Classical Education as Preparation for a Changing World

It is a given that all students will face an ever-changing world. Their career options will change, technology will change, educational opportunities will change, etc. This seminar makes the case that a classical education is the best possible preparation students can have for thriving in this world of change, disruption, and uncertainty. Many people in the 21st century assume that the value of education is based on the practical preparation it provides.

For millennia, however, the tradition of classical education has understood its purpose as the cultivation of whole human beings, not just their specialized, technical preparation for a particular job or function in society. This cultivation of lifelong learners who are equipped to live wise and virtuous lives is precisely the kind of education that best will enable students to adapt and thrive as they navigate all the changes that they will face. In our current context of disruption and uncertainty, this is a message that parents, students, donors, and some of us need to hear.

David Diener

Dr. David Diener holds a BA in Philosophy and Ancient Languages from Wheaton College as well as an MA in Philosophy, an MS in History and Philosophy of Education, and a dual PhD in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education from Indiana University. In addition to working as a high-end custom trim carpenter for an Amish company and living as a missionary for three years in Bogotá, Colombia, he has taught at The Stony Brook School and Taylor University and has served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, TX, and Head of School at Grace Academy in Georgetown, TX. He currently works at Hillsdale College where he is the Headmaster of Hillsdale Academy and a Lecturing Professor of Education. He also is an Alcuin Fellow, serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Classical Learning and the Board of Academic Advisors for the Classic Learning Test, and offers consulting services through Classical Academic Press. He is the author of Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator and serves as the series editor for Classical Academic Press’ series Giants in the History of Education. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society, and the world.

Education as the Cultivation of Love

What is education? Fundamentally it is not the transference of knowledge, the development of skill sets or preparation for the next stage of schooling. Education is the formation of loves. Its primary task is to cultivate an ordo amoris, an ordering of love, that corresponds to reality and enables students to live lives of virtue. Drawing on thinkers from Plato and Augustine to Josef Pieper and C. S. Lewis, this seminar examines the cultivation of well-ordered loves as the central goal of education and questions how this conception of education should affect what we do in the classroom and how we measure “success.”

David Diener

Dr. David Diener holds a BA in Philosophy and Ancient Languages from Wheaton College as well as an MA in Philosophy, an MS in History and Philosophy of Education, and a dual PhD in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education from Indiana University. In addition to working as a high-end custom trim carpenter for an Amish company and living as a missionary for three years in Bogotá, Colombia, he has taught at The Stony Brook School and Taylor University and has served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, TX, and Head of School at Grace Academy in Georgetown, TX. He currently works at Hillsdale College where he is the Headmaster of Hillsdale Academy and a Lecturing Professor of Education. He also is an Alcuin Fellow, serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Classical Learning and the Board of Academic Advisors for the Classic Learning Test, and offers consulting services through Classical Academic Press. He is the author of Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator and serves as the series editor for Classical Academic Press’ series Giants in the History of Education. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society, and the world.

C. S. Lewis and The Abolition of Man

C. S. Lewis’ 1944 book The Abolition of Man is widely considered to be a classic work in the history and philosophy of education. The National Review, in fact, chose it as number seven on their “100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century.” In this seminar, we will examine the central themes of this important book
and the key arguments Lewis makes throughout it for absolute values and the training of students’ affections, as well as their intellects. We will work sequentially through each of the three chapters of the book, discussing both the progression of Lewis’ thought and the practical educational implications of his treatment of concepts like “men without chests,” “the Tao” and “the abolition of man.”

David Diener

Dr. David Diener began his post-secondary education at Wheaton College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and ancient languages. After putting his philosophical training to work by building custom cabinets and doing high-end finish carpentry for an Amish company, he moved with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, where they served as missionaries for three years at a Christian international school. He then attended Indiana University, where he earned a master’s degree in philosophy, another master’s degree in history and philosophy of education, and a dual doctorate in philosophy and philosophy of education. He has taught at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, Texas, and currently is the Head of School at Grace Academy in Georgetown, Texas. He also teaches philosophy courses at Taylor University, is an Alcuin Fellow and offers consulting services through Classical Academic Press. He is the author of Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator and serves as the series editor for Classical Academic Press’ Giants in the History of Education. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society and the world.

