1.4 – What Each Student Needs (7 min video)

Transcript

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Well, for today’s lecture, we’re going to talk about kind of what you need as a student. And no, I’m not going to talk about things like what kind of binder I think you should use or what kind of pen I think you should be writing with.

Because, you know, I don’t really think those are that important. I actually think the bigger ideas about what we need kind of character-wise as we approach something like the history of the past is a much bigger deal.

So I have a few things for you to note as we get ready once again this orientation week to study the past. But first of all I would say, and I always tell my students this every year, one of the things you primarily need when you’re approaching the past is respect. And that may be practically a respect for me in the classroom. You don’t have to worry about that, you can mute me anytime you want, or just stop me, or throw me out the window if you like.

Hey, I just have something to say about that, but hey, I’m not going to feel it. What you do need, though, is you do need an actual respect for the past, and understanding the fact that the people who have come before us were real people who had real passions, and often real brilliance.

The great English writer Samuel Johnson said it this way, “a contempt, like a hatred, of the monuments “and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned “one of the reigning follies of these days, “to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.” In other words, I hope you see how amazing people of the past have been. I hope you see that their pursuits are similar to ours. I hope you see that the things that they accomplished are remarkable. And yeah, you’ll find things that completely gross you out or make you furious and upset, and they should. But the point is this, when we have the brilliance of the past, when we especially have incredible heroes of the past, or remarkable things that were said that cause us to pause, that’s where we should realize, oh, that’s why I’m learning the history of our world or of this culture. Secondly, something that any student of history needs, and this includes me, is repentance. It’s actually one of the key features of education. In fact, Tolkien said it like this. He said, “Education ought to be little more “than a form of intellectual repentance, “a constant confession that we don’t really know “what we need to know, “and we haven’t really let it change us like it should.” Tolkien said, “If it is anything more or less than this, than horror’s result. Sir William Haley, the great astronomer, he said that education would be so much more effective if its entire purpose was to ensure that by the time the student leaves school, every boy and girl should know how much they don’t know and should be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. In other words, I hope you find that the more you study something, the less you actually know. the more you realize there is so much more here than I ever realized. That’s been my experience with that in the past. The more I read, the more I teach it, the more I realize how ignorant I actually am. In fact, I was a much more confident teacher when I was fresh out of college than I am now. Third, one thing that a student of history or of any subject needs is what we call a new affection. You actually need a desire for these things. It’s often the case with students, whether it be history or it’s often math for many of my students, there’s a certain discipline that they just don’t like and they think is pointless, and usually the reason they find it pointless is because, well, they don’t like it, or they don’t see how it’s gonna help them in life. Of course, that misses the entire point of what I’m trying to tell you about education in the first place. See, the whole purpose of why we study all these different things and these different subjects or disciplines, it’s because they’re showing us who God is and they’re showing us the world that he actually made and how we’re to interact. They’re all different languages for how he thinks and what he actually does. That’s what mathematics actually is. It’s what science is. It’s what history is. Spurgeon, the great Victorian preacher, said like this. He said, “Heart longings are prophecies “of what a man will be.” In other words, you need to actually love the right things. And of course, the scripture is to tell you what those things are. That’s why Augustine was able to say that worship, when we actually go to worship God, it tends to order our disordered loves. That’s why worship is at the heart of anything to do with education. That’s why we have to love the right things in order to properly appreciate the things of the past. Fourth, you need to have a sense of wonder. You need to actually have a passion to say, “I want to know what’s out there.” The great British educator Charlotte Mason, she simply said it this way, she said that, “Studies serve for the light.” She was someone who did all kinds of nature studies. She was someone who taught how to nature journal And that wasn’t so much about creating these brilliant scientists as it was simply about teaching people to stop, observe what is around you, and to delight in it.

It’s called wonder. And without wonder, life is pretty joyless. Fifth, as students, we need sanctification. We need good habits. We need actually spiritual habits, like worship and prayer and reading the actual scriptures. Because it’s those habits, it’s those rituals, it’s those patterns that go hand in hand with the proper affections for things of the past or the things that God has actually done.

The British historian Christopher Dawson, who was himself a believer, he said it this way. He said, “The conversion and the reorientation “of modern culture, it involves a double process “that’s both psychological and intellectual.” He said, “First of all, it is necessary “that Western man recover the use “of his higher spiritual faculties.” His ability to contemplate. He said that, “These have become atrophied, “they become weak by centuries of neglect “during which the mind and the will of Western man “has been concentrated on the conquest of power.” In other words, the goal of education is not the pursuit of any kind of power, especially not simply economic power or making more money.

The goal of education is to actually produce faithful and capable men and women who delight in who God is, what he has made, what he has done, and what he is doing.

That’s it.