The Epicurean doctrine of the soul stands as a direct challenge to classical Christian education, as it provides the most comprehensive philosophical ancestor to modern materialism. We might almost see the entire secular modern zeitgeist, so entrenched in the western world, as merely the long shadow of Epicureanism. This fact alone gives the lie to modernism’s grandiose claims of progress, enlightenment and deliverance from medieval superstition. Little do its adherents realize that they have unwittingly adopted the views of one ancient Greek philosopher against the others! 

How true it is what the writer of Ecclesiastes said, that there is nothing new under the sun, a statement that applies more often than we might think in the realm of ideas. As a side note, this fact provides a potent rationale for introducing our students to the Great Conversation in our classical Christian education model.

Epicurus (c. 341–270 BC) follows right after Aristotle as the founder of a new school called “The Garden,”the counter to his contemporary Zeno of Citium, the originator of Stoicism. The vast majority of Epicurus’ writings have been lost to us, with the exception of a few letters by Diogenes Laërtius, a list of maxims, and some scraps preserved in the arguments of later writers. He taught that the highest good is ataraxia (tranquility, or freedom from fear) and aponia (absence of pain), and he aimed to deliver his followers from the superstitious fear of death and the gods through his claims of a materialistic and atomistic universe.

The Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius (c. 99 – 55 BC) provides the fullest exposition of Epicurean thought through his 6 book didactic poem De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”). In it a pseudo-scientific vision of the universe as made up entirely of atoms is used to unravel the “superstition” of traditional religions, as well as the immortality of the soul. As could be imagined, the implications of his views for morality are immense. While he ends book 4 with a diatribe against romantic love and sexual desire as a source of immense suffering and madness, and a distraction from rational philosophical pursuits, it is hard to remove him from the charge of nihilistic amoralism, or at least unfettered hedonism. There is a reason the biblical quotation, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” becomes associated with Epicureanism (see Isaiah 22:13; Proverbs 23:35; Luke 12:19; 1 Corinthians 15:32).

While we must ultimately reject its conclusions regarding morality and mortality, we will, following the ghost of these ideas into the courtyard, glean valuable warnings as well as helpful insights regarding the educational impact of our fundamental beliefs and the intimate connection between the soul, the body, and the process of learning.

The Material and Corporeal Soul

The Epicurean soul is defined by its substance: it is material and corporeal. This atomistic view directly opposes Aristotle’s hylomorphism, discussed in the last article, which held the soul to be the form or the “first grade of actuality” of a natural body. In contrast, the substance or essence of the soul, for Epicurus, is not form but fine particles. In his De Anima, Aristotle had spent a whole section demolishing the atomic view of the soul propounded by Democritus long before. Epicurus revived this view of the mind or soul as minute particles spread throughout the body 

Epicurus maintained a strictly materialist (atomic) view of the soul, the gods and the eternal universe as a whole and so might be the first progenitor of the leading myth of modern secularism. The mind (animus) and the soul (anima) are a corporeal aggregate of atoms. Lucretius specifies that the soul is formed of “very minute, fine, and tiny particles” (p. 112) This corporeal nature dictates the soul’s function during life, defining the relationship between the body and mind:

“Now I say that mind and soul are held in union one with the other, and form of themselves a single nature, but that the head, as it were, and lord in the whole body is the reason, which we call mind or understanding, and it is firmly seated in the middle region of the breast…. The rest of the soul, spread abroad throughout the body, obeys and is moved at the will and inclination of the understanding” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura III., p. 110).

According to Lucretius, the soul is intimately united with the body, being inextricably “linked on throughout veins, flesh, sinews, and bones” (p. 211). It’s hard not to be somewhat impressed by this stunning anticipation of the nervous system, even while we object to the ultimate conclusions of his philosophy.

The Soul as Biological Mechanism

Though the Epicurean view of the soul fails to account for the transcendent or divine aspect of the human person (the imago Dei), its emphasis on the materiality of the mind offers a surprising parallel to the modern discoveries of neuroscience and the physical substrata of cognition and sensation. It’s important to give the devil his due. Of course, we now locate the seat of the mind in the head rather than the chest–a view argued for later on by Galen, the 2nd century AD physician and philosopher, but the physical similarities of a central nervous system command center (animus – mind) and neural networks of a similar nature distributed throughout the body (anima – soul) are not inconsequential.

As the source of motion, the mind must be nimble because, as he explains, “Nothing is seen to come to pass so swiftly as what the mind pictures to itself coming to pass and starts to do itself.” This nimble nature means the mind “is very fine in texture, and is made and formed of very tiny particles”(pp. 112-113). Moreover, the mind is seen to act physically upon the body:

“This same reasoning shows that the nature of mind and soul is bodily. For when it is seen to push on the limbs, to pluck the body from sleep, to change the countenance, and to guide and turn the whole man—none of which things we see can come to pass without touch, nor touch in its turn without body—must we not allow that mind and soul are formed of bodily nature?” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura III., p. 111).

This description of the Mind (Animus) acting as the “monarch of life” (p. 119) that instantly initiates motion throughout the limbs highlights the importance of the physical mechanism of the body (what we now term the nervous system) in sensation and thought. The Epicureans, forced by their materialism to account for all consciousness through physics, explain that mental activity requires a delicate, highly mobile, and well-functioning corporeal nature. The fact that the mind is “distressed by the blow of bodily weapons” reinforces the inseparable bond between body and thought (p. 112).

Even without the benefit of magnetic resonance imaging, we can imagine how the experience of sensation itself might lead an ancient person to this conclusion. There must be some substance connecting my thoughts and will to my limbs. By comparison, Plato’s entirely non-material soul seems a bit farfetched and shadowy, while Aristotle’s hylomorphic soul might feel overly academic, with its complex distinction between form and substance. In a way it’s not surprising that the atomic conception of the soul survived Aristotle’s dismantling into the less philosophical Hellenistic era.

Mortality and the Pragmatic Pursuit of Tranquility

Epicureanism’s insistence on a proto-scientific and thoroughly materialistic account of the human soul serves a primarily pragmatic picture of death. The mind stuff simply disintegrates when the physical bonds holding it together are severed at death. Consciousness, an emergent phenomenon of life, which itself arose on its own, evolution-like, from an eternal, infinite universe full of swirling atoms, will simply cease with death.

The Epicurean position is absolute mortality. Since the mind and soul are material, they are subject to death and dissolution, contradicting the Aristotelean assertion that the rational soul or mind (nous) is “separable, impassible, unmixed and alone is immortal and eternal” (Aristotle, On the Soul, III. 5; p. 179). Lucretius argues that since the mind “can be changed by medicine,” it “has a mortal life” (p. 123).

An early adopter of the conservation of matter, Lucretius claims that the soul is “dissolved” into its constituent atoms upon death:

“Now therefore, since, when vessels are shattered, you behold the water flowing away on every side, and the liquid parting this way and that, and since cloud and smoke part asunder into air, you must believe that the soul too is scattered and passes away far more swiftly, and is dissolved more quickly into its first-bodies, when once it is withdrawn from a man’s limbs, and has departed.” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura III., p. 209)

This doctrine aims to banish the “old fear of Acheron” and the “close bondage of religion” by confirming that death is nothing to us (p. 107).

Although there may be gods or a God, they are uninterested in us, and there is no afterlife, no Hades, and no eternal punishment. The fate of the atomic soul, therefore, establishes the profound ethical difference between Epicureanism and its philosophical predecessors, not to mention Christian theology. Right and wrong are not enforced by an impartial law of justice; there is no transcendence or final righting of wrongs, but only a hedonistic justification for virtue rather than vice as the most beneficial path. Yet, the Epicurean dedication to mental peace (ataraxia) does reveal a pragmatic insight that is nevertheless valuable to educators.

