The REAL MEANING of Education

Introduction. What is the purpose of education? Is it merely to pass on technical skills? G.K. Chesterton argues that it's impossible to separate education from values. Education can't be neutral - the very purpose of education is to help kids tell good from bad. Let's dig in 👇

The truth about education: "Education is a word like transmission or inheritance; it is not an object, but a method." Education in and itself is neither beneficial nor harmful. To educate is to pass on knowledge and lessons to kids - it's the content of the lessons that's key.

Education v/s Dogma: “ It is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from education. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.”

In the classroom, certain things must be shown to be more important than others. Chesterton: “Mr. Bernard Shaw once said that he hated the idea of forming a child's mind. In that case Mr. Bernard Shaw had better hang himself; for he hates something inseparable from human life."

There’s no meaningful difference between an educator and an instructor: “The educator drawing out is just as arbitrary and coercive as the instructor pouring in; for he draws out what he chooses. He decides what in the child shall be developed and what shall not be developed."

Education is never without “intellectual violence.” It involves encouraging certain faculties while repressing certain tendencies. Education must shape a human being like a sculptor shapes his stones into breathtaking artwork - but that involves chopping, chipping, cutting.

Chesterton: “Education is violent; because it is creative. It is creative because it is human. It's as reckless as playing on the fiddle; as dogmatic as drawing a picture; as brutal as building a house In short, it is what all human action is: an interference with life & growth."

We have a “high audacious duty” to share truths with the next generation with an “unshaken voice.” Modern moral relativism takes flight from this responsibility. We must find absolute truths - if we don’t, we are shrinking from an "awful and and ancestral responsibility."

Instead of eternal truths, kids are taught fads: "It ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby. But in a school to-day the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself."

Bottom line. Education is theological because it's impossible to teach good without first deciding what is good, impossible to warn against the bad without determining what it is. Our heavy burden is to put morality on firm ground lest we leave a moral quicksand for posterity.