Is It for All? I Have Some Doubts.

As a lover of classical liberal arts education and a native member of a Democratic society, my immediate instinct was to answer this question, “Of course, classical liberal arts education will benefit everyone.” Often I have heard this education slandered as “elitist,” which astonishes me. When I think of all the humble parents and teachers who sacrifice so much to give the best to their children and students, and how they flourish intellectually, morally, and socially in these schools, I laugh at the idea. But the more I thought about it, the more ideological it sounded to make a blanket affirmation that it benefits everyone no matter their circumstances. So I thought I should reflect on why someone like Plato would think otherwise. Here are some cautionary questions I have been pondering.

The formal education we want to offer ought to have profound effects on the souls of our students. We should consider the consequences of those changes. Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (aka My Fair Lady) did not.

We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road ... I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me, I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me. 

Is everyone in a personal and social position to benefit from this sort of education? The religious brothers and sisters who founded the American Catholic school system generally did not try to give more than good catechesis and a basic education to their tough inner-city, first-generation immigrants. Would any more have been possible?

Certainly everyone should be educated into the true, good, and beautiful in some way. The Shire-folk were all educated into a beautiful (if imperfect) way of life. But should that be through formal education? Was the Gaffer right to worry about Bilbo teaching Sam to read? “Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters – meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it.” What harm might come to Sam, his Dad, or the Shire from learning to read? Can harm come to Shire-like communities in other parts of the world if we educate all their young as we would our own? I have seen much harm done to precocious 16-year-olds taught to read and then set loose in an unguarded library.

At my college, we believed that the scholastic, Great Books education we offered was simply the best for human beings and yet we did not accept everyone. We only admitted those who showed both sufficient desire and sufficient ability to learn. We tried to avoid having students who would likely fail out or get bored and tune out of classes. Even so, John Senior, a luminary of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, strongly believed that we ruined many of our students because they had not received the proper cultural and imaginative formation necessary to keep them from taking abstract nonsense to express the truth.

Were these the sorts of questions that led Plato to insist on being selective at every stage of the educational journey? The moral/cultural/ emotional/imaginative pre-rational education he proposed for the guardians of his carefully constructed cave presupposed leisure and a disposition both spirited and docile. Is such an education possible for those who have no leisure or suitable for those who will not have a life of leisure? Thankfully, our very wealthy society has provided almost all of us with ample leisure in our youth and adulthood. Will it be fruitful for those who have no eagerness for it? Will it be dangerous to society for those who show no docility? Will it separate them in a deep if intangible way from those who love them?

Such questions become even more urgent for Plato as he considers the education that leads out of the cave. Should we try to make all of our students aware of the deep questions that challenge the everyday understanding of the principles of our culture, of our beliefs? Plato was painfully aware that the ways leading out of a cave were as likely to produce sophists who would turn on and undermine their societies as to produce true and passionate seekers of wisdom. He thought students need to be tested carefully over a long period of time to see whether they have the ability and the tenacity to advance through the rigors of the mathematical and dialectical ascent, and above all to see whether they have the moral loyalty to not turn on the society that produced them.

Without such testing, without a good and wise guide, is an Adler-style Great Books education as likely to produce Nietzschean pragmatists as devotees of the better and wiser elements of our tradition? As likely to exhaust a love of learning as to ignite a lifetime of wonder?

Some schools I know not only interview students before admission but include their parents as well to make sure that they understand, embrace, and will support the educational efforts of the school. These schools have had too much experience of students who don’t benefit themselves and cause harm to the community. My questions at this stage incline me to suspect this is wise policy.

Andrew Seeley, PhD, is Director of Advanced Formation for Educators at the Augustine Institute, a co-founder of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, and the President of the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education. 

Andrew Seeley, Ph.D.
Director of Advanced Formation for Educators,
Visiting Professor of Philosophy

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