For What Do We Strive?
A student recently remarked a bit smugly, “can you believe that you didn’t read The Iliad until college, but we read it in 7th grade?” To which I spit back, “this is not due to your exceptional skill in dividing out classic texts, dear child, but because an adult handed it to you and told you to.”
And therein lies the struggle. That little exchange reveals the tendency in both our hearts to be the most, the best, the one that is right.
Most of us have heard it. The charge that classical educators and students are elitist, exclusive, smug. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Somehow the effort to recover a tradition of education that cultivates virtue and softens the mind and heart for seeing truth, at times gives rise to a reputation of arrogance. How did we get here? In the words of Christopher Perrin, “Like all forms of education, classical education is a human enterprise and its renewal has been human too.”
In fairness, most of us in classical education deeply believe that it is the best for our children. Why else go to all the trouble? I remember a rather opinionated friend in college, after being accused of “always thinking he was right”, responding with, “of course I always think I’m right. Otherwise I would change my mind.” I tend to agree with him to an extent. We as parents and educators are pouring ourselves out to push past cultural walls, understand and execute something we have never seen or experienced, and yet even in this struggle witness glorious fruit in these young hearts and minds. How could we keep from celebrating, and testifying, and inviting? Withholding this joy of discovery and wisdom from those who haven’t heard would be at best self-serving, would it not? Now, there will most certainly be times that this genuine invitation will be unfairly interpreted as boastful and needlessly critical. But what of those times that our pleasure is not in the sharing of something larger than ourselves, but rather in simply being…well…better.
Andy Crouch once wrote after working at Harvard for ten years, “Most people who pursue being elite end up being shaped solely by that: They become nothing but elite.” What a tragedy. To witness great beauty, wisdom, and truth, just to have it end with mere boasting is more than a waste. It is Adam and Eve in the garden, blinded by pride to the glory all around them. Do we recognize the Author of all that we celebrate? Do we fall to our knees in wonder over the truths that are so clearly beyond our capacity that we have no claim on any of them? Education - true education - that prepares our hearts and minds to love Christ demands humility. To glimpse a city, “whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10) will indeed spark genuine wonder and all boasting will rest solely on Him.
So what is the answer to myself and my student? There is great news for all of us. It turns out that God is in the business of turning what we see as high and low on its head. His name will be exalted (Luke 19:40). May we each - parent, teacher, student - repent for what is other and celebrate all that rests only on Him. And may we engage every neighbor, both paupers and kings, with deep humility, in recognition of the name in which we draw our very breath.
by Audra Cain, GCCA Logic School Teacher