What is the role of a formal education? Is it ultimately just a matter of conducting oneself in a manner both understandable and acceptable to contemporaries? Is it a matter of freeing individuals to be individual? Does a formal education governed by state or local authority both foster and endanger individuality? More importantly for you: How much of your life and thinking has been molded by your teachers?
Ours isn’t the first age to think about education. Ancient civilizations had various types of schools and teaching methods. Because the foci of education shift with the times, however, what worked for Sparta will not necessarily work for kids in the Hamptons—although, one wonders, wouldn’t some Spartan discipline work for just about anyone? Anyway, education was on the mind of Charlemagne before he became Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Having become a king, he had subjects, and he desired to have educated ones, so he wrote to Abbot Baugulf to address an issue of importance. Apparently, as one can see from the following quotation, Charlemagne seemed to take both his religion and his kingship seriously.
“Be it known, therefore, to you, devoted and acceptable to God, that we, together with our faithful, have deemed it expedient that the bishoprics and monasteries intrusted [sic.] by the favor of Christ to our control, in addition to the order of monastic life and the relationships of holy religions, should be zealous also in the cherishing of letters, and in teaching those who by the gift of God are able to learn, according as each has capacity. So that, just as the observance of the rule adds order and grace to the integrity of morals, so also zeal in teaching and learning may do the same for sentences, and to the end that those who wish to please God by living rightly should not fail to please Him also by speaking correctly. For it is written, ‘Either from thy words thou shall be justified or from thy words thou shalt be condemned’ [Matt., xii. 37]. Although right conduct may be better than knowledge, nevertheless knowledge goes before conduct.”*
Speaking correctly probably does not mean speaking with political correctness though one might guess that Charlemagne, with all the power at his fingertips, probably had little tolerance for those who wavered from the “norms” of his own eighth- and ninth-century times. But like anyone at the top of an organization, he probably also had little tolerance for gibberish; thus, his emphasis on the teaching of “letters.”
Centuries after Charlemagne wrote to the abbot we still face similar questions about the nature and purpose of education. Is it related to conduct? Should it be related to conduct? Does it affect conduct?
Have any questions about that last sentence of the letter? (“Although right conduct may be better than knowledge, nevertheless knowledge goes before conduct”) Your first question: “Who’s to judge what ‘right conduct’ means?” Your second question: “What is the relationship between knowledge and conduct?” That leads to your third question: “What is the purpose of education?”
Are you a Floydian (Pink Floyd), believing, as the lyrics of “Another Brick in the Wall” suggest, that “We don’t need no education”? Do you think education is simply a matter of inducing conformity (“another brick in the wall”) to the observance of rules that “adds order and grace to the integrity of morals?” In a secular society, many might believe that education should have nothing to do with adding order and grace to the integrity of morals; many, in fact, might think there is no moral system that applies to the public in general. In a time of situation ethics, few would be willing to accept the overriding rules of any emperor or group of education oligarchs. Nevertheless, almost everyone has probably experienced some pressure to conform and almost everyone recognizes behavior and thinking that seems not to fit an “acceptable pattern.”
From the perspective of the Pink Floyd song, education can be a stifling infusion of conformity in thought and word. Cemented like arranged bricks, some will always fit into an acceptable social pattern and conform to a rather rigid “morality” or code of conduct. Some will also communicate in “acceptable ways.” But even the most timid of us sometimes have the temerity to think on our own and break the wall of conformity. Add to our personal dilemma between conforming or not conforming the role that learning “letters” might play in either restricting or freeing our personal expressions. We live in an age when any statement of ours can be used either for or against us.
A millennium and a century after Charlemagne wrote to the abbot, Harvey Rice published Nature and Culture.** Harvey advocated for state and local departments that would oversee education:
“In order to secure…the elevation and social equality [of students], every State in the Union should be required to maintain an efficient system of common schools, in which all instruction should be given in the English language, and the schools made accessible to all classes of youth, and be "good enough for the richest, and cheap enough for the poorest. In order to effect this, the system should recognize the theory as an equitable principle, that the property of the State is bound to educate the youth of the State” (p. 72).
