCS sent them everything they needed. And my mom and dad ran that school for ten years.

Anika Prather:
I was a public school teacher. By the time it finally started Um, working full time in Montgomery County public schools here in Maryland, And you know, after a while my mom just kept asking me. Could you please come help us? You know, Can you help us? We will help you, we know it’s a pay cut so we will help you with any bills that you have. If you could just help us, we need your background to help us, and long story short, I did. I came. I left public school, Took a leap of faith. That was a very hard decision, but probably the best decision. That’s where I found my purpose and I came in as the performing arts teacher, teaching music and drama because that was my background, and then eventually took on the Great Books class, where I would incorporate music and drama into the Great books class, where the students would read various works of the canon, and then we would create. We would end Year creating an original production written by students that captured all the various themes we discussed during the year. And so it was a really powerful experience and I did that for about six years up until the school closed down and thought I was done with that world. My children were toddlers, three and under. The just three and under, and I, putting them in school wasn’t really at the forefront of my mind. They were staying with my mom while I was at work. I was a principal then, and it came time for my oldest son to start Kindergarten, and I realized that, Oh, I’m not going to be able to homeschool. Um, where will I put him because he has to have a classical education like have this education that I grew up having. You know, I didn’t realize that’s what I was having, and I with my parents the work we did together with my parents. I wanted him to have that, and so that I, I did some research. Just Trying to you know, starting a school, No one in their right mind would start out saying I would have started school. It’s a really. Anyone says that is either very prideful or insane. So Um, so I did not want to start a school. I now desire to be a leader of a school. My favorite job has been being a Kindergarten teacher. That I could have done that till retirement, but that God had other plans, but I realize that there was nothing. There was nothing for my son who was African American to have a classical education? That that also celebrated his heritage and created a connection to his heritage. So I started the Living Water School almost nine years ago and it is still running. Goes from K to twelfth grade and we just got a building that we rented, but it’s our first building that we’re not renting from a church. We’re not running class rooms from a church anywhere. We have an actual building, and it’s a hybrid is online for a lot of classes, and then we also meet in person during the week. Um, and they get classical education that is truly classical. I was trained in the Dorothy Sayers, The trivium, really more standardized approach to classical education with some color sprinkled in like pixie dust and so it becomes this magical combination where they are learning about the classical tradition, as well as how black history connects to that tradition.

Joe Wysocki:
Wonderful. I appreciate your remark about those trying to start schools are either prideful or insane. I am on a board right now that is looking to found a classical school in Gaston County. I hope I fall into the insane rather than the prideful category, but absolutely I don’t think anybody goes. This sounds fun. They go now this is responding to a need that is deeply there.

Anika Prather:
Yes, that’s exactly it.

Joe Wysocki:
Well, great. Yeah, I just want to pick up on some of your remarks about your own story. To talk a little bit. I mean, I have so much I can talk with you about, but we only have half an hour. This semester, Sort of. I am teaching the senior year honors college course on education. It’s a great books on education course and I love what you said about your non segregated book shelf. In some ways, that’s the way this course is. We begin with Plato and Aristotle On education. We do Saint Augustin, Saint Thomas Aquinas Locke and Rousseau, And then then we move on to some of Booker Washington’s Up From Slavery, some of W E B Du bois, The Souls of Black Folk, and finally we end with Saint John Henry Newman, And it’s

Anika Prather:
I need to steal that syllabus, I need to steal that syllabus. Oh, my

Joe Wysocki:
It’s the first time I’ve taught it. I’ve taught some of these texts before, but so excited to do it. But I wanted to talk with you in thinking about. you know, as you mentioned, the Living Water School, incorporating the great books, the Great Tradition, thinking about freedom and an education for freedom, and thinking about that in terms of the black intellectual tradition, and looking at these two authors, Who, who, obviously, that is Washington and Du Bois, who are so important for the black electoral tradition, but I think are really universal. They raise these universal questions for us as Americans, especially living those of us who are citizens in modern liberal democracies. How do we engage? How do we engage with great books? But what type of education really is the most necessary? And what should our education look like? So before we maybe get into, maybe some of the interesting debate and controversy, and how much of a controversy is there or conflict between Washington and Du Bois? Could you give us just a little background about these about these authors maybe beginning with Washington? Since he came first.

Anika Prather:
Yeah, and as I talk about them, I’m going to talk about where I stand with both of them to, and how I see their relevance. Although, as you know, De Bois is my boyfriend, so you know I have, I’m partial to De Bois,

Joe Wysocki:
All right. Well by arguing for Washington that I’m not sure where I stand on all of it so good.

