By DONALD DeMARCO
It may seem odd to question whether education is possible. After all, is it not true that education is going on, if not flourishing, all over North America?
The question, however, is not without merit for, in far too many instances, what passes for education is not really education at all.
Relativism, skepticism, and deconstructionism, to cite just a few examples, are not forms of education, despite their broad popularity.
I would like to delineate two major enemies to education in our present democratic society. The first is a strong sense on the part of the student of his liberties. Yet these liberties can come into conflict with the legitimate authority of the teacher.
It has been argued that in a free society students have the right to make up their own minds and must not be subject to indoctrination by their teachers.
The second enemy is associated with the egalitarian mood of a democratic society. How can a teacher presume to be sufficiently different than his students in the knowledge of his subject matter to justify his position of authority?
Too much authority can lead to tyranny; too much liberty can lead to chaos.
We can bring these two problems into sharp focus by asking whether there is an irremediable conflict between the authority of the teacher and the liberty of the student. If the teacher fails to respect the liberty of the student, he becomes an authoritarian who is not educating his students, but indoctrinating them. On the other hand, if the students fail to respect the authority of the teacher, they render his teaching irrelevant and remain uneducated.
Is there a way to avoid a conflict between the authority of the teacher and the liberty of the student?
The fear of authority is deeply ingrained in any democratic society. And yet, education is crucial for the proper operations of a democratic society. The student who is distrustful of authority, but not distrustful of himself, is more likely than he thinks to absorb the various fads, fancies, and fashions that surround him. Rather than “think for themselves,” they generally imitate the incomplete or false philosophies that happen to be in vogue.
In this regard, the mindful teacher wants to rescue his students from themselves.
Catholic tradition has an answer to this twofold and often vexing problem. The great teachers of the past — St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, and the other doctors of the Church — defended the legitimate authority of the teacher on the grounds that the teacher became a teacher because he was initially a learner. As an inveterate learner, he has much in common with the students he wants to teach.
There is no conflict, then, in the relationship between a teacher and students who want to learn what their teacher has already learned.
And what has the teacher learned which unites him with his students? Simply stated, he has learned something about the truth of things. In this sense, conflict is avoided because both teacher and student are embraced by a unifying truth.
And what is the key to acquiring truth? It is the universal faculty of reason. The capacity to reason, to investigate the laws of nature, to understand more clearly the nature of the human being, is equally present in the student as it is in the teacher.
By encouraging students to involve themselves in the joint venture of seeking the truth, conflict is avoided and education begins to take place. Moreover, in this instance, the liberty of the student is honored, for liberty has meaning only when it is ordered to truth. It is the truth, ultimately, that makes the student free. The mere accumulation of random and incompatible opinions is not a form of education; nor does it do justice to the liberty of the student.
St. Thomas explains that the student has an “active potentiality” for learning and, consequently, becoming truly educated. Without this active receptivity, knowledge appears to be something that is imposed upon him, rather than something for which he has a natural appetite.
The teacher offers the student not something alien to him nor something identical with him, but a truth that is at once objective and in conformity with his natural inclinations. The human mind is made for truth in the same way, analogously, as the eye for sight and the ear for sound.
The teacher should find joy in helping his students to learn inasmuch as he is crowning his own pleasure of teaching with his love for others. This attitude of giving is a natural preventative to the cultivation of pride to which any person in a position of authority is highly susceptible.
This helps to explain why St. Thomas Aquinas was fond of reminding us that to be a good teacher “is not an honor but a task.”
The other-directedness of the teacher, his focus on the needs of his students, can go a long way in gaining the trust of his students as well as preventing him from being distracted from his task by the bane of pride. Education is surely possible and is ensured by a common respect for the unifying power of truth.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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