The social world in which the child now lives is so rich and full that it is not easy to see how much it cost, how much effort and thought lie back of it. [John Dewey, The School and Society, 1899, U of Chicago P, 1932, pp. 156-157, https://archive.org/details/schoolsociety00dewerich]
What every man is born an heir to is an inheritance of human achievements; an inheritance of feelings, emotions, images, visions, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, understandings, intellectual and practical enterprises, languages, relationships, organizations, canons and maxims of conduct, procedures, rituals, skills, works of art, books, musical compositions, tools, artefacts and utensils …
This world can be entered, possessed and enjoyed only in a process of learning … and to initiate his pupils into it is the business of the teacher. [Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, Yale UP, 1989, p. 45]
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. [Albert Einstein, “The World As I See It,” 1931, Ideas and Opinions, Three Rivers, 1982, p. 8]
All the advantages we enjoy in our present culture have been made possible by the efforts of people who have contributed. If individuals have not been cooperative, have not been interested in others, and have made no contribution to the whole, then their lives have been futile; they have disappeared from the face of the earth leaving no trace behind them. Only the work of those people who have contributed survives. Their spirit lives on, and their spirit is eternal. If we make this the basis for teaching our children, they will grow up with a natural liking for cooperative work. When they are confronted with difficulties, they will not weaken; they will be strong enough to face even the most difficult problems and solve them in a way that benefits everyone. [Alfred Adler, What Life Could Mean To You, 1931, Hazelden Foundation, 1998, pp. 191-192]
Unless we are the most ungrateful creatures in the world, we shall regard these noblest of men, the founders of divine schools of thought, as having been born for us, and having prepared life for us. We are led by the labour of others to behold the most beautiful things which have been brought out of darkness into light. We are not shut out from any period, we can make our way into every subject, and, if only we can summon up sufficient strength of mind to overstep the narrow limit of human weakness, we have a vast extent of time wherein to disport ourselves. [Lucius Annaeus Seneca, “On the Shortness of Life,” ~49 AD, translated by Gareth D. Williams, https://archive.org/details/SenecaOnTheShortnessOfLife]
Both my grandparents did what they felt had to be done to survive. They did not expect of life the gift of personal fulfillment. They never had time or the security to think about fundamental changes in the conditions of their lives beyond their struggles to establish unions. They always felt that living with greater ease and developing one’s self were gifts they would provide for their grandchildren through their work and love, and through the opportunities they gave their children. They were aware that it would take two generations of work to produce one generation who would have the time and security to grow without struggling for necessities. That was why grandchildren were so special for them. We were to be the first free children. And they weren’t wrong in the case of my family. The fruit of their and my parents’ labor was the leisure it afforded me to go to college, travel, and choose what to be, both professionally and as a person. When I was younger, I resented their inability to understand me. Now I often feel foolish for not understanding the gift they offered me. Perhaps part of that resentment came from my bewilderment at the freedom I had—the burden of being able to choose where to live, whom to become or to love, what to work at, and choose with no guidelines or tradition since my parents’ and grandparents’ worlds were not the same as mine. [Herbert Kohl, The Herb Kohl Reader: Awakening the Heart of Teaching, New Press, 2009, p. 197]
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. [John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 12 May 1780, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-03-02-0258]
Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present generation, to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven, that I ever took half the pains to preserve it. [John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 26 April 1777, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0169]
The big question is how are we, as educators, going to handle the enormous increase in new life. How do we make available to these new students what we have been able to discover fairly accurately about the universe and the way it is operating? How are we going to be able to get them the true net value won blindly through the long tradition of ignorant dedications and hard-won lessons of all the unknown mothers and all the other invisibly heroic people who have given hopefully to the new life, such as, for instance, the fabulous heritage of men’s stoic capacity to carry on despite immense hardships?
