David Whitwell

Philosophic
Foundations of
Education
 Philosophic
Foundations of
Education
 OTHER BOOKS BY DAVID WHITWELL

Philosophic Foundations of Education

Foundations of Music Education
Music Education of the Future
The Sousa Oral History Project
The Longy Club 1900–1917

The History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble Series
A Concise History of the Wind Band
Volume 1 The Wind Band and Wind Ensemble Before 1500
Volume 2 The Renaissance Wind Band and Wind Ensemble
Volume 3 The Baroque Wind Band and Wind Ensemble
Volume 4 The Wind Band and Wind Ensemble of the Classic Period (1750–1800)
Volume 5 The Nineteenth-Century Wind Band and Wind Ensemble

For a complete list of the works of David Whitwell visit:

whitwellbooks.com
 David Whitwell

Philosophic
Foundations of
Education

EDITED BY CRAIG DABELSTEIN

WHITWELL PUBLISHING • AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA

Philosophic Foundations of Education
David Whitwell
Edited by Craig Dabelstein
www.whitwellbooks.com

Whitwell Publishing
815-A Brazos Street #491
Austin, Texas, USA
www.whitwellpublishing.com

Copyright © David Whitwell 2011

All rights reserved

Composed in Bembo Book

Published in the United States of America

Philosophic Foundations of Education (pdf) isbn 978-1-936512-01-0

Contents

Foreword vii
Preface xi
1 Why the Church Closed the Schools 1
2 Early Renaissance Views on Education 9
3 Views on Education in Sixteenth-Century Italy 25
4 Montaigne on Education 37
5 Vives on Education 47
6 Erasmus on Education 61
7 Views on Education in Sixteenth-Century Germany 75
8 Views on Education in Sixteenth-Century England 87
9 Views on Education in Baroque France 99
10 Jacobean Philosophers on Education 109
11 Restoration Philosophers on Education 121
Illustrations 133
About the Author 135
Foreword

Over the years it has gradually dawned on me how little we

teachers know about our own profession. I am not talking
about skills such as classroom management, assessment, behav-
iour management, curriculum development or the myriad
other activities in which the modern educator is proficient. I
am talking about the history of teaching, and how the world-
wide education system developed to its current state.
As a conservatorium music student, it was compulsory for
me to study music history for two years: two thousand years
of music history. This was a one-eyed, western Classical view
no doubt, but at least it was something. However, as an educa-
tion student, there was almost no historical information taught
to students other than the small amount that was relevant to
the study of modern learning theories such as those of Piaget,
Vygotsky, and Gardner. The problem is, these are theories that
were developed only in the past one hundred years. What was
teaching like for the 1,900 years before that?
People study history to better understand the present. People
study history to learn and benefit from the mistakes of others.
Why don’t education degree programs include a course on the
historical development of education so that beginning teachers
can get an understanding of why modern education is like it is,
and to help inexperienced teachers from making mistakes that
have been made before? What did the ancient Egyptians think
about teaching? What about the great philosophers such as
Plato and Aristotle? There have been 263 Catholic Popes since
30 ad. Did any of them discuss education? What has been the
Church’s position on the education of children? What teaching
methods have been used for the previous two thousand years?
How was behaviour controlled? (We could all use more tips on
controlling behaviour!) The Renaissance produced some of the
greatest works of art and literature. What was being taught to
children during this time of such creative inspiration?
Reading this collection of essays by Dr. David Whitwell, I
was struck by the thought that both the best and worst parts
of our profession have been around for hundreds, if not thou-
sands, of years. Many of the high ideals we aspire to, and on
viii Philosophic Foundations of Education