Harvey wrote this at the end of the nineteenth century, a time before the state and federal governments formalized agencies of education and at a time before the country moved from a mostly agrarian society to an urban one. He also advocated for “practical,” and not “fanciful,” knowledge. As we struggle today to balance individuality with conformity, so Harvey struggled. He wanted not only to encourage students in their talents, but also to consider them “children of the state.” Sounds a bit like education in the now defunct Soviet Union, doesn’t it? Confused? So was Harvey, and so are many who think about education.
Harvey would probably not consider Pink Floyd the Prophet of Education, but Harvey gave, in the context of his proposal for state education departments and long before “Another Brick in the Wall,” his own Floydian warning:
“It is doubtless true that educators have already become a power in the land. Of this fact they seem to be aware, and the danger is that their influence may be subordinated to the uses of political aspirants. Every educator has a right, of course, to express his own individual opinions; but he certainly has not the right to employ educational instrumentalities to promote the interests of a selfish partisanship, either in State or Church. Whenever it is attempted to sow "tares" of this kind among the wheat, it is to be hoped that an indignant public sentiment will eradicate them with an unsparing hand” (p. 69).
Knowledge and conduct in the context of a formal education for the “masses” is as yet an unresolved problem. Should we teach in a manner that shapes thinking and behavior? How does that differ from propaganda? Are there kinds of knowledge that everyone in a particular society should know? Given your own background, you probably have an opinion derived from the dilemma between choosing individuality and conformity.
Pink Floyd OR Charlemagne? Pink Floyd OR Harvey Rice? Pink Floyd AND Harvey Rice?
*Letter from Charles (Charlemagne), King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans to Abbot Baugulf sent sometime between 780 and 800. Text in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Leges (Boretius ed.), Vol. I., No. 29, pp. 78-79. Adapted from translation by Dana C. Munro in Univ. of Pa. Translations and Reprints, Vol. VI., No. 5, pp. 12-14. Available online at Gutenberg.org.
** Rice, Harvey, Nature and Culture, Second Ed., Lee and Shepard Publishers, Boston, 1890. Available online at Gutenberg.org.
Ours isn’t the first age to think about education. Ancient civilizations had various types of schools and teaching methods. Because the foci of education shift with the times, however, what worked for Sparta will not necessarily work for kids in the Hamptons—although, one wonders, wouldn’t some Spartan discipline work for just about anyone? Anyway, education was on the mind of Charlemagne before he became Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Having become a king, he had subjects, and he desired to have educated ones, so he wrote to Abbot Baugulf to address an issue of importance. Apparently, as one can see from the following quotation, Charlemagne seemed to take both his religion and his kingship seriously.
“Be it known, therefore, to you, devoted and acceptable to God, that we, together with our faithful, have deemed it expedient that the bishoprics and monasteries intrusted [sic.] by the favor of Christ to our control, in addition to the order of monastic life and the relationships of holy religions, should be zealous also in the cherishing of letters, and in teaching those who by the gift of God are able to learn, according as each has capacity. So that, just as the observance of the rule adds order and grace to the integrity of morals, so also zeal in teaching and learning may do the same for sentences, and to the end that those who wish to please God by living rightly should not fail to please Him also by speaking correctly. For it is written, ‘Either from thy words thou shall be justified or from thy words thou shalt be condemned’ [Matt., xii. 37]. Although right conduct may be better than knowledge, nevertheless knowledge goes before conduct.”*
Speaking correctly probably does not mean speaking with political correctness though one might guess that Charlemagne, with all the power at his fingertips, probably had little tolerance for those who wavered from the “norms” of his own eighth- and ninth-century times. But like anyone at the top of an organization, he probably also had little tolerance for gibberish; thus, his emphasis on the teaching of “letters.”
Centuries after Charlemagne wrote to the abbot we still face similar questions about the nature and purpose of education. Is it related to conduct? Should it be related to conduct? Does it affect conduct?