The Value of Physical and Mental Tranquility for Study

The Epicurean goal is pleasure (hedone), defined as the “absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul” (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus). While pleasure here is an end in itself, the means by which Epicureans achieve this—the dedication to study (for him primarily natural science)—does not devolve into all-out moral dissolution. This vision of ataraxia (tranquility) for the sake of pleasurable contemplation offers a positive pedagogical mandate: cultivating tranquility is necessary for serious intellectual work.

Lucretius urges his student, Memmius, to approach philosophy correctly:

“For the rest, do thou (Memmius), lend empty ears and a keen mind, severed from cares, to true philosophy, lest, before they are understood, you should leave aside in disdain my gifts set forth for you with unflagging zeal” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura I., p. 62).

The acquisition of knowledge is explicitly linked to the maintenance of pleasure, in a way that is similar to Aristotle’s view of the contemplative life as the happiest. Of course, for Lucretius this vision is corrupted through his anti-religious bias: knowledge of nature (philosophy/natural science) is essential, as it banishes the fears of the gods and death, providing the highest pleasure. The ultimate success of philosophy is to save us from the “high seas and thick darkness, and enclose it in calm waters” (p. 186) This emphasis on intellectual calm, when recontextualized, provides a compelling ideal for classical Christian educators to encourage a state of mental quietude in their students, necessary for the contemplative work of learning.

Modern research has observed a loss of higher-order thinking during an emotional crisis of fear, referring to it as stress-induced prefrontal cortex downregulation, which impairs executive functions like planning and logical judgment. This impairment occurs because a perceived threat triggers Sympathetic Nervous System activation and an amygdala hijack, forcing the brain to divert resources away from the complex thought processes of the Prefrontal Cortex and towards immediate survival responses. Essentially, the emotional, primal brain overrides the rational brain to prioritize fight-or-flight, leading to a temporary but significant cognitive deficit.

In a similar way, intense desire and craving activate the brain’s dopaminergic reward pathway, effectively causing reward-induced executive dysfunction where the subcortical reward centers override the rational Prefrontal Cortex; this results in a loss of top-down control and a short-sighted focus on immediate gratification over long-term consequence. The transcendent insight here, from Epicureanism to modern research, is the importance of cultivating a tranquil mind for the deeper and more lasting intellectual joy in learning. A lifestyle of emotional swings and sympathetic or dopaminergic overload is, after all, not a recipe for eudaimonia or human flourishing. As Charlotte Mason also emphasized, cultivating a vibrant life of the mind can be an important way of helping children avoid a life of moral debauchery imprisoned to less honorable sensual passions.

Furthermore, the Epicurean focus on a calm physical well-being highlights the importance of the material body for the work of learning. Epicurus teaches that “independence of outward things is a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much” (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus). This sober reasoning, aimed at securing “health of body and tranquillity of mind” is a pragmatic recognition that physical pain or excessive bodily wants are a hindrance to the sustained mental effort required for wisdom. We might see an agreement with Charlotte Mason’s insistence on the harmful effects of manipulating students into learning through a fear of punishments or the promise of rewards, as these actually undermine higher order thinking and genuine curiosity which has its own reward.

The Epicurean Legacy and the Materialist Ghost

Despite these practical insights regarding the physical substructure of sensation, the value of tranquility for study, and its limited moral applications, the Epicurean framework remains fundamentally flawed, leading directly to the philosophical dead ends that continue to haunt modern secular education.

The Epicurean reduction of man to mortal atoms necessitates a rejection of divine purpose, leading Lucretius to attack the teleological view of nature. The universe was created, not by a “foreseeing mind,” but by the chance “movements and unions of every kind” of atoms (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura I., p. 101).

If the soul is merely material, the quest for truth is limited to the pragmatic aim of avoiding fear and pain. This contrasts sharply with Aristotle’s elevation of the rational soul to contemplate necessary, unchanging truth (epistēmē and nous), culminating in philosophic wisdom (sophia). The reduction of the soul to mechanics anticipates the modern trend of reducing soul, mind and spirit to the mechanics of the amygdala, frontal lobes, and dopaminergic system. We do not contest these physical and physiological discoveries, but the philosophical (and religious!) claims are just that. The fact that there are connected physical processes underlying cognition do not and cannot prove that nothing spiritual or immaterial is present as well. 

And this is not even to mention that strict materialism has no way to account for truth itself or the mind’s perception of it. Philosophically, Epicureanism (like its descendant of secular materialism) provides the intellectual equivalent of a man climbing onto a large branch, facing the trunk of the tree, only to begin sawing off the branch he is lying on. How can material man, a mere jumble of atoms, perceive immaterial truth correctly? Epicurus simply abandoned Plato’s problem of accounting for the transcendentals; he did not solve it.

Likewise, the Epicurean system struggles to maintain objective morality, arguing that virtues are necessary only insofar as they prevent the individual from experiencing temporary breakdowns in the pursuit of his own pleasure. Justice, according to Epicurus, is not intrinsically good:

“Injustice is not in itself an evil, but only in its consequence, viz. the terror which is excited by apprehension that those appointed to punish such offenses will discover the injustice.” (Epicurus, Principal Doctrines)

If morality is merely a “compact” or a convention, it lacks the objective weight necessary for the integrated formation of the soul, which Plato defined as the pursuit of justice achieved through the proper ordering of the rational, spirited, and appetitive parts. Relativism in ethics follows hard on the heels of skeptical materialism.

Pedagogy and Warning: Lessons for the Classical Christian Educator

The Epicurean view serves as a powerful cautionary tale, highlighting how prioritizing mortal pleasure over transcendent purpose undermines the classical Christian mission.

While the Epicureans offered a remarkably acute understanding of how sensation and thought are linked to physical motion and the “fineness of texture” of the body’s material components, the reduction of the entire soul to this atomic mechanism is where the system collapses.

The materialist emphasis, though supporting the importance of attending to the physical health and nourishment of the body for learning, cannot account for the part of the soul (Aristotle’s nous) that is “incapable of being destroyed” and alone is “immortal and eternal”. By reducing the soul to a destructible material form, Epicureanism limits the student’s telos to the mortal pursuit of individual pleasure, contradicting the Christian view of the human person as being made for eternal communion with God and bodily resurrection.

Similarly, the Epicurean ideal of tranquility (ataraxia) is a desirable precursor to focused intellectual study, which the classical Christian educator can and should affirm under the general tradition of schole or leisure (see e.g., Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture or Chris Perrin’s The Schole Way). However, when this is made the ultimate end of life, it leads to the dangerous avoidance of necessary conflict and labor.

The Epicurean wise person limits desires and seeks simple, easily procured pleasures to “remove the pain of want” and “avoid conflict.” This stands against the classical ideal of training the soul (especially the spirited part) to embrace “physical training to endure pains and sufferings” and the toil necessary for growth. If we prioritize the elimination of distress above all else, we risk producing “unrighteous men, enslaved to their own prejudices and appetites,” who are unwilling to enter the labor and conflict required for both intellectual mastery and moral virtue. The Epicurean philosophy, by grounding the soul in atoms, ultimately confines humanity within the “deepset boundary-stone” of mortality, forever hindering the spiritual revolution of the mind required for true human flourishing.

________________

Aristotle. On the Soul. Translated by J. A. Smith. The Internet Classics Archive. Accessed October, 2025. http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/soul.html.

Epicurus. “Letter to Menoeceus.” Translated by Robert Drew Hicks. The Internet Classics Archive. Accessed October, 2025. classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html. 

Epicurus. “Principal Doctrines.” Translated by Robert Drew Hicks. The Internet Classics Archive. Accessed October, 2025. classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/princdoc.html. Lucretius. Lucretius on the Nature of Things. Translated by Cyril Bailey. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1910.

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In this case, we are like the haunted house in Pliny that only the Stoic philosopher Athenagoras can liberate by following the ghost to the courtyard and digging up the bones of an ancient murder. This tactic requires an approach that is both open and critical to the great thinkers of the past who have contributed to the jumble of ideas about the soul in contemporary culture. In the last article we responded mostly positively to Plato’s tripartite view of the soul, though of course we rejected the idea of the soul’s preexistence as inconsistent with a biblical worldview. But there is a dark side to Plato’s understanding of the soul that has cast its long shadow on western tradition.

