Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city. â John Henry Newman, The Mission of the Benedictine Order Among the many privileges of her posterity, Rome tends to enjoy a larger space on the metaphorical palate of cultural critics during perceived times of crisis. Narratives comparing her decline to contemporary conditions often bring along an homage to Benedict of Nursia, in many ways the founder of Western Christian monasticism. Newmanâs image of âsilent menâ often rallies would-be cultural preservers toward nostalgic hibernation in response to some imminent and inevitable cataclysm. The trope has recently been taken up in reference to the plights of higher and secondary education. Thomas Bentonâs op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education encourages us to âget medieval on education,â forsaking an academy marked by tenure-track cuts and diminishing humanities enrollment in favor of small institutions where faculty poverty is at least intentional. 1 In Septmeber 2015, the Archbishop of Canterbury instituted a âgap yearâ program of monastic living for high school graduates seeking shelter from a chaotic modern world. 2 For those not ready to retreat into the cloister, a new PBS documentary, The Rule, holds up a New Jersey Benedictine high school as a potential model for urban education. 3 In the last decade, particular elements of the Benedictine educational tradition have garnered interest outside the monastery. In an increasingly instrumental environment, intentionally nonpragmatic and nonpositivistic approaches hold an understandable appeal. Among philosophers of education, Angelo Caranfa, Kevin Gary, and Samuel Rocha have recently provided accounts of the potential educational value of both monastic silence and literary modalities. 4 In light of the 2015 Philosophy of Education Society conference theme, I would like to further this discussion by examining how principles of monastic learning might inform a poetic and transformative educational vision. As a particular appropriation of Platonic paideia, monastic education carries specific ontological, anthropological, and linguistic considerations. When enacted in practice, these positions yield a literacy model that can be described as metanoia, or âturning toward.â In this model, readers âturn towardâ and encounter an Other in the form of textual expression and are transformed through what monastics considered an organic âdigestionâ of the Otherâs mind. 5 This essay seeks to contribute to the current literature by advancing metanoia as a notional framework and by drawing on the work of Ivan Illich as well as Raymond Studzinskiâs recent phenomenological analysis of monastic lectio. After proposing a narrative of continuity between Platonic