EDUCATING THE WHOLE MAN

In these days when young people and parents alike are giving even a college education a hard critical look, as if it might not be worth four years of a person's life after all, we do well to remain open as to what really constitutes a sound education. This is especially true for the Christian, for by the very nature of what he professes to believe he has ardent interest in the development of personhood. It could otherwise be referred to as the education of the whole man ‑ physical, social, intellectual and spiritual. Aristotle insisted that all education is moral, and we could think of all four of these aspects of education as moral. And yet it is the moral aspect of education that never seems to receive proper attention, partly due to the inert notion that morality cannot be taught.

 

For one to be wholly educated, or even educated to be holy, there must be moral education, and I for one believe that this can be structured in terms of content and curriculum. That is, there are moral or ethical principles just as there are economic principles, and there are moral truths as much as there are scientific truths, and so ethics can and must be taught, just as economics and the sciences are to be taught.

 

The colleges themselves are taking a closer look at what it means to be an educated person, and their search reflects a humility that heretofore has not been so evident, and that is encouraging. We are likely to learn more about what it means to be educated wholly when we concede that none of us has all the answers, and that even our educational institutions have done something less than an adequate job.

 

One such call for more self‑examination on the part of colleges comes from none other than Harvard itself. Under the title "What makes the best college education?," Dean Henry Rosovsky in Harvard Today (Fall, 1976) reveals that Harvard's faculty has reached a "critical juncture" after a year of intense deliberation as to what its educational program should be. It appears evident that some basic changes will be made. The dean presents six standards that he considers valid in determining what education should be. It is noteworthy that none of these necessarily implies a college education, and they suggest that education is a lifetime pursuit, whether aided by years in college or not. I think they speak to the Christian conscience in that we should be especially aware in our homes and churches of what a continual improvement of ourselves and our children should involve. Here is a summary of Dean Rosovsky's standards.

 

1. An educated person must be able to think and write clearly and effectively. He should be able to communicate precisely, cogently and forcefully.

 

2. He should have a critical appreciation of the ways in which we gain knowledge and understanding of the universe, of society and of ourselves. This does not mean that we can all be experts in physics, math, history, social sciences and the humanities, but as we grow from year to year we should have an increased appreciation for these ways of knowledge.

 

3. Our world being what it now is, a person cannot be ignorant of other cultures and other times. It is no longer possible for us to conduct our lives without reference to the wider world or to the historical forces that have shaped the present and will shape the future.

 

4. The educated person is to have some understanding of, and experience in thinking about, moral problems. While these issues change very little over the centuries, they acquire a new urgency for each generation. It may well be that the most significant quality in educated persons is the informed judgment that enables him to make discriminating moral choices.

 

5. We should expect an educated person to have good manners and high aesthetic and moral standards. This implies the capacity to reject shoddiness in all its forms.

 

6. He should have achieved depth in some field of knowledge or service.  He should have a constructive way of making a living.

 

What impressed me especially about this list are numbers 4 and 5, and I suspect some of our readers will be surprised to see such old‑fashioned values being stressed by a Harvard dean. It is noteworthy that he sees the capacity to make responsible moral decisions as the most significant. quality of an educated person. To some of us this is to say that education is to be religious or spiritual, that there are transcendental values involved. Surely if one is to be qualified to make tough moral decisions he is to be exposed to moral principles, to be trained in ethical thinking. One does not become morally responsible, as Dean Rosovsky wants him to be, simply through general education, no more than one could be expected to make critical economic decisions without knowing something of the fundamentals of economics.

 

It is refreshing to read of an educator at an elite university stressing good manners as fundamental to education. I know not a few Ph.D.'s that are not yet educated in this respect. One who has no qualms about blowing his smoke in your face, or who habitually interrupts when someone tries to say something to him, or the know‑it‑all who cannot listen sympathetically to an inquiring student, is grossly lacking in his education. Good manners are sometimes called minor morals, but let's just say they are a part of the moral education that the dean is calling for. And if we must have courses in which people are taught to be decent and civil, then I say let's have the courses.

 

Another way of saying what the dean is calling for in numbers 4 and 5 is that education is to reach the heart as well as the head. Education of the heart! We don't hear much about that, and yet man is probably motivated more by the heart than by the head in most of his behavior. We certainly do not educate a poet or an artist or a musician, perhaps not anybody at all, if we work only on the head. Take the likes of Robert Burns as an example. He was a poor peasant boy who stole the hearts of the Scots by his songs and poems that throbbed with warm human emotion. A person is not quite the same who imbibes the spirit of "John Anderson My Jo" or "A Man's a Man for A' That." Bobby Burns learned somehow to touch the heart, and what power that is! Those of us who educate need to learn that art on a more general scale, even if not as intense. Even the study of geography can include the geography of human need.

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is another example. One commentator who sat with him during an interview said something to the effect that the Russian novelist's message to the world has a moral urgency about it. Is education really adequate that does not convey something of this quality in a person's view of himself and the world?

 

Christians should be bold in their faith by insisting that education is learning to walk with God. St. Luke records that Jesus of Nazareth "advanced in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man," which says something about what education should be. Christ‑likeness is the essence of the Christian faith, and to the believer it is at the very heart of all education. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment of all, it was something like raising the question of what makes for a good education. Jesus' reply was that man is to love God with all his personality and he is to love his neighbor as himself.

 

Dean Rosovsky quotes William Cory, master of Eton, as saying to a group of young men back in 1861: "You go to a great school, not for knowledge so much as for arts and habits." Is this not what Jesus was saying? Loving is not merely knowing about things, but it is doing for people. St. Paul's words in his love hymn of 1 Cor. 13 is even more direct: "Knowledge (alone) puffs up, but love builds up." So we can say that education is a matter of learning, laboring and loving.

 

The other four standards that the dean lists are more generally recognized, but even these are set forth in fresher, crisper terms. They, too, remind the Christian that while he may be a pilgrim in this world he is not a wanderer. To be educated Christians we must come to know the world better and to serve it more responsibly and resourcefully.  —the Editor