In this first post, I begin to define what I don't mean by “education.” In the next, I'll begin to ask what an education is.
Practical Training
Such things as typing, driving a car, auto-repair, carpentry, are sometimes taught in schools, and are sometimes called “education.” They certainly are a matter of teaching and learning, but this sort of practical training isn't what a philosophy of education needs to address. Peoples' reasons for taking a class in such things may vary widely, but none of that makes much of a difference in how they are taught. There a well defined body of knowledge/know-how, and conveying that information and those skills is a rather straigtforward matter.
Unfortunately, the way “subjects” (history, literature, music, mathematics, science, etc.) are often taught in schools makes it seem as if they are nothing more than a certain sort of training. This is especially the case in mathematics and science, the idea being that we are training people so that they can do certain useful and important jobs in our society: Teach 'em biology, chemistry, physics and math so that they can become doctors, pharmacists and engineers. Honest work, all; but it turns out the best way to prepare people for the higher level of training they will need in those jobs is to give them an education the purpose of which is not to prepare them for those kinds of jobs, but to pass down to them the cultural and intellectual heritage of a free-born mind. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say that education isn't just a form of practical training.
Bildung
“Education” is sometimes used in a very broad sense to mean what in German is called Bildung. It means something like character formation, in a very broad sense of “character.” It includes the inculcation of moral virtues, and also of hygiene, the forms of politeness, cultural ways of signifying gender differences, and much more besides. In short, it is everything that forms individuals into a good persons and good members of their particular society. Taken as a whole, this is not the sort of thing that can be done by a school or by a tutor. In fact, it can't even be done by parents alone, though they play the primary role in the younger years. Still, an important part of Bildung occurs when the parental role is diminishing as a young person transitions to full adulthood and must learn to interact with other adults as peers.
Some theories of education lean very heavily on the notion that education is for all of life. Someone has summarized Wolterstorff's view in these words: “Education for life is, for Wolterstorff, not simply education for students' future lives but also for their present lives, and not simply for the lives of their rational, moral souls but for their full lives as whole persons in their communities and in the midst of ordinary human society. Christian education is for Christian life in God's world.” Since education is for the whole person, and since persons are body-and-soul in unity, not souls that just happen to have largely irrelevant bodies attached to them, Wolterstorff concludes that physical education should be part of the school curriculum.
Now, if “education” means Bildung, then it is certainly true that education is for all of life. And since Christ is Lord over all of life, I believe that the Bildung of a Christian should be a Christian Bildung. But what schools do is not, cannot be, and should not try to be, all of education in that broad sense. The special charge of a school or teacher is not a child's character formation. To say that this is not their special charge is not to say that they should remain entirely aloof from it. Anyone who performs the role of a caretaker for children is ipso facto involved in their character formation. Consider the analogy of a child, about twelve years old, in an agrarian society, whose family cannot afford to give him the leisure to get a thorough liberal education. The child must do productive labor. So he goes to work for a neighboring family, who could use some help on their farm. The adults in that family are in charge of him while he's working for them, and they have responsibility for his character formation during that time. Teachers have the same sort of responsibility. But in addition they have a special responsibility as teachers. And that special responsibility is to teach them, to give them an education. But what is an education?
