A Philosophy of Education

I. Introduction

While formally on education, the following reflections stem from two very basic, yet indispensable questions: (1) Who is man? and (2) What is his purpose? Our present culture has not only stopped looking for answers to these questions, but has gone so far as to stop asking the questions themselves. I believe, however, that the cessation of the asking and answering of these two fundamental questions has helped to produce a people who have lost a sense of direction and purpose (the two of which go hand in hand). After all, if we know not who we are and we know not that for which we are intended, then we cannot possibly know how to proceed through at succeed at life. Human life is a journey of who we are towards that purpose.

The people of Homeric times knew these questions well. They understood these questions as being at the very heart of human existence. They saw their lives as narratives, as epic journeys into which they were born. They understood the importance of accepting their role in the story; upon discernment of this role, every decision henceforth could be reduced to answering the question: “Which path will help me to reach the goal, the moral of the story?” Such a purpose-driven existence is referred to by philosophers as teleological. The telos (or final cause) is the end for which something is intended, and it is a first principle of metaphysics that everything has such an end.

Aristotle built on the tradition of these epics and spoke more formally about the telos of man, that end towards which he is ordained. For Aristotle, the most important questions can be reduced to, “How can I perfect myself as a human person?” And it is precisely the virtues that direct man towards becoming a “perfect human person,” virtues such as courage, temperance, patience, fortitude, justice, prudence, wisdom, etc. This attitude of actively striving to be better is what I refer to as a “maximalist attitude.” It recognizes that there is an end to be achieved, but at the same time recognizes that we are always on our way to achieving it, and that the journey and process of doing so is inescapably the very purpose of our lives.

Our students are being brought up in a culture that is communicating the polar opposite of a teleological philosophy. While society seems to stress the importance of goals, often couched as “achieving your dreams,” these “dreams” are not so much example of final cause but instead what I would call secondary goals, goals that are not goals in and of themselves. Secondary goals are fine, so long as there is a recognition that they point to a final goal. In other words, these secondary goals should be means to the ultimate goal, our telos. This is precisely what is missing from modern culture. Allow me to illustrate this point with an all too common dialog between teacher and student.

Student: Mr. So-and-So, I understand your altruistic statements on

knowledge, but the reality is, we need to be concerned with our grades.

Teacher: But why do you need good grades?

Student: Because we need to keep our GPA’s up.

Teacher: But why do you need top quality GPA’s?

Student: Because we need to get into a good college.

Teacher: But why, dear child, is getting into a good college so important?

Student: Because we need to get a good job.

Teacher: And why is that so crucial?

At this point, the conversation typically stops. The student is not sure ho to respond an even worries that the Socratic questions of the teacher may be without end. The problem, of course, is not that the questioning is without end, but that the student’s philosophy is without a proper end (telos). The most ideal students, having already (at the mature age of 17) discerned their purpose, will attempt to push the questioning forward with something like, “Because I want to be a doctor in order to help people.” This, actually, is at least getting close to the right mentality. It is attempt to approximate a final cause. But even the “helping of others” is a secondary end. We help people both because it makes us better people and because it helps to make them better people. (The question remains, though, what will this student do if the day comes when she decides that the medical profession is not for her. Will she still see her education as valuable in and of itself? If not, then her approximation of a final cause falls quite short of the ideal and shows itself once again to be an undirected secondary cause.)

This mentality is what I like to refer to as the minimalist mentality. Without a teleological sense, without the goal of improving one’s own humanity, the secondary goals become goals in and of themselves. When this happens, the temptation becomes to achieve the goal and then halt. For example, when the grade becomes the goal in and of itself, the natural question becomes, “What do I need to do to get an A?” And when the line is drawn, the temptation is to see the process as complete when the A is achieved. If instead, the question becomes “What do I need to do in order to become a better person?” then not only does the journey not stop at the A, but it also continues throughout one’s entire life, one’s entire journey. (We see a similar minimalistic attitude in the teenager’s obligation approach morality. They see their actions as governed by certain rules, and so long as these rules are not being violated, their actions are justified. Contrast this with a virtue-based ethics in which actions are meant for the perfection of the human person. Ironically, the rule-based mentality inevitably leads to more “rule breaking” than the virtue-based mentality.)

Our charge is to change the culture. We must stop seeing people as means to an end, such as economic security, etc. We must begin to see people as ends in and of themselves. We need to stop asking minimalist questions, and start keeping first things first. These two questions, Who are we? and What is our purpose?, must be revived, and I claim that it is not only the right, but the responsibility and the very purpose of education to do so.

