To thee that would bring us out,
To show us richer life;
Where we have wasted our brightest sprouts,
And only increased our strife,
Cultivate in spite of their pouts,
For the farmer is desperate for your scythe.
Alternate title: “WHY AM I EVEN SENDING THESE KIDS TO SCHOOL?”
I write this article in what I can perceive is only the beginning of the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, the novel coronavirus. Teaching in a public school has given me insight into education in ways that I never expected. I had of course attended a few public schools here and there (as well as private and online) but I was never attuned to my surroundings. When you’re a smart kid in school you know that other kids aren’t necessarily doing the same things as you, but you rarely pay them any heed. You put your head down, look at your own life and problems, and focus there.
The putting-my-head-down approach has probably bitten me in the butt at this point. Now I teach public high school and I wonder if all the things I’m seeing really popped up in the last seven years or if it was always this way and I just didn’t happen to see it. Our public education system is messy and gross – something I’m sure you’ve heard other people complain about before. But why be so cliché?
I couldn’t have articulated it myself until recently. By happenstance I recently was reading St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University. You’ll remember this if you read my previous article “What does St. John Henry Newman say about Learning a Language?.” Previously I focused on how Newman might have answered the question of foreign language instruction, but now I’m turning my scopes towards a larger issue: American education.
Where do I have to start? Unfortunately it goes way back, back to the Roman Empire. From that time, we have teachers such as St. Augustine talking of these methods, and they were standard for the longest time. They contain the Trivium and the Quadrivium (three and four):
- Grammar
- Dialectic
- Rhetoric
↑Trivium – Quadrivium↓ - Arts & Music
- Empirics
- Mathematics
- Geometry
These seven areas constituted the liberal arts. What is the goal of such an education? The first impulse we have is to say “well, it’s to know the content from these subject areas.” But that isn’t what our western predecessors say about it. St. Augustine says in his De Ordine that the Liberal Arts are meant to free us from materialistic thinking. The word ‘educate’ comes from two Latin words: ex– [out] and ducare [to lead]. To educate someone means to lead them out…from where? From materialistic thinking. Through what? Through the artes liberales. The free arts, the arts that free us. In other words, it elevates the mind beyond simple matters of the material and brings it into the realm of the immaterial, as well. I would like to take particular note of what Newman thought a liberal education was:
“Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is will to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life; these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University…Surely it is very intelligible to say, and that is what I say here, that Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence” (Newman, pg. 120-121, The Idea of a University)
Go back and read what Newman considers it ‘well’ to be. Do any of those things seem practical to you? Absolutely not! A delicate taste most certainly does not itself put food on the table. Newman talks in his book about the notion that knowledge should be sought for knowledge’s own sake. We ought to know simply to know. That knowing and increase in the intellect creates someone with a gentleman’s sort of quality, but they result from seeking knowledge with no ulterior motive.
How appalling to the modern mind! Why would we seek out something if we are not to use it to increase our material gain? Newman wrote in the middle of the 19th century and is still quite relevant in his critiques of those who would only educate for economic principles. The truth is, liberal education was the standard for education for the longest time. This idea of going to school to know things simply to know them was the expectation for education going all the way back to the time of the Romans…but that doesn’t seem to be what we have now, right?
Correct. In the early 20th century educators considered this inefficient and wasteful. Someone should walk away from an education with the ability to do things and to learn with more skill-based focuses. So expectations changed. But only ever so much. You see, when someone comes up with an idea, it usually comes about from a previous way of thinking and is only modified to accommodate a new level of expectation. What I mean to say is that even with the significant changes in education beginning in the 20th century, our model of education is still that of the Liberal Arts. Things are made out to be a bit more practical nowadays, but the notion that one should be learning about more of their native tongue and how to master it as much as math and arts or other extracurriculars is still the fundamental approach to how educators build our educational systems.
Except not.
Capitalist thinking, and especially modern and post-modern capitalist thinking, views units in an economy as agents interacting with supply and demand. Everyone, from the multi-national corporation to the individual, operates life under the assumption that he will buy what he needs to survive and thrive and sell what he has (or can do) for other people to buy from them. This interaction of selling and buying is foundational thought.
