OUT OF THE HORSE’S MOUTH

Some 350 years ago Francis Bacon told a story that continues to live because it gets so close to the lives of us all. It may even have relevance to the problems of the modern church.

There was a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For 13 days the dispute raged without ceasing. The ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition, such as was never before heard of in the region, was made manifest. Finally a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard of, and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find the answer to their question.

At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceedingly wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar they flew upon him and smote him hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith, For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard of ways of finding truth contrary to all the teachings of the fathers.

After many days more of grievous strife the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man, declaring the problem to be an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down.

This is the story of orthodoxy, which is repeated over and over in every field of human endeavor. Orthodoxy is stereotyped and unteachable. It always struggles to defend and preserve itself, and it considers anything different as a threat to its existence. It cannot “look into the horse’s mouth” because it has never done it that way. Anyone who suggests a new method or a different approach or a contrary interpretation is treated forthwith as an enemy. Orthodoxy has already arrived; change is therefore out of the question. It is presumption to raise questions. Freedom means that one is at liberty to believe and behave the way approved by the party or institution. Freedom does not and cannot mean that one is free to look into the horse’s mouth — or even to suggest it. Such “horsing around” always gets one into trouble, if not the cross perhaps the hemlock.

“Test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thess. 5:21) — The Editor

EDUCATION AS SELF-CRITICISM

On my trip around the world last summer I was able to look at education from a different perspective: as a foreigner looking in from the outside at educational systems around the world. The systems were of course, greatly different, and yet both the problems and possibilities are strikingly similar despite the cultural diversities.

Human nature is no different in Japan than it is in America, and the emotions, drives, instincts, and behavior of the Vietnamese are much the same as those of Texans. The problems of learning that we seek to solve in our psychology classes are not essentially different from the attempts made in the Middle East or in Europe. Some countries, are of course, more advanced in pedagogical know-how, and some have better tools with which to work, but the problems are always the same.

Modern man supposes that his world is more complex and his problems more involved, but this is only a conjecture. Life thousands of years ago may have been as complex as our own, perhaps even more so. Learning to build a log cabin was just as involved a problem to people of yesteryear as building a spaceship is to us. The invention of barbed wire was as vital to the culture of its time as the mechanized cotton-picker is to ours.

This means that the real problems of life and education are not so much a matter of log cabins, spaceships, barbed wire, and cotton-pickers, but of understanding. And understanding begins with self. This is why I say that the real problem of education the world over is man himself. Despite all of our science and technology it is doubtful that we are any closer to the answers to the great questions that man has been asking for centuries: Who am I? What is my mission in this world? What is my destiny? Is the universe friendly? What is the good life?

Has the human race made any real progress the past few centuries? Some thinkers like Rheinhold Niebuhr contend that the notion that we have made great progress in our age of science is sheer fiction. Man still does not know how to live either with himself or with others. He still does not understand himself. Even in our space age nations cannot trust each other.

These are real educational issues in any country. This being the case, we can always pause to ask if it might not be true that some other nations are getting at these problems better than we are. Is a person really educated who does not know how to get along with others, even if he does live in a push-button culture? Is one truly educated who has not yet experienced the spiritual forces in himself and the universe, even if he has a college degree and drives a high-powered automobile to his office in a skyscraper made of tinted glass?

In places like Taiwan most of the people I met appeared to be freer of anxiety than most of us are, and it seemed that life makes more sense to them than it does to us. They have more of a feel of history and a continuity with the past. Even more important, they know a lot about how to live with each other. Life is much less rushed. Surely life has its many complicated problems to them just as to all peoples, but they seem to be able to roll with the punches so much better than the most of us.

So who is “backward” after all? It all depends on what kind of values you measure by. Socrates argued that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” If that is as true in 1964 as it was in the time of Socrates, then the lives of so many of us are not worth living.

In any part of the world education could well be viewed as the discipline and experience of self-criticism. Chuang Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, saw self-discipline as the ability to follow others without losing self. This loss of individuality is rapidly becoming a mark of our own culture. Mencius, another Chinese sage, viewed self-discipline and criticism as the means of preserving the feelings of goodness that are innate in man. Goodness means compassion, he taught, and this means a feeling of responsibility for the suffering of others.

Mencius insisted that education does not and cannot produce these feelings of goodness, for they are inborn, but education must nurture and safeguard them. These feelings can be lost through “the rough contacts of daily life,” so it is the responsibility of education to provide the kind of environment in which the best in man can thrive.

A university is to encourage the free spirit of inquiry, which implies first of all self inquiry. To do this a university must be critical of itself. There should always be dialogue going on in which strengths and weaknesses of an educational institution are canvassed. It is pride that resents criticism.

I recall from my days at Harvard, which is probably the freest institution in the world, that a severe barrage of criticism was leveled against the university. There were charges of all descriptions, but especially having to do with the political left-wing. Where did I see these criticisms, blazing in boldface type? On a bulletin-board at Harvard! That was a great lesson to me. Here was an educational institution under attack by its enemies posting the criticisms for all to read and judge for themselves. The willingness to listen to criticism is one reason why Harvard has become great, and I am certain that neither an educational institution nor an individual can move toward greatness without this kind of self-criticism.

A biblical definition of education touches these points:

“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” (Luke 2:52)

No man becomes truly wise, in whatever country, who does not understand himself and his mission in life. And no man gains the favor of either God or man who cannot judge himself by the same standards that he judges others. — The Editor

William James defined the free mind as one that can: (1) imagine foreign states of mind, (2) always see alternatives, (3) make conventionalities fluid, (4) involve oneself creatively in the lives of others.