The Search of a True Education

Education is not vocational training.

I don’t know about you but there is something about the cold and dark of winter that make me contemplative. It could be that with the lack of light outside; I’m forced to look at the inward working of my mind. There is little better in winter than a hot cup of coffee, a good book, and a notebook with a fountain pen. From there, I let the pen go. I like to consider what I do, and how I am doing it.

On this break, my contemplations have taken me down the path of education. I actually work for two different educational institutions: Evangel Classical School and Comeford College. Both of these are based where I live in Marysville, WA. When it comes to the training of young people, I have to consider what it is that they need to know. What do they need to learn. This in contrast with what can they learn and what should they learn. An idea was introduced to me a few months ago of Compression Culture. More can be found about it here. TLDR is all about Compression Culture. The attention span of people is so short today it is measured in seconds instead of hours. This idea has seeped into education. This idea has made it so that true education has all but disappeared. If all you want is the highlights, you miss the true beauty in learning. For example, if I tell you the clouds are pink, have I given you a description that is worthy of a sunset? No, a sunset is worthy of a least a sonnet. Alas, we take pink clouds over the work of digesting iambic because time. 

What is most commonly called education today is what I would call vocational training. Vocation became a vogue idea during the Reformation thanks to Martin Luther. He preached that vocational work glorified God, which is true. But what is it? Vocational training is the skills needed to do a job in order to provide for oneself and one’s family. It is a practical training that has direct impact on the daily life of most people. There is a place for this training, but it should not be confused for education. 

Looking through most of history, vocational training was the type of training that was giving to slaves in order for them to be useful to their masters. Plato and Aristotle taught about how this was not a good form of education. Training men to do skills for money was not a worthy pursuit. This is why Socrates is always calling out and ridiculing the sophists. The sophists were the ones who taught or would argue for a living. They sold their lessons and “education” of what we would call “lawyering” for the practical purpose of money or winning arguments in the democracy. To the philosophers, this is not a worthy reason for learning the art and science of Rhetoric. Rhetoric was more than just learning how to argue. It was something much more. 

This brings us to what it was for. Rhetoric was a part of education, a true education. Rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion. This made it a handy skill in a high political society like Athens and Sparta. There are three main branches to Rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos, Logos. Ethos is establishing character. Pathos is appealing to emotions. Logos is using logic and reason. A person is persuasive if they are known to have good character, understand the correct emotional response to a situation and have it, and they can logically move through an argument. These three things work together in order to move people to one’s opinion. In our culture, because our education is broken, people generally only care about one of these things depending on how they are raised. For example, engineer types only care about the Logos. Empathetic people only care about the Pathos. Businesspeople tend to care about the Ethos. It is rare to find a person who considers all three of these things when they are listening to arguments or making decisions.

Rhetoric should be taught in order for a person to understand how they should be and communicate as a consistent person. Who you are while giving a speech should be the same person you are outside of the room. There should be a consistency to your life. Your life should be ruled, in part, by pathos, ethos, and logos. It is not a tool in the bag of a workmen to take out when they need to do a particular job, but rather a way of life. A person should have the correct emotions, ethics, and logic about each thing of life. 

This is missed because true education is missing. Education, throughout history, was meant to develop character and virtue. It was not meant to prepare a man for a job but for life. As an anecdote and to think of it another way, I have done several different vocations. My education is what I take TO each vocation. It is who I am and how I work. I got special training (vocational training) at each one, but my education is what I bring to the table. 

The reason the ancients saw education being about character development is because man was seen as a relational creature. Men build societies. They study religion. This is because men need God and government. Character is all about how men interact with God and each other. Each generation would put their own emphasis on the balance between these two things, but everyone recognized these two categories for the reason behind the education of the next generation. 

An idea closely associated with education is leisure. Today, leisure is seen as how one spends their free time for their own enjoyment. It is full of amusement. Amusement was never the point of leisure. Leisure was a time that one would take to better oneself. The reason it is called a liberal art education is because it is the type of education that a free person with free time needs. This free time can be used for entertainment. Better oneself is the pursuit of what makes one a better person. If this doesn’t bring joy to your life, you are doing it wrong. Doug Wilson makes a good point about a Liberal Arts education in this video. He says that the point of the Liberal Arts education is so one knows how to use one’s free or leisure time. Leisure time is a place to pursue passions for the betterment of one’s soul. 

