What is the responsibility of education?

What does it entail?

In what ways are you liable to be called to account for your learning and teaching? What kind of obligation do you have to bring about your own growth and that of those you influence? How can you help yourself and others honor this responsibility?

The entirety of this course has been my attempt to answer these questions, but here’s an outline of some of its key points.

To properly assume the responsibility of education, you

should:

1. … be an active, autonomous student—not merely receiving knowledge, but seeking it: searching for what excites you, what gives you a sense of purpose, what will ultimately make you an exemplary human being. As such a student, you must make the deliberate choice to learn and grow—to be responsible for your growth—not to consider it someone else’s job to educate you. Knowledge that is freely and actively chosen is most likely to have a lasting and meaningful place in your mind. Autonomous exploration is most likely to reveal the educational path that is uniquely suited to fulfill your potential.

2. … have personal standards of the kind of education that you want—that you think you ought to have—that you think others deserve from you. This definition of education will give you an individual sense of your obligation to learn and teach to the best of your ability. To get by on the standards of others (or no standards at all) is to risk being satisfied with a quality of learning and teaching that doesn’t meet your needs and the needs of your world—that leaves you deficient in authentic work, virtuous character, or vital competencies.

3. … appreciate that you are always learning, and you are always teaching. Every interaction: social, cultural, economic, political, environmental, leaves its mark in ways sometimes small, sometimes large, but always significant. Many of the most influential lessons taught in of our homes, schools, work places, and society at large are conveyed through these implicit educational exchanges, which we often disregard. You should appreciate the educational effects of your actions in all spheres of life, and care greatly about what you take in and what others take in from you.

4. … take responsibility for the world and the educational role you play in it. On “Spaceship Earth” no one is a mere passenger, everyone is part of the crew. Everyone has a role to play in the mission of human flourishing. The educational function—the job to provide others (especially young people) with the expectations and support needed for their optimal growth—is not, and never has been, the sole responsibility of certified teachers and schools. It is, and has always been, the unavoidable reality of every individual; we either acknowledge and do right by this responsibility, or we renounce the necessary authority and execute it poorly.

5. … use your free time wisely. When your needs for work and recreation are met,

you should dedicate yourself to what makes life meaningful—what feeds your soul and enables you to evolve morally, intellectually, and spiritually. This is the role leisure (in the forgotten sense of the word) ought to play in our lives. Free time is a precious gift that many people don’t have. This should inspire a gratitude—and a temperance—that urges you to use your freedom to make yourself and the world better: to (among other legitimate leisure pursuits) learn from your vast inheritance of knowledge, and make your own contribution to this legacy so that everyone can live more freely.

6. … appreciate and harness the power of words. Whether you’re a poet or a welder, your internal and external worlds are shaped by language. Your ability to think critically, to be a positive influence on others, often depends on the words you have at your disposal. To this end, there’s nothing better than reading and writing diligently. You should give your thoughts the attention they deserve, by writing them down and refining them. This will develop your powers of expression, help you discover what you truly think, and generate ideas you never would have had otherwise. You should read widely and deeply. The benefits of reading: the insight, the inspiration, the vision of human potential—of your potential—that can be gained from the great minds of the past and present, cannot be overstated.

7. … personally address the questions that underlie all education. These questions are so fundamental to your way of life that to leave them to others, or to fail to make your answers explicit, is to risk pursuing (and teaching others to pursue) values and goals that undermine authenticity, engender vice, or impoverish the spirit. Many of these questions are proposed in this course, but here are a few important ones: What should a good education enable you to do, what kind of life should it prepare you for? What standards of success, health, and happiness should you uphold? What kind of environment is most conducive to healthy human growth? You should consider not only the content of a good education, but its mediums, its motivations, and the long-term effects of such on everyone involved. These topics ought to be the heart of a Great Conversation that reinforces the essential place of learning and teaching in our lives.

I’ve used the word potential several times here, and I’m reluctant to do so without elaborating and offering some examples.

Like many educational incentives, the idea of potential is often invoked in a negative sense: if you fail to fulfill it you should feel guilty, your future will lack opportunity or dignity. What remains unrepresented is a positive concept of potential, and the great benefits of realizing it.

Needless to say, one of the essential jobs of a teacher is to offer students an attractive vision of what is possible for them, things they can and ought to aspire to that will stimulate their abilities and virtues.

The aspects of the responsibility of education listed above are some of the worthy aims that are possible for all of us. Below are a few more (among the many) noble aims that are possible through learning and teaching.

You have the potential to:

A. … know yourself deeply. Your inner world is an immense frontier, waiting to be explored. The more of this land you survey, the more of its language you can interpret, the more of its uncivilized regions you tame—the more rich your life will be. You have the potential to develop essential habits of self-reflection and self-expression (through various mediums or art-forms). You can discover formative values and personal affinities as you study the works of others.