Anika Prather:
So Booker T Washington, Um, and his book Up From Slavery is really important to really understanding where he stood number one with classical education, So I’m going to start off by saying this. He himself was classically educated and he himself valued the cannon, But he was of the mindset that to speed up progress, we shouldn’t do classical education In the broad scape of things in the black community, he felt a quicker way to progress, safety and self-preservation was to accept your space in the world until these things naturally work itself out, And which is kind of troublesome to me, because as you read his autobiography and other speeches, you recognize his brilliance and how, somehow he didn’t quite see why it was important to pass his educational experience on to his people in the way that he received it like you could. I often wonder, look at what it did for you. You came from slavery. As a result of this type of education. One of the first things he does he is. He’s been out of slavery. Just not that long. Maybe he might be in his late teens, early twenties, and I believe he’s working at Hampton. At the time he’s working his way through Hampton, and the first thing he does is built himself a book shelf. That’s one of the first things he does with his true freedom is built himself a book shelf where he would read different books. He favored autobiographies. He was a very intellectual learned man. This is why he could speak the way he did. He could understand politics the way he did. This is why he could successfully start and run a university that is still in existence today. I mean, if you look at how Tuskegee became very self-sustaining, it came to the point where even though he was getting funding from different people, mostly from white Southerners, and as he said, some of his closest friends fought in the Federacy, which, when I read that I had to pray. And so he did receive funding from them, but he wasn’t when a hundred percent dependent on that, what he did was is, he trained every student of Tuskegee in a trade, and so the students built the buildings, the students prepared the food, the farming. The food came from their own farm. It was a self-sustaining institution. This is why Tuskegee was so successful. And when we say trades also want to define trade. So this is where you do see him kind of sneak in intellectual strength. Is that when we think trades, he didn’t just it wasn’t just training and how to be a plumber, how to build a building or how to be a good maintenance person. I mean, that was part of it, but they were architects. They were veterinarians, they were pilots. They were scientists. You know, a lot of Research that is done and met was done early back then. In medicine was done through Tuskegee, Um. Also, but sometimes he would sacrifice his own people to do that research. That’s a whole other story. And so my, my point is that he really genuinely loved his people. We know that that is unmistakable and anything he wrote, and I feel that love for his people was almost like a father over his children. Like he. He feared for our safety. he feared for our wellbeing, And so I’m saying that, To say that I have had to learn and my father had to really help me with this because I really struggled with Booker T. Washington, is that he was from the South. He was enslaved. He was constantly under death threats. At one point some white supremacy group had put literally a contract out on his life for him to be killed. And so he’s He is dealing with all of that pressure like many of us would crack under just someone not you know, being unkind to us, but he was literally. He had children. He had a wife. You know, he had these people. He was responsible for educating all of that was constantly in danger of some type of brutal murderous attack, and he lived with that fear, And so what Booker T. Washington chose to do Was to go a safer route, and he did that to preserve the work he was doing, and also to preserve his life, and we can’t fault him for that, And so when he recognized that white people of that time became very angry when black people got a really good education to the point they would. They would lynch people if they thought they were smarter than them just for looking like they might think they’re smarter than them. So he said, accept your place, and don’t get involved in politics because he was afraid with these. With this fight for the right to vote, so many people were being killed and lynched for over that he’s like, don’t do that. Just you know. Continue to work in the skills and trade you’re learning here at Tuskegee, so that you can gain the at least the acceptance and respect of whites, because you’re fulfilling a need that they have. You can be able to earn an income that provides for your family, and in his thinking, actually was instrumental in helping black families. Black communities rise out of poverty and they were pouring back into the economic structure of the nation. Although even though they were paying their taxes, they couldn’t. They couldn’t go in certain places because of Jim Crow. So the very things that they were paying like you know, the very, the very taxes they were paying, the support various parts of their community. They couldn’t be in those spaces, but Booker T Washington said, be safe, preserve yourself, accept your place. And then his mentality began to go into The Education of America. He began to really partner with the country’s Board of Education Department of Education, and in that effort and this is why Du Bois was fighting him constantly, and in an essence Booker T actually won the fight. We see that the effects of that even now. This is why Classical Renewal movement is so is fighting so hard. Some are fighting it for wrong reasons, and we know that, but there are some who genuinely feel like this is the best education for all free people, and we’re fighting a battle because Booker T Washington, along with the Department of Education of the United States began to close down the classical curricula that was being taught in segregated schools, and so Segregated schools began to bring in industrial education. Anna Julia Cooper, also tried to fight against this, and I know, take it had, but just kind of dropping that little nugget there. Um, and you know when she refused, she was the principal of the M Street school, But this is important to understand his connection with Booker T Washington, and she had a completely classical curriculum in that school in D. C. She’s the first black principal of a school in a public school in D. C. M Street School, and she had the student speaking Writing, reading Latin. Fluently. They were reading all of the classics. They were learning rhetoric and logic, and the students would graduate and go to some of the top universities in the nation. They were sometimes the first black person at this or that university, and Booker T. Washington, in the Department of Education, closed that down. They wanted her to stop. She refused to stop and she lost her job. She was fired and in the other black teachers of that school, One of that were kind of in that community, One of them being Mary Church Terrell Instead of supporting Anna Julia Cooper’s vision for why classical education is so important for every free man, they, they sided with Booker T Washington, Because Booker T Washington at the time was probably the most powerful black man in America, and Booker T Washington had a relationship with America’s leadership, and many people wanted to protect their status by not going against this powerful black man, and so people like Dubois, who ended up living in exile, in Ghana and Anna Julia Cooper, who ended up losing her job.