In the article on the soul in Mortimer Adler’s Syntopicon, that masterful guide to the Great Conversation, the perennial question of the soul is framed around a central dispute: Is the soul a distinct substance that inhabits a body, or is it inextricably bound to the body it enlivens? This is not merely an abstract debate. As educators, our answer determines whether we see our task as training a “ghost in a machine,” or as cultivating an integrated, living person. Plato gave us the classic dualist image of the soul as a prisoner longing for release from its bodily cage. This was a helpful, if limited reaction to the materialistic atomism that preceded him in Greek thought. But it is Plato’s student, Aristotle, who offers a third way—a profoundly unified vision that grounds our entire educational project in the rich soil of embodied reality.

From a Christian perspective, Plato’s view might resonate well with the soul’s ongoing existence after death (a truth that Aristotle is also able to account for), but it falls short in accounting for the resurrection of the body, and therefore in what it means to be human from a biblical perspective.

For Aristotle, the soul is not the body’s prisoner but its very principle of life. His psychology (a word originally derived from the Greek for ‘soul’ – psyche), laid out in De Anima, is therefore the necessary foundation for his ethics and thereby his view of proper education. To understand how to cultivate the virtuous mind, we must first understand the living form of the human person. Aristotle’s hylomorphic view of the soul provides the essential framework for understanding and cultivating his five intellectual virtues. In this way, we can shift our pedagogy from the fragmented focus on either mind or body, so common in the modern world, to the integrated formation of the whole person.

A Soul Needs a Body: The Hylomorphic Revolution

Aristotle’s great innovation was to reject both the pure dualism of the Platonists and the crude materialism of the atomists. He charted a middle course known as hylomorphism (from the Greek hyle, “matter,” and morphē, “form”). As scholar Christopher Shields notes, Aristotle saw the soul not as a distinct substance, but as the “principle of organization of a body whose matter has the potentiality for life” (Shields, 2024). In short, the soul is the actuality of a body that has the potential for life. It is the substantial form that makes the matter of a body a living, unified thing.

Aristotle’s own language in De Anima emphasizes this unity with a decisive analogy:

Therefore, we have no need to inquire whether soul and body are one, just as we have no need to inquire whether the wax and its shape are one, nor in general whether the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter are one. (De Anima, Bk. II, Pt. 1)

This hylomorphic vision is revolutionary for educators. It means we teach embodied souls. The physical world of the classroom—the beauty of the art on the walls, the order of the desks, the posture of the students—is not incidental to learning. It is part of the architecture of the soul’s formation. Because all knowledge begins with the senses, the body is not a distraction from the life of the mind but rather its gateway to the world.

The Ladder of Life: Aristotle’s Ascent and the Imago Dei

Once Aristotle establishes that the soul is the form of the body, he spends the rest of De Anima investigating what this form looks like across the vast spectrum of living things. His method is empirical and observational; he builds his argument from the ground up, starting with the simplest forms of life and ascending to the most complex. This “ladder of life” not only provides a brilliant taxonomy of the natural world but also offers a profound parallel to the biblical account of creation and the nature of man. In a way that mirrors the progression of the days of creation in Genesis, Aristotle’s argument ascends through three fundamental levels of soul, or life-principle.

First, he observes the nutritive soul, the power shared by all living things, from the humblest plant to man. Its functions are the most basic: nutrition, growth, and reproduction. This is the soul in its most foundational sense, the biological urge to sustain oneself and to generate new life. This resonates powerfully with God’s first commands to his creatures in Genesis 1. To the plants, the sea creatures, and to mankind, the imperative is the same: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:22, 28). For both Aristotle and the biblical authors, life’s primary and most universal impulse is a good and ordained principle of flourishing. It affirms the goodness of our createdness and our participation in the fundamental rhythms of the cosmos.

Next, Aristotle identifies the sensitive soul, which belongs to animals and, by extension, to humans. This faculty adds to the nutritive powers a new set of capacities: sensation, appetite (desire and aversion), pleasure and pain, and locomotion. This is the realm of the passions and corresponds to the lowest part of the soul in Plato’s tripartite conception. Here we see the raw material for what the Apostle Paul calls the “flesh”—the seat of desires which, since the Fall, are disordered and at war with the spirit (Gal. 5:17). Yet these passions are not inherently evil; they are God-given capacities for experiencing and navigating the world. The capacity to feel pleasure is a gift that allows us to enjoy God’s creation; the capacity for anger can be a righteous passion against injustice. The Christian life is not about the Stoic eradication of these passions, but their right ordering. As educators, our work in habituation and character formation is largely the work of disciplining and directing this sensitive soul, training our students’ loves so that their desires are aligned with the good.

Finally, at the pinnacle of the earthly ladder, Aristotle arrives at the rational soul, which is unique to human beings and immortal in its essence (see De Anima, Bk. 3, Pt. 5). This is the power to think, to reason, to use language, and to grasp universal truths. It is here that Aristotle’s philosophy most profoundly intersects with the biblical doctrine of the Imago Dei. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion…'” (Gen. 1:26). While the Imago Dei is a rich and complex concept, it has always been understood to include this unique human capacity for reason, moral deliberation, and relationship with God. Our ability to abstract the form from the matter, to contemplate the eternal, and to order our lives according to a known good is the echo of our Creator’s rational nature. The ultimate goal of a Christian education is the redemption and sanctification of this power—what Paul calls being “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2)—so that our reason is no longer a tool for self-service but an instrument for knowing, loving, and serving God.

This ascent from the nutritive to the sensitive to the rational provides the essential psychological map for our work. We are tending to whole persons, honoring their physical needs, training their passions, and ultimately, guiding their reason toward its proper end. It is the perfection of this rational soul, working in concert with the lower powers, that Aristotle identifies as virtue.

The Soul’s Toolkit: Forging the Intellectual Virtues

In the Great Conversation, a key question about the soul concerns its powers or faculties. Aristotle provides a brilliant taxonomy, showing how the soul’s capacities build upon one another, from the basic nutritive powers we share with plants to the sensitive powers we share with animals, culminating in the rational power unique to humans. It is within the rational soul that the intellectual virtues reside. Aristotle subdivides our reason into two functions: the calculative part, which deliberates about contingent reality (what can be otherwise), and the scientific part, which contemplates necessary reality (what cannot be otherwise). Our task is to bring both to their peak form.

The Virtues of Making and Doing: Technê and Phronēsis

The calculative part of the soul works on the world of action and production, using the data provided by our senses. The two virtues that perfect it are technê and phronēsis.

• Technê (Artistry/Craftsmanship): As we explored in the “Apprenticeship in the Arts” series, technê is the excellence of making, “involving a true course of reasoning” (NE 1140a). It is the virtue of the artisan who can see the form of a chair in a block of wood and guide his tools to bring it into being. When we teach students the technê of grammar, rhetoric, or even long division, we are doing more than transferring skills; we are habituating their souls to reason productively, bringing order and form to matter.
• Phronēsis (Prudence/Practical Wisdom): While technê produces a good product, phronēsis produces good action. This is the master virtue discussed in “Counsels of the Wise,” the “reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man” (NE 1140b). Phronēsis cannot be learned by abstract rule-following. It requires experience—a deep reservoir of memories built from sensory engagement with the world—to perceive the particulars of a moral situation and deliberate well regarding what is best. We cultivate this by immersing students in history, literature, and scripture, training them to see the world with moral clarity.

The Virtues of Knowing and Contemplating: Epistēmē, Nous, and Sophia

Beyond the changing world of action lies the unchanging world of truth, the domain of the scientific part of the soul. Aristotle argues this highest human faculty, the intellect (nous), is unique among the soul’s powers, describing it as something divine and immortal.

