Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Education
THE great books assembled in this set are offered as means to a liberal or general
education. The authors of these books were educated men; more than that, they typified the
ideal of education in their various epochs. As their writings reveal, their minds were
largely formed, or at least deeply impressed, by reading the works of their predecessors.
Many of them were related as teacher and student, sometimes through personal contact,
sometimes only through the written word. Many of them were related as divergent disciples
of the same master, yet they often differed with him as well as with one another. There is
scarcely one among them--except Homer--who was not acquainted with the minds of the others
who came before him and, more often than not, profoundly conversant with their thought.
- Yet not one of the writings in this set is specifically a
treatise on education, except Montaigne's essay Of the Education of Children.
Some of these authors speak more or less fully of their own education, as does
Marcus Aurelius in the opening book of his Meditations, Augustine in his Confessions,
Descartes in his Discourse, and Boswell. Others refer to their educational
experience in fictional guise, as does Aristophanes in the argument in the Clouds
between the Just and Unjust Discourses; or Rabelais when he tells of Gargantua's schooling
in Gargantua's letter to Pantagruel. Sometimes they report the way in which other men were
trained to greatness, as does Plutarch; or, like Gibbon, Hegel, and Mill, they describe
and comment on the historic systems of education.
In still other instances the great books contain sections or chapters devoted to the ends
and means of education, the order of studies, the nature of learning and teaching, the
training of statesmen and citizens; as for example, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's
Politics, Augustine's Christian Doctrine, Bacon's Advancement of
Learning, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Hegel's Philosophy of Right,
and the psychological writings of James and Freud.
But in no case is education the principal theme of these books, as it is for most
of the works cited in the list of Additional Readings, among which will be found treatises
on education by authors in this set.
- EDUCATION is not itself so much an idea or a subject matter
as it is a theme to which the great ideas and the basic subject matters are relevant.
It is one of the perennial practical problems which men cannot discuss without
engaging in the deepest speculative considerations. It is a problem which carries
discussion into and across a great many subject matters--the liberal arts of grammar,
rhetoric, and logic; psychology, medicine, metaphysics, and theology; ethics, politics,
and economics. It is a problem which draws into focus many of the great ideas--virtue and
truth, knowledge and opinion, art and science; desire, will, sense, memory, mind, habit;
change and progress; family and state; man, nature, and God.
This can be verified by noting the diverse contexts in which education is discussed in the
great books. In each connection we shall find some of the special questions which together
make up the complex problem of education. For example, the nature of teaching and learning
is examined in the wider context of psychological considerations concerning man's
abilities, the way in which knowledge is acquired, and how it is communicated by means of
language or other symbols.
- Different conceptions of the nature of man and of the
relation of his several capacities surround the question of the ends of education.
In this context questions also arise concerning the parts of education--the
training of man's body, the formation of his character, the cultivation of his mind--and
how these are related to one another.
The whole theory of the virtues and of habit formation is involved in the question whether
virtue can be taught or must be acquired in some other way, and in related questions about
the influence of the family and the state on the growth of character. These questions are
also asked in terms of general political theory. Different views of the state are involved
in questions about the division of responsibility for education among various agencies.
- Questions about the purpose of education, and what sort of
education shall be given to the diverse classes in the state, are differently raised and
differently answered in the context of discussions of different forms of government.
Though they are far from exhaustive, these examples should nevertheless suffice to
make the point that
- there can be no philosophy of education apart from philosophy
as a whole.
It may therefore not be a disadvantage to find the discussion of education in the
great books almost always imbedded in the context of some more general theory or problem.
ONE OPINION FROM which there is hardly a dissenting voice in the great books is that
- education should aim to make men good as men and as citizens.
"If you ask what is the good of education," Plato writes, "the
answer is easy--that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly, and conquer
their enemies in battle, because they are good."
Men should enter upon learning, Bacon declares, in order "to give a true
account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men"; while William James
stresses the need for "a perfectly-rounded development."
Thus it would seem to be a common opinion in all ages that
- education should seek to develop the characteristic
excellences of which men are capable and that its ultimate ends are human happiness and
the welfare of society.
Within this area of general agreement there are, of course, differences which
result from the different views that are taken of man's relation to the state or to God.
If the good of the state takes precedence over individual happiness, then education must
be directed to training men for the role they play as parts of a larger organism.
