T. S. Eliot Archives - James E Hartley

Does Education Have an Aim?

“Education is a subject on which we all feel that we have something to say. We have all been educated, more or less; and we have, most of us, complaints to make about the defects of our own education; and we all like to blame our educators, or the system within which they were compelled to work, for our failure to educate ourselves.”

That comes near the outset of T. S. Eliot’s essay “The Aims of Education,” included in the posthumously published collection To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings.

The essay was originally a set of lectures Eliot gave in 1950-51 at the University of Chicago. What is striking about the discussion is how little has changed since then in thinking about the aims of education. Think of the enormous advances in other fields of knowledge, all of which have shaped the content of the individual classes in an educational system. In what fields, for example, would a textbook from 1950 still be useable in a college classroom? Yet despite those massive changes what we can call the Education Question is still unresolved.

What is an Education? Or as Eliot puts it in the first part of his essay “Can ‘Education’ be Defined?” As soon as you start to try to answer that question, you realize how many different ways we use the term. Which person is educated? The person who can read? The person who knows reading, writing and ‘rithmetic? The person who can read a newspaper? The person who knows algebra? Or calculus? The person who knows about Dante and Aquinas and Michelangelo? At what point can you say about yourself, “I am educated”?

Thinking through the question of definition is pretty interesting because it leads naturally into thinking about the aims of education. Eliot begins noting three quite distinct aims of education, however defined: training to earn a living, preparing for citizenship, the pursuit of perfection. The intriguing questions here is how those aims are related to one another and how they conflict with one another. It is a marvelous tangled mess.

The part that left me in deep reverie, however, comes at the midpoint of the essay, when Eliot describes the history of education:

We have already observed that the term “education” has become more difficult of definition as a result of social changes in the last three or four hundred years. We may distinguish four important phases. In the first, we were concerned only with the training of a small minority for certain learned professions. In the second, with the refinement of culture, we were concerned with the education of the gentleman, or of the honnête homme; and at the same time, with the supply of the rudiments of literacy to a humbler stratum of society. During the nineteenth century, the minds of educators were largely occupied with the problem of extending the benefits, or supposed benefits, of education as then understood, to an increasing number of the population. The problem was apparently simple: men still thought that they knew what education was—it was what a part of the community had been receiving; and so long as this education could be supplied to increasing numbers, educators felt that they were on the right road. But today we realize that we have come near enough to the end of expansion to be faced with a wholly new problem….In the nineteenth century, there seemed also to be only the problem of educating more of the members of society. But now we are at a stage at which we are not simply trying to educate more people—we are already committed to providing everybody with something called education. We are coming to the end of our educational frontier. Long ago we decided that everybody must be taught to read, write, and cipher; and so long as there were large numbers who could not read, write, or cipher, we did not need to look too closely into the question of what education meant.

A fascinating way to frame the question. We are still stuck in that fourth stage. Truly stuck. Once we have reached the point in a society where there is universal literacy and knowledge of basic mathematics and science, then what? The aims of education through 4^th grade are clear; there is relatively little debate about that any more. It is what comes after that where the questions loom large.

A student knows how to read; what do you have the student read? In a society with a cultural consensus on what things matter most, that is not a difficult question. But, what if there is no consensus? Who gets to decide what the student reads? Do we leave the matter up to “education experts”? But, in this case, what does it mean to have an expertise in education? Do the experts in educational theory automatically know the best aims for education? If you look at the content of a Master of Arts in Education program, you find a lot about technique, but very little about how to decide what content will make the best society.

Imagine we wanted to set up a program in which people will learn the best aim for the education in a country. Plato’s Republic had something like that. The Philosopher Kings decide. Can we agree on who should be our philosopher kings? Good luck even making a list of candidates for that job.

It doesn’t take long in ruminating about this to end up exactly where Eliot ended up at the close of his essay. “The Issue of Religion” cannot be avoided. We need a standard on which to evaluate different societal forms in order to decide on the best aims of education. A system of thought which provides an external standing place is a pretty good description of a religion. The religion is not a part of what we are examining when we think through the aims of education; the religion is the standard by which we evaluate those aims.