Joe Wysocki:
I’m in.

Anika Prather:
They were outcasts you know, and so and so. Booker T. Washington, Uh, philosophy of industrial education was first of all, introduced into segregated schools, and eventually the sad part about it is then with de segregation, that mentality of industrial education just was for everyone. It came into everyone, because the mentality was. This is the best way for everyone to be educated. It’s easier for anyone to just kind of find their place. America and you began to educate for a job. You see, you know the work that you and I do. We’re not educating for a job we’re educating so we can do any job we can accomplish anything. We’re not educating for one specific career. Even teachers are taught now just how to teach. But I have. I have a close friend who is a leader and I’m not going to give any details, But she’s a leader in a public school system and she says her biggest struggle is most of her teachers don’t like to read. And so how do you come out of a teacher preparation program and you have to teach reading, but you don’t like to read yourself. And so that’s because even fields like teaching are taught in this industrialized way. Teach them how to sit still in their desk. How to have classroom management, how to take a test, how to fill in the blank, how to turn your paper and get an A. But, but where are we teaching them critical thinking and that’s something that. Even though Booker T Washington was trained and how to do that else, how could he have been so success? But he did not pass that on to others, and so he chose another path for liberation and progress in America, and it included, and he says it. He says it, in his autobiography, we don’t need to learn Latin. We don’t need to sit around and just philosophize philosophy. I just make that word up, but we don’t need. Just sit around and make up philosophy, and talk about and think we have to work. We have to make money, we have to take care of ourselves. We have to do. And so that was his philosophy, Even though he himself saw the value of classical education, I think he just felt that it wouldn’t work.

Joe Wysocki:
That’s great. Yeah, well, maybe if you would talk a little bit about Du Bois and his response and want to ask some questions, because I want to. Yeah, again, I’ll try to maybe make the case a little for Booker T, and then you can we can have a good conversation.

Anika Prather:
Yes, okay, so Du Bois, Is you almost kind of look at Booker all the way Now when I say left and right, please, No one think I’m talking about politics. I’m not talking of that. If you think about Booker, he’s all the way to the one side. I’ll say that to be safe, everything so triggering these days when you talk about Booker T. Washington, he’s all the way on one side. Okay, but now when you talk about Du Bois, so I’m going to talk about him honestly, too. You know I love him. Uh, Du Bois was all the way on the other side. His thinking was, if you teach us to think we will have persons, we will be rich enough to do the have some it, do the work for us. And so you’re not learning these skills of survival and trade, because I am a person who believes in trade schools, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. And so he believed that you get the education you learn the classics. You learned Latin, and now I get his passion for teaching Latin. I feel it like I’m possibly doing some consulting work with school who wants to turn classical. That’s serving a black community and they were trying to figure out what classics to start with. I said, please start with Latin, because what you’re begin to see with Latin, Black students learn Latin. They almost immediately gain access to a literacy that they that they feel has been distance from them. When you teach those Latin roots and English derivatives, they begin to understand anything. Everyone’s saying anything that’s written.

Joe Wysocki:
Yeah,

Anika Prather:
They begin to spell better, they begin to write better. As opposed to this kind of wrote way of learning English grammar, they learn the basis for it, and so by giving that to them through Latin, they are, they become extremely liberated and they become extremely. They become very happy because they know something about the world around them that he didn’t know before, So Du Bois talked a lot about the importance of Latin.

