This is the first essay I’ve posted since April 27. In the intervening two months, I’ve given all my literary energy to finishing my next book, The Christian University & The Academic Establishment. I expect it to be published sometime in August. I will have more to say about it then.
As always happens when you are reading and formulating your thoughts on one topic, other issues come into view that you must set aside for the moment. In writing the The Christian University & The Academic Establishment, I read much about the history and the current state of higher education in America, and this concentration forced me to ask other questions: What is education? What is learning? What part do schools play in learning? What does it mean to be an educated person? How does one gain a good education? And specifically, how does one gain a good education in Christianity? In the next few months, I hope to address these questions and more. This essay sets the table for that discussion.
Truly Educated People are Humble
We will never know everything. We must be satisfied with (1) learning what we need to know for living the life we want to live; and (2) doing the best we can to make sure that the knowledge we gain—partial though it is—cannot be completely falsified by future discoveries.
We don’t know what we don’t know. Remember the old saying “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”? Why is that? Because that little knowledge is surrounded by a lot of ignorance! But we can know that we don’t know. So, be humble and careful. Strive to distinguish between beliefs that are firmly grounded in evidence and thus are likely to withstand scrutiny and those that are supported solely by our desires, vanity, wishes, and feelings.
No individual knows everything that is known. Human knowledge is a communal possession. Unlike animals, human beings can learn from the thoughts, discoveries, and experiences of other people and pass that knowledge on to future generations so that the body of knowledge grows with the passage of time. Each new generation benefits from this heritage of wisdom, knowledge, and skills. The process of passing on this knowledge is called education.
Principles of Education
There is a difference between schooling and education. One can attend a school, college or university—even get a degree—without acquiring a good education. To gain an education, one must learn.
Learning is always something we do. We can sit at a desk while a teacher lectures, but learning involves assimilating new information into the body of knowledge and the patterns of understanding we already possess. It changes us.
The sum total of human knowledge can be refined and extended only by those who have mastered traditional knowledge. You need to learn what is already known. Even though this body of knowledge is incomplete and may contain errors, it is the best starting place for learning more. Only from this vantage point can an individual see unanswered questions and the limits of inherited theories, methods, and procedures.
A good education is one that enables us to live well in the society in which we dwell. As I said above, no one can know everything. It is the business of educators to create programs of study that provide students with the opportunity to gain a good education. Unsurprisingly, educators do not agree completely among themselves on what that program of study should be, and it is always changing as society changes. But in general, educators agree that it is a great advantage for a person to gain basic proficiency in language, history, natural science, economics, and political and social institutions.
How to Get a Good Education
How can you make sure that you get a good education? Whatever subject you want to study, place yourself under the tutelage of teachers who can direct you to the best of what is known and guide you through a maze of crackpot ideas, fancies, and conspiracies. As I emphasized above, there is a difference between going to a school and getting a good education. The most important thing about becoming an educated person is not where you learn but that you acquire the best knowledge available and become a discerning and critical student. However, for most people, the best place to begin this journey is in an educational institution—a high school, college or university. Why here? Because these institutions gather in one place teachers who have given many years to mastering their disciplines and are responsible to their professions. It is their duty to direct your attention to the best knowledge available—ideas and practices that have been critically examined by many thinkers and have proven themselves useful and reliable.
The Higher Education Mess
Almost every book I’ve read on the subject—whether coming from the right or the left or from inside or outside the university—complains that higher education in America is a mess. Universities are too expensive, too inefficient, sold out to the political left, or in danger from the political right. They encourage students to take on huge debt to earn useless degrees. They are run too much like corporations. Needed change proceeds at a glacial pace. Professors care more about their research than their students. Tenure and academic freedom shield incompetent faculty and serve as cover for anti-academic, political activism.