Through such pursuits you can earn the self-knowledge and self-esteem that support a vital integrity—a defense against incursions of various kinds: diversions that would alienate you from yourself,

degrading treatment that would reduce you to mere appearances,

or demagogues who would exploit your unexamined insecurities.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work. It means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.” [Adrienne Rich, Claiming an Education, speech delivered at the convocation of Douglass College, 1977]

Why do we not have leadership that says to us, respectfully and candidly, that the problems we face, at home and abroad, are complex, that no choice is without its costs, and that patience, humility, dialogue, and a larger grasp of complexity will be required of all of us? Are we so immature that we need someone to protect us from ourselves, to lie to us, to collude with our lack of intellectual discipline, our difficulty in handling complexity, our immaturity? Why do we not have more theologians, or preachers, who confirm that life involves suffering, and that our deepest questions will never be answered? Why do we have psychologists in the media who conveniently fail to verify the contradictions with which we all daily live, the necessary suffering that is a by-product of real life, rather than suggest that three easy steps will bring us happiness and material affluence? Until we grow up and step into the large challenge of living our journey as individuals and as a society, we will get the demagogic leaders and the infantilizing culture we deserve. These external artifacts reflect what we have not addressed within. [James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life, Gotham Books / Penguin Group, 2009, pp. 70-1]

B. … develop mastery. Few things are as rewarding as immersion in a challenging task that uses knowledge you’ve cultivated through sustained effort. The pursuit of mastery grants access to even deeper interests, insights, and an invaluable sense of pride and identity (to say nothing of the economic opportunity afforded by the skills you develop). Mastery facilitates deep knowledge, but it also broadens interests as it dissolves the illusion of the separation of subjects. Becoming good at something you care about expands your ability to care about, and become good at, adjacent (or even not-so-adjacent) things. It yields a genuine authority that supersedes more contrived, coercive means of motivation. It grants entrance into a community of like minds (both living and dead) who share your values and can support your further growth.

C. … be a beneficial presence in the lives of others. You can do an immense amount of good by cultivating virtue and demonstrating it to those around you (i.e. honesty, intelligence, self-control, etc.) You can help others by making the human condition, and the requirements for its flourishing, central to your ongoing learning. You can learn to listen to, understand, and address the needs of yourself and others. You can develop the communication skills and psychological awareness that facilitate healthy, loving relationships. You can cultivate the compassion and solidarity that allow you to treat people as parts of the human family to which we all belong.

D. … be a mentor. Regardless of your age, there are always people less experienced than you who could benefit from your guidance. Some of the most life-changing relationships are those in which someone older takes a chance on someone younger, cares for them, has faith in their potential, and gives them opportunities to grow. Taking such a personal interest in someone demonstrates a respect and a trust that helps that person respect and trust themselves. Mentors have empathy for those who are less experienced, they remember themselves at that stage and ask what kind of guidance they wish they had. The more of us who embrace the potential for mentorship—who seek to elevate those below us—the more humane our cultures will be, and the more healthy the relationship between the old and the young. The more experience, virtue, and authority you cultivate, the better able you will be to fulfill this transformative potential.

One of the greatest benefits of responsible learning and teaching is the effect is has on the potential of others. The more of your own potential you realize, the more you sanction those around you to do the same. The person you become, and the environments you shape, can make possible a deeper, fuller human experience for others, that may not have been possible for them. The responsibility of education entails this dual obligation: to enlarge and realize your own potential, insofar as you are able, and to empower those whose potential you help shape.

To a certain degree, you are responsible for your education—for your choice to learn and grow. At the same time, part of your educational potential is determined by the growth (or lack thereof) of the people around and before you.

Insofar as your fate has been predetermined, you should appreciate that, in a similar way, your educational attainments can (and sometimes must) play a part in determining the fate of others. Through your own education you can increase the degree to which others are predisposed to claim responsibility for their own.

Being the product of conditioning and being free to change do not war with each other. Both are true. They coexist, grow together in an upward spiral, and the growth of one furthers the growth of the other. The more cogently we prove ourselves to have been shaped by causes, the more opportunities we create for changing. The more we change, the more possible it becomes to see how determined we were in that which we have just ceased to be. …

We must affirm freedom and responsibility without denying that we are the product of circumstance, and must affirm that we are the product of circumstance without denying that we have the freedom to transcend that causality to become something which could not even have been previsioned from the circumstances which shaped us.” [Allen Wheelis, How People Change, Harper & Row, 1973, pp. 86-8]

This is a monumental potential, the seriousness of which was articulated by Alfred North Whitehead:

When one considers in its length and in its breadth the importance of this question of the education of a nation’s young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous inertia with which it is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage. …

We can be content with no less than the old summary of educational ideal which has been current at any time from the dawn of our civilization. The essence of education is that it be religious.

Pray, what is religious education?

A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity. [The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Williams and Norgate Limited, 1955, pp. 22-3]

Your potential control over the course of events is unavoidable; thus you are endowed with a certain duty: to learn and teach the knowledge that can “change the issue” of your life and the lives of those you affect. The enduring consequences of your actions make it essential that you uphold, and inspire others to uphold, a faithful devotion to this duty.

If you are to know what this decisive knowledge is, if you are to have the motivation to seek it, then you must be grounded in the present. Not a blinkered, superficial present, but one that you appreciate wholly, as the cumulative sum of the past, the foundation of the future, and the only time you will ever have. Your education should integrate a profound respect for all three. It should help you explore as fully as possible this all-encompassing time that you have to live. And it should initiate you into an adventure that neither defers, nor curtails, a life of purpose and meaning, for yourself and those to come.