Joe Wysocki:
Yeah,

Anika Prather:
He talks about the trivium and quadrivium and recognizing that young people, people, especially illiterate people, and the reason why we can take Du Bois’ writings, and connect it to K.-12. Education is because he’s just on the ends of slavery, Right. He was never enslaved himself, but he knew people who were enslaved. Obviously he knew Booker T Washington, and so he is speaking to black people who were coming out of a state of illiteracy,

Joe Wysocki:
Yeah,

Anika Prather:
So it’s almost like educating a k-twelve person because they’re starting over. They were not citizens before they were considered farm animals.

Joe Wysocki:
Yeah,

Anika Prather:
Literally, they were considered like. A lot of times people talk about enslave people as if they were seen as human. They were seen just like someone would see a cow. So they went from being seen as an animal in our society that is bred and forced to work on a farm to. Oh, now you’re a human being and you have this freedom and you have access to some rights. Um, and so Du Bois was saying, this type of education is. Classical. Education is going to be the easiest and quickest way and the most effective way to get them, as he calls it above the veil that darkness. So when I tell people introduce Latin right away once, even describe this, I feel like I can see. Now there’s a veil that’s lifted for them is my. Oh yes, there’s a veil that’s lifted. There’s a darkness. When you’re just an industrial education. You’re just here. Anna Julia Cooper talks about. You’re just working to do the thing you’ve been doing for four hundred years, like you’re just there when you give someone access to classical education. They, they are elevated beyond the working hand to the thinking person, and this thinking person can be instrumental and making a lot of the major decisions of our society. They could be the authors of the books that educate the next generation. Um. And so that is what Du Bois an advocate was for. And so that’s what? All of his essays. Just about everything he writes. A Lot of people don’t realize just about everything he writes. Even though he was. I think one of the co-founders of the N.W.A.C.P. was really big on some rights. They think his writing is just about his fight for liberation and equality. But his writings, I would say, I haven’t anything that’s outside of this context. In that context is his writings? Yes, they’re about civil rights. Any equality, of course, but his, his tool for that or his process to gain that was through classical education. He felt that that was the way to gain it. That is the way you find a seat at the table to make the decisions in our government. That is the way you find a place, an academia to educate the next generation to rise above. That is the way you become that lawyer that can help overturn the laws that continue to discriminate against us. That was the way forward. And why is classical education that important? And here’s the fact that I know everyone knows, but it’s a fact that we’re arguing about, and we cannot change that classical. If it was. If it was another situation, we could have another discussion. But we cannot Change history. We can learn from history. And what do we learn from history? Is that Classical education is in the very DNA of America, And we got to process that for a minute you could like I’m a human being if you think about a living organism and they have DNA, and I think of America as a living breathing thing, And that’s what we call her. She, you know, It is, Classical education is in her. D.N.A. now someone is going to hear that and say, but that means its White Supremacy, Classical education itself, as Aristotle understood it, as the ancients understood, it was not racist as we know it today. It was known often times as being elitist, but it wasn’t known to be racist. And honestly, all types of people had access to it, whether they snuck it over, though the sin. Since the beginning of time, they would have access to this type of learning. Right, and we see women like we look at Sapho, the great poetess from ancient Greece. She somehow gained access to this type of learning and became one of the most well respected poets of her time, even though women weren’t typically educated, and so that elevated her. So that’s an example of the past, and so that type of powerful education, the education, Aristotle, or, as I believe, its voice, or Anna Julia cooper, says, this was the education that was laid before. There was even a Pharaoh. It’s from the beginning that education was what was brought to America and laid the foundation of this land. That’s why we have Latin mottos is why we have fraternities and sororities. It’s you know, it’s in our language. Our language is made up of so many Latin derivatives or Latin roots, and so when we say that’s irrelevant to our people, we are plunging everyone into a state of illiteracy. And so Du Bois, which all of us essays are seeking to unpack that and help us understand that, and even though we understand this type of education was used misused, I’ll say, misused to support a white supremacy ideology. We know that was a misuse. It wasn’t its definition. If that makes sense, you know, some people think that because it was misused racism defines classical education. And this is something that black people understood. This is why I was reading something last night about Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s mother. He’s this great poet. Well, his mother would sit and listen to her enslaver. The one who held her captive, read poetry to his children and would go back and share that with Paul, And so he became this phenomenal poet who wrote the masterpiece We Wear the Mask that Grins and Lies. I think it said something like, it shields our face and hides our eyes. Something like I’m trying to do it from memory. But he wrote this beautiful poem about what it’s like to be in a society that sees you as inferior and you have to kind of be behind this mask and smile. It grins and lies. Oh yes, okay, I’ll accept my place, but all the while you’re hurting because you know that your brown skin is not seen as equal, and so that that Paul Lawrence Dunbar was classically educated, And if you look back at Dunbar, Tony Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King Jr, Du Bois, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, every single black person who has written or done anything of any influence In our history, fighting for our liberation and equality. You were going to find a classical tradition in their history, and we can’t do anything about that. I know we’re upset. I know we wish it could be different, but you can’t rewrite. That narrative has already been written. So what do we do with it? We learn from it. What do we learn from it? Well, we learn. As Du Bois was trying to say in many of his writings that it is our bridge. This is why he says, and that great opus to classical education. I sit with Shakespeare and he wins. As not, I walk arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas and we glide in gilded halls. I summon Aristotle, and what soul I will, and they all come graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So many people misunderstand him as being a communist or a person who is only about black power, and he wasn’t that he really was thinking that opus says it all. that classical education Not only will help us progress, it will not only liberate us, but it will also connect us to those who at one time saw us as inferior, and maybe through this common knowledge that we have shared since the beginning of this country, some of us sneaking it, others, having the rights to it because of their privilege, but we all have had it. And so it can connect all of us. It is our way forward, and so that. So that’s Du Bois, That’s Booker T. Washington. Where am I? I’m Anna Julia Cooper. She loved both of them and I see both of them are important. I think it is important for students, young people to learn a trade, to learn how to do things with their hands and to take care of themselves. You know, I tell my husband all the time. My husband is brilliant. He’s a chemical engineer and a computer engineer. He’s brilliant, but the he is also very literary. We love to talk about literature and write together. And but man can fix anything, and I said, Oh, you are so fine. I just love that you’re smart and can use your hands, and I feel like an Anna Julia Cooper was saying that we can be successful at both. Let’s do both or all of her education involved both.