Leisure and passions are things that have been abused by modern man to the point where most people would now be labeled as hedonist in Ancient Greece. Leisure and passions must be tethered by something. If you think I am going to say it should be tethered by education, you would have guessed wrong. Education must also be tethered by something. There are three guiding principles of education, leisure, and passion that are true in every culture. I’ll be looking at them through the lens of education.

First, education is theological.

It is either Christian or non-Christian, theistic or atheistic. This is the first one because it is the matter of first importance. One could say that I only say this because I want everyone to be a Christian. This is true, but I think I would also say this if I was an anti-theist as well. The belief that there is or isn’t a God changes how one fundamentally views the world. It is presuppositional. If I am a theist, then there is something above me that is making some kind of rule. If I am an atheist, then there is nothing above me, so I get to make the rules, or there is only matter so there are no rules. Either one actually works in that scenario. Theology matters. 

When it comes to choosing your own or your kid’s education, you should do so knowing what you believe and picking one that aligns with you. If education is meant to build your character, should it not be building the character that you think is correct? What one values depends upon what one believes, thus character is influenced by what one believes. A “Christian” college that says that homosexuality is good or even fine does not actually believe in Christian values. It is being inconsistent with itself. An atheistic school that has no higher reason behind morality should actually encourage its students to cheat, as long as they don’t get caught, because it is an easier way in life. That would be consistent. In fact, any ethics class taught from an atheistic perspective can’t actually say one way is actually better than another because who makes the rules? The individual. So, instead, an ethics class at an atheistic college is a way to find what works for you. To each his own. They can appeal to empirical testing and say that most people find this one way as better than another, but data is not conclusive. There are always excepts to every rule in science. Just ask any biologist about taxonomy. The battle lines of thought are being drawn, and we should stop supporting schools that are inconsistent with their stated worldviews and beliefs. Education is the bedrock of society. Schools should know what they believe and display it proudly and consistently. Let the students chose the type of education that they want. Then let the pieces fall. 

This leads to the second principle:

Education is societal.

No matter what extreme you fall into, man is not made to be alone. Man is blessed most and does best when surrounded to likeminded people. Genesis 2:18 says that God sees man being alone as a problem. From an atheistic perspective, division of labor is a force multiplier that can be seen through history to build better cities and general life for all those who participate. With both these things in mind, when one is choosing an education, one should not simply choose the one that most interests the individual. Interests do play into the decision, don’t get me wrong. If one hates Mathematics, they should probably not spend their life studying it. they also are probably not very good at it which is why they hate it. I enjoy Mathematics, but it is the Achilles heel to the vast majority of my students. So, one should start with what one likes. I have met few people who have a singular love. If they do, they are normally young, immature, or slightly autistic. Christians should love the whole world that God has created for them to enjoy. Being well-rounded is Christian. For the atheist, I would point to the book Range by David Epstein. It is a pragmatic view on learning lots of different things. Every major advancement of humanity has happened on the fringes between two to three bodies of knowledge. Basically, it is advantageous to learn more than one discipline. So, learn lots of things.

From your collections of passions, one can then look at their society in order to see what need they can meet. This is how society is helpful in order to direct young people in the way that they should go. One of the hardest parts about growing up is figuring out how you fit in. Being left to flounder is one of the saddest things a society can do to its young people. Those who are older and wiser should be watching the young ones grow up and see what their proclivities are. They should then guide them in the direction they should go. This is also helpful when it comes to character because society can help to knock off some of the sharp edges in development. It is good to have worthy people to follow, hold them up as examples, and tell others to follow those who are in the lead. 

Society is outside of education. It is the cloud of people around those who are growing up. There should be society buy-in to the training of young people. Everyone should be paying attention to the younger generation because we are all growing older and needing to be replaced. Older people should be looking to find younger people who can fill their spot in the wall. This is a GOOD thing. It is good to pass on the torch before it is too late. If you are reading this and already “done” with your education, be looking at those who are under you and help them grow up and fill a spot in society. Encourage them. Direct them. Give them a vision for what is being built. Give wisdom. Let them give the energy. Which does mean you’ll have to get out of the way. 