This intellect is separable, impassible, unmixed… and when separated from the body it is that only which it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal… and without this nothing thinks. (De Anima, Bk. III, Pt. 5)

This power of the intellect is what allows us to move from seeing particular examples to grasping universal truths. The virtues that perfect this power are epistēmē, nous, and sophia.

• Epistēmē (Scientific Knowledge): This is knowledge of necessary truths through logical demonstration (NE 1139b). It is the virtue at work in a Euclidean proof or a scientific syllogism.
• Nous (Intuitive Intellect): This is the direct, intuitive grasp of the first principles from which demonstrations begin (NE 1141a). It is the moment of insight, the “seeing” of a self-evident truth that cannot be proven but only understood.
• Sophia (Wisdom): Sophia is the pinnacle of intellectual virtue, the union of nous and epistēmē (NE 1141a). It is the comprehensive understanding of the highest truths, seeing both the foundational principles and the logical conclusions that flow from them. This is the ultimate aim of a classical education: to equip students for the contemplation of ultimate reality.

The Aristotelian Classroom

Aristotle’s answer to the great question of the soul provides us with a fully integrated model for education. Our work is the patient cultivation of the living form, moving students up the ladder of their own God-given capacities.

An Aristotelian classroom begins with rich sensory experience, recognizing the body as the foundation of learning. It proceeds through disciplined apprenticeship to form the virtues of making (technê) and acting (phronēsis). Finally, it guides the student in the joyful work of demonstration (epistēmē) and the profound act of contemplation (nous), all in the service of wisdom (sophia), which finds its ultimate fulfillment in the knowledge and love of God.

References

Adler, Mortimer J. “Chapter 85: Soul.” The Great Books of the Western World, vol. 3: The Great Ideas II. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Aristotle. De Anima. Translated by J.A. Smith. The Internet Classics Archive. Accessed August 26, 2025. https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.mb.txt.

Shields, Christopher. “Aristotle’s Psychology.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/aristotle-psychology/.

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“Umm,” you begin.

“It’s the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric.”

“It’s…classical art and music. Like Beethoven and Mozart. Plus math and science.”

“It’s the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty. And Latin.”

Now I would not say any of this is incorrect per se, but as Chuck Evans, author of Wisdom and Eloquence, has noted, the focus is on the features, or the “how” of classical education, not the “why.” The “why” of a movement or organization is going to be its ultimate purpose, cause, or belief. It will be rooted in a story that generates a visceral reaction.

To explore the “why” of classical education, this article will focus on a a pivotal time in the development of Western Civilization: the Golden Age of Greece.

What is Civilization?

Before I examine the history of ancient Athens, it is important to reflect briefly on the nature of civilization. As I discussed in my previous article, civilizations are difficult to create and even harder to preserve.

Historian Will Durant defines it as such:

“Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end.

For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.” 

Notice the defining feature of civilization: cultural creation. When the four elements Durant identifies are present, the resulting outcome is creativity and constructiveness for what can then become, what we will see in the Greek’s case, a free and flourishing society.

The Beginning of Democracy

In light of these insights about civilization, let us now to turn to the development of ancient Athenian society, specifically how democracy emerged in this context. To be clear, the Athenians did not necessarily weigh the different forms of government—dictatorships, aristocracies, and democracies—and choose democracy. Rather, they stumbled into it, classical warfare style.

In 507 B.C., a conflict broke out as Athenians sought to overthrow the tyrant Hippias. While the Spartan king Cleomenes was able to defeat this tyrant, he soon set up a pro-Spartan oligarchy, essentially a proxy state for Sparta. But then, in a surprising turn of events, an Athenian named Cleisthenes rallied his people and was able to take over control of Athenians, setting up equal rights for all citizens within a democratic structure.

Cleisthenes was instrumental in setting up ten districts, replacing a familial clan structure, in order to mitigate bias and align loyalty with the new democracy. Each district selected fifty representatives by lot to serve on the Council, which would submit proposals for approval or rejection by the Assembly, the gathering of all citizens, to make laws and resolve civil disputes.

Incidentally, Cleisthenes also introduced the idea of ostracism, whereby one could be banished for up to ten years with a vote of 6,000 citizens (of about 43,000 citizens total). In a tragic case of irony, we are told that Cleisthenes himself was ostracized at one point.

Now it is helpful to clarify here that the Greek view of citizenship was not rights-based. That is, citizenship was not grounded in natural human rights as we understand them today. Citizenship was based on one’s heritage. Both men and women could be citizenship, but only men could vote. So, as we can see, this Athenian democracy was far from perfect, but it was a step in the right direction for with citizenship comes responsibility, and responsibility implies freedom. Indeed, as Will Durant puts it, “Never before had the world seen so liberal a franchise, or so wide a spread of political power” (Will Durant, The Life of Greece, 267).

Democracy is Threatened

But would this nascent democracy last?

In 490 B.C., the Persian king, King Darius I (not to be confused with King Darius from the Bible), attempted to conquer Greece, a conglomerate of city-states such as Athens, Sparta, Argos, Syracuse, and so forth. But surprisingly, the Greeks held them off at the Battle of Marathon. The “Great King,” as he would be known, apparently did not realize that he was opposed by men who “owned the soil they tilled” and who “ruled the state that governed them.” They were free citizens, and with freedom, it turns out, comes fierce responsibility. 

As the story goes, after the Athenians won, one soldier, covered in blood, ran a far distance on foot back to Athens in order to share the news and declare victory. Upon arrival, he praised the goddess of victory, Nike, declaring “Rejoice, we have conquered!”, before falling over dead. This endeavor would inspire both the “marathon,” a long-distance foot race, and the name for a particular modern athletics company.

After his defeat, King Darius retreated back to Persia and was eventually succeeded by his son King Xerxes (known as King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther). King Xerxes sought to conquer Greece again, this time with an alleged two million soldiers. He defeated the Spartans at the famous Battle of Thermopolae, despite the courage and sacrifice of King Leonidas and his three hundred men.

Ultimately, at the decisive Battle of Salamis, the Athenians were able to give the Persians a final blow. By assembling a massive naval fleet, they soundly defeated the Persians. The story goes that Xerxes watched his ships burn to the ground from a distance, left a lieutenant in charge, and retreated back to Persia. The Persians would not return for over 1,000 years, during the rise the Ottoman empire.

With the Persians soundly defeated, the Athenians were now able to focus on creating and constructing their civilization. They rebuilt their city and set up a strong naval defense through founding the Delian league, uniting city-states across Greece, and moving the treasury to Athens.

This pivotal time in history would allow for one of the earliest and certainly the most well-known democracies of the ancient world to flourish. It would be marked by rule of the people, not a dictator. In fact, the military victories that occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars are so crucial for the future of Western Civilization that John Stuart Mill, the great economist, once stated the following:

“The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings.” -John Stuart Mill      

The Golden Age of Greece

With the Persians dispelled, the golden era was ready to begin. It would be characterized by the rise of free peoples and an experiment for a short while in the exercise of individualistic freedom over communal dependence.

This era would also be known as “the Age of Pericles,” named for the great statesman who led many of the reforms and historic architectural feats. He built strong defensive walls around the city of Athens, strengthened the navy, and secured thirty years of peace with the Spartans.

It was during this time that an explosion of creativity occurred, including the building of the Parthenon, the great temple in honor of Athena, on the Acropolis. The arts, architecture, literature, mathematics, history, and philosophy all experienced historic creative innovations during this time.

Some examples of the art and architecture include:

Luminaries of this brief eighty-year period includes names such as:

• Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aristophanes (Literature)
• Anaxagoras and Hippocrates (Math and Science)
• Herodotus and Thucydides (History)
• Parmenides, Democritus, and Socrates (Philosophy)

The Centrality of Education

In addition to all of this innovation in the arts, sciences, and learning, the Athenians also knew how important education would be for this civilization to continue.