Have any questions about that last sentence of the letter? (“Although right conduct may be better than knowledge, nevertheless knowledge goes before conduct”) Your first question: “Who’s to judge what ‘right conduct’ means?” Your second question: “What is the relationship between knowledge and conduct?” That leads to your third question: “What is the purpose of education?”
Are you a Floydian (Pink Floyd), believing, as the lyrics of “Another Brick in the Wall” suggest, that “We don’t need no education”? Do you think education is simply a matter of inducing conformity (“another brick in the wall”) to the observance of rules that “adds order and grace to the integrity of morals?” In a secular society, many might believe that education should have nothing to do with adding order and grace to the integrity of morals; many, in fact, might think there is no moral system that applies to the public in general. In a time of situation ethics, few would be willing to accept the overriding rules of any emperor or group of education oligarchs. Nevertheless, almost everyone has probably experienced some pressure to conform and almost everyone recognizes behavior and thinking that seems not to fit an “acceptable pattern.”
From the perspective of the Pink Floyd song, education can be a stifling infusion of conformity in thought and word. Cemented like arranged bricks, some will always fit into an acceptable social pattern and conform to a rather rigid “morality” or code of conduct. Some will also communicate in “acceptable ways.” But even the most timid of us sometimes have the temerity to think on our own and break the wall of conformity. Add to our personal dilemma between conforming or not conforming the role that learning “letters” might play in either restricting or freeing our personal expressions. We live in an age when any statement of ours can be used either for or against us.
A millennium and a century after Charlemagne wrote to the abbot, Harvey Rice published Nature and Culture.** Harvey advocated for state and local departments that would oversee education:
“In order to secure…the elevation and social equality [of students], every State in the Union should be required to maintain an efficient system of common schools, in which all instruction should be given in the English language, and the schools made accessible to all classes of youth, and be "good enough for the richest, and cheap enough for the poorest. In order to effect this, the system should recognize the theory as an equitable principle, that the property of the State is bound to educate the youth of the State” (p. 72).
Harvey wrote this at the end of the nineteenth century, a time before the state and federal governments formalized agencies of education and at a time before the country moved from a mostly agrarian society to an urban one. He also advocated for “practical,” and not “fanciful,” knowledge. As we struggle today to balance individuality with conformity, so Harvey struggled. He wanted not only to encourage students in their talents, but also to consider them “children of the state.” Sounds a bit like education in the now defunct Soviet Union, doesn’t it? Confused? So was Harvey, and so are many who think about education.
Harvey would probably not consider Pink Floyd the Prophet of Education, but Harvey gave, in the context of his proposal for state education departments and long before “Another Brick in the Wall,” his own Floydian warning:
“It is doubtless true that educators have already become a power in the land. Of this fact they seem to be aware, and the danger is that their influence may be subordinated to the uses of political aspirants. Every educator has a right, of course, to express his own individual opinions; but he certainly has not the right to employ educational instrumentalities to promote the interests of a selfish partisanship, either in State or Church. Whenever it is attempted to sow "tares" of this kind among the wheat, it is to be hoped that an indignant public sentiment will eradicate them with an unsparing hand” (p. 69).
Knowledge and conduct in the context of a formal education for the “masses” is as yet an unresolved problem. Should we teach in a manner that shapes thinking and behavior? How does that differ from propaganda? Are there kinds of knowledge that everyone in a particular society should know? Given your own background, you probably have an opinion derived from the dilemma between choosing individuality and conformity.
Pink Floyd OR Charlemagne? Pink Floyd OR Harvey Rice? Pink Floyd AND Harvey Rice?
*Letter from Charles (Charlemagne), King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans to Abbot Baugulf sent sometime between 780 and 800. Text in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Leges (Boretius ed.), Vol. I., No. 29, pp. 78-79. Adapted from translation by Dana C. Munro in Univ. of Pa. Translations and Reprints, Vol. VI., No. 5, pp. 12-14. Available online at Gutenberg.org.
** Rice, Harvey, Nature and Culture, Second Ed., Lee and Shepard Publishers, Boston, 1890. Available online at Gutenberg.org.
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