Education then serves the purpose of preserving the state. Of all things, Aristotle says,
"that which contributes most to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of
education to the form of government .... The best laws," he continues, "though
sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained
by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution."
Rousseau seems to take a similar view when he calls for a system of public education run
by the state. Its object is to assure that the citizens are "early accustomed to regard
their individuality only in its relation to the body of the state, and to be aware, so to
speak, of their own existence merely as a part of that of the state." Taught in
this way, the citizens, Rousseau claims, "might at length come to identify themselves
in some degree with this greater whole, to feel themselves members of their country, and
to love it with that exquisite feeling which no isolated person has save for
himself."
If happiness cannot be fully achieved on earth, then whatever temporal ends education
serves must themselves be ordered to eternal salvation, and the whole process of human
development must be a direction of the soul to God. "What did it profit me,"
Augustine asks in his Confessions, "that all the books I could procure of
the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself and
understood? . . . For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened;
whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, was not itself enlightened.
Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic, geometry, music and arithmetic, by
myself without much difficulty or any instructor, I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my
God; because both quickness of understanding and acuteness in discerning, is Thy gift; yet
did I not thence sacrifice to Thee." Wherefore, Augustine concludes concerning this
stage of his learning, "it served not to my use but to my perdition." But
Augustine does not therefore conclude that, under no circumstances, can liberal education
be put to good use. In his treatise On Christian Doctrine, he considers in detail
how the liberal arts, which serve so well in the study of Sacred Scripture, may also serve
to bring the soul to God.
SUCH DIFFERENCES DO NOT, however, annul one consequence of the general agreement,
namely, the conception that education is concerned with the vocation of man, and prepares
him in thought and action for his purpose and station in life.
In these terms Adam Smith argues for a minimum general education.
- He claims that "a man without the proper use of the
intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward,
and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the character of
human nature."
He explicitly points out that this is the condition of "the great body of the
people," who, by the division of labor, are confined in their employment "to a
few very simple operations," in which the worker "has no occasion to exert his
understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing
difficulties which never occur."
The result, according to Smith, is that
- "the torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable
of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any
generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment
concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life."
When the vocation of man is thus understood,
- a general or liberal education is vocational in that it
prepares each man for the common conditions and callings of human life.
In this sense specialized training, which by implication at least seems to be the
object of Smith's criticism, is not vocational. It fits a man only for some specialized
function, according to which he or his social class is differentiated from some other man
or class.
In our day, the word "vocational" is used in the opposite sense to mean
specialized training, whether it is preparation for the least skilled of trades or for the
most learned of professions. Since all men are not called to the practice of law or
medicine--any more than all are called to productive work in the various arts and crafts,
or the tasks of commerce and industry--the training they may need to perform these
functions does not fully develop their common humanity. It is not adequate to
make them good as men, as citizens, or as children of God.
- The traditional meaning of the word, "liberal' as
applied to education entails a distinction between free men and slaves. Slaves, like
domesticated animals, are trained to perform special functions. They are not treated as
ends, but as means, and so they are not educated for their own good, but for the use to
which they are put.
This is true not only of slaves in the strict sense of household chattel; it is
also true of all the servile classes in any society which divides its human beings into
those who work in order to live and those who live off the work of others and who
therefore have the leisure in which to strive to live well.
In accordance with these distinctions, Aristotle divides education into
"liberal" and "illiberal."
- Certain subjects are illiberal by nature, namely, "any
occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul of the freeman less fit for the
practice or exercise of virtue."
In this category Aristotle includes "those arts which tend to deform the
body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind."
It is not only the nature of the subject, but also the end which education serves, that
determines whether its character is liberal of illiberal. Even a liberal art becomes, in
Aristotle's opinion, "menial and servile . . . if done for the sake of others."
A man's education "will not appear illiberal" only so long as "he does or
learns anything for his own sake or for the sake of his friends, or with a view to
excellence."
In other words,
- to be liberal, education must serve the use of leisure in the
pursuit of excellence. It must treat man as an end, not as a means to be used by other men
or by the state.
It follows that
- any society which abolishes the distinction of social classes
and which calls all men to freedom, should conceive education as essentially
liberal and for all men.
It should, furthermore, direct education, in all its parts and phases, to the end
of each man's living well rather than to the end of his earning a living for himself or
others.