which we base our individual teaching philosophies, were

expounded by the philosophers of ancient Greece. Similarly,
the worst aspects of our profession, such as corporal punish-
ment, have also been around for a long time and we have still
not eradicated them.
Some of the primary sources Dr. Whitwell quotes in these
pages paint an extremely bleak and terrifying picture of what
early schools were like, including the physical and psychologi-
cal mistreatment of students, and yet, centuries later, when
even dog and horse trainers use positive reinforcement, there
are still schools around the world where corporal punishment
is used under the cloak of a ‘behaviour management strat-
egy’. Montaigne is one of those in these pages who saw the
error of corporal punishment more than four hundred years
ago. Roger Ascham and John Locke also criticised the use of
corporal punishment in education. Poland became the first
country to ban corporal punishment from schools in 1783 and
yet my own high school was still handing out the cane during
the 1980s. To this day, the argument over the use of violence,
or threat thereof, as a means of modifying behaviour goes on.
Few countries have outlawed corporal punishment from their
government run and privately owned schools entirely. Are we
ignorant or just slow learners?
Another theme in these pages is the cultural and economic
status of the teaching profession. From these sources it appears
that teachers have never been held in high esteem by the
public, or treated with the respect afforded other members of
society, or paid a sum which reflects the importance of what
they do. In the 1300s Francesco Petrarch said, ‘Let them teach
who can do nothing better’—a precursor of George Bernard
Shaw’s, ‘He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.’ (Man
and Superman, 1903) Many of the world’s greatest thinkers,
included in these pages, have tried to reverse this trend and
convince people of the importance of teachers and education;
however, the social status of teachers remains below many
other professions. Few parents nowadays would articulate
Petrarch’s or Shaw’s disrespect towards their child’s teachers,
however, many take only a limited interest in their child’s
schooling. Roger Asham’s reflection, in the mid-1500s, that
most pay the man who looks after their horses more than the
man who teaches their children seems just as relevant nearly
 ix

five hundred years later: people spend more money on cars,

hobbies and holidays than on their children’s education. Many
parents do not even know the names of their child’s teachers,
let alone the teacher’s qualifications or experience.
The education field worldwide is populated by enthusiastic
and dedicated teachers who are constantly trying to improve
our practice and the outcomes for our students, and I would
guess that most universities take their education degree pro-
grams seriously. However, teachers spend their first three or
four years at university studying their preferred subject. They
then spend just one year studying to become a teacher, learn-
ing most things ‘on the job’, and in which trial and error plays
a big part. I inwardly wince when I think back to all those
students who I ‘taught’ while I was struggling to learn how to
teach effectively. Our children’s lives are too important to be
left in the hands of teachers who are learning on the job. Can
you imagine a school where the teachers have spent three years
or more learning how to teach ... ? Teaching is a profession in
which experience matters.
It is not the role of schools to produce engineers, doctors,
politicians, lawyers or musicians. It is the role of schools to
equip students to negotiate life, and we do that by teaching
different subject areas. As a music teacher, I do not try to create
musicians: I try to create smart, happy, well-adjusted people
and I do it through teaching the beauty of music. The book
you are about to read has made me a better teacher. I hope it
will do the same for you.

Craig Dabelstein
Brisbane, 2010
Preface

During the course of my own graduate studies at the Catholic

University of America in Washington dc, I elected to take a
course offered by their drama department called ‘Drama Criti-
cism.’ I was interested in this because both drama and music
have a written form and a performance form which is subject
to interpretation by the performer.
The professor for this course was a brilliant young Jesuit
who began with detailed analysis of the theorie of the drama
in Aristotle and Horace. The issue in contrasting these two
men, representatives respectively of Tragedy and Epic the-
ater, was at heart a philosophical contrast between the val-
ues of aesthetic performance and entertainment. The course
continued to study these contrasting philosophies in leading
playwrights until the semester’s time ran out (somewhere in
the Renaissance).
This course really ‘hit home’ with me because I had long
since wondered why orchestral concerts were aesthetic events
while band concerts were entertainment events. A typical
university band concert in the 1950s consisted of comedy music
(‘The One-Armed Paper Hanger’), trumpet trios, multiple
marches, a variety of soloists and brief excerpts of orchestral
music (the ‘coda’ of Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration). I could
not understand why band conductors wanted to wear uniforms
when they conducted when their colleagues of the orchestra
wore those elegant sets of tails. And, of course, as a student
player in these groups I do not recall ever being ‘moved’ by
performing in a band.
I have returned to this theme throughout my career as a
conductor and have for fifty years attempted in every way
possible to convince my colleagues to leave the entertain-
ment business and become conductors of aesthetic music. I
have never understood why a public high school or a public
university should be expected to provide entertainment for
the public when at no time has the public suffered for lack of
entertainment. During my career I have seen some progress
in the improvement of the repertoire. But band conductors
themselves, almost always having grown up in the band busi-
xii Philosophic Foundations of Education