II. On Education in General

If man is teleological in nature, what then is the purpose of education? Our culture tells us that the purpose of education is to “prepare students for the world.” Depending on the meaning of this, it can be either helpful or incredibly disastrous. (We see here one of the primary faults of the modern educational environment, the use of vocabulary and catch phrases that are never fully defined or explored philosophically. Undefined terms are an inevitable source of philosophical ruin.) “Preparing students for the world” can be disastrously if it means to give students the necessary skills to enter the work force. While the old “factory model” of education is often criticized for “churning out products,” I maintain that any educational philosophy that sees the student as a means to an end will inevitably end up as a “factory” of sorts. The production process and the end product may vary, but the factory climate will remain. If we see our students merely as future members of an economic society, we will inevitably present education as a means to that end. Moreover, seeing students in this light, as anything other than human persons, violate the personalistic norm, which states that under no circumstance is a human person ever to be used as a mean to an end, but instead is to be loved as a person.

If instead, we see education as what it should be, the formation of the human person, then we will see it as a primary good, not a pathway to worldly success. Yes, our students are future members of society, but society is not primarily economic. It is not primarily political. It is primarily moral. Recall the Homeric people. They understood their lives as narratives, narratives with a moral. Society is primarily a communio personarum, a communion of persons. As a communion, it is indeed one; it has an entity in and of itself. But as a communion of persons, it must not destroy the individuality of its members, but rather elevate it. Society is intended to perfect the humanity of each member, to allow each individual to strive more and more towards his or her own telos. Plato said that a good society is one that allows each individual to reach his or her proper end, one that allows each member to be fully human. If this is true, then we must drastically change the way we think about education. We are not educating just a future work force. We are not educating just future doctors, lawyers, politicians, teachers, fathers, mothers, etc. We are primarily education human beings, and the purpose of education must be to form the human person.

Does this mean that teaching skills for use in the work force is unnecessary? No, but what it does mean is that these skills are secondary matters. We must keep first things first. Only by doing so will we be able to keep both first and second things in line. The first and indispensable thing is to educate the human person as a human person. Our goal, our telos, is to be better people, and the goal of education is to help students to become better people. Then and only then will the second things, things such as work skills, knowledge base, and thinking strategies, have any potential for success. If we concentrate merely on producing workers, our nation will further lose sight of the dignity of the human being and we will find ourselves eerily close to the hellish disrespect for humanity found in countries like India and China. In its extreme form, we will find ourselves in Huxley’s Brave New World.

Education is valuable in and of itself. It is a “first thing.” We must stop treating our classrooms as a “step along the way,” as a means to get into college. We must start treating them as a “step along the Way,” as a part of our teleological journey, as an opportunity to make ourselves and our students “better people” … not just better workers, but better people. This is our calling as educators. This is our vocation.

III. On Mathematics Education

Mathematics is particularly guilty of losing sight of education as a good in and of itself. Mathematics, perhaps more than any other discipline, are faced with the question: When am I ever going to use this? The textbook writers have fallen in to the trap that many of us have fallen in to, that of trying to answer the question. The problem of course, is the question itself. It is a question that should never be asked, because there is one and only one answer to it (to which I will return momentarily).

The textbook writers and we teachers scurry around trying to find “real life” applications from architecture, engineering, music, etc, in order to motivate students. The problem, of course, is that these examples are typically contrived, and the students know it. In the process of trying to answer the question we have done two things. First, we have not really answered it and hence failed to motivate the student. Second, we have justified the question. We have confirmed (erroneously) for the student that the goal of education is to prepare them for some secondary goal, i.e. a career. In their mind, we have now confirmed that if there is not a direct application of the content to their future, then it is not worth learning. Further, we have assured that the next time a challenging topic arises, so too will “the question.”

What is the answer to, “When am I ever going to use this?” The “answer” is that the question is not a valid question. It is not valid because the purpose of education is not application! The purpose of education is not the preparing for future careers. The education of the human person is a good in and of itself; the purpose of education is to make the student a better person. Knowledge, wisdom, fortitude, courage … the virtues are what makes the human person better. They are not only the path that we must take to strive for our goal in life, but they themselves are also the goal. The answer to the question is, “This lesson, this subject matter, this very service that the school provides for you, will give you knowledge and wisdom (and along the way a whole host of other virtues), and this knowledge, and in particular the struggle that it takes to attain it, will help you perfect your personhood. Perfecting personhood is precisely the purpose for which you were created. Hence, this lesson, this material, is everything. At this moment, it is the most important thing, because it is an opportunity to improve your humanity.”

The problem, of course, is that if you already know this answer, you do not need to hear it. In fact, you would have never asked “the question” to begin with. On the other hand, if you do not “see it,” then you will not be convinced by it. What is my evidence for such a claim? I would venture to reason that everyone reading this either reacts with, “Of course,” or, “That is entirely too exaggerated and altruistic.” If you “see it,” if you believe it, then you do not see it as an impossibility, but instead you see your “job” as an educator not in terms of career, but in terms of character, that of the main character in the narrative known as your life. You understand the term vocation.