IN THE CLASSIFICATION of the kinds of education, the word "liberal" is
frequently used in a more restricted sense to signify not all education designed for free
men, but only the improvement of the mind through the acquisition of knowledge and skill.
In this sense liberal education is set apart from physical education which concerns bodily
health and proficiency, and moral education which concerns excellence in action rather
than in thought.
These divisions are clearly made, perhaps for the first time, in Plato's Republic.
The education described there begins in the early years with music and gymnastic.
Gymnastic "presides over the growth and decay of the body." Music, which
includes literature as well as the arts of harmony and rhythm, is said to educate its
students "by the influence of habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm
rhythmical," and its function is to develop moral as well as aesthetic sensibilities.
The second part of Plato's curriculum, "which leads naturally to reflection" and
draws "the soul towards being," consists in the mathematical arts and sciences
of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The program is capped by the study of
dialectic, to which all the rest is but "a prelude"; for "when a person
starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any
assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the
perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual
world."
Up to this point, the program can be taken as liberal education in the narrow sense of
learning how and what to think. The fifteen years of experience in civic affairs and the
tasks of government, which Plato interposes at the age of thirty-five, seem to function as
another phase of moral training. This period provides "an opportunity of trying
whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or
flinch."
To the extent that physical training aims, beyond health, at the acquirement of skill in a
coordinated use of one's body, it can be annexed to liberal rather than moral education.
Plato notes, for example, that gymnastic should not be too sharply distinguished from
music as "the training of the body" from the "training of the soul."
Gymnastic as well as music, he claims, has "in view chiefly the improvement of the
soul," and he considers the two as balancing and tempering one another.
Whether they produce competence in gymnastic or athletic feats, or, like the manual arts,
proficiency in productive work, all bodily skills, even the simplest, involve the senses
and the mind as well as bones and muscles. They are arts no less than music or logic.
Apart from their utility, they represent a certain type of human excellence, which will be
denied only by those who can see no difference between the quality of a racehorse and the
skill of his rider. Whether these skills as well as other useful arts are part of liberal
education in the broader sense depends, as we have seen, on the end for which they are
taught or learned. Even the arts which are traditionally called liberal, such as rhetoric
or logic, can be degraded to servility if the sole motive for becoming skilled in them is
wealth won by success in the law courts.
IN THE TWO traditional distinctions so far discussed, "liberal education" seems
to have a somewhat different meaning when it signifies the opposite of servile training
and when it signifies the opposite of moral cultivation. In the first case, the
distinction is based upon the purpose of the education; in the second, it refers to the
faculties or functions being cultivated. When the second is stated in terms of the
distinction between the intellectual and the moral virtues, liberal (i.e., intellectual)
education is conceived as aiming at good habits of thinking and knowing, and moral
education is thought of as aiming at good habits of will, desire, or emotion, along with
their consequences in action.
Although he does not use these terms, Montaigne seems to have the contrast between moral
and intellectual training in mind when he criticizes the education of his day for aiming
"at nothing but to furnish our heads with knowledge, but not a word of judgment and
virtue." It is, to him, a "pedantic education," which not only fails to
achieve the highest educational purpose, but also results in a great evil, in that
"all knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of goodness."
A too sharp separation of the intellectual and the moral may be questioned, or at least
qualified, by those who, like Socrates, tend to identify knowledge and virtue. Yet they
seldom go to the opposite extreme of supposing that no distinction can be made between the
task of imparting knowledge to the mind and that of forming character. Socrates, for
example, in the Meno, recognizes that a man cannot be made temperate, courageous,
or just in the same way that he can be taught geometry.
From another point of view, the notion of moral training is questioned by those who, like
Freud, think that the patterns of human desire or emotion can be beneficially changed
apart from moral discipline. It is the object of psychoanalysis, he writes, "to
strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of
vision, and so to extend its organization that it can take over new portions of the
id." To do this is radically to alter the individual's behavior-pattern. "It is
reclamation work," Freud says, "like the draining of the Zuyder Zee."
Emotional education, so conceived, is therapeutic--more like preventive and remedial
medicine than moral training.