ness from an early age, still find it very difficult to separate

themselves from the old tradition of entertaining their students
and the public. Many do not yet understand that the goal in
classical music is not to ‘please,’ but catharsis.
Later on in my career there came a time when my own
music department at the California State University at North-
ridge decided to completely reconstruct its curriculum in
music. Having noticed over the years that no music depart-
ment offered a genuine course in the aesthetics of music, I
determined to have such a course added to the curriculum.
It was only then that I discovered that our very large pub-
lic library had virtually nothing on the shelves dealing with
aesthetics in music. A few books with similar titles had noth-
ing to do with aesthetics but were instead disguised attempts
to justify contemporary music. Thus I felt compelled to begin
reading and writing on this subject myself.
In reading the works of earlier philosophers one immedi-
ately finds them struggling with issues familiar to us today,
such as the roles Reason and Experience play in our lives, the
role of Emotion in our thinking and the value we assign to
public opinion. In struggling with such topics early philoso-
phers became entangled with issues of the Church and inevi-
tably the role played by education. It was in this vortex of
competing ideas and interests that music education had to seek
its place.
The purpose of this volume is to provide the reader with
a functional perspective on the philosophical foundations of
earlier education in general. Following volumes will provide
the reader with a detailed study of music education’s place in
that broader educational framework and then help the reader
develop his own philosophical convictions about music educa-
tion for the future.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge the many contributions of
Craig Dabelstein in making this volume available to the public.

David Whitwell
Austin, 2010
[The] wretched Aristotle, who taught [the heretics] dialectic, that
art of building up and demolishing, so protean in statement, so far-
fetched in conjecture, so unyielding in controversy, so productive of
disputes; self-stultifying, since it is ever handling questions but never
settling anything.
Tertullian (155–230 ad)
1 Why the Church Closed the Schools

From our distant perspective, many people assume that

the new Church was founded immediately after the death of
Christ and grew in a steady, uninterrupted fashion until the
present day. Actually, during the first three centuries, it was a
church divided on many fronts. There were many branches, or
factions, so many that one writer in the year 187 ad counted
twenty and a writer in 384 ad found eighty.1 Certainly it was 1 Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

clear by the fourth century that the Roman Church would (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1944), 616.
be the survivor and it established its authority in 367 ad when
Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, and various committees,
selected the books which were to comprise the New Testa-
ment, keeping sacred books which supported their argument
and casting into oblivion those which did not.
It must have also been very difficult, at first, to maintain
discipline among the early Christians, especially as the antici-
pated reappearance of Christ failed to occur. An anonymous
poem of the early second century, ‘The Shepherd of Hermas,’
complains that one is beginning to see among Christians the
re-emergence of pagan customs, including rouge, dyed hair,
painted eyelids, drunkenness, avarice, and adultery.2 2 Quoted in ibid., 599.

It was against this background, then, that the early Church

leaders and philosophers struggled to create the Church as we
know it. In order to facilitate the growth of the new religion,
the early Church Fathers had two paramount challenges. First,
they had to finally overcome a ‘pagan’ intellectual environ-
ment which had roots one thousand years old. Hence they
immediately commenced their attack on education, philoso-
phy, poetry, music and all forms of entertainment known to
their contemporaries—in short, everything we think of as the
glorious traditions of ancient Greek and Roman culture. And,
in the end, the Church was successful; the Church won! Her
victory we call today, ‘The Dark Ages.’
It was in this spirit of eliminating the pagan past that we
find the quotation at the top of this essay by Tertullian. Basi-
cally, both his and the Roman Church’s view was: We, not Triumph of Christianity by
Tommaso Laureti (1530–1602), Sala
di Costantino, Vatican Palace
2 Philosophic Foundations of Education

the philosophers of the past, will provide your philosophy;

we will tell you what to think. This is what Tertullian meant
when he wrote,
What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What
between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and
Christians? … Away with all projects for a ‘Stoic,’ a ‘Platonic’ or a ‘dia-
lectic’ Christianity! After Christ Jesus we desire no subtle theories, no
acute inquires after the gospel.3

