Wes Cecil's piece on letter writing opens with a claim that immediately hooks: Christmas letters are "the worst genre ever." This is delightful hyperbole, but it's also the thesis driving everything that follows. He's not joking—these annual updates about family vacations and new puppies genuinely represent a collapse in our ability to communicate meaningfully. What makes this piece compelling isn't just the diagnosis; it's the historical excavation that follows. Most commentary on letter writing stays superficial, but Cecil goes deeper, tracing the decline back through centuries of educational philosophy.
The core argument is striking: "we don't know how to write letters" and "the reason we can't write letters is because we do not have the education that would permit us to write them." This is audacious stuff—suggesting our failure isn't about technology or laziness but about fundamental changes in what we learn. The piece gains power from its specificity: this isn't just any education, it's the Trivium and Quadrivium—a system that ran "from 500 BC until 1900" with remarkable consistency.
the letter died long before email was invented
Cecil makes a crucial point that's historically revisionist in the best way. Email didn't kill the letter; the letter was already dead by 1920, decades before digital communication existed. This matters because it reframes our nostalgia as misunderstanding—we imagine there's something to return to, but the thing we want to return to already disappeared.
The Education We Forgot
The heart of the piece is what these ancient educational systems actually taught. The Trivium wasn't about memorizing dates or facts—it was "grammar, rhetoric, logic" designed specifically around self-expression. Students didn't learn French history; they learned to "express yourself clearly in writing," "express yourself clearly orally," and "express yourself clearly mathematically." This is where the argument becomes genuinely thought-provoking: the purpose of education wasn't information storage but clear thinking itself.
Cecil's description of who actually went through this system is revealing. Students entered around age eight or nine, "done in about four or five years" so they'd be "13 or 14 maybe 15," and at that point, "they were done." This seems shockingly short to modern readers—but Cecil isn't being hyperbolic. The reason is that the curriculum was narrow: only seven subjects total. Compare this to the sprawling educational requirements we assume are necessary today.
The Quadrivium wasn't separate fields but expressions of one unified field: "algebra was the mathematical representation of the world," "geometry was the physical representation," "music harmony was the order and balance"—these were seen as different languages for talking about the same underlying reality. This is where Cecil's argument really lands: we think these are distinct disciplines, but the Renaissance mind saw them as one.
The Chinese Parallel
One of the piece's most effective moves is introducing the Chinese Imperial exam system as a parallel to Western education. It wasn't just similar in structure—it ran "from roughly 900 or 1100" to 1900, matching the Western timeline almost perfectly. This isn't coincidence; it's evidence that something fundamental shifted around the turn of the century. The Chinese system had its own version of this unified education—what Cecil calls "the six arts of the gentleman"—which corresponded closely with the Trivium and Quadrivium.
The examples are vivid: someone who went through the Imperial exams could be "the ambassador to some sort of lowly Province," then "in charge of building a canal that's a thousand miles long," then translating ancient works, then managing financial policy—all while writing beautiful poetry. This sounds like superhero competence, but it's actually the point: when education trains you in clear expression and logical reasoning, you can move between domains effortlessly.
What We Lost
Cecil's deepest insight is that old educational systems "didn't teach history of any kind" because they believed "if you're an educated person go look it up." This represents a radical different philosophy: the job of education isn't to fill you with content but to give you the tools to find what you need. The result was people like Montaigne and Newton—"completely different people" who "could write in the same languages," read the same books, understood the same arguments because they shared the same foundation.
The weakness here is that this feels idealized—the Renaissance ideal of well-rounded education wasn't universal even then; only a tiny fraction went through these systems. But Cecil's larger point holds: we lost something when we stopped believing that grammar and rhetoric were enough.
Bottom Line
Cecil's strongest move is reframing the letter-writing crisis as an educational collapse rather than a technology problem—"we are incapable of it" isn't about capability but training. His weakest move is not fully addressing who actually received this education—it was elite training for a small percentage, not some golden age of universal learning. The piece works because it's genuinely historical: we don't need to return to Latin Cicero, but we might need to rediscover that narrow focus on clear expression the Trivium once provided.