Joe Wysocki:
That’s great. Yeah, I mean, you’re sort of hitting on some of my question, and part of it I was wondering. you know, my biggest intellectual influence tends to be Alexis de Tocqueville, And you know, when I read the Souls of Black Folk for the first time, I found myself going Yes, right,

Anika Prather:
Yes,

Joe Wysocki:
I’m with you. I didn’t know Booker T Washington’s work. And so when in in those you know, those chapters where he’s sort of arguing against what he’s doing, I found it very sympathetic. Obviously are both part of The movement now, And so you know, we have a sort of interest, but we’re like, Yeah, this is what I do and he likes what I do, and so this is great. Um, but you know Toqueville has this really interesting challenging chapter that every once while I have to ask myself the question like am I wrong or am I missing something, And Toqueville has this line and I love him on everything else, but he, in a way, kind of takes the Booker T. Washington line, which he says, Um, It’s good for some people in democracies to have advanced studies in Greek, Latin, but not for most people. In fact, most people, if you go too far and you don’t teach them how to work, they’re going to be. they’re going to be poor, and then they’re going to be angry because they’ve learned all these things about justice and the highest and then they don’t have access to them, And so I guess my first question maybe would be, Is there as much of a divide between the two as there is on the surface? or maybe as was seen at the tie Historically, and the reason I ask is you know, there’s this speech by Booker T Washington that he gives at a graduation at a commencement at the Tuskegee School, where he’s talking about cabbages, you know, and he’s talking. I give you an education and cabbage and how to cultivate it and you can eat and it’s practical, but there’s also something you learned about nature like that. This. Even this kind of education in the common work Can be dignified can lead us to wonder. And so it does both and then you know. On the other hand, and maybe you can fill us in a little on this. I know there’s that the piece by Du Bois on the talented tenth you know. So somebody say. Well, you know, Maybe you know Du Bois is not, for you know how much liberal education does you want for everyone? And then this Booker T Washington sort of open to more than sometimes, I think When we think of industrial education, you think of sort of soulless work on what do you call it conveyor belt? Maybe there’s something a little more there. So is there a way to sort of reconcile them or