On the other hand, there were some early Church fathers

who were reluctant to give up the treasures of Greek philoso-
phy. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–216), for example, thought
the Greek philosophers were also inspired by God and that Quintus Florens Tertullian
their works were put in place to make people ready for Chris- (155–230 AD), church father
and theologian
tianity. Philosophy, he said, was a ‘schoolmaster’ to bring the
Greek mind to Christ. 3 Tertullian, De praescriptione
These two schools of thought about what to do with ‘pagan’ haereticorum, vii, in Henry
philosophy must have been the spring board for much debate. Bettenson, ed., Documents of the
Christian Church, 2nd ed. (Oxford:
Taking sides against the ancient Greek philosophy, we see Oxford University Press, 1963), 6.
St. Jerome (347–420 ad) concerned about priests themselves
reading ‘the philosophers, the orators, the poets,’ for fear it
would set an example for the ‘weak.’4 He admits he reads the
philosophers and suggests that ‘if we find anything useful in
them, we apply it to our own doctrine.’ But the other litera-
ture, anything having to do with idols, love, or secular things,
these he says must be cut off like finger nails. And certainly, he
says, priests should not read poetry or comedies, which only
children read, and then because they are forced to in school. Saint Jerome (1606) by Michelangelo
Merisi da Caravaggio
But as it is, we see even priests of God slighting the Gospels and the
prophets, reading comedies, reciting love passages from bucolic verse, 4 St. Jerome, ‘Letter to Damasus,’
cherishing Virgil and voluntarily making themselves guilty of that trans., Charles C. Mierow in The
which in the case of children is done under compulsion. Letters of St. Jerome (Westminster,
MD: The Newman Press, 1963),
I, 118.
St. John Chrysostom (349–407 ad) argues for a similarly
limited acceptance of philosophy. Philosophy is good, he says,
as long as its our philosophy!
Philosophy is a very good thing—I mean, of course our philosophy. 5 St. John Chrysostom,
Pagan philosophy, to be sure, is merely talk and fables, and not even ‘Commentary on Saint John,’
the fables themselves possess any trace of true wisdom. In fact, all their trans., Sister Thomas Aquinas
teachings are uttered with a view to worldly repute.5 Goggin (New York: Fathers of the
Church, 1960), 179.
 3

Speaking for the more liberal views, the humble St. Basil
(329–379 ad) gives subtle, indirect, advice to welcome
past teaching:
One should receive instruction modestly and teach graciously. If he has
learned anything from another, he should not conceal the fact after the
manner of degraded wives who palm off as belonging to their husbands
their baseborn children, but he should candidly declare the father of
his idea.6 6 St. Basil, ‘Letter to Gregory of
Nazianzus,’ in Letters of Saint Basil,
trans., Sister Agnes Way (New
The ideas of Plato and Aristotle had not completely died out York: Fathers of the Church, 1951),
by the fourth century, being preserved in a few schools dedi- I, 9.
cated to traditional ‘pagan’ philosophy. In particular, Athens
had a university of sorts which was supported even by the
Christian emperor, Constantine. The final important philoso-
pher in the ancient tradition was Libanius, born in 314, whose
students included such important future Church leaders as
St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom. One who wanted to study
with Libanius, but was not allowed to, was the young man
who became the Emperor Julian, reigning 361–363 ad. Ban-
ished to Athens, he enjoyed an introduction to the teachings
of the ancient philosophers. He, himself, defined philosophy
as follows:
In philosophy the end and the beginning are one, namely, to know
oneself and to become like the gods. That is to say, the first principle
is self-knowledge, and the end of conduct is the resemblance to the
7 Julian, ‘To the Cynic Heracleios,’
higher powers.7
in The Works of the Emperor Julian,
trans., Wilmer Wright (London:
Even as emperor, his private passion remained books and Heinemann, 1913), II, 127.
philosophy and a wish to restore the ancient cults. If we
can believe his self-portrait, even his appearance resembled
the stereotype pagan philosopher which the Church so
often ridiculed.
Though nature did not make my face any too handsome, nor give it
the bloom of youth, I myself out of sheer perversity added to it this
long beard … I put up with the lice that scamper about in it as though
it were a thicket for wild beasts … My head is disheveled; I seldom cut
my hair or my nails, and my fingers are nearly always black with ink.8 8 Misopogon, 338B