Nature and Vision of Classical Christian Education

What is classical Christian education? How is it different from other approaches to education? How can we clearly and succinctly explain the nature and vision
of classical Christian education despite its long and complicated history? This seminar addresses these questions by examining some of the essential defining characteristics of classical Christian education, such as its foundational assumptions, goals, curriculum and pedagogy. While there is no single reductive formula for classical Christian education, these key characteristics distinguish it from other educational paradigms in important ways and provide a framework for clearly and succinctly explaining what it is all about.

David Diener

Dr. David Diener began his post-secondary education at Wheaton College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and ancient languages. After putting his philosophical training to work by building custom cabinets and doing high-end finish carpentry for an Amish company, he moved with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, where they served as missionaries for three years at a Christian international school. He then attended Indiana University, where he earned a master’s degree in philosophy, another master’s degree in history and philosophy of education, and a dual doctorate in philosophy and philosophy of education. He has taught at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, Texas, and currently is the Head of School at Grace Academy in Georgetown, Texas. He also teaches philosophy courses at Taylor University, is an Alcuin Fellow and offers consulting services through Classical Academic Press. He is the author of Plato: The Great Philosopher-Educator and serves as the series editor for Classical Academic Press’ Giants in the History of Education. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society and the world.

The Formative Power of Educational Metaphors

Metaphors are powerful tools that profoundly affect how we think and live. Throughout history, numerous metaphors have been used to describe the nature of education, and these have had a formative impact on educational theory and practice. In this seminar we
will examine three particularly influential educational metaphors: Plato’s cave, the industrial factory, and a guided journey. We will discuss the significant educational implications of each of these metaphors and consider how they both describe and prescribe our understanding of education. We will conclude by briefly exploring a number of other educational metaphors and considering some of the practical ways in which our own educational practices are guided and limited by them.

David Diener

Dr. David Diener began his formal post-secondary education at Wheaton College, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Ancient Languages. A er pu ing his philosophical training to work by building custom cabinets and doing high-end nish carpentry for an Amish company, he moved with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, where they served as missionaries for three years at a Christian international school. He then a ended graduate school at Indiana University, where he earned an MA in Philosophy, an MS in History and Philosophy of Education, and a dual PhD in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education. He has taught at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, and currently is the Head of School at Grace Academy in Georgetown, TX. He also teaches philosophy courses for Taylor University as an Adjunct Professor. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society, and the world.

Cultivating Spirituality and the Challenge of Digital Screen Technology

Digital screen technologies are playing an ever-increasingly present role in our lives and the lives of our students. While such technologies have many benefits, they also pose a number of significant challenges to the cultivation of spirituality. In this seminar, we will begin by considering some important truths about the nature of any technology. We then will examine three key aspects of cultivating a spiritual life that are uniquely challenged by digital screen technologies: solitude, contemplative silence, and engagement with reality. Finally, we will address a number of practical methods that we can use to help our students and ourselves navigate these challenges.

David Diener

Dr. David Diener began his formal post-secondary education at Wheaton College, where he graduated summa cum laude with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Ancient Languages. A er pu ing his philosophical training to work by building custom cabinets and doing high-end nish carpentry for an Amish company, he moved with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, where they served as missionaries for three years at a Christian international school. He then a ended graduate school at Indiana University, where he earned an MA in Philosophy, an MS in History and Philosophy of Education, and a dual PhD in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education. He has taught at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, TX, and currently is the Head of School at Grace Academy in Georgetown, TX. He also teaches philosophy courses for Taylor University as an Adjunct Professor. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society, and the world.