If this is right, then Eliot’s fourth stage of education is the most difficult even in a society in which there is a consensus about religion. Agreeing to teach a student to read is pretty simple compared to figuring out what educational content will prepare people to be good citizens or what careers an education should train people to do or what virtues will enable people to pursue perfection. In a society with a common religious foundation, those questions are hard, but they are at least potentially answerable.

What happens, however, when a society does not have a common religion? How do we decide on the best aims of education when we no longer share the same fundamental beliefs about what makes a good society?

The educational wars we see today fit so easily into this framework it is hard to see them in any other way. Think of all the candidates for the structure of public education today, and it is easy to see that this is a religious war being conducted under a different name. We have the Religion of America the Beautiful vs the Religion of Environmentalism vs the Religion of the Woke vs the Religion of Self-Esteem. All of these and more are vying for control of the curriculum.

Is there a way out? Is there a way to craft an educational system and the content of that education which bypasses this problem of warring religions? I can’t think of one. Indeed, the longer I think about it, the more I realize that it is hard to come up with any aim of education for the literate student which does not immediately further the aim of one of the those warring religions. The curriculum wars are the ideological equivalent of the Reformation wars, with, let us hope, a lot less blood.

What happens if we cannot agree on the aims of education? Look around.

Preserving a Culture

As I have rather frequently noted, when asked about the learning goals for my classes, I always reply, “To help students learn to read Shakespeare for Pleasure.”

Since most of my classes are in the Economics department, this answer always strikes people as a bit, well, odd. But, I am not joking when I say that.

To say that we learn economics in order to learn to read Shakespeare for pleasure is making a cultural argument. The study of economics is part of a larger intellectual culture, one in which we build models of the world in order to understand the world. The cultural argument is that Newton, Austen, and Smith were all building models, that thinking about those models is both enjoyable and illuminating, and that when you can learn from both Dickens and Ricardo, then you can enjoy learning from Shakespeare.

A vital part of this argument is that there is something about this culture which is worth preserving, worth handing down to the next generation. To see why it is worth preserving culture, we first need to think about what it means to have a culture. Enter T.S. Eliot.

“Notes Toward the Definition of Culture” is one of the essays in Eliot’s Christianity and Culture. The essay has seemingly modest aim: to define the word “culture.” Being by Eliot, the essay roams widely into all sorts of obscure nooks and crannies, but if you have ever read any of Eliot’s poems, you would expect nothing else.

The crisp definition of culture is:

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. And it is what justifies other people and other generations in saying, when they contemplate the remains and the influence of an extinct civilization, that is was worth while for that civilization to have existed.

That is a marvelous description of a culture in two ways. First, it is a rather accurate way of distinguishing our culture from the other aspects of our lives. Second, it gives a means to categorize a culture as a good culture or a bad culture by letting the future be the jury.

Culture comes in at many levels. There are the historical relics (Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby); the European imports (Hamlet, War and Peace, the Mona Lisa); the modern blockbusters (Marvel, Harry Potter); streaming TV (The Queen’s Gambit, Real Housewives); music (Bach, John Williams, Lana Del Rey and Dr. Dre); the holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, July 4);and the mighty trio (NFL, NBA, MLB). High culture, low culture, and maybe even something in between.

What is important is a structure of society in which there will be, from “top” to “bottom,” a continuous gradation of cultural levels: it is important to remember that we should not consider the upper levels as possessing more culture than the lowest, but as representing a more conscious culture and a greater specialisation of culture. I incline to believe that no true democracy can maintain itself unless it contains these different levels of culture.

The challenge for the modern age is thus not to ensure the existence of culture. The Kardashians will always be with us. Neither the NFL nor Marvel is on the verge of vanishing. The challenge for our age is to preserve high culture, to remind people that just because you like J.K Rowling, you shouldn’t skip discovering the joys of Dante.

There is a popular misperception that high culture is some sort of church demanding strict obedience; Thou shalt not speak ill of Shakespeare. While there is inevitably a relationship between the religion and the culture of a society, in both cases there is an acute need for debate and discussion within the hallowed inner chambers. Eliot’s comments on Christianity and culture apply equally to the discussion about the Great Books and music and painting.