The great Augustine (354–430 ad) follows the now official

Roman Church view in dismissing ‘pagan’ philosophy. In one
place he mentions reading the Hortensius of Cicero,9 of whom 9 The Confessions, Book III.
4 Philosophic Foundations of Education

he makes the interesting observation, ‘whose language almost

all admire, not so his heart.’ In condemning earlier philosophy,
he quotes from Colossians 2:8.
But the love of wisdom is in Greek called ‘philosophy,’ with which
that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through philosophy,
under a great, and smooth, and honorable name coloring and disguising
their own errors: and almost all who in that and former ages were such,
St Augustine Teaching in Rome
are in that book censured and set forth: there also is made plain that (scene 6, south wall), 1464–65,
wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, Fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli,
See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty Apsidal chapel, Sant’Agostino,
deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental San Gimignano
spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.

Regarding his own education in the liberal arts, including

music, Augustine diminishes the philosophies of the past by
stating that in his youth he studied and understood them all
without the benefit of a teacher.
Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic, geometry, music, 10 ibid., Book IV.
and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty or any instructor,
I understood.10

Understanding the liberal arts was, for the fourth century

Church fathers, somewhat of an irrelevant concept. Faith was
what mattered. Only later did some Church philosophers come
to believe that the liberal arts might have a value in helping the
Christian understand this message. For Augustine, study of the
liberal arts had only a limited value. St Jerome Appearing to St
Augustine by Giovanni di Paolo,
You must return to those verses, for instruction in the liberal arts, if ca. 1456
only it is moderate and concise, produces devotees more alert and stead-
fast and better equipped for embracing truth.11 11 Divine Providence and the Problem of
Evil, trans., Ludwig Schopp (New
York: CIMA Publishing Co.), 261.
As implied in this quotation by Augustine, the Church
had now not only dismissed ancient philosophy, but also all
the liberal arts. This is nowhere more clear than in a letter by
Pope Gregory (540–604 ad), during whose lifetime the Greek
schools were closed, to Desiderius, the Bishop of Vienne, criti-
cizing him for teaching grammar.
A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, 12 Quoted in Nan Cooke
that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends; whereat we are so Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and
offended and filled with scorn that our former opinion of thee is turned Renaissance Universities (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press,
to mourning and sorrow.12
1958), 15.
 5

Most historians take the date of 475 ad as the beginning of

the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, a date by which
time the old empire was divided, with emperors in both
Rome and Constantinople. The history for the next seventy-
five years is very complicated, but the leading figures were a
Western general, Odoacer, who proclaimed himself king of
Italy and Zeno who was the Eastern, or Byzantine, emperor
in Constantinople. Odoacer is eventually replaced with a rare
talent, Theodoric, for whom both Boethius and Cassiodorus,
names well-known to musicians today, were employed.
In the East, Zeno was followed by Justin I and then by his
nephew Justinian and his prostitute-actress-wife, Theodora.13 13 An extraordinarily vivid account

Justinian achieved what no other Byzantine Emperor had of these people can be found in
Procopius, The Secret History
before or ever would again after him, the conquering of the (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
city of Rome itself. But by this time little was left of the West- 1981).
ern part of the Empire, as tribes of Goths, Franks, and even
Saxons in the north were claiming the ancient Roman lands.
We have an eye-witness description of the city during the
period of this first emperor of the sixth century, Justinian,
who was certainly one of the strangest of all Roman emper-
ors. He lived and dressed like a monk, fasting, praying, and
discussing philosophy. As he wanted to become a musician and
poet, we must assume his neglect of the educational institu-
tions reported here was due more to his inclination to hoard
money (he once increased his income by putting ashes in the
peasants’ bread).
[Justinian] caused doctors and teachers of gentlemen’s sons to go short
of the elementary necessities of life. For the free rations which earlier
emperors ordered to be issued to members of these professions Justin-
ian took away altogether. Moreover, the whole of the revenues which
all the municipalities had raised locally for communal purposes and for
entertainments he took over and shamelessly pooled with the revenues
of the central government. From then on doctors and teachers counted
for nothing: no one was now in a position to plan any public building
projects; no lamps were lit in the streets of the cities; and there was
nothing else to make life pleasant for the citizens. Theaters, hippo-
dromes, and circuses were almost all shut … Both in private and in
public there was grief and dejection, as if yet another visitation from
heaven had struck them, and all laughter had gone out of life.14 14 ibid., 169.
6 Philosophic Foundations of Education