The Centrality of Virtue in the Ancient Understanding of Education

In the contemporary discourse about education, discussion of virtue as the goal of education is strikingly absent. When “virtue education” is mentioned, it is generally treated as an add-on to the curriculum, not as the overarching goal of everything that is studied. This conception
of education, however, stands in stark contrast to the ancient understanding that the primary purpose of education is is the cultivation of students into virtuous human beings. While this understanding of education can be seen across a wide swath of thinkers throughout history, in this seminar we will examine two key ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle. In focusing on their understanding of the purpose of education, we will explore the central role that virtue plays in their thought and how we can apply their insights today.

David Diener

Dr. David Diener began his formal post-secondary education at Wheaton College where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Ancient Languages. After putting his philosophical training to work by building custom cabinets and doing high-end nish carpentry for an Amish company, he moved with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, where they served as missionaries for three years at a Christian international school. He then a ended graduate school at Indiana University where he earned a M.A. in Philosophy, a M.S. in History and Philosophy of Education, and a dual Ph.D. in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education. A er teaching for one year at The Stony Brook School on Long Island he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School. He now is the new Headmaster at Grace Academy in Georgetown, Texas.

The Formative Power of Educational Metaphors

Metaphors are powerful tools that profoundly affect how we think and live. Throughout history numerous metaphors have been used to describe the nature of education, and these have had a formative impact on educational theory and practice. In this essay I examine three educational metaphors and consider some of the educational implications that follow from them. The three metaphors are Plato’s cave, the industrial factory, and a guided journey. While the brief analysis presented here certainly is not exhaustive, my goal is to facilitate further conversation and thought by offering a compelling case that the explicit and implicit metaphors that guide and limit our understanding of education deserve careful consideration.

I. Plato’s Cave

At the beginning of book VII of the Republic, Plato offers perhaps the most famous educational metaphor in history with his allegory of the cave. Plato asks us to imagine a group of human beings who live in a cave. Since childhood they have been bound fast such that they cannot move or even look in any direction except straight ahead. Behind these prisoners there is a fire that casts light onto the cave wall in front of them, and between them and the fire there is a low wall. As various artifacts are held up behind this wall, all that the prisoners can see is the shadows of these objects cast onto the wall in front of them. What would happen, Plato asks, if one of these unfortunate prisoners were to be freed? At first he would be dazzled by the light and unable to identify the artifacts moving along the wall. Based on a lifetime of experience, the shadows of these objects would seem truer than the objects themselves. If he were then dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, he at first would be unable to see anything because of the sun’s brilliance. After a time of adjustment, however, he would be able to see things as they truly are and not merely as images or shadows. Thinking back to his former bondage in the cave, he would pity his fellow prisoners and would not desire the prizes they give to those who are best able to identify the shadows and predict which will appear next. If, however, he went back down into the cave and immediately had to compete with the prisoners at identifying shadows, his eyes would not be adjusted to the darkness and the others would conclude that his journey up out of the cave was a waste of time. They would prefer to remain in their ignorance, concludes Plato, and would try to kill anyone who attempted to free them and lead them upward.

While the allegory of the cave has many social, political, epistemological, and religious implications, in the Republic Plato treats it primarily as an educational metaphor. He prefaces the allegory, for example, by charging his listeners to “compare the effect of education and of the lack of it on our nature to an experience like this,”1 and after describing the allegory he immediately draws a series of educational conclusions. He contends that the power to learn, like sight, is present in every person. He furthermore argues that, “The instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul.”2 Plato therefore concludes, based on the allegory of the cave, that education is “the craft concerned with doing this very thing, this turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it. It isn’t the craft of putting sight into the soul. Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and tries to redirect it appropriately.”3

According to this first metaphor, then, the role of teachers is not to transfer knowledge to their students or to equip them with the ability to learn. Rather the teacher’s role is to facilitate a sort of conversion experience in which students turn from the shadows of this world to the form of the good. As C. D. C. Reeve explains, the fundamental goal of education according to Plato “is not to put knowledge into people’s souls but to change their desires, thereby turning them around from the pursuit of what they falsely believe to be happiness.”4 It also follows from this metaphor that education is often a necessarily painful process for students as their “eyes” adjust to new perspectives and realities that may completely undermine what they once comfortably believed and held to be valuable. To put it in concrete contemporary terms, the student accustomed to reading celebrity magazines and Twitter feeds may initially find the profound insights of Homer, Augustine, or Shakespeare somewhat difficult to grasp and appreciate.