The new life needs to be inspired with the realization that it has all kinds of new advantages that have been gained through great dedications of unknown, unsung, heroes of intellectual exploration and great intuitively faithful integrities of men groping in the dark. Unless the new life is highly appreciative of those who have gone before, it won’t be able to take effective advantage of its heritage. It will not be as regenerated and inspired as it might be if it appreciated the comprehensive love invested in that heritage. [Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation, Southern Illinois UP, 1962, pp. 33-34]
This transaction between the generations will … be inhibited unless there is a contingent belief in the worth of what is to be mediated to the newcomer, and unless this conviction is somehow also transmitted. Everything human exists in terms of the recognition of its desirability, and this civilized inheritance, this world of meanings and understandings, will be transmitted only where it inspires the gratitude, the pride and even the veneration of those who already enjoy it, where it endows them with an identity they esteem, and where it is understood as a repeated summons rather than a possession, an engagement rather than an heirloom. [Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, Yale UP, 1989, pp. 66-67]
[G]ratitude is a window into purpose, because it helps us identify the things that we find particularly significant in our lives. When we express our thanks, we increase our awareness of what is most valuable in life, and we communicate this awareness to others around us. From gratitude springs not only an enhanced appreciation for our own blessings but also a desire to pass such blessings along to others—the heart and soul of purpose. [William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Free Press, 2008, p. 141]
[B]y failing to reconnect their students to the idea that good fortune confers a responsibility to live generously toward the less fortunate, too many colleges are doing too little to help students cope with this siege of uncertainty. One of the insights at the core of the college idea—indeed of the idea of community itself—has always been that to serve others is to serve oneself by providing a sense of purpose, thereby countering the loneliness and aimlessness by which all people, young and old, can be afflicted. [Andrew Delbanco, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, Princeton UP, 2012, p. 148]
Having the talent that enables us to succeed in reaping great market rewards, and living in a society at a time when there’s great demand for the talents we happen to have, neither of those is one’s own doing; both of those are matters of luck. …
[In meritocratic societies] those who wind up on top come to believe that their success is their own doing. But this brings out the dark side of meritocracy, this attitude. It leads to what I call meritocratic hubris: the tendency of the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way, to forget their indebtedness to those who make their achievements possible: parents, teachers, coaches, family, neighborhoods, communities, countries, the times in which we live. [Michael Sandel, “The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?” YouTube, uploaded by Geneva Graduate Institute, 27 Sep. 2022, 31:30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rUeUM2HIQ]
“Ruling classes have always believed in their own right to rule, but it once was understood—at least by anyone who cared to think seriously about the matter—that their place in the social order was arbitrary, an accident of birth and breeding, rather than a matter of cosmic justice. Ideals of noblesse oblige grew from just this sense: the knowledge that God (or blind chance) had given the elite much that was not necessarily deserved.”
Today, however, “that knowledge has been wiped away. The modern elite’s rule is regarded not as arbitrary but as just and right and true, at least if one follows the logic of meritocracy to its unspoken conclusion … [today’s elite] belong exactly where they are—the standardized tests and the college admissions officers have spoken, and their word is final.” [Ross Douthat, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class, Hyperion, 2005, pp. 12-13] …
[F]ew people would deny that “the quasi-meritocratic admissions system of today is a major improvement over the more overtly discriminatory and hereditary system of the past.” And yet [Jerome Karabel] concludes … that “we neglect the dark side of our meritocracy at our collective peril.” [The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, Houghton Mifflin, 2005, p. 557] [Andrew Delbanco, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, Princeton UP, 2012, pp. 138-139]
A core element in a positive orientation is gratitude. … This sense of gratitude for being able to partake in what the world has to offer, and to have a chance to make one’s own contribution, was common among all in our highly purposeful group. …
[T]his is the way that all young people should feel about life when they are starting out. Idealism, high hopes, enthusiasm, and a sense of awe and wonder in exploring the world around them are central to the traditional orientation of youth … This is an attitudinal orientation that all young people deserve to have as their beginning stake in life. [William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Free Press, 2008, pp. 89-90]
One of the things that I find profoundly disquieting about the modern radical ideology that is so unfortunately dominant on campuses among young people is that it’s unbelievably ungrateful. When I walk outside and there’s not a riot and death in the streets, I’m having a good day. That’s my sense of history. I’m constantly staggered by the fact that so much works all the time. …
[F]or me, it’s like Hobbes said: nasty, brutish, and short. The simplest and most likely social circumstance is catastrophe punctuated by hell, and to see that not happening in a sustained manner, constantly, and to see things improving around us, and to be reliable in that manner—and then not to be grateful for that, it’s like, an unbelievable combination of ignorance and willful blindness. And it does no one’s soul any good. It’s so good to walk down the streets of a beautiful town like this and to be open-mouthed in non-ironic amazement at what’s here. And to not instill that sense in young people—for them to understand that they are standing on the bones of generations of people who suffered to make this possible, despite all their errors, and brought this forward … [Jordan B. Peterson, “Apprehending the Transcendent,” YouTube, uploaded by Jordan B. Peterson, 14 Dec. 2018, 1:20:40, https://youtu.be/XvbtKAYdcZY?si=31P-pgB5F5p63aPX]
Of course, culture is an oppressive structure. It’s always been that way. … What we inherit from the past is willfully blind, and out of date. It’s a ghost, a machine, and a monster. It must be rescued, repaired and kept at bay by the attention and effort of the living. It crushes, as it hammers us into socially acceptable shape, and it wastes great potential. But it offers great gain, too. Every word we speak is a gift from our ancestors. Every thought we think was thought previously by someone smarter. The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity. Culture takes with one hand, but in some fortunate places it gives more with the other. To think about culture only as oppressive is ignorant and ungrateful, as well as dangerous. [Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Random House Canada, 2018, pp. 302-303]
Related:
– How or why should we incorporate the spiritual, sacred, or transcendent in education?
– What is the proper function of the university?