Anika Prather:
It is. it is and I feel like, and this is not a plug for my school, but I really modeled it after Anna Julia Cooper’s, thinking she was the president of a university called Filling Howard in University, and actually right around the corner, like her house is on one side of Univershow University, and the building where Feeling Howard University used to be is on the other side of Howard university. It’s so interesting and she believed, and she, she trained future teachers in the same mentality. So Nanny Hellen Barrels was one of her mentees, And nanny Helen Burrows, I think, was the first black woman to start a school in the D C area, and the Nanny Hellen Burro school believed in teaching classics and trades, Anna Julia Cooper believed at Freeling House University Was. It was more so like the first community college for black people in the D C area, one of the first, and it’s named after a senator who tried to stand against Andrew Johnson. Senator Freeling Husband, Andrew Johnson was trying to reconstruct in Freeling House On, was trying to just trying to stand against him, so that that’s the university. And she felt in that school she had adult students. Of course, she was teaching them trades and classics, because her thinking was you can do and think you can do both at the same time and you’re right at the high school, The Living Water School, I pushed trade. I do push trade learn. I push trades. I pushed experiences and careers and all of our students. before they graduate they have to do an internship somewhere where they are doing, and I do that on purpose, because in order to make sure, but they all get it Classical education because education is for every classical education is for everyone. Even I even believe it’s for the child who may have special needs. It is for. It’s for the bilingual, the student who doesn’t speak English as a first language. It is it is. It is liberating for everyone, but I think this is where Du Bois got himself in trouble with that talented tempt. I’m like, I want my boyfriend have to write it like that. So he wrote it. And but I don’t think he meant it to say only a few can. I think he means only a few may be able to. There were so many obstacles in the way of our even intellectual progress. And so there were going to be so many things in the way. And that’s why I said Du Bois was so all over here. He didn’t really have an answer for those who weren’t able to have access to this type of education and I think he almost saw it as this is. These are ones who would lead us forward, and everyone else will kind of get lost. But Booker T Washington Was like. Well, what I have over here, everyone will be successful for me. I feel like everyone has access to some form of classical learning. They learn to think for themselves, they learn to engage in the great questions of humanity. But then if they don’t, if they choose not to take it further, then they still have something to do with their hands. But yet they can sit down and enjoy a good book, and discuss and talk and learn about the world around them. Be open to all types of philosophies, and continue to build the soul of themselves. And so I think there has to be a marriage of the two.

Joe Wysocki:
Yeah, that’s great for me. For me I always. it seems that this may be an over simplification, but I think of the liberal education part, and its relationship to freedom, as the liberal education helps us with self-knowledge, Right that that’s so important through reading the great books, through reading the classics and Du Bois emphasizes that so much that we need. We need these books that help us to understand human nature, the nature of God. You know it’s always seemed to me the tension and the sort of dialogue between the two leads to a sort of vitality today in terms of all of those things we need to be free people so the question of the best education for newly freed slaves is the question of freedom is not just something that we can rely on even today and that, and that we don’t need to work for that we don’t need to be educated for. And that the two things together really that is liberal education, which helps us with self-knowledge and critical thinking. But then that education of taking care of your own stuff, to Building of your own buildings, I just that’s the most I love that part of Booker T Washington, right where with young people, my own kids right who, like they leave their stuff outside in the rain and they don’t right. and like that idea of being a steward of your material things right, and being able to not have a sort of throw away culture, but one where you take care of those things. I feel like you know. That’s that great thing that you get from Booker T Washington, and maybe intellect, and historically there’s not an easy reconciliation. But I really appreciate what both of them have to offer.

Anika Prather:
Yes. I’m so glad you said that. I’m going to take. I want to use two examples of what we mean. Let’s look at Henry David Thoreau when he wrote the book Walden. Right. First of all, I think, then he built the cabin, so you see that he’s actually embodying what we’re talking about. He is out there on Walden Pond, taking care of himself, working with his hands, but reading works of the cannon and thinking critically. And from that experience comes this beautiful book that has blessed generations. I think Henry David Thoreau is an example of the marrying of the classical learning with the trade. He believed in working with his hands, and a good example of that. I’m what we’re saying right now, I’m kind of as you’re talking, as you were just sharing. Joseph is kind of making me real. Something even about my own family. So I have tried to live that out, and now you’re really giving it a framework for me, so my kids. They all have their own chores. They have things to do, but they also raise rabbits. I know that people think I’m crazy, like as if I don’t need something else to do, but, but what I’ve seen come from that responsibility. You know, like I had to travel last weekend, but my kids made sure their rabbits were fed. Their cages were clean. They had their water, they have bread rabbits. They have sold the baby rabbits to people. And so there is that’s kind of a practical example for anyone who’s listening. But this is you know we can’t. I don’t believe that we hold, just have kids sitting at a desk thinking all day they need to do, and so like, even at my school, our students have to do chores at the end of the school day. They have to clean the building and I often get students who’ve never been made to clean. I’ve gotten students in the school, so when I ask them to do a chore, they don’t know how to clean. After school, they learn how to clean a toy. They learn how to take care of and vacuum a space. I had a student, a big young man who didn’t understand who how to lift heavy things like we had to teach him, And now he knows how to carry furniture around and set it up. And so there’s this, this, this Oar ET Labor, even though it means pray and work. I’m thinking about praying as thinking, you know meditating to do both, but we’ve got to do both. We’ve got to be in our minds and in our bodies too, and I think together married together. You really develop a whole human being.

