Education: The Purpose is…?

Throughout history, education has been a much-debated subject. There are many different views on what the purpose of education should be and what the best methods are. Some say that the purpose of education is to teach information, and that teaching how to use the information is unnecessary. Others, such as Dorothy Sayers, say that the purpose of education is to teach students how to think and use information. Some, like C.S. Lewis, argue that the purpose of education is to teach students morals and how to subjugate their emotions to reason. However, there are problems with using any one of these to the exclusion of the others. Each is valid, but none can stand alone. Although some think that education should center on only one or two of the following three things—information, reason, or becoming a proper human—education should focus on all three, because if any one of the parts is missing, the resulting education will produce people ill-equipped to be productive members of society.

The popularity of the conveying of information as the sole purpose of education varies from time to time and from place to place. Dorothy Sayers, writing in England around the time of WWII, says in her essay The Lost Tools of Learning, “modern education concentrates on teaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking, arguing and expressing one’s conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along” (10). At that time, teaching ‘subjects’—information—only was the popular purpose of education. Although unfashionable in some circles, teaching information only is in use here in the United States, sometimes under the guise of ‘teaching to the tests’. When questioned about educational methods in the United States, Elizabeth Pocock—a retired public school teacher—said that she taught her students more than just ‘subjects’. The catalyst for her resignation was a directive from higher officials demanding that teachers teach only what was required to pass the standardized tests.

Teaching information is vital to education, because without knowledge of information, people are ill equipped to fulfill their roles. Those who are illiterate, with no more than a rudimentary command of language, will find it very difficult to be responsible citizens because they will be unable to make informed decisions regarding public policy. Those with only a basic knowledge of math and economics will be an economic burden on society, since they will be unable to make informed decisions in business and personal finance. Those who know nothing of science and ecology are likely to wreak havoc on the environment, since they will be unaware of the ecological consequences of their actions. Those who are ignorant of history will be unable to learn from it, and will find themselves repeating it. All in all, lack of knowledge makes it very difficult to make responsible decisions, and therefore, to be a productive and responsible citizen.

However, although information is necessary, it alone cannot create productive members of society. If one knows facts, that does not mean that one is equipped to use those facts. Dorothy Sayers discusses the inadequacy of merely knowing facts, saying that although students who are taught only information may have knowledge, they may be unable to think, and to use or increase their knowledge (7-8). In order to use what they have learned, students need to be taught at least that it has an application outside of the schoolroom, and preferably to be taught how to use it.

Another educational purpose that some espouse is to teach reason primarily and information secondarily. This is what Dorothy Sayers advocates in her essay The Lost Tools of Learning. She points out the obvious failure of an educational system that produces a ‘gullibility rate’ higher than its high literacy rate (1-7). She goes on to suggest that perhaps education has been ‘improved’ much to its detriment, and that the cure of education’s woes can be found in a return to the medieval method of education (7-8). In medieval times, formal education was divided into the Trivium and the Quadrivium (Sayers 8). The purpose of the former was to teach the students to think and reason well, before moving on to studying primarily information in the Quadrivium (Sayers 8-10). In the Trivium, students were taught information, but information was merely a tool by which to learn to think, rather than being the focus (Sayers 8-10).

The advantages of teaching reasoning as well as information, as opposed to teaching only information, are readily apparent. Teaching reasoning plus ‘subjects’ has most of the benefits of teaching ‘subjects’ alone, with very few of the disadvantages, since students are not only taught the information that they will need to be productive citizens, they are also taught how to use it . Some might argue that spending time learning how to think takes away from the learning of facts, and that therefore teaching students to think is detrimental. Although it is true that there may be less time for facts, it is a choice between more time for facts with little ability to use them, or less time for facts with the ability to use them.

While much better than teaching only information, teaching reasoning plus information is not totally adequate either. Although it provides the skills required to become productive members of society, it fails to provide an impetus to use them productively. It is possible that a murderer could master the art of reason, and thereby escape capture for quite some time, but such a person is far from being a productive member of society, and is in fact pathogenic. C.S. Lewis says in The Abolition of Man, “It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism” (24). Without morals, one has no reason to be a productive member of society, and further, one is unable to be one.

As seen in his book The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis believes that one of the main purposes of education should be training in morals, or ‘just sentiments’— teaching students to like what they ought and dislike what they ought—because “the little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred to those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful” (Lewis 16). As was said above, Lewis argues that without such ‘just sentiments’, reason is incapable of controlling the emotions, and that therefore ‘just sentiments’ are very necessary.

The advantages of teaching ‘just sentiments’—or morals—are immense, since morals are what allow reasoning and information to be put into use. Morals are the catalyst that push people to become responsible citizens, to be honest, to work to conserve the environment. They are the reason why people choose to be virtuous. Without morals, there is no reason why people should not lie, steal, cheat, and murder their way to the top. Without morals, there is no reason why power should not be the ultimate goal, rather than filling one’s role well.

Although morals are a necessity, they cannot stand alone. Without a foundation in absolute truth, morals become merely a tool for creating human puppets, since without an absolute standard the only standard for right and wrong is that of the person in control. As Dr. John Mark Reynolds points out in his lecture Religion, Politics, and Culture: Late 18th to the 20th Century, morals alone cannot create virtuous people. If one relies on morals alone to create virtuousness to the exclusion of reason, one may succeed for a small amount of time, but if the reason is unconvinced the heart will follow eventually. Reasoning and information are also necessary since without them people are ill equipped to fill their proper roles.

Looking at these three possible purposes for education, it becomes apparent that although none of them can stand on their own, they work quite well together. Lewis says that the teaching of proper sentiments must be in place before rationality can effectively be used. Sayers says that without reason, facts are unusable. Facts, of course, must be taught in order for students to have the knowledge necessary to fill their proper roles. Therefore, education should have all three elements—moral instruction rooted in absolute truth, the teaching of reason, and the teaching of facts. None of these elements is complete in itself, but together they create a comprehensive educational system capable of producing truly educated people—people who are decent humans who can think and who know their facts—people equipped to be productive citizens.

In conclusion, while it is possible to focus on one or more of these three elements of education, only a combination can create a truly complete education which will prepare people to be productive citizens. If even one of the elements is missing, it renders the rest ineffective. Teaching facts alone is unproductive, since if one cannot think, one will be unable to use whatever knowledge one manages to gain. Teaching facts plus reasoning is better than teaching only facts, but it is still less than ideal, since without morals people have no reason to use their gifts and fulfill their roles. Teaching morals is effective, but only when based on absolute truth and paired with teaching reason and information. However, the three fit together quite nicely into a combined educational philosophy capable of turning out whole and educated people. This is much needed today when both morality and reason seem to be crumbling. If reason and virtue are restored to their place in education, there may yet be hope for humanity. If they are denied, what hope is there for the future?


Works Cited
Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Pocock, Elizabeth. Personal interview. 15 March 2005.
Reynolds, John Mark. “Religion, Politics, and Culture: Late 18th to the 20th Century.” Torrey Honors Institute. Biola University.
Sayers, Dorothy. Creed or Chaos? Including the Lost Tools of Learning. Eugene: Wipf and Stock 2004.