Education and Eternal Truth

Noah Webster asserts, with regard to education within a republic, that, “the virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities.” By its very nature as a government of the people, in which men choose their peers to represent them and lead them, a republic requires the education and formation of its citizens to prepare them to make wise decisions. This capacity to make well informed decisions stems partly from the simplest form of “education”—accumulation of facts in the memory. But the formation of the virtuous citizen, prepared to wisely choose his peers for office or even to take office himself, requires an education in those things which can’t be simply calculated or memorized: the ability to extrapolate from calculated or memorized facts to wise decisions. This is the virtue of prudence. “For this reason,” Webster continues, “the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.” He gets to the core of an issue with huge relevance today: more and more this essence of education is lost in the pursuit of factual knowledge.

I certainly share Webster’s ideal for education: the goal of my learning and formation, taken holistically (that is, through sports, leadership, scholarly endeavors, reading, and emulation of the best people around me) is that I become a better man. Obviously this is an ideal; not always the reality. But when I have the opportunity to compare my educational experience with the alternatives, I am surprised by what is omitted in some narrower schemes of education.

For many years I have had the opportunity to compare my experience with that of a friend of mine. After middle school, he attended a prestigious STEM magnet school, which he absolutely loved and praised to the skies. However, in hearing about his work there, I was left feeling that he had gaping holes in his formation. As accelerated STEM students, he and his classmates moved to advanced levels of math and spent countless hours on the robotics club. To accommodate this, other courses which I would consider essential were waived: he never had to read a work of literature or discuss the actions of men in the past. This was a gaping hole in his merely factual knowledge, but especially a hole in the formation that Webster speaks of; the prudence that makes a good citizen and the experience that allows man to understand his neighbor. At the most basic level, he became harder and harder to interact with. His interests were extremely limited: robotics as labor and videogames as recreation. He seemed to lose sight of any larger context for his existence. Because in my education I have become specifically aware of the various facets of a well-rounded student and a well-rounded formation, I could see some of the essential knowledge that he was lacking. He is not someone I would choose to participate in the leadership of society or in the formation and education of the next generation. Too easily, an institution can teach a plethora of true things while completely neglecting to pass on any truth.

In considering the colleges I would like to attend, I am surprised by the sharp divide between those that tout the best research facilities, the best salaries upon graduation, or the most concentrated math and science studies, and those that claim to form and educate the individual. This summer, I was deeply affected by the words of a certain Dr. Sweet as he taught a University of Dallas program. A professor of classics, he asserted that the reason that every person should read the great books—if possible in the original languages—is that these works have been handed down by the western tradition as teaching eternal and irreplaceable truth about the human condition. If you come to UD, he said, you will not only be taught Homer’s Odyssey, or the French language, or medieval history, or physics: you will be taught “how to be a good person; how to make good decisions outside your area of study.” For me this is a clarion call to action for educators and citizens today. What is the purpose of an education if it doesn’t make you a more valuable asset to society or a more virtuous person?