Ancients drew a distinction between those fit to be free, to self-rule, and those who must have someone always supervising them. Liber, the former, were people of learning, people of the book, and chattel are the latter, those who must be controlled by someone. Race was irrelevant in ancient ideas of slavery. The key was whether you had an education--which idea unfortunately followed the slavers to America, and made educating a slave a criminal offense.
Education is seen as crucial to success in life. Today few Americans are farmers and ranchers, and even they usually have extensive understanding of the science involved in their trade and often employ accountants - they need an education too. But education in what? That's the part that no one can agree on. When we say "education" do we really mean "training"? Teaching reading, writing, and 'rithmetic--is that truly educating? What shall we read - trendy novels and magazines? What about computer programming, cooking, and comprehensive sexuality education (known around here as "Family Life Education")--do those count toward becoming an educated person?
In Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons says “Education, that vague and official word for what goes on in our schools, has been a trinket on the shelves of snake oil salesmen and a plaything for social planners in America for over a century. They have been driven by the spirit of ceaseless innovation. And we have paid a high price. The peddlers have shrouded the higher and subtler goals of learning which former generations accepted and promoted. These bringers of the New have traded in the ancient ideal of wisdom for a spurious 'adjustment' of the mind, settling for fitting us with the most menial of skills needful for the world of the interchangeable part. They have decided we are less, not more, than wiser people have hoped humanity might have become. We are masses to be housed and fed, not minds and souls seeking something beyond ourselves.”
I believe in the definition of education that was prevalent in the time of the ancient Greeks, that the purpose of education is to instill virtue in a person. How is this to be done? Reading, discussing, writing, discussing, going deep into a subject, doing an internship or other hands-on experience, discussing, giving service, and discussing. Why so much discussion? First, because (supposedly) you remember 80% of what you said in a discussion, and only 20% of what the other person said. And second, because it allows the person to process what they have just learned, to tease apart what may have been truth or error in it, and to formulate and defend their own ideas about it. Sometimes the mentor plays the devil's advocate, sometimes not, but either way a person is better prepared to meet the world after he has followed this process. In Dorothy Sayers, "The Lost Tools of Learning" she says:
Education is seen as crucial to success in life. Today few Americans are farmers and ranchers, and even they usually have extensive understanding of the science involved in their trade and often employ accountants - they need an education too. But education in what? That's the part that no one can agree on. When we say "education" do we really mean "training"? Teaching reading, writing, and 'rithmetic--is that truly educating? What shall we read - trendy novels and magazines? What about computer programming, cooking, and comprehensive sexuality education (known around here as "Family Life Education")--do those count toward becoming an educated person?
In Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons says “Education, that vague and official word for what goes on in our schools, has been a trinket on the shelves of snake oil salesmen and a plaything for social planners in America for over a century. They have been driven by the spirit of ceaseless innovation. And we have paid a high price. The peddlers have shrouded the higher and subtler goals of learning which former generations accepted and promoted. These bringers of the New have traded in the ancient ideal of wisdom for a spurious 'adjustment' of the mind, settling for fitting us with the most menial of skills needful for the world of the interchangeable part. They have decided we are less, not more, than wiser people have hoped humanity might have become. We are masses to be housed and fed, not minds and souls seeking something beyond ourselves.”
I believe in the definition of education that was prevalent in the time of the ancient Greeks, that the purpose of education is to instill virtue in a person. How is this to be done? Reading, discussing, writing, discussing, going deep into a subject, doing an internship or other hands-on experience, discussing, giving service, and discussing. Why so much discussion? First, because (supposedly) you remember 80% of what you said in a discussion, and only 20% of what the other person said. And second, because it allows the person to process what they have just learned, to tease apart what may have been truth or error in it, and to formulate and defend their own ideas about it. Sometimes the mentor plays the devil's advocate, sometimes not, but either way a person is better prepared to meet the world after he has followed this process. In Dorothy Sayers, "The Lost Tools of Learning" she says:
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip-service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.
It makes me wonder...how many of the PhD's out there would Ms. Sayers view as being susceptible to propaganda because they've not been through a process of learning to take a bird's eye view of an idea, then zoom in and examine if from all perspectives. This is hard mental work, and few are willing to pay the price, but rather will swallow the lamest sound-bite as if it were gospel truth. I believe this is one reason we as humans always return to tribalism, especially in difficult times. We've no time or patience to dig for truth, especially if it's on the other side of the fence from where we stand. We'll just go along with the herd, staying in the center for protection from the wolves.
Here's another viewpoint on that idea:
Here's another viewpoint on that idea:
“One of the chief objects of education is to train flexibility of mind, to make a man quick to comprehend other points of view than his own. Obviously, no power is more necessary in dealing with men. To be able to discard for the moment his own opinions, and see the world through the eyes of other classes, races, or types, is as indispensable to the merchant as to the statesman; for men are hardly to be controlled or influenced unless they are understood. And yet no power is rarer. It is almost non-existent among uneducated people. A man who has not risen above the elementary school is hardly ever able to seize an attitude of mind at all different to his own; he may acquiesce in it because he trusts or respects the character of the person in question, but he does not understand it; he cannot perform the great feat for which our intellectual gymnasia train us, of being in two (or more) people’s skins at the same time. And this is not due to the absence of any organ from his body, but simply to the fact that he has never practiced the art.” Sir Richard Winn Livingstone, “A Defense of Classical Education” 1917
To sum up (sort-of) this idea of the reasons and major methodology to become an educated person, let me just say that at some point in this life or the next we must all face the fact that, though we know very little compared to God, we have a responsibility to grow our own intelligence through reading His words along with the best that has been written by members of the human race, and incorporating the principles that resonate with us.