If Athens was going to be ruled by the people, that is, citizens, not a group of oligarchs–or worse, a tyrant–then the citizenry needed to be educated. They need to think carefully about what makes for just laws, along with the virtues to promote, and vices to suppress. What leaders of character, called archons, to elect. How to ensure the right laws were well-argued for and represented in the assembly.

Freeborn boys were educated from age six to sixteen. They were brought to school by slaves called pedagogues where they were then taught by their teachers. The curriculum had three main divisions—writing (reading and math), music (the lyre), and gymnastics (wrestling, swimming, and using the bow or sling), and later drawing and painting.

Higher education was provided by professional rhetors and sophists, who offered instruction in oratory, science, philosophy, and history. These instructors were quite expensive, and would later be critiqued by Socrates as disingenuous at times, but they did their part of educating the citizenry to represent themselves well in assembly. For if a civil dispute occurred, citizens had to represent themselves in court before a jury of peers.

After age sixteen, boys were trained for military service and civic participation as soldier-youths. Through physical training and instruction in democratic governance, literature, music, geometry, and rhetoric, they were preparing for full-freight citizenry. At age 21, they would be formally admitted by taking a solemn oath to the state, ancestral faith, and legal order (Durant, 291).  

Thus the seeds of the liberal arts, the tools for a free people to create and construct, were born.

Conclusion

Although the Golden Age of Greece, manifested through Athenian democracy, only lasted around eighty years (480-399 B.C.), it would impact the future of civilization for centuries to come. Due to war with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and encroaching Macedonian invaders led by Philip II, the Athenian democracy would eventually end. Historians often point to 399 B.C., when Socrates was tried and convicted in the assembly for impiety and the corruption of youth, as the turning point in this crucial age.

To be clear, the Athenian democracy was not perfect. Nor was Greek morality. It is important to note that there was a separate, and even more important civilization developing, which ran parallel to the Greeks at this time: the call of Abraham, the nation of Israel, the giving of the holy scriptures, and ultimately, the coming of Christ.

The eventual meeting of Athens and Jerusalem would become the great nexus of Western Civilization. With the fusion of the legacies of these two cities, this civilization would spark a new era for humanity. It would go on to produce some of the world’s first hospitals, orphanages, and universities. And it would promote distinct values of objective truth, human rights, equality, compassion, modern science, and human innovation. To be sure, this civilization has its flaws and dark moments, as all civilizations do, and yet we can also so say that it provided pivotal contributions for the flourishing of humanity. Future eras such as the Hellenistic period, the days of the Roman Empire, Christendom, the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment would all harken back to ancient Greece for inspiration and insight.

As classical Christian educators, the story of ancient Greece, particularly the “golden age” examined in this article, offers a glimpse into the sort of education we seek to pass on to our students today. For as G.K. Chesterton famously stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

And as Will Durant cautions:

“For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.”

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So begins the first chapter of the first volume of an eleven volume series by Will Durant entitled, “The Story of Civilization.” This series, which Will and his wife Ariel wrote over the course of four decades (1935-1975), covers the history of western civilization, from the ancient Near East to the Napoleonic conquests.

Durant begins his series by noting the preconditions and causal factors for a civilization to emerge in the first place. For example, if a region is frozen over by ice or if its soil is barren of nutrients, social order promoting cultural creation becomes very difficult. But as soon as these geological and geographical preconditions are met, the four causal factors for a civilization (economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and education) can begin to do their work. 

To illustrate the necessity of each of these factors, Durant turns first to economics. He writes, “A people may possess ordered institutions, a lofty moral code, and even a flair for the minor forms of art…and yet if it remains in the hunting stage…it will never quite pass from barbarism to civilization” (2). In this way, the economic transition to agriculture is a key form of development for a people as well as the building of towns and cities. For in cities, the wealth and brains of the region gather–to invent, to trade, to debate, and to create.

In the context of the civitas, the gathering of citizens, the other causal factors for the development of a civilization begin to gain traction. Political organization occurs through the creation of laws and formation of government. Moral traditions, rooted in values for the good of the community, develop. And the pursuit of knowledge and the arts launch a broader pursuit of truth and beauty that transcends mere survival. The harshness of life, from infant mortality to severe weather to social conflict, is offered meaning through moral narratives of purpose, hope, and redemption.

As the process of civilization unfolds, the civilization itself becomes its own form of independency, in some ways moving from effect to cause. Durant writes, “It is not the great race that makes the civilization, it is the great civilization that makes the people; circumstances geographical and economic create a culture, and the culture creates a type” (3). This type becomes the anchor of the civilization, the north star to which it it perpetually points. It is the set of ideals, the defining characteristics, of the city, the family, and the individual.

Thus we can see how civilizations begin, and can use this criteria to generally predict how they might end. The disappearance of any of the aforementioned conditions threaten to destroy them. For example: a geological catastrophe, a deadly pandemic, the failure of natural resources, mental or moral decay, the decline of social discipline, a lack of leadership, a pathological concentration of wealth, financial exhaustion, or declining fertility rates. 

Of course, the end of a civilization is not necessarily sudden or dramatic. Though Rome was sacked in 410 C.E., it was another fifty years before the empire fell. Nevertheless, the end of a civilization is in sight when its enduring values are lost. The set of ideals that define a civilization is its precious inheritance, a treasure that is to be faithfully passed on from generation to generation.

But what if this type, this set of ideals, is lost?

Five Crises Facing Western Civilization

In How to Save the West (Regnery Publishing, 2023), classicist Spencer Klavan identifies five major concerns that threaten the future of Western civilization specifically, moving this question from a theoretical exploration to an actual crisis. While he admits that it is a relatively recent practice to talk about “the West,” as a distinct historical phenomenon, historians and scholars are “…observing, in good faith, threads of continuity that stretch back through time and space” (xx). He therefore goes on to offer a working definition of “Western” as “the vast and complex inheritance of ‘Athens,’ the classical world, and ‘Jerusalem,’ the Jewish and Christian monotheists of the near east (xix).

This “inheritance,” I suggest, functions as the type, which Durant refers to as the foundation for a civilization. In the case of Western civilization, it is the set of ideals and masterpieces treasured through the generations that fit within a broader Great Conversation, full of wrong turns and dead ends, that nevertheless pursue a common vision for goodness, truth, and beauty. This conversation is not bound by race, ethnicity, or even geography. Nor is it restricted to a particular gender or social class. Rather, it is an unfolding story of humanity’s united search for meaning, composed of luminaries as diverse as Cicero and Frederick Douglass, Aeschylus and Shakespeare, Hildegard von Bingen and Abraham Lincoln.

While Klavan does frame his concerns in terms of a looming crisis at hand for the West, as a classicist, he helpfully reminds his readers that at every turn, a civilization can appears to be on the verge of collapse:

The intoxicating rise of Athens in the fifth century B.C. came to an abrupt and gory end in the Peloponnesian War. No sooner had the ancient Israelites made their way to God’s promised land than they strayed after foreign gods and suffered under foreign oppressors. The Western Roman empire crumbled into warring tribal oppressors; France’s revolution devolved from utopian optimism into terror and bloodshed; Communist uprising in Russia led to socialist dictatorship and millions of deaths” (xiv).

At the same time, here I am, in the twenty-first century, writing about Western civilization…in the West. Obviously certain events occurred which led for the transmission of the heritage to continue, for the ideas and values to be passed on. Whether it to be Jerome writing the Vulgate translation of scripture, Charlemagne sponsoring new schools, Celtic monks building libraries in medieval Europe, Johannes Gutenberg creating the moveable-type printing press, or American colonists creating a new republic, the civilization has endured.