Religious education is usually regarded as both intellectual and moral, even as the
science of theology is said to be both speculative and practical. Citing the admonition of
St. James, "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only," Aquinas holds that
religious education is concerned with the knowledge not only of "divine things"
but also of the "human acts" by which man comes to God. Since man is infinitely
removed from God, he needs for this purpose the grace of God, which, according to Aquinas,
"is nothing short of a partaking of the divine nature."
Both on the side of man's knowledge of God and on the side of his love and worship of God,
religious education involves the operation of supernatural factors--revelation, grace,
sacraments. Hence God is Himself the primary source of religious education. But as the
dispenser of the sacraments whereby "grace is instrumentally caused," the
church, according to Aquinas, functions instrumentally in the service of the divine
teacher.
THE CONCEPTION OF THE means and ends of moral education will differ with different ethical
theories of the good man and the good life, and according to differing enumerations and
definitions of the virtues. It will differ even more fundamentally according to whether
the primary emphasis is placed on pleasure and happiness or duty. The parties to this
basic issue in moral philosophy, which is discussed in the chapters on DUTY and HAPPINESS,
inevitably propose different ways of forming good character--by strengthening the will in
obedience to law, or by habituating the appetites to be moderate or reasonable in their
inclinations.
On either theory,
- the basic problem of moral education is whether morality can
be taught and how.
The Greeks formulated this question in terms of virtue, by asking whether such
things as courage and temperance are at all teachable, as geometry and horsemanship
plainly are. The problem remains essentially the same if the question is how the will can
be trained. Can it be trained by the same methods as those which work in the improvement
of the understanding?
The answer to the question, whichever way it is formulated, depends on the view that is
taken of the relation between moral knowledge and moral conduct. Do those who understand
the principles of ethics or who know the moral law necessarily act in accordance with
their knowledge? Can a man know what is good or right to do in a particular case, and yet
do the opposite? St. Paul seems to suggest that when he says, "For the good that I
would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." If something more than
knowledge or straight thinking is needed for good conduct, how is it acquired and how can
one man help another to acquire it? Certainly not by learning and teaching in the ordinary
sense which applies to the arts and sciences. Then how--by practice, by guidance or
advice, by example, by rewards and punishments; or if by none of these, then by a gift of
nature or by the grace of God?
These questions are necessarily prior to any discussion of the role of the family, the
state, and the church in the process of moral training. They also provide the general
background for the consideration of particular influences on character formation in men
and children, such things as poetry and music, or laws and customs. All of these related
problems of moral education have a political aspect, which appears in the issue concerning
the state's right to censor or regulate the arts for morality's sake; in the question of
the primacy of the family or the state in the moral guidance of the young; in the
distinction between the good man and the good citizen or ruler, and the possible
difference between the training appropriate for the one and for the other.
THE MAIN PROBLEM of intellectual education seems to be the curriculum or course of study.
The traditional attempts to construct an ideal curriculum turn on such questions as what
studies shall be included, what shall be their order, and how shall they be taught or
learned. A variety of answers results from a variety of views of man's faculties or
capacities, the nature of knowledge itself, the classification and order of the arts and
sciences. Especially important are the various conceptions of the nature and function of
the liberal arts. Subordinate questions concern the place of the fine and useful arts in
liberal education, and the role of experience and experiment--both in contrast to and in
cooperation with the role of books and teachers.
In addition to the problem of the curriculum and its materials, the theory of intellectual
education necessarily considers methods of teaching and learning. Here the various
proposals derive from different views of the learning process--of the causes or factors at
work in any acquisition of skill or knowledge.
The contribution of the teacher cannot be understood apart from a psychological analysis
of learning, for the teacher is obviously only one among its many causes.
- It makes the greatest difference to the whole enterprise of
learning whether the teacher is regarded as the principal cause of understanding on the
part of the student; or whether the teacher is, as Socrates describes himself, merely
"a midwife" assisting the labor of the mind in bringing knowledge and
wisdom to birth, and "thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind . . .
brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth."
This Socratic insight is later reformulated in the comparison which Aquinas makes,
in his tract Concerning the Teacher, between the art of teaching and the art of
healing. Both are cooperative arts, arts which succeed only as "ministers of nature
which is the principal actor," and not by acting, like the art of the cobbler or
sculptor, to produce a result by shaping plastic but dead materials.