II. The Industrial Factory

The second educational metaphor to be considered is that of the industrial factory. This metaphor, unlike Plato’s cave, did not originate first from a writer’s pen but rather from the multifaceted Industrial Revolution that took place from the late 18th through the 19th century. Two particularly important aspects of the industrial factory that arose during this period were interchangeable parts and the assembly line.

At the beginning of the 19th century, cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney championed the manufacture of interchangeable parts in the production of muskets at his armory. Whereas before an artisan gunsmith had been responsible for crafting each weapon by hand from start to finish, now identical component pieces were manufactured separately en masse and then assembled together to form a complete musket. This had obvious benefits, for both production and repairs were faster, easier, and cheaper. This new system also meant that the necessary qualifications of workers were quite different. No longer was each weapon produced by a sole craftsman who understood the intimate connections between all the parts. Now separate groups of relatively unskilled workers could produce each part, and it was not necessary for them to understand the assembly and proper function of the musket as a whole. It is quite possible, for example, to manufacture a given number of perfectly acceptable firing pins each day without understanding how the firing pin will function as part of the entire musket or knowing how to connect it to the other parts of the firing mechanism.

In addition to interchangeable parts, a second important aspect of the industrial factory was the assembly line. This idea was used and developed throughout the 19th century and was famously “perfected” by the Ford Motor Company in the early 20th century
for the production of Model T automobiles. The basic concept behind an assembly line is that the product being manufactured is assembled in discrete segments by workers who remain stationary along a production line. Each worker is thus responsible for performing a simple task over and over while other necessary tasks are simultaneously performed by other workers along the line. Like the concept of interchangeable parts, the assembly line has obvious benefits in terms of efficiency: fewer tools are needed, and mastery of a simple repetitive task increases production speed and reduces the occurrence of error. Also like the production of interchangeable parts, an assembly line requires relatively unskilled labor. Workers on a tractor assembly line, for example, can perform their job quite satisfactorily without having any idea how to accomplish the other tasks necessary to assemble the entire tractor or understanding how their specific task contributes meaningfully to the assembly of the entire product.

As interchangeable parts and the assembly line became the accepted norm in factory production, the industrial factory gradually became the dominant metaphor by which to organize the process of education as well. Thus, as historian Page Smith notes, by the final decades of the 19th century education had come to be treated primarily as a “knowledge industry.”5 Consider, for example the daily and annual routines of both teachers and students in a post-Industrial school. The teacher, like the factory worker, became a specialist. Whereas before a school teacher (often in a one-room schoolhouse) was responsible for crafting a small group of local students in various curricular subjects over the course of multiple years, teachers soon became responsible for a specific subject area or grade level. The Algebra teacher might now teach period after period of Algebra each day, repeating the same lesson plan over and over much like a factory worker who repeatedly performs the same task. The third grade teacher similarly is a specialist in teaching third grade and repeatedly performs this task year after year. Like the factory worker, the industrial teacher does not have to understand the end product. The Algebra teacher can teach Algebra perfectly well, it is assumed, without understanding how mathematics works alongside of history, literature, science, foreign languages, and fine arts classes to holistically form the student into a certain kind of person. Likewise, the third grade teacher can teach third grade math, it is assumed, without needing to understand how the mathematical concepts being taught will later be developed and built upon to form students able to reason about higher mathematics or solve complicated calculus equations.