Nevertheless, Klavan identifies five modern crises that could lead to its undoing, briefly stated as follows:

Crisis of Reality: A rejection of the eternality of objective truth and moral facts in favor of relativism, expediency, and virtual reality

Crisis of the Body: A rejection of the physical body with a turn to the inner self and posthuman technologies

Crisis of Meaning: A rejection of metanarrative, a transcendent explanation for existence that is grounded in objective truth

Crisis of Religion: A rejection of belief in God in exchange for a misplaced confidence in modern science

Crisis of the Regime: A rejection of the principles for a republic to endure, such as rule by law, popular sovereignty, and checks and balances

Solution: Educate One Child at a Time

It is beyond the scope of this article to explore each crisis in detail, much less to review the solutions Klavan suggests. A strategy for saving the West from the crises above is complex, multi-layered, and requires a deeper dive into ideas and philosophy.

At the risk of appearing simplistic, however, I want to suggest one straightforward strategy that could slow down these trends, if not reverse them: educate one child at a time according to enduring biblical values.

The 19th and early 20th century British educator Charlotte Mason famously championed the idea that children are persons. Created with immense potential as divine image-bearers, they enter the world eager to explore, create, build, think, and love. Education, then, is the process of helping children encounter the relations of the world they are born into–relations with God, others, creation, and knowledge. In this way, Mason famously called education “the science of relations.” By simply teaching children in a way that exposes them to enduring stories, poetry, nature, music, art, math, and science, we are forming them in a biblical view of reality that will enable them to respond accordingly.

After all, the underlying thread of the five crises described above is simple: a rejection of goodness, truth, and beauty. By offering an education that introduces children to these ideas, we shape their views of knowledge, reality, morality, and desire. This, in turn, will shape them into people who not only keep the economy going (one of the four factors of a civilization), but can run government, pass on moral traditions, and uphold an unrelenting pursuit of knowledge.

Mason writes,

We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room;’ should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? (School Education, p. 170).

Notice the end goal for Mason: living a full life. Is this not the proper end of education and civilization itself?

And how do we go about this education for a full life? Mason gives us a clue:

I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children. (School Education, p. 171)

Conclusion

G.K. Chesterton famously stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” Through this exploration of civilizations–factors for their beginning and crises that can lead to their demise–we can understand this insight with fresh perspective. Great civilizations do not occur by accident. Certain preconditions must be met, and, on top of these preconditions, specific causal factors are at play.

Civilizations continue when they take on an existence of their own, grounded in an ideal type, which functions as the north star for the ongoing formation of its inhabitants. When this type is preserved, the civilization flourishes and human flourishing is the result. But when we lose sight of this ideal, the ground becomes shaky, moral intuitions uncertain, and truth itself up for grabs.

There is, therefore, work before us now as there is in every era. For, as Will Durant puts it, “For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization” (4).

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Of all the medieval universities, Paris was pre-eminent. The University of Paris attracted scholars from every country, in large part due to the immense reputation it accrued due to previous esteemed professors such as William of Champeaux, Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard. So many students flocked to the university, that housing was scarce. Boarders could exact exorbitant rates of the young scholars, making this the education of the wealthy aristocracy. Thus, Thomas living at the priory was not only down to his religious commitment to his Dominican Order, but also presented an affordable residence with an easy commute.

At the outset of his appointment at the university, Thomas was required to present inaugural lectures that expounded a biblical text. This was known as the principia biblica, one of two lectures at the inauguration of a new professor. The passage Thomas chose for this brief lecture was Psalm 104:13. The story goes that he received this passage in a dream where a figure handed him this particular text. However we regard this legend, it seems that Thomas worked out a rather compelling delineation of the relationship between religious knowledge and the instruction of students in the liberal arts. In many respects, this brief lecture anticipates the fuller synthesis Thomas achieved in his career, reconciling faith and reason. This article explores his inaugural lecture, entitled “Rigans montes,” to draw from it insights for our own educational renewal movement.

An Exposition of Rigans Montes

The text of the inaugural lectures was lost for centuries until they were discovered again in 1912 among the writings of Remigio dei Girolami at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, according to Ralph McInerny, who translated the text for the Penguin edition (Selected Writings 5). One can find the text online or in its published form in McInerny’s edited volume, Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings. It’s a rather brief sermon that falls into four parts following a short preface. The sermon is an exposition of Psalm 104:13 which reads “You water the hills from your upper rooms, the earth is sated with the fruit of your works.” (Note: in the Vulgate the numbering of the Psalter differs from our English versions, so in printed editions of Thomas’s lecture, one will find it referring to Psalm 103:13.) For Aquinas, this text serves as a model for how divine revelation reaches the mind of the learner.

He seems quite Platonic when he reasons that the “gifts of Providence” are given to those who are lower “by intermediaries” in his preface. The water cycle becomes a metaphor for this intermediation. The clouds release rain at the top of the mountain. This water flows down the mountain, feeding the rivers, which go out into the land “so that the satiated earth can bear fruit.” By analogy, divine wisdom flows down through well-trained minds to those who are learners. He writes, “Similarly, from the heights of divine wisdom the minds of the learned, represented by the mountains, are watered, by whose ministry the light of divine wisdom reached to the minds of those who listen” (Selected Writings 12). This then structures the four parts of his sermon, so that his outline covers the height of doctrine, the dignity of teachers, the condition of learners, and the order of communication. Let us follow this outline.

To begin, divine wisdom comes from on high. Thomas references James 3:15 regarding how God’s wisdom comes from above. He acknowledges how some things are generally known. So, for instance, knowledge of God’s existence is naturally known by all. Some divine knowledge is comprehensible, such that Paul can state in Romans 1:19, “what can be known about God is plain to them,” that is all humanity. But some divine knowledge is hidden or veiled, requiring revelation through Scripture and the inworking of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, God reveals this high wisdom in order that “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). And for those who are in Christ, Paul’s admonition is that we would “seek the things that are above” (Col. 3:1). So, Thomas begins his exposition by accumulating a variety of text to make the point that divine wisdom is high and exalted, yet God pours this wisdom out in various ways such that it flows down the mountain, so to speak.

Because of the height of divine wisdom, teachers who would teach divine wisdom must have certain characteristics. Thomas begins by calling upon teachers to despise earthly things and cling exclusively to heavenly things. He quotes Philippians 3:20 where Paul writes that our citizenship is in heaven. The vocation of the teacher is a high calling. Next, the teacher must be illumined by divine wisdom. Returning to the image of the mountain, it is the top of the mountain that receives the first light of the sun in the morning. For Thomas, the teacher receives these high beams of light. He writes, “the teachers are illumined by the first beams of divine wisdom” (Selected Writings 14). Then, Thomas continues the analogy of the mountain, this time focusing on how a mountain provides protection to the land, a defensible position. The teacher of divine wisdom defends the faith and stands against error. He sees these characteristics exemplified in Paul, who defines his own ministry in these terms:

“To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.”

Ephesians 3:8-9

To express this a different way, a teacher ought to be enthralled and experience joy in being able to reach for the heights of wisdom, while also being grateful and humbled to be a vessel to convey this exalted knowledge to others. Such dispositions place the teacher in right frame of mind to climb the mountain and bring these truths down to the land below.

Learners also ought to have dispositions that make them capable of receiving divine knowledge. Chief among the dispositions is humility. To receive something so high, one must recognize how low one is. The student is of the earth in the analogy of the mountain. The knowledge comes down from on high. And like the earth, the student must acknowledge this lowness by remaining humble. Yet, like the earth, the student must also be characterized by firmness and fruitfulness. When we think about training students in a biblical worldview – or imparting divine wisdom to them – the goal is to establish them firmly in their faith as well as to enable them to experience fruit in their lives.

Thomas concludes his reflections by addressing the mode of communication. Even though God communicates his wisdom abundantly, the teacher cannot know everything and, likewise, the teacher cannot even teach everything he has come to know. Teaching is limited because we are limited beings. We know in part and we teach in part, with the hope that our insufficiency is empowered by God’s sufficiency. Thomas goes on to convey that teaching is an act of sharing in wisdom. The teacher does not possess the wisdom. Wisdom belongs to God, who shares abundantly with us. So the teacher draws the learner into this stream of shared wisdom. Because wisdom belongs to God, the power of God is required in order for it to be properly conveyed or communicated.

