September 12, 2025
Thanks to George Narvaez, HMU alumnus, for today’s post.
My journey with education has never been simple. Living with disability often meant that the traditional classroom felt like a place where I did not quite belong. Instructions moved too quickly, expectations shifted without warning, and the conventional ways of measuring learning rarely fit my experience.
For years, I wrestled with frustration. Why did some people seem to grasp concepts instantly, while I had to struggle uphill just to keep pace? Why did education feel like a puzzle with its most important pieces missing?
These struggles led me to deeper questions: What does it mean to know something? How is knowledge created? Why do certain ideas endure across centuries?
It was humanistic education that gave me answers. Unlike traditional schooling, it did not view me as a problem to be solved. Instead, it welcomed me into dialogue with ideas, with mentors, and with history itself.
When I began reading Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, I did not encounter distant or irrelevant voices; I found companions. Aristotle’s reflections on persuasion taught me that character and lived experience are as vital as logic. Cicero’s vision of eloquence reminded me that my voice, shaped by disability and struggle, had inherent value. These thinkers did not shut me out; they invited me in.
Today, when I teach and write, I carry that lesson with me. Learning is not about perfection; it is about discovering one’s voice within the ongoing conversation of humanity. Humanistic education, grounded in the study of the classics, emphasizes dialogue, reflection, and the dignity of every learner. It can be understood as a bridge between classical thinkers such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and twentieth-century figures like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, who developed the concept of “humanistic education” within psychology. For me, this tradition transformed disability from an obstacle into a lens through which I could engage more deeply with enduring ideas. As a philosophy of learning, it places human experience, dignity, and the potential for growth at the center of education; principles that have enabled me to view disability not as a limitation, but as a source of resilience, insight, and continued personal development.
Disability taught me persistence. The classics gave me perspective. Together, they revealed that education is not a race to the finish line but a lifelong process of becoming wiser, more empathetic, and more fully human.
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ Jacob_09