While teachers become akin to factory workers in the industrial factory metaphor, students in many ways parallel the products that roll off an assembly line. Each day students move from class to class, subject to subject, just like partially assembled products rolling down a line. Their discreet educational “stations” are divided into even intervals usually governed by bells, and as students are shuttled down the line they encounter at each station a new worker who specializes in the assigned educational task for that period. On an annual scale student learning is divided into distinct grade levels through which students progress. Like products on an assembly line, students do not move on to the next grade level until the education of their current “station” has been successfully completed. Thus the enterprise of learning, on both a daily and annual basis, is conceived of not as a holistic and continuous process but as one that can be divided into a list of distinct standards or “steps” through which students must sequentially move.

III. A Guided Journey

The third and final educational metaphor to be examined is that of a guided journey. This is a metaphor that in many ways challenges the previous metaphors, especially that of the industrial factory, and that may be particularly helpful for those working within a classical liberal arts paradigm. The metaphor of a guided journey has appeared in multiple ways throughout history, from medieval universities and guilds, to Dante’s use of Virgil in the Divine Comedy, to the Latin roots of the very words we use to talk about education.

Consider, first, the Latin words for “teacher,” “student,” and “educate.” In Latin, a teacher is a magister
– literally a master. A student, on the other hand, is a discipulus – literally a disciple. The process in which the teacher and student engage together, namely education, comes from the Latin verb educere which means “to lead out.” Thus etymologically in Latin the idea of a teacher educating a student literally means that a master is leading out a disciple who follows behind. It is worth noting that in order for this view of the educational process to make sense, the teacher and student must be facing in the same direction and moving toward the same goal. The teacher is a guide who has been down the trail before, so to speak, and uses insights gained by past journeys to lead his followers down the path and demonstrate for them how to navigate the trail.

Another example of this guided journey is the relationship that exists between a master tradesman and an apprentice. A blacksmith, for example, may take a young boy into his shop in order to guide him toward mastery. The master craftsman serves as a guide for the novice by allowing the boy to observe him at work and by giving his apprentice some simple tasks that he too can accomplish despite his limited experience. While on a day-to-day basis the master may be creating a beautiful wrought-iron piece of art as the apprentice is bending horse shoes or stoking the fire, in a fundamental sense they are both about the same business. Like the trail guide and his followers, both are travelling together along the same path. The blacksmith leads his disciple along the journey of becoming a master by guiding him through steps that he has taken many times in the past and by modeling for him how those tasks should be done.

According to this metaphor of a guided journey, then, a teacher is a master who leads students along the path of learning. As John Milton Gregory writes, “It is the teacher’s mission to stand at the impassable gateway of young souls, a wiser and stronger soul than they . . . to guide them to the paths to be trodden.”6 In an important conceptual sense, teachers do not face students in order
to direct the teaching process at them but face the same direction as students, a few paces ahead in their own journey of learning, in order to guide students toward a common goal. As master learners guiding students on
the path of learning, teachers serve as exemplars of what students ought to become. Thus, in a fundamental way
the teacher is the text, and an essential characteristic of teachers is that they themselves model the same approach to learning that they seek to cultivate in their students. As Arthur Holmes writes, “The most important single factor
in the teacher is the attitude toward learning. By virtue of what a teacher is, his students can stand on his shoulders and peer further in their day than he did in his.”7 In other words, according to the metaphor of a guided journey what it means to be a good teacher has more to do with being a certain kind of person and learner than with producing a certain set of measurable results.

Conclusion

Plato’s cave, the industrial factory, and a guided journey are but three in a long list of educational metaphors that deserve similar analysis. Other metaphors with significant educational implications include Socrates’s appropriation of midwifery, Comenius’s garden of delight, Locke’s tabula rasa, Rousseau’s treatment of children as plants, and the digital computer which stores and transfers information as discrete “bits” of inert data. All of these metaphors deserve careful consideration because they all have the power to guide and limit the kinds of educational questions we ask and the answers we give to those questions. For example, many arguments for the necessity of annual standardized testing rest squarely on
an industrial factory conception of education.8 On a model of education that takes the teacher’s goal to be Socratic conversion of the soul or a guided journey of disciples toward mastery, however, such arguments are much less compelling. Other questions that are influenced by the educational metaphors we adopt include what kind of environment we should cultivate within the classroom, how schools and teachers should structure the daily routines of their students, what kind of assessments (if any) teachers should give, how we should define and evaluate successful teaching and learning, what constitutes valuable teacher training, etc. These are all important educational questions, and the formative power that our metaphors have in how we answer them is profound. Analysis of the implications of our educational metaphors is therefore invaluable, and it behooves us to carefully consider the role that metaphors play in both describing and prescribing our educational thought and practice.