The comparison which Hippocrates makes of instruction in medicine with "the culture
of the productions of the earth" exhibits the same conception of teaching. "Our
natural disposition," he writes, "is, as it were, the soil; the tenets of our
teacher are, as it were, the seed; instruction in youth is like the planting of the seed
in the ground at the proper season; the place where the instruction is communicated is
like the food imparted to vegetables by the atmosphere; diligent study is like the
cultivation of the fields; and it is time which imparts strength to all things and brings
them to maturity."
This conception of teaching as a cooperative art, analogous to medicine or to agriculture,
underlies the principles of pedagogy in the Great Didactic of Comenius. It gives
significance to the distinction that Aquinas makes between learning by discovery, or from
experience, and learning by instruction, or from a teacher--even as a person is healed
"in one way by the operation of nature alone, and in another by nature with the
administration of medicine."
In addition to the technical considerations raised by the nature of the learning process,
the discussion of teaching deals with the moral or emotional aspect of the relation
between teacher and student.
- Without interest, learning seldom takes place, or if it does,
it cannot rise above the level of rote memory. It is one thing to lay down a course of
study; another to motivate the student.
Though he does not hesitate to prescribe what is to be learned by the student,
Plato adds the caution that there must be no "notion of forcing our system of
education."
More than interest is required.
- Teaching, Augustine declares, is the greatest act of charity.
Learning is facilitated by love.
The courtesies between Dante and Virgil in the Divine Comedy present an
eloquent picture of love between student and teacher, master and disciple.
- Not only love, but docility, is required on the part
of the student; and respect for the student's mind on the part of the teacher.
Intellectual education may not be directly concerned with the formation of character, yet
the moral virtues seem to be factors in the pursuit of truth and in the discipline of the
learning process.
WE HAVE ALREADY noted some of the political problems of education. Of these
probably the chief question is whether the organization and institution of education shall
be private or public. Any answer which assigns the control of education largely or wholly
to the state must lead to a number of other determinations.
Who shall be educated, all or only some? Should the education of leaders be different from
the education of others? If educational opportunity is to be equal for all, must the same
kind as well as the same quantity of education be offered to all? And, in every case, to
what end shall the state direct the education of its members--to its own welfare and
security, or to the happiness of men and the greater glory of God? Should education always
serve the status quo by preserving extant customs and perpetuating existing forms of
government; or can and should it aim at a better society and a higher culture?
These are some of the questions with which statesmen and political philosophers have
dealt, answering them differently according to the institutions of their time and in
accordance with one or another theory of the state and its government. There are still
other questions. Is freedom of expression, in teaching and discussion, indispensable to
the pursuit of truth and the dissemination of knowledge? To what extent shall the state
control the content and methods of education or leave such determination to the teaching
profession? How shall public education be supported? Should it be carried beyond childhood
and youth to all the ages of adult life; and if so, how should such education be organized
outside of schools?
Mill, for example, holds it to be "almost a self-evident axiom that the State should
require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is
born its citizen." Yet he deprecates the idea of a "general state
education" as a "mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one
another."
Discussing the pro's and con's of this issue, Mill touches upon most, if not all, of the
questions just raised. He believes that the difficulties could be avoided if the
government would leave it "to parents to obtain the education where and how they
pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of
children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay
for them." Schools completely established and controlled by the state, he maintains,
"should only exist, if they exist at all, as one among many competing experiments,
carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain
standard of excellence."
So far as the problem of adult education concerns citizenship, Mill's answer, like
Montesquieu's and Plato's before him, is that nothing can take the place of active
participation in political life. Men become citizens by living and acting as citizens,
under the tutelage of good laws and in an atmosphere of civic virtue. So far as the
problem of adult education concerns the continued growth of the mind throughout the life
of mature men and women the answer is not to be found in the great books in the words of
their authors. Yet the great books as a whole may constitute a solution to that problem.
- The authors of these books, from Homer to Freud, are the
great original teachers in the tradition of our culture. They taught one another. They
wrote for adults, not children, and in the main they wrote for the mass of men, not for
scholars in this or that specialized field of learning.
- The books exhibit these teachers at work in the process of
teaching. They contain, more over, expositions or exemplifications of the liberal arts as
the arts of teaching and learning in every field of subject matter.
To make these books and their authors work for us by working with them is, it
seems to the editors and publishers of this set of books, a feasible and desirable program
of adult education.
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