Joe:
That’s great. It seems like the best classical schools are doing this right. Like you see, it’s not. It’s not. We’re going to philosophize and only read Plato and never get out there. Yeah, that’s well, thank you.

Anika Prather:
Yes, yes, George Washington Carver is another great example of that. You know. Now he was more a Tuskegee type person, but he was definitely an intellectual you know, and look at. But, but he was doing with his hands, you know, and so I think there is more power in the both. And if you look at people throughout history, you see the doing and you see the thinking.

Joe:
Dr. Prather, There’s so much more I want to talk with you about and we’ll have to do this again. I mean, I want to talk about the world you mention, Ora et Labora, and that comes from the Benedictine tradition at Belmont Abbey, you know Benedictine Monks and that’s you know that that’s that Benedictine model. And I would really love to. At some point I want to get into the nitty-gritty of, like the politics, and I only mean not the partisan politics, but like how do we? How do we move this forward? You know how do we uh, how do we convince people of what we’re trying to do?

Anika Prather:
Yes, and I’m nervous, because as you and I have been talking, this type of education is so valuable to everyone but a representative of the black community. It is, It is so important and I am nervous about the politics of it is. There’s a danger of turning it away, and I, um, and I’m feeling the resistance in my community to this type of education is growing, And uh, yeah, and so I feel like The only way we’re going to change that is if we really come together as a community and really allow us together to talk about this. I think it’s still seen even if you have a school that is serving a diverse population. If the leadership and the founders are the ones pushing that they’re hiring the teachers. Of course, it’s still seen as colonization is still seen as white people trying to colonize. If there’s if there’s still this resistance to us being able to connect our heritage with this tradition, as if it’s irrelevant or inferior. There is going to continue to be that resistance. This tradition has liberated many people, not just in the West all over the world, and it’s really important for us to unpack that as a community if we’re going to move forward and to do that honestly, you know we don’t want to just say. Well, let’s expand the cabinet canon and throw everybody in there just because there’s people of color. I’m not saying that, but really finding people of color who are actually engaged with this great conversation so that we can see that it really was for and about all of us, And we have to do that and share the space of leadership. Share the space where decisions are made in this movement. So that people of color cause. I’m not kidding. I get emails now from people of color who say, I see that the conference hardly has any black people speaking as any. Hardly any. They can see. We think that even though you may have an urban education path in your conference or in your organization, if they’re not seeing black and brown people a part of that journey, it’s still communicating “It is white supremacy”. I hope that’s okay to say.

Joe:
I mean, that’s that was. But and that’s always for me, I go. I love this movement. I’m involved in these different things I travel. I recruit for the honors college at the Abbey, So much from classical school and it is overwhelmingly right. It’s overwhelmingly the students I’m encountering are white right. I talk with you and Dr. Parham, and I’m like we’re convinced Like No, This, this is for everyone that the Du Bois line, and yet right, like when somebody, if a colleague comes to me and says well, like look, isn’t this? Isn’t this sort of white Colonization? Right? I mean, not when colleagues at the abbey, but yeah, Like, Look what you’re doing is this thing and you say Well, No, it’s not because right, listen to Dr. Prather and, they say, but yeah, but look at the numbers right. Look at them. And

Anika Prather:
Yes.

Joe:
So

Anika Prather:
They’re not being drawn like even you and I have been having this conversation for two years. Overall, we’ve been a part of this movement for some years, right, I’ve been a part of this movement for twenty something years. Through my parents in 2000, they started a journey to start a classical school in 2000, it is 2023, and we still hardly have any schools that we still see up it schools. We, we still see a small number of people of color in this movement celebrating this movement and you can feel the reticence. I don’t know. Um, you can feel this struggle to figure out how do we incorporate them and I will tell you right now people are very sensitive. You will not draw them if you don’t bring them to the table. If it’s only, Um, you’re allowed to say this this over here. You’re allowed to come over here because we’ve already laid out the framework, and now you can come speak what we want you to say. That’s not going to bring people of color. People of color will come when they feel like they are a part, literally a part of the movement and its process forward. And the danger is that after you don’t want people have color say, since they’re not willing to be that open, we’re going to Start our own, and that’s not good, Because then we’re back into these segregated efforts and that’s not classical Education is not supposed to be segregated and it’s supposed to be a common ground to bring us together. How do we do that? Honestly? In this very tense season that we’re in, it’s hard.