As Gibbon points out, it was this Christian emperor who

also closed the schools of Athens and Alexandria.
Justinian suppressed the schools of Athens and the consulship of Rome,
which had given so many sages and heroes to mankind …
The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the
establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the
exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and
15 Edward Gibbon, The History of the
condemned the infidel or skeptic to eternal flames.15
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(Philadelphia: Coates), III, 466ff.
But this was only the last chapter of a longer story. One
aspect of the Church’s effort to create a new kind of Roman
citizen was the elimination of those who did not fit the
model. Thus,
a wave of violent attacks against heretics, Jews, and pagans swept the
region, with many assaults incited or winked at by bishops and perpe-
trated by zealous monks determined to ‘purify’ their society.16 16 Richard Rubenstein, Aristotle’s
Children (New York: Harcourt
Books, 2003), 70.
One story will perhaps represent hundreds of thousands.
There was a daughter of a well-known Alexandrian mathema-
tician named Hypatia, who by ca. 415 ad had established her
own school of philosophy. She was a beloved person, famous
for her virtue and wisdom, and her school was attended by
distinguished persons. Following an attack by the Christians
on a large and ancient Jewish population in Alexandria during
which many residents were murdered, the rumor was spread
that Hypatia had conspired to undermine the archbishop’s
authority. Consequently, while taking an evening walk, a
group of Christians seized her and carried her to a nearby
church where they stripped off her clothes, tortured her to
death, dismembered her body and burned the pieces.
The tragic story of Hypatia serves as a symbol of just
how powerless the ancient philosophies were in the face of
the Church. In fact, it was during the life of Hypatia, that
Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria (d. 412 ad) set out to
destroy all the ancient manuscripts he could find.
The ‘Dark Ages,’ might be dated from the year 529 ad when
Justinian closed the Platonic Academy in Athens. However,
due to the fear of the Christian church, so well justified in the
example of Hypatia, many teachers had already left the West
seeking safer residences in the East. Their taking copies of the
ancient Greek works with them was the first step by which
 7

these works survived in Arab translations, which would then

centuries later be retranslated into the Western tongues. Their
later reintroduction to the West gave the Church a tremendous
headache, for their edifice built on Faith had now to defend
itself against the world of Reason they had tried to destroy.
In the meantime, by the beginning of the sixth century,
Cassiodorus had already found,
Arithmetic, Theoretical Geometry, Astronomy, and Music are dis-
coursed upon to listless audiences, sometimes to empty benches.17 17 Letter to ‘the Illustrious
Consularis,’ III, lii, in Variae,
And as Gibbon summarizes, what followed was indeed ‘the trans., Thomas Hodgkin (London:
Frowde, 1886).
Dark Ages’:
The 7th and 8th centuries were a period of discord and darkness: the
library was burnt, the college was abolished … and a savage ignorance
and contempt of letters has disgraced … the dynasties.18 18 Gibbon, op. cit., IV, 587.

