A Gift Worth Receiving

Hope - bronze by Issy Birsinger

Last night I ran a Google search on the words "educational quotes," and one of the first sites I hit had compiled "50 of the Best Quotes About Education."

Most of these quotes were about advancement, the utility of learning knowledge, worldly success, and the benefits of the full mind. Of course, these ideas have a general positive bent; however, I started to wonder, "Advance where?" "What does real success look like?" and especially, "What should the full mind be filled with?

Could this whole list have missed something?

One of the quotes about education that I think is probably the most interesting, and by the way, is not included in that list, is from G.K. Chesterton. Way back in 1924, in the newspaper The Observer, Chesterton revealed an insight into education that is quite different in comparison to the fifty on the list. He wrote: "Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."

He says that it is simple, yet not one of the others touched on succession. In succession, something precious is being given from one generation to the next. Many know about succession in terms of a king handing his kingdom to his heir. Does a society have anything valuable to give? Can it participate in succession? And, from an even more bewildering tack, does society even have a soul to pass down?

In my estimation, Society is a group of humans living and interacting in physical or virtual proximity. It is common idea that each human has a soul. The soul is the spiritual and moral non-physical part of a human person that continues even after death. Since societies are made up of souls, society then can be said to have a soul that is formed by the 'collective spirit' or unity of the individuals of this group. It would seem more like a recipe for confusion, not unity. How do groups of individuals form this collective spirit?

According to Russel Kirk, there is the idea of order, which is something more foundational than society.

Before a person can live tolerably with himself or with others, he must know order. If we lack order in the soul and order in society, we dwell “in a land of darkness, as darkness itself,” the Book of Job puts it; “and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where light is as darkness.”

Kirk continues, "Order is a systematic and harmonious arrangement whether in one's own character or in the commonwealth. Also 'order' signifies the performance of certain duties and the enjoyment of certain rights in a community: thus we use the phrase 'the civil social order.'"

Now according to Kirk, the order of society is determined by the beliefs and customs (not by law--which does flow from beliefs and customs, but law is not foundational).

It is these beliefs and customs that concern Chesterton, what he would call 'culture.' But what does culture have to do with education?

The modern educator might say: "Arithmetic, Chemistry, Economics, and Engineering have to do with facts...what do these subjects have to do with culture? Education is about jobs and progress--how does one get a job or progress in this modern world of computers and science with just learning culture?"

Chesterton continues:

"What we need is to have a culture before we can hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves."

Where does one learn Arithmetic, Chemistry, Economics, and Engineering? School? Who does the teaching? Grown-ups? Where did they learn the content of the subjects from? The people older than they? And so on down the line. Everything, even facts, is handed down from one generation to the next. Who decides what is the correct content or the correct facts? The Calculus is a fact, but at one point in history, someone's grandfather had to believe in it. Throughout the ages, culture has been a complex dance of belief and customs and these beliefs and customs include everything. The passing down of culture from one generation to the next is the essence of education.

Humans can see the beauty in the world, and they want to understand it. They want to know it is real....they want to participate in it. Humans want to live a good life in this beautiful world, and they want to believe that the good life is possible--and that it is true--and that Truth is real and knowable. In order to understand these things, humans need to grow in wisdom and in virtue.

But humans do not just know what these things are. They have to be educated (or shown) in the path (culture) to these wonderful things. Andrew Kern of the Circe Institute would assert that contemplation of these three things, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, is education, because all disciplines from Art to Zoology are included and the soul of the contemplative will be nourished, and the 'collective spirit' of society will be also nourished, therefore, individuals and society will grow in wisdom and virtue.

Students growing in wisdom and virtue, shepherded by a culture that aims for the True, Good, and Beautiful, is the kind of education that Chesterton was keen to pass on to future generations because it contains the markers for what is best for humanity. One of the greatest gifts a society can give is nourishment for the souls of the next generation.