The purpose and goal of education
It's not the acquisition of surface-level knowledge. It's catching flame.
This is a homily I preached not too long ago for the Chesterton Academy of St. Louis where I serve as chaplain.
The philosopher Plutarch, in his treatise on education, says, "The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.” I wonder if the typical American conception of education isn’t quite the opposite, that there are a certain number of texts, a canonical syllabus of sorts, that must be read, studied, and commented upon. The speculative content of the texts must be gotten into the minds of - when we’re talking about high-schoolers - somewhat reluctant recipients. We’re in a rush to cram intellectual learning into those wonderful minds of theirs (In the meantime, they’re asking me questions in class along the lines of “If we receive perfected bodies after the final judgment, does that mean we can all be D1 athletes in Heaven?” But I digress).
Plutarch, in any case, is having none of it. Chesterton, I hasten to add, really isn’t either. His explanation of education isn’t the passing on of one or two particular skills or ideas but, rather, it is the gifting of a whole world, a miraculous world of imagination that suggests the first fragmentary hint of a philosophy. For Chesterton, education is, more than anything, the shining of a light. The light illuminates wonder, which pushes us towards true knowledge. Imagination, he says, is the opposite of illusion. We arrive to knowledge by dreaming true, and what is the true dream if not the hope poured into the world by the Logos? What is the truth if not Christ himself?
What if the mind isn’t an empty container for intellectual concepts so much as it is part and parcel of an integrated human person, and an education, while it encompasses speculative knowledge, contains within its gift a far more profound connection with the Truth?
Knowledge sparks and throws off light and heat. It transfigures. This means, by definition, that knowledge manifests in more realms than the intellectual. It is found, to be sure, in the rigors of intellectual formation (students, we do want you to do your homework) but it is also in aesthetics, and virtue, and culture, and the spiritual life.
Plato has a famously controversial statement in which he says, “after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from an other.” I say it’s controversial because it’s often applied to the idea of soul-mates, but I think he’s trying to explain something far more important than the modern dating scene. He’s speaking, as Plutarch did, about knowledge. In this case, the knowledge imparted when you love something or someone very much and love kindles. In other words, Plato is speaking about the contemplative life. This is a knowledge of presence, attention, looking closely and wanting to know more because you are in love with being alive, in love with Christ, and full of delight over the beauty of this world he has made just for us. This is the knowledge that seeks divine light, the very source of Being. Surpassing all words, it draws us into participatory knowledge of who we are and who we are meant to be.
A soul aflame with knowledge is a soul that wonders. It is attentive to the phenomena, the iconographic quality of creation, and then pushes into and through, into the depths, the heart of the matter wherein unfolds the Love that gives existence to all things. This knowledge of love is very much the impulse behind education, which is to know and to know completely, with great depth, aware that knowledge, ultimately, is transfigurative. For instance, in my New Testament class, my hope is that over the course of the school-year, the students gain a basic intellectual understanding of the genre, themes, and motivations of the text, but more importantly that in the course of doing so, they begin to love the Divine Heart beating just below the surface animating the text, that they come to know God not simply as intellectual concept but as the living Logos, the Word, the story of salvation in which we all participate.
I want to point out, here, that these two virtues of love and knowledge are intertwined not only in education in the context of, say, a class at the Chesterton Academy, but also in our personal, spiritual journeys. The knowledge of God that we seek is nothing less than an ennobling knowledge of the Beautiful and Good by which we move into the light. The Holy Spirit is the animator, the breath who sets us to flame.
Chesterton says that, in an age increasingly unwilling to seek philosophical and theological knowledge because the world prefers power at the expense of truth, at some point “Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.” To interpret him rather freely, my commentary it that there will be a fire. Either the fire of destructive unreality caused by the rejection of God, or the flame of purifying truth. We must accept the Truth in all his blinding glorious light, accept the sacrifice required in the turning of a soul to the Real, to God.
Perhaps we can appropriate Plato, here, to suggest a summary definition of education; “to turn the soul from what is less real toward what is more real.” We turn from the less real, which is sin, towards what is real, Almighty God. We contemplate him and so, by degrees, participate in his glory and develop, each of us, our own personality and identity.
Students, parents, we have a chance every day to receive a great gift, which is knowledge of the Truth, and in that gift is a Great Love, a Love surpassing understanding.
The soul is not a vessel that needs filling so much as it is a phoenix made to die and rise with Christ. A pentecostal firebird. You are made to catch flame.