The low mooing melody lulled my soul to peace as the “doggies” lumbered past and their hooves softly kept a steady percussive beat on the pressed, wet grass. I patted Jasper’s damp and warm neck as he stretched his chin and chomped his bit. The black bovine carpet modulated towards the open gate. Occasionally, a calf would sing an obligato to his mother, and she would answer his call. The perfume of leather, horse sweat, and rain, some of my favorite scents separately, created a symphony of aroma. All my senses were awakened during the uncommonly cool and drizzly July morning in Northwest Arkansas.

“Whoop, cow!”

Shaking my head out of my inner thoughts, I squeezed Jasper’s palomino middle to trot.

Left…nope…right…

Within a split second, Jasper listened to both my shifting leg and hip to cut off the young and scared bovine.

Two days prior, a ranching family that attends our classical school invited me to move cattle on horseback. The cattle needed to be organized for routine health services and sale.

Yes, please! I had many years of different experiences riding—hunter/jumper, western, trail riding, and dressage—but never this type.

“Sit down,” I told myself. I sunk my hips further in the saddle so my eager steed would give me a trot I could sit more easily. The cattle shimmied further up the hill, and both Jasper and I moved near the fence line to watch for babies and stragglers.

Even though I was new to this job, Jasper wasn’t. He knew what to do. After some initial introductions to Jasper’s “go” and “stop” buttons and a little silliness on his part crossing a drain, my body remembered being horseback and the symbiotic rhythms of working with another created being for a certain end.

As Jasper and I strategically paraded the field, I pondered the children who were herding cows with me—mainly eleven-years-old and younger. Several of them were students at our classical school. I silently wished all our students could experience working cattle. On the way to the ranch, several of the eleven-year-old girls explained stoically that, “The daddies are going to castrate the bulls today,” without a crack or giggle. Their common experiences matured their knowledge of “what is,” while sadly I stifled an immature guffaw at the uttered word “castrated.”

The children in the party took direction from the adults in charge (certainly not me) and worked with their horses to close gaps and corner strays. They each knew their horse’s personality and quirks, and they appropriately feared the situation at hand. I was amazed to watch the confidence of these young ones move half-ton animals while on a half-ton animal, as they continued the ancient and skillful ritual of animal husbandry. For thousands of years this art has been vital for human survival. Common arts are just that—skills for living. They require scientific knowledge, perfected skills and prudent virtue. While this art is part of man’s “common” work, it is no less sacred. Dorothy Sayers says:

As for the common man, the artist is nearer to him than the man of any other calling, since his vocation is precisely to express the highest common factor of humanity—that image of the Creator which distinguishes the man from the beast. If the common man is to enjoy the divinity of his humanity, he can come to it only in virtue and right of his making (1). 

In essence, the common man participating in any type of work with creation, whether it be cooking, pottery, leather-craft, farming, or even working cattle, participates with God as His image-bearer.

In contrast, fine arts seem to go a step further. In a recent conversation with Chris Hall, he shared: “Equestrian arts become fine arts when the horse and rider are in tune and can anticipate one another and work together seamlessly. That's where the superlative performance of equestrian arts evokes that experience of goodness, truth, and beauty in the beholder.”(2) So, it appears the common art of working cattle (or anything taken to this end) could become a fine art.

I have witnessed this fine art at many rodeos as horse and rider dance together the precisely timed steps for roping a steer. While I cannot claim that I have mastered the common art of animal husbandry in one day of working cattle or the fine art of cutting or roping a steer, I saw and felt the potential of it on this day as I watched others in the party. As a younger person, I had experienced, even if just for a moment, the rhythm, grace, and beauty required to jump fences and dance dressage patterns in tandem with an eager and forgiving creature.

Today, these spectacles always move me. (I recall a special memory in Spain watching the Andalusians dance at the Spanish Riding School.) While watching humans, equines, and bovines move towards the corral, the draw to participate with this beauty again was so strong that I threatened to run away and become a rancher. The joy was overwhelming.

Joy.

This is why we need both the common arts and fine arts in classical curriculum. They have the power to not only help students joyfully grow in confidence and survive autonomously, but some, if perfected, may lead others to joys in truth and goodness through their creations of beauty. By skillfully engaging our bodies to make, grow, or care for something, we come to know our Maker more fully. Sayers describes that “The hand of the creative artist…. rocks the foundations of the world; and he himself can only indulge in this perilous occupation because his mansion is not in the world but in the eternal heavens.” (3) Creating and making in both the common and fine arts help us be at home with the Maker and His eternity. 

Moreover, the common and fine arts prepare our soul to find a home in what is lovely so we can receive the wisdom from the liberating arts—the trivium and quadrivium. If you refer to the PGMAPT paradigm “tree” (Fig 1.1) at the beginning of The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain, the common and fine arts, which could include a variety of sports and musical arts as well, might be placed near “gymnastic” and “music” at the base since beauty and rhythms of the body and soul provide a foundation for learning the seven liberal arts, philosophy, and theology. The “homebase” of the tree, rooted in piety resides in the stability of gymnastic and music, or the body and soul, arts.

Fig 1.1(4)

In short, both common arts and fine arts are important parts of a classical curriculum since they provide a foundation for students to love the right things well and offer experiences which incline their gaze towards joy and the Joy Giver. Teachers and parents should be aware that educating children includes preparing the body and soul as well as the mind, and they have the grave responsibility of introducing students to various making and creating so they may better know the One who created them. This can include formal lessons in sculpting, painting, or playing an instrument, or it can be simple household cooking, sewing, and gardening—it can even mean pushing cattle on a horse. Each prepares our body and soul for knowing God and His world in a special way.

As for me, I’ll be looking for my home in eternity . . . on the range.

Works Cited:

Clark, Kevin and Ravi Scott Jain. The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2019. 

Sayers, Dorothy L. The Lost Tools of Learning and The Mind of the Maker. Oxford, England: Oxford City Press, 2010. 

(1) Dorothy L. Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning and The Mind of the Maker (Oxford, England: Oxford City Press, 2010), 160.
(2) Chris Hall is the author of Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head, and Heart, published by Classical Academic Press and this quote was cited with permission.
(3) Dorothy L. Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning and The Mind of the Maker, 158.
(4) Kevin Clark, Ravi Scott. Jain. The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2019). The PGMAPT tree illustration is located on the  unnumbered first page of the 2019 edition while the PGMAPT chart is located on page 287.

Carrie Eben, MSEd (PhD student), is owner of Classical Eben education consulting (classicaleben.com), founding board member of Sager Classical Academy in Siloam Springs, AR and adjunct instructor of Integrated Humanities at John Brown University.

Carrie Eben
Classical Education Consultant
Founding Board member of Sager Classical Academy
Instructor of Humanities at John Brown University

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