1.3 – Why School? (16 min video)

Transcript

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Well, today, let’s talk about why we do this thing called school, or education, or learning, or whatever you want to call it. Really, the answer to that is going to be the same as how you would answer what is the purpose of life. They’re very close together. The first answer that I’ll give you is one I’ve already given you. It’s from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which says that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. So we learn, we do these subjects. We actually undergo all these years of formal schooling, but also of course, we learn throughout our lives. It’s part of our aspect of worshiping God. It’s part of how we actually worship Him. Because it’s in learning these different subjects that we begin to see how everything connects, everything relates together because he created everything. It’s called integration, which is from the Latin word integritas. Now that’s a curious word. Not only do we get integration from it, we also get integer from it, a word that means a whole number. Furthermore, we get integrity from the same word. Integrity is a word that we typically think of. We think of a person who is trustworthy, who keeps their word, who has integrity. But integrity can also apply to objects. For example, a boat. If a boat is seaworthy, if the hull is whole and intact, then it has integrity. But if it’s falling apart, if it is disintegrating, which is also from integritas, then you can’t actually trust it. In other words, my whole point of showing you this is that all subjects that you will encounter or study, they’re all different expressions of how God reveals Himself in the world that He has made. Because they’re all different aspects of the creation. In Romans 1 tells us that the creation reveals His presence. It reveals His power. And so therefore, all subjects should cause us to marvel at who God is and at what he has made. This idea led Chesterton to say there are no boring subjects, just bored people. In other words, the point is, whenever you come to a subject that you don’t particularly like, that is an area for personal growth. That is an area you can say, “All right, Lord, I don’t actually love this. “Help me to properly love it, “for I know there is something marvelous here. I know that this subject ultimately reveals truth, beauty, and goodness. Now it is true, sometimes subjects are taught in a way that is totally divorced from who God is. And if you struggle in those subjects, that’s probably why. Secondly, the second reason for why we learn, why we do this thing called school, is to contemplate, to think deeply. It’s a curious thing that the Greeks called school, scola, and the Romans called it ludus. Both of those words could be translated as school, but they could also both be translated as play, or game, or leisure. That’s why we have the old Latin phrase, ludere est contemplare, which means literally to play is to contemplate. It’s getting at the idea that what you’re doing right now, that time you’re taking to learn a subject that’s not gonna provide you with, say, survival skills. It’s not gonna provide you with, say, an immediate way to make money, unless you become a high-paid history teacher, which, you know, it doesn’t really exist. But anyway, the point is this. Learning is a free activity. What I mean by that is it’s non-essential. It’s not something that you actually really have to do. It’s not really needed. Therefore, it’s kind of like us. Meaning that God created us simply because he wanted to, not because he had to. Learning is very much like us when we pursue things that we don’t necessarily need, but we find joy in them. Most of art and music, for example, are making up stories. They’re not necessarily needed for survival in terms of an evolutionary way of thinking. We do them because we’re human. It’s part of the manishness, to use Francis Schaeffer’s terminology, of man. We create things because we’re made in God’s image. He created out of simple joy, so therefore we create out of simple joy as well. So when you’re studying history, It’s for the sake of studying it itself. It’s for the sake of finding the joy that is already present in there. That’s why the liberal arts, which often refer to say history or theology or literature, for example, that’s why that term has always meant the freeing arts. They were always seen as a privilege, which meant that in pagan antiquity, the liberal arts were only studied by the wealthy. They were only studied by those who could devote the entire day just to reading or learning or thinking. And they had basically all the work of the house and the fields done by slaves. But in Christendom, under Christianity in the church, that changed. It changed to the point that liberal arts was something for everyone as it should be. So keep in mind that this is a privilege, this time that you have right now, in which you don’t have to constantly be thinking about, “How am I going to pay the bills?” or “How am I going to provide for certain needs?” This time that you have right now is a remarkable privilege. You’re given years just to learn things and just to marvel at who God is and what He has done in this world. You’re also given this remarkable time to just contemplate, to do as the psalmist says in Psalm 46, to be still, which could be translated as have leisure, and know that I am God.

James Shaw, who points out many of the ideas that I just talked to you about in his book on the unseriousness of human affairs, he writes these words about contemplation, about thinking, about learning.

He says the problem of contemplation was not to create God. We’re not trying to think him up, but to discover him, who is he? Then Shaul writes, “And this discovery initially consisted in having at least some experience of freedom, of sheer fascination and delight that had no reward but itself. We respond to God best in the freest of our activities.” Meaning, think about the subjects, think about the things that you have gone and learned, not because anybody told you, not because you had to, simply because you wanted to.

That’s really my prayer and my hope for you as you look at all subjects, that you would actually pray that God would lead you to that end.

