Re-Humanising Education
“The creation and maintenance of diverse pathways of formation—adequate to the great diversity of real human beings—is the essential condition for the revitalisation of a vibrant culture.”
In this paper, Stephen Blackwood and Bernadette Guthrie look to models from the past—from the guild to the monastery to the university—to propose a vision for education that recognises the transcendent value and realises the unique potential of every human being.
Summary of Research Paper
The West currently faces the question: what is the purpose of education? To maximise our potential productivity, or invest in the cultivation of human minds and character?
It is the loss of the latter—the higher calling of education—which has underpinned the demise of educational provision in the West. This decline has taken three principal forms:
The rise of standardisation: Sparked by both the French and Industrial Revolutions, the modern education system prizes uniformity, productivity, and the accumulation of “skills” over the gaining of knowledge, independence of thought, and depth of character.
Loss of meaning: The emphasis on endless fluidity, adaptability, and deconstruction has emptied education of its innate meaning and purpose. Educational communities have also been atomised and replaced with faceless bureaucracies. Without truth and meaning, education is a pointless pursuit, fuelling the rising dejection amongst students.
The crisis of attention: There has been a steady rise of technologies and advertising designed to grab and enslave our attention, interfering with our capacities to concentrate. The education system has responded by reducing content to “bite sized chunks”, rather than challenging young people to concentrate and think deeply.
Restoring education will mean renewing the importance of core values underpinning what it means to learn and have one’s character shaped through the process: honesty, gratitude, humility, and restraint. Each of these virtues is dependent on the presence of truth, wisdom, and goodness—and our willingness to accept them.
Education in Western societies has historically taken five broad forms, each representing not just a mode of imparting information, but a way of life. Together, these forms shed light on what a holistic, enriching education looks like:
The Gymnasium: a community separate from the day-to-day life of the city, shaping the character of its future citizens and leaders.
The Monastery: the physical reminder at the heart of the community to elevate one’s gaze and contemplate the divine and transcendent.
The University: a community jointly in pursuit of a deeper, comprehensive, philosophical understanding of the world through personal impartation and depth of thought.
The Guild: independent, voluntary associations in which apprentices learn to become artists and artisans from masters of their trade.
The Home: a locus of private and public activity where one’s individual gifting and capacities are drawn out and cultivated through play, interaction, discovery, and exploration.
The Book: conferring dignity and knowledge upon their readers, who grasp the opportunity to expand their own education.
These educational forms demonstrate the main principles of an authentic education, embracing the fundamental needs of humankind:
Freedom, including:
Leisure: Freedom for thought—reviving the importance of the contemplative life and the space to think, rather than devoting one’s existence to the supreme value of “productivity”. Leisure is the origin of culture.
Dialogue: Freedom of Thought—freedom to debate the merits of opposing views in pursuit of truth, in the context of loving relationship.
Tradition and its transmission—extending debate to generations past, building on their canons, and escaping the preoccupations of the present.
Unique needs and potential of men and women—not ignoring the realities of human difference between the sexes and creating the environments in which all can flourish.
With these principles in hand, how can we revive and reinvent forms of education past for the present day?
Vocational Education: Rather than using university education as the sole marker of capability, there is a great need to renew the value of tradesmanship and rejoin the principles of vocation/occupation and education of the individual—raising a new generation of tradesmen with a knowledge of the traditions and community of which they are members.
University Education: Rather than a technical, bureaucratic passage, we can renew the university in its sense of orientation towards transcendent good, fostering contemplation and exploration of diverse views.