Joe:
I wonder if this sort of. I don’t know. I’m thinking I’m thinking through things here, but I mean it seems like the natural ally in terms of making the case is like the link can be Christianity. Not that you can’t have classical Christianity or classical education without Christianity, but like, I heard a really great talk on the Black Church and its role in racial reconciliation, and I was wondering, you know is that is it Sort of by turning back to scripture, Right that you say? Look, look, there’s something that is old. There are these classic texts, not the scriptures, like other classic texts. But do you find that the most sort of progress you make in making the case to black communities is through Christian churches, or is there resistance there even?

Anika Prather:
There’s resistance there because Christianity In the general sense, has been known to be very racist, especially Christian churches, Christian schools, and so, a lot of times when you bring this to the black community, even if they’re affiliated with the black church, the black Church is birthed out of activism, So it’s a very, has a different look to traditional Christianity. If that makes sense, I’m not a theologian or anything like that, so that’s tricky. It is a very complicated. I haven’t figured it out. Honestly, I do feel one thing that has to happen as we have to equally come together. Not one thing I’ll see sometimes is you will see a group of people that feel like we’ve got to do something about this diversity thing, But a bunch, mostly white leaders will get together and have a conversation about what to do with it and make the decision on what to do and then come out and say Okay, black people, this is what I want to do to Handle diversity. That not going to do it. You know, there has to be. We have to actually come together. I’m going to fight for that. I’m never going to do a segregated process because you know we’ve been doing that for years and we’re still segregated in a sense, but it’s only going to work if everyone who, first of all, sees the value of this type of education, no matter your race, and it can’t be me in a room of a whole bunch of people that don’t look like me. It has to be kind of an equal amount of people where we are coming together and planning together as a unit forward. Especially in the classical Christian education movement. It’s going to have to be. We at least have that. I don’t. It’s hard to change the world, but in our small little community of Protestants and Catholics who share a common love of Jesus Christ and believe in his death burial and resurrection. We got to kind of figure out how we can come together with diverse voices around this tradition that we believe and organize something that truly shows a united effort that is not connected to political terms that is not connected to different philosophies and ideologies that are out. The only, the main framework is our common humanity, our common faith and our common love for these books, and that we just have honest conversations together, and that together we are educating educators, teaching educators on how to do this in a way that draws. I think about the scripture that, says, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me like, how do we do this in a way that draws all men to this? This this well-spring of truth, goodness and beauty, and no one is feeling triggered like wait a minute is this just a white supremacist. Like all the all the board leaders, all the board is white most of the main speakers are white. This is that one black person, but I don’t quite know where they are Like that doesn’t drop people but. There has to be. There’s another way that. I like I said, I haven’t completely figured out, but it’s not. It’s not like anything we see right now. I don’t think what’s being seen right now is the way forward. I don’t think many of the philosophies and theologies, and I mean not the theologies, but ideologies that are being pushed right now that often are not even rooted in the Bible. I don’t think for our community is the way forward, and I’m not saying that to negate the validity of the concerns that come out in some of those books. But as a Christian community our color of our skin, Joseph, You and I does not bind us together. The love of God, the love of Christ, that connects us to one another. How do we use that as our route to have honest conversation about my true races experiences? But yet I’m part of this broader Christian community, and we can come together and fix this in a way that is completely different and I think Classical education has it there. We just have to come around it together.

Joe:
Thank you, thank you so much. I am really looking forward to the getting into the difficult conversations right because it’s always that we go to these classical conferences and everybody on the same page. And we’re trying to push the movement forward. And there’s all good parts. And now I want. Let’s start having. Let’s get to the next level. Like how are we really going to figure this out together? And it’s a challenge. But it’s a great challenge and I’m so grateful to you for being part of it.

Anika Prather:
Thank you,

Joe:
We went way over time, but that’s okay

Anika Prather:
Yeah,

Joe:
Thank you, thank you.

Anika Prather:
And thank you

Joe:
In signing off, I want to say thanks to all of our listeners. This has been the conversation podcast at Belmont Abbey, you can access this wherever you get your favorite podcasts on Google and Apple. So thank you again, Doctor Prather, and we look forward to seeing you soon

Anika Prather:
All right, take care. Thank you all.