“Hey son, do this chore.”
“Sure dad, what do I get when I finish?”
The absolute worst part about this materialist thinking is that it has infected our systems of public education.
“All children must get an education.”
“Sure, government. What do my kids/me get when they finish?”
The answer ‘well they know things now’ isn’t an answer that will fly, exactly. The standard modern answer (in my opinion)?
“They need a high school diploma to get a job.”
The most basic notion of education is that it is a certificate for someone to say “ah, you’re grown up now. You’re now capable of fully and autonomously participating in real life.”
This contractual notion of exchange permeates education on every level. If you don’t believe me, just go read my article “I Need That Grade.”
Right now, more than ever, I believe this underlying thinking is being exposed. Kids aren’t coming physically to school because of COVID-19. If they have access to technology they are likely participating in distance learning with their school. Their teacher is working to come up with lessons to send through technology and then grade the work in return (get it?). And this contractual exchange is being exposed and ridiculed by parents. Kids, already exacerbated by a flawed system, are forced to try and fit the mold from an even more difficult position. Parents are tired of it. They didn’t sign up to educate their child! (They did, but they don’t believe they did). The exhausting effort to make sure their kids still get good grades is paramount. But, again, I already wrote about the grade part. Go read the other article if you aren’t following.
What this situation ultimately exposes is that not many people understand the why of education. They have grown up being taught that it is necessary, and that properly functioning members of society need it, but who the heck knows why we do it? Certainly we know that doctors and lawyers need to get advanced degrees that specify in knowing lots of detailed skills, but plumbers don’t need even a bachelor’s degree and they know lots of detailed skills? I don’t know, quit asking me. Sometimes I wonder if even the people in charge of our public education understand the ‘why’ of education. In a recent email I was encouraged to be lax with students, to give them ‘just what the students need to know and be able to do’ to get by the rest of the academic year. What even constitutes the body of knowledge that one “needs” to know?
In this delicate situation of trying to educate from home, parents are saying ‘this is enough. This is too much to handle from home. Just stop for now, pick it up again next year.’ I even had a parent email me (and all the rest of her son’s teachers) and ask
“What standards [state mandated learning goals for students] are you teaching through the rest of the school year? I just want to make sure my son is being taught what he needs to move on and that he’s not just being given busy work.”
In America in the 21st century, you don’t go to school just to go to school and to learn things. That’s dumb. There needs to be a product. Education means you need to acquire a skill, to acquire useful information. It’s either to get on to the next course or it’s to use it for some skill. Skill-based education is not inherently negative, but a skill-based education is not liberal. It is not freeing of the mind, it only ensnares it further in the materialistic thinking of the world. Most unfortunately that product of modern public education, in this case a high school diploma, requires grades. When you’re focused on perfecting your grades, what aren’t you focusing on?
Probably not cultivating your intellect.
Probably not a delicate taste.
Probably not a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind.
Probably not a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life.
In short, we are not focusing on becoming gentlemen and ladies. I know…it sounds archaic. Who wants to be a gentleman anymore? Who talks of becoming a lady? It sounds pretty useless. It doesn’t sound like it’s going to earn me anymore money. But ladies and gentlemen (if you consider yourself to be in this category) we must put aside these talks of money, and products, and contractual exchanges. If we have a liberal education, then let us have a liberal education. Let us disavow of grades as we have them. If a society is lacking in its number of gentlemen and ladies than it is worser for it. By all means should we teach and offer skill-based instruction and education for our students. We need technicians, plumbers, farmers, and soldiers; but these deserve and need to become gentlemen as much as the lawyers and doctors. Instead of teaching our children to skate by with as little ‘education’ as possible, let us encourage them to engage in it as much as possible.
Not because good grades are what matter the most. Not because it is a burdensome requirement to participate in society.
But because knowing knowledge is good for its own sake.
“Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is will to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life; these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge; they are the objects of a University…Surely it is very intelligible to say, and that is what I say here, that Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence” (Newman, pg. 120-121, The Idea of a University)