Teachers as Intellectuals, Not Technicians

Many 21st century teachers view themselves primarily as technicians: they are professional educators who have been trained with a set of skills that, when correctly employed, will produce the prescribed outcomes. In this seminar, however, I argue that teachers should view themselves primarily as intellectuals, not as technicians. Teachers are master learners whose primary job is to model a life of learning for their students and to lead students on a path of learning that they also are traveling. In addition to examining the conceptural differences between these two paradigms, we also will consider some practical applications of this. We will focus in particular on how teachers conceive their purpose, how they interact with students in and out of the classroom and what teachers and administrators alike understand to be excellent teaching and worthwhile professional development.

David Diener

Dr. David Diener began his formal post-secondary education at Wheaton College where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Ancient Languages. After putting his philosophical training to work by building custom cabinets and doing high-end nish carpentry for an Amish company, he moved with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, where they served as missionaries for three years at a Christian international school. He then a ended graduate school at Indiana University where he earned a M.A. in Philosophy, a M.S. in History and Philosophy of Education, and a dual Ph.D. in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education. A er teaching for one year at The Stony Brook School on Long Island he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he served as Head of Upper Schools at Covenant Classical School. He now is the new Headmaster at Grace Academy in Georgetown, Texas. Dave has also taught philosophy courses for Taylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as an Adjunct Professor. The Dieners have four wonderful children and are passionate about classical Christian education and the impact it can have on the church, our society, and the world.

The Centrality of Virtue in the Ancient understanding of Education

In the contemporary discourse about education, discussion of virtue as the goal of education is strikingly absent. If “virtue education” is mentioned, it is generally treated as an add-on to the curriculum, not as the overarching goal of everything that is studied. This is at least partially due to the fact that in the 21st century most people simply assume that the primary purpose of education, if not its only purpose, is to equip students with the knowledge and technical skills that they will need in order to go out into the world and “be successful.” Typically the definition of “success” people have in mind in this context is to a large degree financial. In other words, the common assumption in contemporary culture is that education is a necessary means to an economic end. Even among educational leaders discussions focus overwhelmingly on the “how” of education, on how educational methods can be tweaked to better serve this economic end, while the consideration of any further “why” of education is almost completely overlooked. Very little is usually said, for example, about the kind of human persons that we should be trying to cultivate through education or about the role that virtue plays in guiding how we go about the process of education. In 1944 Sir Richard Livingstone summed up this illiberal approach to education in a way that trenchantly depicts our current educational milieu quite well:

It is characteristic of to-day that, when we discuss which subjects should be studied, or which languages should be learnt, the first consideration is nearly always utility; we ask what is most useful for the machine, not what is most likely to make a good human being . . . At times, the right motto for our education seems to be Propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas: ‘For the sake of livelihood to lose what makes life worth living.’ The material in life tends to dominate . . . Spiritual and moral life is forgotten: wisdom and even judgment recede into the background.1

In a 1975 essay Wendell Berry similarly writes that, “We think it ordinary to spend twelve or sixteen or twenty years of a person’s life and many thousands of public dollars on ‘education’ – and not a dime or a thought on character.”2