While mathematics typically has this problem in its approach to education, it is ironic that professional mathematicians are one of the most altruistic academics one encounters. They often do not care to search for an application, but they revel in the beauty of the theoretical discoveries by which they come. They understand very deeply that knowledge is a virtue, that it is a good in and of itself. This discrepancy between the attitudes of professional mathematicians and mathematics education is at the root of a fundamental problem for our discipline. If I were to stop the average person on the street and ask them to describe for me what the career of a professional mathematician is like, I would be very surprised to find an adequate description. I would imagine that most people would give answers such as, “working with numbers,” “solving complicated equations,” or “finding new ways to divide.” All of these, of course, are very far from the truth. For many mathematicians all three of them are flat out wrong.

So what? Would we not find the same phenomenon with the other disciplines? I don’t think that we would. I think that for most disciplines, people would have a decent idea of what a professional does, what their research is like. (Please understand that I am in no way claiming that the average person would understand the details and technicalities of other disciplines, merely their general descriptions.)

Why is this such a problem? If we teach students twelve years of mathematics and they come out of high school not knowing what mathematics is … I think that is a very serious problem. The life of a mathematician primarily consists in conjecture and proof. If we are not teaching conjecture, discovery, and proofs at every level of mathematics, then we are not teaching mathematics.

“But the students aren’t ready for it! But not all students will go into mathematics, so why teach these complicated ideas? After all, it is not really applicable to their lives.” First, I disagree. I think that it is the most applicable thing that we can teach them, far more applicable then most content areas that we teach. Second, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I repeat … the purpose of education is not to prepare student for worldly applications! It is to impart knowledge and understanding to students and to form them as human persons. The process of conjecture, proof, and presentation is invaluable for the formation of the person.

IV. On Grades

The telos, or goal of man is to be perfect in the art of humanity. We are called to constantly strive to be better people. The telos of education is to prepare and aide man for his telos. What then, is the telos or purpose of grades? Today’s students see grades as the end of education. The students are only secondarily concerned with understanding. They seek to understand so that they can get an A. In reality, it should be the other way around. The students should seek the A because it represents adequate understanding. Understanding is a virtue, A’s are not.

Should grades be motivation? Absolutely, so long as first things are kept first. What do I mean by this? A grade should be reflective of understanding, not of effort. If the goals of education are understanding and knowledge (both of which better the human person), then the grade should reflect progress along that journey. The proper “grade-motivation” should be as such: I seek to learn for the sake of bettering my knowledge, and hence myself. The teacher assesses my understanding and issues a grade, for example a B. I should read that B for what it is, a statement that my understanding is good, but could use some work, and I should use that as motivation to understand the material at a deeper level. In this mentality, the primary goal is understanding, the secondary end is the grade. Unfortunately, many of are students have switched first and second things. Their primary goal is the A. (Why? To get a good GPA, which leads to a good college, which leads to a good job, which leads …)

If the primary end becomes understanding, then students will become aware that education is a process. (Actually, it is more proper to call it a habit, habitus in Latin.) There is always more understanding for which to strive. In this way, the A students are working just as hard to increase there understanding as the B and C students are, even though their grade cannot get any higher. In this way, all students are self-motivated to improve themselves, and hence the goal of education is on its way to being accomplished. In this way, the grade becomes and aide to education, not the end of education.

V. Conclusion

These thoughts require a radical shift in mind set. It would profit all of us to return to the classics of philosophy … Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, etc. In their writings we will find the direction that is so lacking in our culture. It is no wonder that we have a rising number of students who graduate from college not knowing what they want to do. People today see happiness as merely an emotion, something that is passing. They do not see their lives as teleological. They do not see a proper end to which they are ordained. Without an end, we are lost, and notions such as “success” and “progress” become dangerously undefined. This is another way of saying that our story has no moral. Aristotle said that the proper end of man is happiness, but he meant something quite different than modernity’s notion of the word. He meant a sustaining state of being; he meant that state that is the “perfection of man.” A much better word would be beatitude. The path to beatitude, the path to our proper end, the way to become more perfect people, culminates in and is by way of the virtues.

Our goal as educators is to form our students as human persons, to educate them in the virtues. No matter what subject we teach, our discipline is only a path towards this common goal. In seeing education as a good in and of itself, and in imparting that to our students, we can and will change society. After all, society is nothing if not a communio personarum. As such, the change must begin with the person, and that means first ourselves, second or classrooms, and third, our school.