January 2026
Dear Friend of Golden View Classical Academy,
Seven times per year, I or another faculty member presents to the Board of Directors some topic from classical education, as part of their ongoing education in the tradition of which our school is a part. Below is an example of that kind of thing from our Literature Department Chair, Mr. Atherton. He demonstrates not only the caliber of our teaching, but the depth of the books we read with students. I hope you enjoy:
Neural Networks, Beowulf, and a Literary Education
I’d like to say some things, first, about the mechanics of the human brain and, second, about the special way in which literature, and literary instruction at Golden View, suits those mechanics. This is a privilege of a rare kind – an opportunity to say why, in part, at least, stories and poems have such power in the human mind.
Let’s begin with the neural networks of the human brain. As we've learned in recent decades, knowledge has a physical presence in the mind, in the form of interlocking networks of cells called 'neurons.' When we think about a certain thing, electricity zips up and down that network, accessing the various kinds of data that compose the thought. The bigger and deeper the knowledge, the bigger and wider the network, and the stronger the connections between cells. Such a network is not only vast and complex, but efficient, so that the smallest data can be found with a relatively low pulse of energy. Conversely, poor knowledge consists in neural networks of small size or frayed connection. In such networks, it takes more energy to light up less of the brain, with associative ability flickering on and off like nervous lightning, leaving us uneasy about what we’d like to say. If we know this, we can understand much about the things that bring us confidence and joy, and those which leave us feeling anxious and inadequate. For instance, to take a long car trip with a dear friend is to have all the world to talk about, because we know this person well, and that knowledge connects to so many other parts of our lives. But we dread a car trip with a stranger; we don't have the data to anticipate how they will react to our observations about the world, and we cannot read or adjust for the unique cues of their demeanor. It is as though we suffer from a lack of social coordination. Indeed, 'coordination,' in the athletic sense, has everything to do with the matter. Neural networks explain why a nervous child can hardly even kick a soccer ball, while a professional can dial in a high-stakes shot with, seemingly, the smallest adjustment of a toe. The child has only a tenuous connection between his mind and his feet, and it is overwhelmed by the aggravation of his developing senses of honor and shame; but the professional can marshal his anxiety and bring it, and his whole implicit knowledge of the game, to bear meaningfully on movement of his smallest limbs – the connections are there, in his mind, to do that almost miraculous work.
This enables me to say something about the nature of our memories. When they exist as parts of a rich neural network – when their connections are wide and deep – they serve as the maps by which we navigate the present. According to the science of education, we have two kinds of knowledge currently in view: automaticity (the ease and efficiency with which we can access knowledge) and transfer (the ability to apply existing knowledge to new circumstances). There are older terms for these kinds of knowledge and, admittedly, I prefer them to the new. In times past, when one knew something deeply enough to act upon it automatically and with ease, we said that he was wise, as the philosopher is wise in the way of ethics and the craftsman is wise in the motions of the hand.
Turn, then, to the art of poetry, and to one poem that is especially dear to my memories of teaching: the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. I would like you to see how the questions of memory and wisdom and neurons affect our students’ work with this extraordinary piece of writing.
As you may know, the first portion of Beowulf tells the story of a hero named Beowulf, a good Danish king named Hrothgar, and Grendel – a sort of ogre who comes, night after night, to terrorize Hrothgar and devour his people. The advent Grendel is, really, something to behold: he arrives late one night and kills thirty men with ease, eating some outright and stuffing the corpses of others into a dragon-skin sack. He does this for twelve years – always at night, and always within the walls of Hrothgar’s mead hall and throne room, a splendid building called Heorot. Early in our reading of Beowulf, the teacher pauses to ask students a question: “In how many ways can you say that Grendel is evil?” and then, working in small groups, students compose what we call a ‘catalog’ in which, always quoting directly from the poem, they list as many details of that monster’s badness as they can find. Each group ought to summon 10 to 20 such quotations. After about fifteen minutes, we reconvene and students talk as a group, while the teacher scribes on the board. Students note that Grendel does extreme damage to the human population of Denmark, and that his killing is indiscriminate and cannibalistic. They see that he has enormous political consequences for Hrothgar, since he diminishes the king’s fighting force and denies Hrothgar use of the throne-room in which, by hosting lavish banquets, Hrothgar earns the love and loyalty of his men. Students see that these consequences threaten the Danish people, too, with effects on their safety (weakness invites invasion from a neighboring tribe) and their happiness (their society enters a cultural recession; gone is a meaningful outlet of work for anyone whose livelihood depends on merry, nighttime gatherings within the hall – work dries up for craftsmen and poets). Hence, when we hear that Grendel nearly knocks Heorot down, students recognize that the poet is speaking symbolically of the kingdom, as well as literally, of the building. Students see other things, too, of even deeper and more symbolic importance: that Grendel is descended from Cain and is "God-cursed.” And students notice that, when Grendel touches the doors to Heorot, he boils over with rage since he, like us, reads symbols into the world. For him, those doors are the barriers to a realm which he loathes and which he intends to destroy in jealous rage. And, finally, students notice that, of all the things in Heorot which Grendel destroys, he refuses to even approach Hrothgar's throne. This makes him the natural opposite of – the antithetical pole to – good government, to the notion of human happiness, and, in the eyes of the poem, to the will of a benevolent God. Is it any wonder that, as banquets in Heorot cease, the Danes fall back into an old, pagan habit of blood sacrifice? The students notice that, too.
Our work in cataloging the badness of Grendel is, effectively, the building-up of a rich neural network. As details of Grendel's badness accumulate on the board, small differences and elaborations resolve into textures – and then patterns – and then, gloriously, ideas. This knowledge is neither abstract nor quickly earned. It is, rather, discovered in the expanse of a great netting-together of simple, lived-in facts – the kinds of thing that anyone can see, or hear, or touch, taste, and smell. By the time that it becomes necessary to explain what makes Grendel evil, students can answer in a way that they feel in their bones: What makes Grendel evil? ‘He is everything that mankind isn’t, and should fear becoming.’ Where do you see that? ‘Everywhere.’ The answers they give resemble the high-level literary analysis undertaken by college students – the difference being, perhaps, that our students do this work collectively when the college student is expected to do it individually. But the depth – the richness – the solidity – is the same.
There is more that I would like to say – for instance, about how a good book is a tailor-made network of neurons and memories, passed from the mind of the wise onto us; and about how our literary tradition may, indeed, be a vast neural network existing outside the mind of any one person, and representing the collective brain of all humankind. But, mainly, I would like to say more about Beowulf – about the fact that Grendel has a mother who is, on the whole, quite different from himself, and about the challenges that students encounter as they try to transfer what they know about Grendel to the sudden, new things we learn about her, and about the revelations that our students have once they do. And I would like to talk about why Hrothgar is wise, and why Heorot is good, and why, of all the monsters to end the life of the hero Beowulf, it must be none other than a lonesome, greedy dragon. But that is the blessing of having many rich memories of a poem: they connect with everything else in our lives, and always leave us with a little too much to say. That makes us literature teachers a lucky breed: most of the time, we get to merely ask questions and let the poem do the talking for itself.
Sincerely,
Dr. Garrow
Principal, Golden View Classical Academy
