True Education

Are there certain things that have value apart from any and all material considerations—that is, are there things that have value in and of themselves?  

I think we would all agree that there.  Virtue, truth, friendship, love—all of these things have inherent they are valuable even if they have no financial value.  In fact, not only do they often fail to financially benefit us, they often cost us—we value these things so much we will sacrifice our financial good for them.

If these things have independent value, what happens when we add financial considerations to them?  Is not friendship or virtue cheapened, degraded, and possibly even destroyed when a price is set on it and its value is made contingent on its financial value?  For example, how much would you value a friendship if you knew one of your parents was paying your ‘friend’ to hang out with you?  How much would you trust someone if you found out they had to be bribed to tell the truth?  

If something has inherent value, it is debased and often destroyed when its value is made contingent upon another thing.

That brings us to education.  Why do we as a society tell our young they need to be educated?  So they can be successful.  And by success we mean financially successful.  But is not education something that is valuable in and of itself?  Even if you were stranded on a dessert island, wouldn’t reading Homer still be a valuable use of your time?  Are not the dialogues of Plato inherently valuable?  Knowing about the life of Julius Caesar or understanding the ethics of Kant will probably never help you get a job, but does that mean that this knowledge is totally devoid of worth?  

True education is inherently valuable for we need it to reach our full potential as human beings.  There are certain questions that every human asks and must answer if they are to reach full maturation—questions like: Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is the purpose of life?  Am I immortal?  Is there a God?  If there is, how do I know God?  What is truth?  True education gives us the tools to think through and find answers to these great questions.  In so doing true education transforms us and helps us to reach our fullest potential as human beings.  Being human means asking these questions and in some real sense you are not a full, mature human being if you avoid these questions and make no effort to discover their answers.  

Until the early 20^th century nearly every society viewed education primarily in terms of character formation.  The good teacher exposed his or her students to the great questions and helped them to think through these questions, showing them how false answers fell apart, inculcating the importance of seeking truth at all costs, all the while shaping the minds and wills of their students in the process.

But a love of truth will not help you get promoted.  A moral character is not valued in our economy and will not help you to get a job.  So we’ve moved education from the moral realm to the pragmatic.  We see value only in terms of money and we have reformed our education system to teach ‘practical’ skills—skills that help one get ahead.  In our society a non-financial value is often an oxymoron.  If something is does not lead to increased economic wealth or productivity, it is not valued and therefore not taught.  

But in reducing education solely to the promotion and passing on of things of economic worth we have taken something with inherent value and treated it as if it only has contingent value—we have valued education only so far as it promotes our perceived economic well-being.  Has this not degraded education and does not this degradation explain the sorry state of education in our country today?