We need to develop a healthy fear of what passes for education in the current age because that form of mental development is, in fact, little more than deformation of the pliable student into a trained monkey. To speak first of abstract thought, book-centered learning is best done by minimal years spent on basic reading skills followed by supervised — but, ideally, flexible — courses of individual reading interspersed with perhaps gatherings for discussion or problem solving and then — most importantly — writing and problem-solving exercises which are critiqued by the teacher and any assistants he designates. In response to those who might object that such a program is best-suited to the needs of the intellectually talented, I can only ask — why torture other students and waste resources on the pretense that we can develop the higher-level intellectual talents of those students who have no such talent? Why not give those students the education they need, basic literacy skills combined with apprenticeships in law or journalism, engine-repair or computer programming? Don’t force anyone but let them gravitate to what suits their inclinations and then let them gravitate elsewhere with no more demands than serious effort in return for the use of valuable resources. As it is, we have a bastardized educational system that kills enthusiasm in potential mechanical geniuses or musical geniuses as rapidly as it kills enthusiasm in potential physicists or language scholars. [We also have put ourselves in a position where it’s going to be hard to finance any serious educational system for all of our youngsters, but I’ll pass by that problem in this article.]
It’s enthusiasm that most concerns me here. It’s a sign of wonder, of a young human creature who’s fascinated by numbers and symbols, by reading and writing stories, by producing wonderful sounds with that guitar or piano, by taking apart an engine to see what the insides look like, by building walls or cooking delicious pot-pies, by caring for children or caring for horses and cows. Stop thinking of that child as a generic six year-old piece of human flesh. Stop thinking of that child as a future doctor or mother.
Is this practical? Probably not, but we need to see some sort of clear image of paradise so we can build a better shantytown. In any case, I wish to concentrate upon that one aspect of the human being, that one admirable aspect not well-developed in our incompetently utilitarian age — the sense of wonder at what lies around us, seen and unseen. This is a sense of wonder common to Gore Vidal and Duke Ellington and Richard Feynman and Bill Elliot — the Awesome Bill from Dawsonville who never saw a car engine he couldn’t push harder. In response to the legitimate needs for mental, moral, and spiritual development, we tend to ignore that sense of wonder, in fact, to kill it that the student might be more readily molded to the needs of the educational bureaucracies and the other bureaucracies of the modern world. In other words, we don’t educate so much as we try, at best, to train a higher-quality monkey.
Provide opportunities and see which ones the child responds to. And it’s likely that a given child will respond to specific opportunities with different levels of enthusiasm. And those specific responses will change as he matures. The child whose visual systems mature slowly may be late in taking to reading, but he may turn out to be a great scholar of the languages of ancient India. In the meantime, let him play with the dog and nurture his sense of wonder with walks through the woods. Avoid the stupid and cruel assumption that there’s some sort of standard schedule of physical and mental development to which all children should conform.
It’s that sense of wonder which is important, a sense of wonder which often starts out so poorly focused. It’s that sense of wonder that might lead that child to become a truly educated human being rather than a trained monkey. What is a truly educated human being? It’s what might become of that girl who bloodies her toes practicing ballet steps. It’s what might become of the boy who insists on taking machines and electronic devices apart to see how they work. It’s what might become of the boy who has become obsessed with numbers and symbols at a young age. It’s a good mechanic who knows how to deal with customers and suppliers as well as the historian who can talk properly at a conference or when he’s negotiating entrance to the archives of a hostile government.
Some men of greater wisdom have claimed that true education has little to do with particular stocks of knowledge and is instead a developed capacity for learning. I’ll broaden that claim:
True education is what results in the capacity to respond confidently and appropriately to God’s Creation.
In terms of traditional Christian teachings about virtue, the opposite, the incapacity to respond confidently and appropriately to God’s Creation, is the sin of sloth. In more recent centuries, sloth has been somewhat officially redefined as mere laziness or idleness, mere inactivity. In fact, many human beings who are guilty of the traditionally defined sin of sloth have busy schedules, even if many slots in those schedules involve shopping or submitting passively to being entertained. Sloth is a lack of faith in the goodness of Creation more than a mere laziness.
The opposite of sloth is a disciplined capacity to wonder. The opposite of sloth can involve hours spent staring at the stars in a clear winter sky or hours dreaming of a life lived in Colonial Massachusetts. Somewhere, Jacques Barzun pointed out that the successful creators are those who know how to properly loaf. To loaf in a sense of wonder is to learn how to align your thoughts with those of our Maker. It’s to learn how to enter into His creative acts, His acts-of-being. It’s also to prepare for periods of more active learning and of the production of a book or a drawing for a new type of plumbing system, periods in which a more conventional discipline becomes necessary.
In terms of Christian salvation, I’m advocating education as a path of preparation for participation in the life of God. It’s the capacity to wonder and to respond properly to the object of wonder which might make us creatures capable of enjoying life without end.