What is remarkable about these descriptions of education is that they stand in stark contrast to the centuries-old tradition which views the formation of virtuous character as the highest and most important goal of education. The vast majority of great educational thinkers throughout history have understood that the primary task of education is to cultivate people’s character, not to equip them for specific occupational tasks or functions within society. The ultimate goal of education, in other words, is to form people of virtue. While this understanding of education can be seen across a wide swath of thinkers throughout history, I am going to examine the centrality of virtue in the ancient understanding of education by focusing on two key ancient thinkers: Plato and Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle were seminal thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition, and their understanding of education has had a profound and pervasive effect on educational theory and practice from the time of the Greeks and Romans onward. While Plato’s and Aristotle’s educational views differ on a number of points, both thinkers accord virtue a central place in their understanding of education. Both agree that the primary purpose of education is not to transfer to students a body of knowledge, or to teach practical technical skills, or to prepare students for a specialized vocation. Rather for both of these thinkers, the primary purpose of education is to cultivate students into virtuous human beings who have a robust and wise disposition toward learning, themselves, and the world around them. To demonstrate that this is so, in the following I offer a brief examination of the central role that virtue plays in each thinker’s understanding of education.3

Plato

Throughout his works Plato is explicit that the purpose of education is to form people who are virtuous. In the Republic, for example, he writes that, “The final outcome of education, I suppose we’d say, is a single newly finished person, who is either good or the opposite.”4 He goes on to argue that, “The form of the good is the most important thing to learn about” and that, “It’s by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial.”5 In the Laws he similarly clarifies that what he means by “education” is not training for a particular trade or business but “education from childhood in virtue.”6 He goes on to explain that this virtue consists in having one’s loves properly aligned such that one adores what is good and abhors what is not: “There is one element you could isolate in any account you give, and this is the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure and pain, which makes us hate what we ought to hate from first to last, and love what we ought to love. Call this ‘education,’ and I, at any rate, think you would be giving it its proper name.”7

This understanding of the goal of education significantly affects how Plato understands the value and purpose of various curricular subjects. In fact, he is explicit that the subjects he thinks should be studied are selected not on the basis of their content per se but rather because of their ability to turn the soul away from darkness and toward goodness and truth.8 He admonishes that, “Each of us must neglect all other subjects and be most concerned to seek out and learn those that will enable him to distinguish the good life from the bad and always to make the best choice possible in every situation.”9 Plato thus recognizes that the curricular subjects are not ends in and of themselves but are educationally valuable only insofar as they promote the formation of virtue. To put it another way, for Plato the principal question that must be asked of any educational proposal is not what practical or economic impact it will have but whether or not it fosters virtue in those toward whom it is directed.

Plato furthermore maintains that knowledge without virtue is worse than useless – it is pernicious. The goal of education is, therefore, not merely to impart knowledge but also to nurture in students the virtue and wisdom necessary for that knowledge to be used for the good. In the Republic, for example, he points out that, “The one who is most able to guard against disease is also most able to produce it unnoticed”10 and that the person who is clever at guarding money “must also be clever at stealing it.”11 Knowledge, in other words, is not an intrinsic good, for without a moral compass to guide its use it can bring about great evil. Thus the most significant educational question according to Plato is not what a person knows but how a person lives. In the Laws he is explicit that the acquisition of supposed goods such as wealth, health, knowledge, etc. must not be taken to be the purpose of education: “A training directed to acquiring money or a robust physique, or even to some intellectual facility not guided by reason and justice, we should want to call coarse and illiberal, and say that it had no claim whatever to be called education.”12 The purpose of education is therefore intrinsically moral in nature, and the ultimate goal is to form students who are equipped with wisdom and an understanding of the good such that they can use whatever knowledge they may possess in ways that are virtuous.

Aristotle

Aristotle’s understanding of the purpose of education is grounded in his understanding of human beings’ purpose. Thus before examining some of his comments on education in the Politics, I am going to begin with a brief overview of his understanding in the Nicomachean Ethics of the telos, or purpose, of human activity.