Reflecting on the Nature of Teaching and Learning

The mountain analogy expressed at the outset of his career is not quite his full expression of the harmony of all knowledge in his Summa Theologica. What this inaugural lecture does, though, is remind us of some key principles that are worth reflecting on.

First, the matter we get to work with as teachers is high and weighty. The dictum that “all truth is God’s truth” means that no matter the subject area, there is a pathway from the heights of the mountain top to the topic at hand. The truths handed down through the generations arrive in our classrooms on a daily basis. To engage with this material is to stand on holy ground, to open oneself to the mysteries of the cosmos and the depths of the human spirit. This is no small task. The work before us is worthy, but also demanding. We must approach it with reverence and humility, for the insights we seek to impart to our students have the power to inspire and transform. Before our students can engage with such wisdom, we ourselves must be captivated by it. Let us delve into these rich veins of knowledge, that we might emerge enlightened and empowered.

Second, in fulfilling our calling as teachers, it is easy to become weighed down by the demands of the classroom and the deadlines of the calendar. We can lose sight of the joy and wonder that first drew us to this calling. However, it is essential that we cultivate these qualities within ourselves, not just for our own fulfillment, but for the sake of the wisdom God has bestowed from the heights of heaven. There comes a point when Latin grammar or geometric proofs become mundane. And it is exactly at this point where we must ask of God to renew our curiosity and wonder. True joy and wonder can only be found when we humble ourselves and depend on God’s power working through us. It is not something we can manufacture on our own, but rather a gift that comes from surrendering our own agenda and allowing the Holy Spirit to work. As we learn to walk in this posture of humility and dependence, we will find a renewed sense of awe and excitement about the privilege of shaping young minds and hearts by means of the materials at hand. Our students will be the ones who reap the rewards, as they are inspired by teachers who radiate the joy of the Lord.

Finally, in our pursuit to teach students within this educational renewal movement, we must not lose sight of the true objectives to provide a firm foundation for our students to stand upon, and to cultivate fruitfulness in their lives. At the heart of this endeavor lies the timeless virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty. It is our responsibility to guide our students on a journey of discovering the profound truths that are foundational to life’s meaning, and to inspire them to live lives of moral integrity and excellence. Ultimately, the greatest gift we can impart to our students is the opportunity to walk in step with the Lord and to be discipled in the ways of the our Savior. For it is only through this intimate relationship that they will find the strength, wisdom, and purpose to thrive and make a lasting impact in this world. Let us, therefore, remain steadfast in our commitment to nurturing the whole person of each student so that they are well equipped with the tools they need to stand firm upon the ground of truth and to live fruitfully as they walk with the Lord.

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This series may not be able to answer all the controversies and complex intricacies of this age old set of questions, but at least if we follow out these different strands, we might be able to be more aware of our preconceived notions and how they are affecting our view of the children in front of us day after day. Even as Christians we can tend to hold contradictory notions at one and the same time and this befuddles our practices and responses to everyday occurrences. Once we follow the ghost of the soul out into the courtyard of ideas, we’ll find both valuable insights into who we are and how we should be educated, but also incorrect notions that should be discarded and reburied as liable to lead us astray. In this way we can end the haunting of our educational practices by false views and unhelpful practices.

We can profitably begin with Plato’s account of the soul as immortal and containing three parts which must be properly harmonized with one another through education. Before Plato significant thinking about the nature of the soul had already begun among earlier Greek philosophers, but no one thinker arguably has had a greater influence on Western conceptions of the soul than him. 

The Immortality of the Soul

In Homeric times the word for soul, psyche in Greek, had more of a straightforward referent, something akin to ‘life’ on the one hand, and ‘shade’ or ‘ghost’ on the other: 

The soul is, on the one hand, something that a human being risks in battle and loses in death. On the other hand, it is what at the time of death departs from the person’s limbs and travels to the underworld, where it has a more or less pitiful afterlife as a shade or image of the deceased person.

See Ancient Theories of Soul (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Summer 2009 Edition)

This set of meanings is roughly comparable to the common use of ‘nephesh’ in the Hebrew Old Testament, which may have originally meant ‘neck’ or ‘throat’. Your soul in this ancient Greek or Hebrew context is what makes you alive, and perhaps, ironically, the part of you that lingers on in Hades or Sheol after you have died. 

Plato develops especially on this second meaning in the Phaedo to express his view that the human soul is immortal. For Plato this immortal soul is embodied throughout a human life and can be affected negatively by the choices and lifestyle lived in the body. Purifying the soul from bodily entanglements is part and parcel of the true practice of philosophy, which involves a type of dying that leads to genuinely blessed life. 

This Platonic view of the soul will influence Stoicism, as well as later Gnosticism. Moreover, it seems almost impossible not to conclude that Jesus and the apostles are not, in some ways, both countering and affirming it, as earlier Jews had before them. For instance, Jesus says, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28 ESV). This seems to agree with the idea that the soul outlives physical death, adding further the Christian view of final judgment and everlasting “destruction” in hell. 

At the same time, we do not have any Christian affirmation of the idea that the soul pre-exists bodily life in normal humans. Therefore, Plato’s supposition that all learning is in fact remembering finds no support in Christian theology. It also brings with it its own set of problems, like the possible infinite regression of souls passing into and out of bodies. Plato’s socratic method of educating by ‘drawing out’ the knowledge already nascent inside the soul must find some other justification than this theory of the soul for classical Christian educators. 

But we have had no trouble doing so, since asking the student questions to prod thought is attested elsewhere, not least with Jesus himself. In addition, the value of socratic or maieutic instruction is found in training a student in the art of dialectical reasoning and, at the same time, forcing a student to analyze their own partially formed or borrowed answers to life’s fundamental questions for logical consistency. This process can help bring about a metanoia, a repentance or change of mind, where a student adopts a more consistent understanding of the world. We can safely do away with pre-existence while holding onto the human soul’s continued existence after death based on the biblical support.

The Tripartite Soul: Rational, Emotional, and Appetitive

In Plato’s Republic his tripartite theory of the soul finds its most stunning and educationally suggestive descriptions. The overarching concern of the dialogue is the attempt by Socrates to explain what justice is and why it is worthwhile in and of itself, regardless of society’s rewards. The tale of the ring of Gyges told in book 2 helps to bring the issue to a head by positing a scenario in which a man with a ring of invisibility could practice all manner of injustice without any fear of punishment. It is a case of absolute power corrupting absolutely and challenging the hearer on whether he wouldn’t do the same thing, if given the opportunity. 

Socrates’ extended answer to the question of whether justice truly leads to happiness or blessedness hinges on the order or disorder of the several parts of the soul. He maintains that the tyrant with absolute power is actually the most miserable and unhappy type of person. In order to explain why he writs large the nature of the soul, by expanding into an inquiry into the just city-state, which ends up having the same harmonious parts as the individual human soul.  “Corresponding to the three types in the city, the soul also is tripartite,” says Socrates (Perseus Digital Library, Book 9, 580d). “Each of us also in whom the several parts within him perform each their own task—he will be a just man and one who minds his own affair” (441d-e).

The three parts are the rational, high-spirited, or we might say emotional, and the appetitive. The symbolic images he assigns to these are a man (rational), a lion (spirited), and a monkey or monster (appetitive). “Does it not belong to the rational part to rule, being wise and exercising forethought in behalf of the entire soul, and to the principle of high spirit to be subject to this and its ally?” (441e) asks Socrates. These two parts, then, allied together, can effectively “preside over the appetitive part which is the mass of the soul in each of us and the most insatiate by nature of wealth” (442a). In Plato all the non-ideal forms of government, as well as the non-ideal forms of individual character, are explained through various types of disordering of these fundamental parts of the soul or city. 