Christendom should be one: the form of organisation and the locus of powers in that unity are questions upon which we cannot pronounce. But within that unity there should be an endless conflict between ideas—for it is only by the struggle against constantly appearing false ideas that the truth is enlarged and clarified, and in the conflict with heresy that orthodoxy is developed to meet the needs of the times; an endless effort also on the part of each region to shape its Christianity to suit itself, an effort which should neither be wholly suppressed nor left wholly unchecked. The local temperament must express its particularity in its form of Christianity, and so must the social stratum, so that the culture proper to each area and each class may flourish; but there must also be a force holding these areas and these classes together. If this corrective force in the direction of uniformity of belief and practice is lacking, then the culture of each part will suffer.

Another way of framing the challenge of our age is making sure there are enough people in the next generation to carry on that endless conflict between ideas in the sanctums of higher culture, to carry on the battles against heresy and work out the orthodoxy of the age.

High culture is ever at risk because the forces of low culture are like the sea eternally crashing upon the rocks. No matter how strong the rocks are, the sea will never stop crashing against them; but there is no guarantee the rocks will persevere against the forces of the sea. Sometimes a culture will crack under the strain; and the question for future generation is whether the culture produced anything still worthy of veneration.

Teaching people about the glories of high culture is not (or at least should not be) saying that mass culture is unworthy of attention. I, for one, thoroughly enjoy superheroes and the NFL. Mass culture does indeed fit Eliot’s description of being part of the thing that makes life worth living. But nether WandaVision nor the 2021 NFL Draft will be the thing that future generations look back on and say “It is good that such a civilization existed.” The legislation passed by Congress in 1885 is not what we remember about that year; we remember Huckleberry Finn, and we remember it because it is worth remembering. The challenge for education is now what it has always been, to hand down that culture so that Huckleberry Finn will never be forgotten.

The Wishing Game

Let’s play the “You get three wishes” game.

(And, yes, “ixnay on the wishing for more wishes.”)

Here is the challenge: Can you craft a wish which cannot be subverted?

Terry Pratchett’s novel, Eric, is, like all Discworld novels, a mash-up parody of innumerable other things. In this case, the primary objects of mockery are Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Homer, the Aztecs, and Dante. As with all Discworld novels, it is marvelous fun.

In the novel Eric tries to summon a demon so he can get his three wishes. He makes his wishes and in every case, while he technically gets his wish, it isn’t what he really meant. That idea has been done many times in other stories.

Here is the twist. It turns out there is a demon who has the job of figuring out how to subvert wishes. You make a wish, and this demon then thinks about your wish and figures out how to simultaneously grant you your wish in the technical sense that you have to admit your wish was granted, but making sure it is not what you really wanted.

I hereby invent a new parlor game. (Wait. Does anyone else call these things parlor games anymore?)

I hereby invent a new Card game which for $24.99 you will be able to buy on Amazon. Each card comes with a wish on it. Players then compete to come up with ways to grant the wish, but do so in a way that it is very unappealing to have the wish fulfilled. Something like Apples to Apples or, even more accurately, that Dictionary game where you come up with fake definitions.

Good times for all.

Anyone who wants to actually develop and sell this game, let me know.

Here is the first challenge: I wish someone would come along, take this idea, sign a contract with me, causing me to get fabulously rich off of the royalties from this game.

Your job: figure out how to both technically grant that wish, but make sure that I will not be happy that my wish was granted. You can use the comments section below for your ideas.

Reversing the question, though, is where this gets philosophically interesting. Can you think of a wish which could not be subverted? When I try to do that, I realize that the wish starts sounding like a legal document. Does the genie who grants wishes accept 50 page legal documents for each wish?

Why is it so hard to simply state a wish? Why are our wishes so complicated?

Eliot wrote (in East Coker):

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing

Is that the same idea? Is the problem that when I think about wishes for the future, I actually do not know what I want?

I wish to be happy. So, like Job, I am happy right before my world crashes down.

I wish to be permanently happy. So I spend my life consuming lotus plants or some other narcotic.

I wish to be happy because I have cultivated virtue. Does that work?

The problem with wishes of that last type is that they are wishes for a state of internal thought. To the best of my understanding of the three wishes game, you only get to wish for external things, things of the sort a genie can create. Wishing for happiness is cheating.

So, if I am limited to external things, do I have any idea what it is I actually want? Do you?