At the outset of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle writes that every craft, line of inquiry, action, and decision seeks some good and that he wants to examine what the highest good is that all of these ultimately seek. The question, in other words, is what the ultimate goal or
end of human activity is. The answer he gives is that the highest good is eudaimonia, or happiness.13 According to Aristotle happiness is the highest good because all other goods are desirable for its sake and because it is desirable in and of itself, not as the means to some other good. After describing various common views on happiness, Aristotle concludes that, “With those who identify happiness with virtue or some one virtue our account is in harmony; for to virtue belongs activity in accordance with virtue.”14

In Book X Aristotle returns to his analysis of happiness as the chief end of all human activity. He again emphasizes that happiness is an activity that is desirable in and of itself and is not merely a means to some other end. Virtuous actions are of the same nature, he argues, since doing noble and good deeds “is a thing desirable for its own sake.”15 He thus concludes that happiness “does not lie in amusement . . . The happy life is thought to be one of virtue; now a virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.”16 He claims that complete happiness consists in activity in accordance with proper virtue, and he furthermore contends that this activity is the activity of contemplative study since contemplation “alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating.”17 Thus the highest good of mankind consists in a life of virtuous contemplation.

This discussion of humanity’s highest good plays an important role in Aristotle’s understanding of education, for it is through education that people are able to achieve their ultimate purpose of virtuous contemplation. Thus with a brief overview in place of his understanding of the chief end of man, we are now positioned to understand his treatment in the Politics of the goals toward which education should be directed. Regarding the relationship between virtue and education, he writes that, “There are three things which make men good and virtuous; these are nature, habit, reason . . . We have already determined what natures are likely to be most easily molded by the hands of the legislator. All else is the work of education; we learn some things by habit and some by instruction.”18 In other words, according to Aristotle education plays an essential role in the actualization of mankind’s ultimate purpose by directing students toward a life of virtue.

In his discussion of the rationale for teaching subjects such as reading, writing, gymnastic exercises, and music, he reiterates that leisure, which facilitates happiness, is the goal: “It is clear then that there are branches of learning and education which we must study merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed necessary, and exist for the sake of other things.”19 Children should be taught drawing, for example, “not to prevent their making mistakes in their own purchases, or in order that they may not be imposed upon in the buying or selling of articles, but perhaps rather because it makes them judges of the beauty of the human form. To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls.”20

In considering what other subjects should be taught, Aristotle notes that, Occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without making mechanics of them. And any occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of virtue, is mechanical; wherefore we call those arts mechanical which tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind. . . . The object also which a man sets before him makes a great difference; if he does or learns anything for his own sake or for the sake of his friends, or with a view to virtue, the action will not appear illiberal.21

It is important to note that Aristotle does not mean to imply here that learning mechanical arts is necessarily worthless. His point is that the reason for which something is learned is of the utmost importance in determining its value. Learning carpentry, or foreign languages, or economics can be worthwhile, provided that it is learned “with a view to virtue.” He is highly critical, however, of his fellow Greeks who fail to embrace a system of education “with a view to all the virtues, but in a vulgar spirit have fallen back on those which promised to be more useful and profitable.”22 The purpose of education is for Aristotle therefore not primarily utilitarian in nature. Rather education’s highest purpose is the formation of human beings who can fulfill their highest purpose – living a life of virtue.

Both Plato and Aristotle thus take the development of virtue to be a central and necessary component of the well-lived life. They, furthermore, both consider the primary purpose of education to be helping people fulfill their ultimate purpose by fostering in them virtuous thought and action. The development of virtue, in other words, is the sine qua non at the heart of what education is all about.

In closing, I want to emphasize that this centrality of virtue in the understanding of education is not particular to Plato and Aristotle or even to the ancients. Rather it is a commonly accepted understanding of education that endured for centuries and was supplanted only in the second half of the 19th century. Far from being the historical anomaly, this view is thus the dominate conception of education that throughout history has undergirded Western educational thought and practice. In our contemporary society, the prevailing paradigm conceives of education as a completely secular and “value-free” enterprise. In the course of history, however, education has almost never been thought to be a solely secular enterprise but rather one that is intimately connected to the development of morality and virtue in students. The contemporary charade of value- and virtue-free secular education is thus not only a philosophical and practical absurdity but also demonstrates a stubborn refusal to accept the nearly universal recognition of the importance of training in virtue that has existed throughout the history of education.