The Church has much to answer for, for the closing of the
schools and the general mayhem it sponsored. But it would be
unfair for us to fail to mention that there were a few isolated
individuals who privately collected and saved some of the
manuscripts of ancient Greece. Boethius (475–524 ad) was a
notable example. But there were also a few Church officials
who saved ancient manuscripts and their Church buildings
offered the manuscripts some chance of survival during cen-
turies of turmoil. And we must not forget the lowly monks,
the scribes, who expended a good part of their lives making
copies, thereby increasing the odds for survival of individual
works of literature. Their tired backs and cramped hands were
driven by superiors who told them God would forgive one of
their sins for each line they copied. One monk, his superior
reported, escaped Hell by the margin of a single letter! It is no
wonder that we find a scribe has written at the end of one of
his volumes,
This completes the whole;
For Christ’s sake give me a drink!
About the Author

Dr. David Whitwell is a graduate (‘with distinction’) of

the University of Michigan and the Catholic University of
America, Washington DC (PhD, Musicology, Distinguished
Alumni Award, 2000) and has studied conducting with Eugene
Ormandy and at the Akademie fur Musik, Vienna. Prior to
coming to Northridge, Dr. Whitwell participated in concerts
throughout the United States and Asia as Associate First Horn
in the USAF Band and Orchestra in Washington DC, and in
recitals throughout South America in cooperation with the
United States State Department.
At the California State University, Northridge, which is
in Los Angeles, Dr. Whitwell developed the CSUN Wind
Ensemble into an ensemble of international reputation, with
international tours to Europe in 1981 and 1989 and to Japan in
1984. The CSUN Wind Ensemble has made professional studio
recordings for BBC (London), the Koln Westdeutscher Rund-
funk (Germany), NOS National Radio (The Netherlands),
Zurich Radio (Switzerland), the Television Broadcasting Sys-
tem (Japan) as well as for the United States State Department
for broadcast on its ‘Voice of America’ program. The CSUN
Wind Ensemble’s recording with the Mirecourt Trio in 1982
was named the ‘Record of the Year’ by The Village Voice.
Composers who have guest conducted Whitwell’s ensembles
include Aaron Copland, Ernest Krenek, Alan Hovhaness, Mor-
ton Gould, Karel Husa, Frank Erickson and Vaclav Nelhybel.
Dr. Whitwell has been a guest professor in 100 different
universities and conservatories throughout the United States
and in 23 foreign countries (most recently in China, in an
elite school housed in the Forbidden City). Guest conducting
experiences have included the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle
Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Radio Orchestras of Brno
and Bratislava, The National Youth Orchestra of Israel, as well
as resident wind ensembles in Russia, Israel, Austria, Switzer-
land, Germany, England, Wales, The Netherlands, Portugal,
Peru, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the United States.
136 Philosophic Foundations of Education

He is a past president of the College Band Directors

National Association, a member of the Prasidium of the Inter-
national Society for the Promotion of Band Music, and was a
member of the founding board of directors of the World Asso-
ciation for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE). In 1964
he was made an honorary life member of Kappa Kappa Psi, a
national professional music fraternity. In September, 2001, he
was a delegate to the UNESCO Conference on Global Music
in Tokyo. He has been knighted by sovereign organizations in
France, Portugal and Scotland and has been awarded the gold
medal of Kerkrade, The Netherlands, and the silver medal of
Wangen, Germany, the highest honor given wind conductors
in the United States, the medal of the Academy of Wind and
Percussion Arts (National Band Association) and the highest
honor given wind conductors in Austria, the gold medal of
the Austrian Band Association. He is a member of the Hall of
Fame of the California Music Educators Association.
Dr. Whitwell’s publications include more than 127 articles
on wind literature including publications in Music and Letters
(London), the London Musical Times, the Mozart-Jahrbuch
(Salzburg), and 39 books, among which is his 13-volume His-
tory and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble and an
8-volume series on Aesthetics in Music. In addition to numerous
modern editions of early wind band music his original compo-
sitions include 5 symphonies.
David Whitwell was named as one of six men who have
determined the course of American bands during the second
half of the 20th century, in the definitive history, The Twentieth
Century American Wind Band (Meredith Music).
A doctoral dissertation by German Gonzales (2007, Arizona
State University) is dedicated to the life and conducting career
of David Whitwell through the year 1977. David Whitwell is
one of nine men described by Paula A. Crider in The Conduc-
tor’s Legacy (Chicago: GIA, 2010) as ‘the legendary conductors’
of the 20th century.
‘I can’t imagine the 2nd half of the 20th century—without David
Whitwell and what he has given to all of the rest of us.’ Frederick Fen-
nell (1993)