From theology, to society, comes to the closest guiding principle of character building.

Education is Familial.

The family is the unit that is held to the highest responsibility for the rearing of young ones, in particular fathers. In Ephesians 6:4 “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (KJV). In the eyes of God, the buck stopped with the father of the children. God is the one who put forth the idea of the patriarchy because it is good. It is good for young ones to have a differentiate, logical, loving man at the helm of one’s life. It is terrible for a young person to be led by an arbitrary, emotional, and indifferent man. It is up to the father and the responsibility of the father to raise up their sons to love the Lord and all His laws. Fathers are not called to be vocational trainers first, but character trainers. Vocational training comes after the character. 

Fathers should be the model for their children to follow both in life and in work. A father should first be a lover and worshiper of God. A father should be a constant learner and pass that along to their children. A father should also be productive and raise their children to follow in their footsteps and in the family business. This is how society has always been built until very recently. This is how mastery of concept was passed down. Children learned at a young age to shadow their fathers, and he would teach them as a master to a pupil, just a little at a time in the order and with the grain with their frame. 

For the Christian, the reason for doing this is to extend the kingdom of God and to work on taking dominion of the earth. Each generation builds upon the last. From a pragmatic standpoint, one should build up the family unit in order for there to be enough young people to care for the older generation. If one generation fails at this, it will put undue stress on the next two generation with the possibility of societal collapse and the death of the culture. Society and culture must be passed down from one to the next. Skipping generations is a for sure way to handicap all those who follow. A good anecdote of this is the Greatest Generation. Coming back from the horrors of WWII with little mental health care was a breeding ground for weak fathers and failing families. PTSD was a real thing that was not understood at the time. A whole generation of fathers who were just trying to survive within their heads lead to the 60’s and 70’s and all kinds of revolutions of the wrong sort. They threw off the goodness of their fathers because their fathers were incapable of passing along their greatness. The US has been in a corroding cultural state ever since. 

It all starts with the family and the father. This is not to speak ill of the mother who has potentially the greatest influence on her children over any other person. I heard it first from Doug Wilson somewhere along the way that “the education of your daughter is the education of your grandsons.” I believe he said this as a defense for sending daughters to get a Liberal Arts education. From my own kids, my wife has spent hundreds of more hours with our kids than I have, and I am around them a lot. My job does let me be home more than most. When it comes to the family, one cannot belittle the impact of mothers. The mother is blessed by the leadership of the father though. The father should be giving direction to the mother on the household and the way the children should go. The father is the one who holds the responsibility before God. A mother should be taking the direction that her husband is giving and running with it. This is the Proverbs 31 woman. She was not working outside of the direction of her husband. She was working with his blessing. 

With all this said, what is my case for a true education? I have contrasted Christian and Atheistic throughout to give both sides of the argument. If education is meant to be the means of cultivating character, then atheistic education is not education. At best, it is flimsy, inconsistent ideologies tied together with twine in order to prepare one to be a cog in the machine of enterprise that holds men down and in their place. A true education is one that recognizes man’s place in this world under a sovereign God who loves His creation and has predestined each person for their location, belief, society, and family, for the building of His Kingdom, the betterment of society, for the maturity of each person to be complete in Christ.

This is the end of true education.

It flows from knowing what you believe and to find an education that will strengthen those beliefs. Strive to be useful to your society so you have purpose and can bless those around you. Finally, be a person that fits with your last name. Your life should bring glory to God, betterment to your fellow man, and make your family proud. This all stems from your education and your character. Vocation can come later. People would prefer to work with the right kinds of people rather than a talking head. We want people with passions, virtue, and wisdom. A society collapses when the men don’t have chest. This is what Evangel Classical School and Comeford College is striving for in Marysville, WA. These are the beliefs that we uphold, the community and culture we are trying to build, with families that are bought in for the sake of their children and for our generations to come. This is not a side project for me or those who partner with us. This is out goal. If this sounds like something that you want to support or the kind of community you want for your family, then come and build with us. There are plenty of places on the wall of our community that need a sword and a trowel.