Food for Thought

Schooling Is Not Education
By Mortimer J. Adler

CHICAGO - For more than 40 years, a controlling insight in my educational
philosophy has been the recognition that no one has ever been - no one can
ever be - educated in school or college.

That would be the case if our schools and colleges were-at their very best,
which they certainly are not, and even if the students were among the best
and the brightest as well as conscientious in the application of their
powers.

The reason is simply that youth itself - immaturity - is an insuperable
obstacle to becoming educated. Schooling is for the young. Education came
later, usually much later. The very best thing for our schools to do is to
prepare the young for continued learning in later life by giving them the
skills of learning and the love of it. Our schools and colleges are not
doing that now, but that is what they should be doing.

To speak of an educated young person or of a wise young person, rich in the
understanding of basic ideas and issues, is as much a contradiction in terms
as to speak of a round square. The young can be prepared for education in
the years to come, but only mature men and women can become educated,
beginning the proms in their 40's and 50's and reaching some modicum of
genuine insight, sound judgment and practical wisdom after they have turned
60.

This is what no high school or college graduate knows or can understand. As
a matter of fact, most of their teachers do not seem to know it. In their
obsession with covering ground and in the way in which they test or examine
their students, they certainly do not act as if they understood that they
were only preparing their students for education in later life rather than
trying to complete it within the precincts of their institutions.

There is, of course, some truth in the ancient insight that awareness of
ignorance- is -the beginning of wisdom. But, remember, it is just the
beginning. From there on one has to do something about it. And to do it
intelligently one must know something of its causes- and cures - why adults
need- education and what, if anything, they can do about it.

When young adults realize how little they learned in school, they usually
assume there was something wrong with the school they attended or with the
way they spent their time there. But the fact is that the best possible
graduate of the best possible school needs to continue learning every bit as
much as the worst.

How should they go about doing this? In a recent book I tried to answer the
question, "How should persons proceed who wish to conduct for themselves the
continuation of learning after all schooling has been finished?" The brief
and simple answer to the question is: Read and discuss.

Never just read, for reading without, discussion with others who have read
the same book is not nearly as profitable. And as reading without discussion
can fail to yield the full measure of understanding that should be sought,
so discussion without the substance that good and great books afford is
likely to degenerate into little more than an exchange of opinions or
personal prejudices.

Those who take this prescription seriously would, of course, be better off
if their schooling had given them the intellectual discipline and skill they
need to carry it out, and if it had also introduced them, to the world of
learning with some appreciation of its basic ideas and issues. But even the
individual who is fortunate enough to leave school or college with a mind so
disciplined, and with an abiding love of learning would still have a long
road to travel before he or she became an educated person.

If our schools and colleges were doing their part and adults were doing
theirs, all would be well. However, our schools and colleges are not doing
their part because they are trying to do everything else. And adults are not
doing their part because most are under the illusion that they had completed
their education when they finished their schooling.

Only the person who realizes that mature life is the time to get the
education that no young person can ever acquire is at last on the high road
to learning. The road is steep and rocky, but it is the high road, open to
anyone who has skill in learning and the ultimate goal of all learning in
view - understanding the nature of things and man's place in the total
scheme.

An educated person is one who through the travail of his own life has
assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture, that make
him a bearer of its traditions and enable him to contribute to its
improvement.
Mortimer J. Adler was chairman of the board of directors of the Encyclopedia
Britannica. Article from The New York Times.