Education:
What’s the Point?
by Stephen Bertucci
There
is a lot of talk about the importance of education.
This is not something new. The ancient Greek
reformer, Lycurgus, was of the opinion that
the education of children was the most important
duty of a lawgiver. Some people disagree. They
think education is not at all the business of
government. But they still think education is
vitally important. So, if it is so important,
it raises an obvious question, "Why?"
Considering
the appalling amount of money spent both publicly
and privately in our country in an effort to
educate the young, it is safe to conclude that
people in the United States consider education
to be a great work. How many of them, do you
think, could tell you what they believe the
end, or goal, of that work is? I speak to groups
about education and often ask the question,
"Why are you going to all this effort,
and expense? What is the point of it?"
It seems few people have thought much about
this except in a rather vague manner. Yet, according
to another ancient Greek, Plato, "The beginning
is the most important part of the work."
What is the beginning of the work of education?
I suggest that it consists in determining what
is the goal of education. As the saying goes,
if you don’t know where you are going
you won’t know how to get there. I would
add that, at least in regard to education, even
if you know where you want to go you may still
not know how to get there. But "how"
is a secondary question. It comes after determining
where we ought to go.
What
are the answers that I receive to my question?
They generally fall along these lines: The end
of education is to produce good citizens. To
produce productive people. To learn to efficiently
find information. To get a good job. To achieve
full potential. To read and write well. To learn
to think.
Apart
from precisely what each of those phrases might
mean, do they answer the question? I don’t
think so. They simply lead to a further question,
"Why do you want your children to be able
to do or achieve those things?" This is
where many people are stumped, at least for
a while. The ones who are stumped the longest
are often professional educators. During all
of their training this question has seldom,
if ever, been addressed. It probably appears
to be a dumb question. After all, isn’t
it obvious why we should want our children to
be able to read, to have a good job, to be good
citizens? I know from my experience with students
that the questions that seem to have the most
obvious answers are often the best questions
to talk about. It is because the answers seem
so obvious that we tend to have spent little
or no time thinking about them.
When
my students, as a result of the beastly prodding
of their teacher, are made to think about apparently
obvious answers they often make great discoveries.
One of which is that they really haven’t
understand the questions, though they were quite
sure they had. This presumed understanding of
the questions is why, when we are 16, we tend
to think we know so many of the answers to life’s
questions.
"
I know what I’m doing. You old people
just don’t get it. The world is different
now."
"How
is it different?"
"Dude,
it’s obvious, isn’t it?"
Well,
it used to be obvious. For folks like me it
takes about half a century to begin to get a
handle on the notion that what has been obvious
is not necessarily true. Plato and Aristotle
thought that it takes about 50 years before
someone could be a decent philosopher. It often
takes that long to realize you don’t know
what you thought you knew. Once you realize
it you can make some progress. So it is better
to find it out earlier. That way you can get
started sooner. But it is hard work. It’s
tough to get out of your own way. We really
aren’t often willing to make the effort
– and it does require effort – to
stand in the other guy’s shoes and see
things as he sees them because, "Dude,
it’s just obvious he’s wrong."
Much
of education, of growing up, is about acquiring
a better understanding of the questions. Does
the question "What is love?" mean
the same thing to you now that it did when you
were a teenager? How about "What is home?"
The
question about the goal of education cannot
be answered without first answering the question,
"What is the goal, or end, of a human being?"
After all, shouldn’t the goal of education
be to help us achieve whatever is the goal of
human life? Is there a goal that is universal,
common to all people? Aristotle says that it
is happiness. Everybody wants it. We want other
things as a means to obtaining it. Ultimately,
that further end is happiness. We want happiness
for itself.
Of
course, that leads to a big question –
who is the happy man? Socrates [another ancient
Greek!] says the happy man is the one who is
good and noble. How do we become good? By learning
to love what is true, and good, and beautiful
we will learn to be virtuous and, as Aristotle
says, it is a life of virtue that gives us the
best chance for a good life, a happy life. [What
kind of life would your children have if they
loved what is false, evil, and ugly? Do you
see examples in our culture of the results of
loving those things?]
The
work of education begins by identifying the
end of the work. If the end of a human being
is to be happy, and if education should help
a person achieve that end, then, following the
line of thought of these ancient Greeks, the
end of education is to help us to learn to love
what is true and good and beautiful. I think
that is exactly right. I wish all educators
agreed.
Notice,
the end is not knowing. Rather, it is loving.
This is not to minimize the importance of knowing.
Knowing is necessary as a means to loving. And
that is precisely the point. It is a means,
and an indispensable one, but it is not the
end. Simply knowing what is true may satisfy
the mind of a man, but it does not satisfy his
heart. The evil man knows what is true. But
he doesn’t love it. And he is not satisfied.
This
suggests that education is not simply an intellectual
pursuit but, rather, involves the whole person.
We are men and women. To live fully, to be happy,
should we not love with all of the powers that
we possess?
So,
how do we get to the end? What do we need to
know? What skills do we need to acquire? How
do we obtain the knowledge and the skills? Those
are good questions, they are the "how do
we get there" questions, and they are now
in their proper place – after determining
where we ought to go.
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