I agree. Education in America at all levels is a mess. Reforms are needed. Alternative paths to a good education are desirable. But my point in this essay is this: Whatever reforms in existing educational institutions we enact or new ways of securing an education we envision, at the core of all of them must lie the process of learning an accumulated body of knowledge and skills from those who already know them. And this is the answer to the question posed in the title: What is Education?
ifaqtheology 
I doubt “A good education is one that enables us to live well in the society in which we dwell.” is precisely correct. Too much in that statement depends on what it means “to live well,” and too much authority is given to the society to establish that meaning. In our society today, “to live well” is often taken to mean “to achieve a satisfactory level of material success.” That standard is surely different from what, say, Aristotle, or Jesus, meant by living a good life. There are undoubtedly societies in which “living well in the society,” on its terms, would entail rejecting the good life as seen by Aristotle, or Jesus. Educating people for an Aristotelian or Christian good life would enable them and empower them to live at odds, hopefully productively, with their society. I would argue – and I believe you would, too – that such an education really would be a better one than an education that, for instance, trains people to condone or ignore their society’s stupidities and injustices and inhumanities for the sake of achieving material success. In other words, I think the criterion you propose there needs re-statement.
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I take your point. This definition is very general. Isn’t it true in its generality? A good education must be relative to the age and society in which one lives.
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Yes (because I’d readily concede there’s little point in learning alchemy these days, for instance), but … the language of “living well in the society in which we dwell” seems to lean towards a vision of education that prepares people to be content with society’s conditions, whatever those are, rather than preparing people to observe, question, and perhaps even challenge those. It could be nice to find language that wouldn’t do that.
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Yes. I agree. I just wanted to push back against the notion that the main business of universities is producing researchers and research OR producing revolutionary activists. Here is a paragraph from Chapter 3, which deals with academic freedom:
“The AAUP’s definition of the professor’s role omits the socially vital task of explaining and defending the wisdom of the past, favoring instead critique of tradition and discovery of new knowledge. The “professional” university teacher, under this view, must train students to question the status quo and adopt more progressive thinking. Apparently, there is no room for conservatives and traditionalists within this vision. This is a narrow, elitist view of the profession, borrowed from late-nineteenth-century German universities, which focused almost exclusively on graduate education and research. I see no rational basis, however, for excluding from the profession those university teachers whose primary goal is to explain and defend the inherited wisdom of their tradition to undergraduates. The work of transmitting moral tradition and cultural identity is a necessary educational task of any society. It is certainly equal in importance—and prior in developmental order—to the training of researchers and critics. Critical thinking without intellectual and moral foundations leads to philosophical nihilism and political radicalism. No society can long endure without shared values, narratives, and traditions.”
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Hello Ron.
Glad you’re back.
Of course there is little point in agreeing or disagreeing with the brief here. It’s generally accurate and i’m certain there will be ” precision” in the book.
It isn’t just american further education that has been hobbled by Big Profit Inc.; did you know that increasingly, world leading companies are turning to offering bright kids modern apprenticeships BECAUSE by the time they leave university (say, in engineering, computing or physics) they are virtually impossible to train.
The ability to learn as been edited out. So in this respect, these obvious failures are failing the target employers as much as the students.
I look forward to you saying more later.
JS
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Regarding your last thought and quotation.
It is my view that studying the techniques and processes behind the marvels of ‘past art’ enables the novel thinker to get inside their own freedom to think.
No amount of education in simply learning historical facts and figures can make a student into an enlightened thinker. And the more students are programmed to realize that they do not have what it takes to be an enlightened thinker, the more likely it is that some will rebel and revolt against the horse’s bit.
Higher education and further education should not be a continuation of grade school, nor is it a version of sunday school. There comes a point at which research develops into a practical application or it fails most of what society needs from it. Does it help, or does it hinder? Does it improve or does it sour?
An exceptional person called Thomas Jefferson developed something that grew into the First Amendment. But how many angry people, students, or purveyors of ethics have studied the beauty of his original bible notes and specific sayings of Jesus that lead to this phenomenal piece of practical human social guidance? And what is it today?
JS
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