One of my heroes in terms of education from the 20th century, Arthur Klerk-Hooch, he said this, he said, “There is such a thing in the world as a love of learning. The very best things in the world do not pay for the simple reason that they are priceless. So we do this thing called school simply because it’s worth doing in and of itself. Third, we are doing it for wisdom. We are pursuing wisdom, which Proverbs 9, 10 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It’s the concept that faith or belief comes prior to understanding. And then of course you have how Francis Bacon defines wisdom when he says that crafty men condemn studies. Those who essentially want to get away with things, they don’t want wisdom out there to stop them. He then says that simple men admire them. Basically they’re those people who think, well, I’ll never be intelligent. I would argue that nobody should think that way. He says they simply admire studies and say, “Oh, aren’t you smart?” Don’t look at other people that way, I would encourage you. Everybody who seems to kind of have a knowledge or have a wisdom, that has been developed. That has actually come over the course of many, many years, especially in the case of your teacher. But then finally, Francis Bacon says, “Wisemen use them.” Meaning the wise use what they have learned. they actually apply it. They don’t just know it. They don’t just understand it. They live it. Fourth, we do this whole thing called school to pursue beauty and imagination. Socrates said that the object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. Much of my job is to point out to you what is true, what is beautiful, what is good, so that you yourself can know where the good things are and you can further learn about them.

‘Cause there’s no way I can ever pass on to you everything worth knowing. Ken Meyers says this about education. He said that, “Education requires the nourishing “of the imagination, the orienting of the heart, “so that we can intuit, we can know from our very soul, “so to speak, the world aright before we even begin to shape our theories. So much of education is captivating one’s imagination. That is where story comes in. It can’t be done by mere facts that seem to only be memorized for a test and thrown away afterwards. Fifth, we do this thing called school to pursue Thanksgiving, or really to have Thanksgiving and to have praise. And one example I’ll give you of this is that when a young daughter of Tolkien’s publisher wrote to him, asking him the question, “What is the purpose of life?” What we’ve been talking about. He responded with these words. I won’t read you the whole letter, but let me read to you a portion. He says this. He says, “It may be said that the chief purpose of life for any one of us is to increase according to our capacity, our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and to thanks.

In other words, the whole purpose of life, he says, is to constantly pursue God, and part of that is through learning. He talks about the knowledge of God, but then he says there’s a reason for that. He says when we do that, we respond with thanksgiving and with praise. If you think about the scriptures, as you look back over them and you see God’s faithfulness, or if you look back upon how God has been faithful in your own life and the lives of those you know, it should cause you to respond with thanksgiving and with praise.

Six, we do this whole thing called school to pass on a tradition for a legacy. We are transmitting a culture. The Latin word tradere, from which we get the word tradition, literally means to pass something on, to hand it on. Our traditions, especially associated with holidays, they are designed to cause us to remember what truly matters. Again, I’ll quote Arthur Quillacooch on this topic when he says, “You,” meaning you as students, “are the heirs of a remarkable legacy, “a legacy that is passed into your hands “after no little tumult and travail, A legacy that is the happy result of sacrificial human relations, no less than a stupendous human achievements. A legacy that demands of you a lifetime of vigilance and diligence so that you may in turn pass the fruits of Christian civilization on to succeeding generations.

That is the essence of the biblical view, the covenantal view, and the classical view of education. This is the great legacy of truth which you are now the chief beneficiaries. And this is the great legacy of truth which you are now called upon to bequest to the world.” In other words, I have a job to pass on to you the things that are truly true, good, and beautiful from the past so that you may in turn pass them on.

7th, we do this whole thing called education for a proper humanism. It was Lewis who said that we read to know we’re not alone, meaning we read to know what it means to be human. Strafford Caldecott says that education is about how we become more human and therefore more free in the truest sense of the word. That’s why John Buchan, when he talks about education, he summarizes it with the word “humanitas,” essentially meaning that education shows us who we are actually called to be according to how we were created. Eighth, we do this whole thing called school for the purpose of virtue and for service. It was Buchan who in that same quote talking about education being humanitas noted that we’re being trained to do the right things. Or it’s Arthur Kulrik-Hooch who said that the true business of a university or of a school is to train liberty, the freedom that we have, into responsibility.

to let us know that we actually have a mission in this world. We actually have a unique calling, something that God has called us to. Q goes on to say that the true business of a school is to teach a young man to think for himself. And that really is the mission of it. He also said the whole goal of education was a mastery of service. And going back to the previous lecture, All these things require us to have a proper enchantment, to know that we truly are in a song, to be able to give thanks to God for who he is and what he has done.

G.K. Chesterton says it best when he says, “I would maintain that thanks “are the highest form of thought, “and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”