We can pause at this point to note that Plato’s tripartite soul draws from our common sense self-awareness as human beings. Each of us has felt within 1) the massive force of appetitive desires, 2) the high emotional spirits of a desire for honor and the motivation to act, 3) the ability to think rationally about things, whether our own affairs or abstract sciences. Naming these various parts of the human inner life does not exactly put us in heavily speculative or theoretical territory, unlike the soul’s pre-existence. Whether we think of Freud’s superego, ego and id, or the biblical language of mind, heart and flesh or passions, we find ourselves assuming something very like the threefold division of Plato. In other words, Plato’s tripartite soul is fundamental and necessary, virtually uncontestable (unless we get down very deep in the weeds of exact distinctions), and therefore incredibly important and valuable.

Plato has posed the question of human justice or righteousness as a matter of a rightly ordered soul in harmony with itself. In doing so he framed the work of education and personal growth as aiming principally at what came to be called the cardinal virtues: practical wisdom or prudence, courage, temperance and justice. Practical wisdom arises when the rational part of the soul rules and is obeyed in a person’s choices. Courage involves the high-spirited part’s emotional regulation according to right reason, even in the face of fears. Temperance, or self-control, comes about when the mass of desires and appetites submit to the rational and spirited part, with the outcome of these three being a person who acts justly toward himself and others. 

How does this educational goal come about? we might ask. What pedagogy or means can be turned to this end or purpose of education? Plato’s answer is that it is “the blending of music and gymnastics that will render them concordant, intensifying and fostering the one with fair words and teachings and relaxing and soothing and making gentle the other by harmony and rhythm” (441e-442a). A literary, poetic, and musical education filled with examples of real goodness, truth and beauty (we must engage in some censoring of the poets, Plato asserts) will tune the heart to right reason. Physical training to endure pains and sufferings, improve fitness and build up well-trained reflexes of nerve and sinew, rather than pampering the flesh, will set the appetitive part in submission. (For more on gymnastic and musical education, see Clark and Jain’s The Liberal Arts Tradition.)

Based on his symbolic and tripartite image of the soul, the task of education becomes very clear, aiming both at justice and ultimate happiness or human flourishing as two sides of the same coin:

And on the other hand he who says that justice is the more profitable affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete domination over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast—like a farmer who cherishes and trains the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild—and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will first make them friendly to one another and to himself, and so foster their growth. (589a-b)

This type of self-culture implies the help of a certain type of parental discipline and educational regimen that might be otherwise unwelcome. The conclusion is that each soul has a “many-headed beast” within it that must be taken charge of, checked, and dominated. The heart and sense of honor and motivation must be made an ally to the reason, “cultivated plants” like good habits and right emotional responses must be “cherished” but wild growths must be pruned, weeds dug up by the roots. 

Moreover, the three parts of the soul have each, according to Plato, a different set of natural desires. The rational part is a lover of learning and a lover of wisdom, the natural philosopher in us. The spirited part is a lover of honor; we might call this our social-emotional nature, easily swayed by the wrong influences, but a powerhouse of energy and drive. The appetitive part is a lover of gain, money or profit, chiefly concerned with how to satisfy its own desires. According to this insight, then, the major concern of education is not simply how to train the skills of one individual part of the soul, i.e. honing the faculties of the rational part. For, if the appetitive part or spirited part are ruling the man, then the powers of the rational part of the soul can themselves be used in service of the man’s avarice and unchecked ambition. Instead, the challenge of education and self-culture is how to properly order the development and growth of the three parts of the soul in harmonious and proper relationships with one another. Each part must do its own proper task, claims Plato. 

To the extent that Plato is right about this, modern education is found to be wanting because of its abandonment of traditional values and morality. Without an agreed upon principle for the ordering of the soul’s affections, as C.S. Lewis explained in The Abolition of Man, education will tend to be disforming, making bloated heads and shriveled chests, or we might say, unrighteous men, enslaved to their own prejudices and appetites. This much we have said before on Educational Renaissance, but perhaps now we can see more clearly how it is this tripartite view of the soul that hovers over this educational problem. As we continue our series on The Soul of Education we will see how this fundamental insight from Plato finds expression or contradiction in various ways.

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In this article, we will do a little bit of cost analysis to determine whether students, parents and schools should continue to aim for college placements. We will also look at how financial aid works with some guidance on how to navigate a fairly complex set of factors that determine the actual cost families pay.

Unlike admissions, where one can look at a few sets of numbers to determine whether a student meets the admissions criteria, the financial picture is highly individualized. Each school approaches awarding differently and each family represents a unique financial situation. With this in mind, guidance counselors ought to be wary of a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the financial component of college guidance. That being said, hopefully this article will provide some insights and perspectives that will help you with both students and parents.

Does Rising Cost Mean Lower Value?

It is incontrovertible that the cost of college tuition – not to mention fees, room and board and books – have increased substantially over the past half century. An abundance of sources tracking college tuition costs from the mid-1970s to the present find that college tuition has tripled. A college education has become one of the most expensive items one will pay for in life, with only a house being more expensive according to financial planners.

One question to be asked is whether college has retained value as in investment. To answer this, we must consider two facets of what a college education is. The first facet looks at the role a college education plays as a lever for economic mobility. This facet takes into consideration the earning potential of college graduates in comparison to students holding only a high school diploma. A recent study done by the Postsecondary Value Commission was reported in Inside Higher Education. This study analyzed the comparative advantage of college graduates over high school graduates. “Institutions meet Threshold 0 if their students earn at least as much as a high school graduate, plus enough to recoup their investment in college, within 10 years.” In other words, the study is asking whether graduates are finding a return on investment within a decade of graduating. The study found “that threshold is within reach for about 83 percent of colleges, according to the report.” This indicates that most colleges see their alumni realizing a greater economic advantage only a decade after graduation. In terms of actual dollars, “The typical postgraduation earnings for alums of such institutions are about $8,981 above the threshold minimum.” (“Is College Worth It? Recent Analysis Says Yes,” Inside Higher Education, June 22, 2023)

The second facet has to do with economic adaptability. This concept is similar to economic mobility in that it encompasses how an individual with a college degree can move upward in terms of earning power. However, economic adaptability has more to do with the ability to change direction in light of changing economic circumstances. The concept here is that a college degree opens doors otherwise inaccessible without a degree, in some cases substantially more lucrative opportunities. A significant factor that contributes to these economic opportunities has to do with the network effect of joining a college community, including fellow students, professors, alumni, donors and companies that might prefer graduates from certain colleges. Ivy League schools immediately come to mind when we consider the network effect. However, many smaller schools enjoy similar advantages. So, it is not the case that attending a lesser-known school impinges upon this network effect. Instead, many of these smaller schools enjoy highly active networks.

These facets indicate that colleges and universities have retained good value as an investment despite the rising costs of tuition. Understanding the true value of a college education can be a very personal consideration. Multiple factors can contribute to what one genuinely values in life. Be careful about college rankings or marketing that emphasizes superficial aspects of college life. If a student truly values Christian formation, fellow students who are intellectually engaging, and professors who care about student learning, then finding a school that has these traits will end up being more valuable than a school that has a higher ranking or costs less.

Before moving on, it is important to be aware that the advertised tuition for colleges and universities—the “sticker price”—is rarely what typical families actually pay. Most students receive some form of financial aid, which can substantially change the price comparison between colleges. Even when we factor in financial aid, some families may still find that the cost of college outweighs their estimate of the value of a college education. There are some significant alternatives to higher education, a topic we will cover in another article.

Funding the College Dream

With a few exceptions – such as Hillsdale, Grove City, New Saint Andrews and Patrick Henry who do not accept federal funding – the first step to funding the college dream takes the form of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or the FAFSA. This form determines eligibility for financial aid based on a family’s income and assets. Colleges may use alternative or additional forms to determine institutional aid, but the FAFSA has become the norm for the vast majority of college applicants because it is tied to federal aid such as grants, loans and work-study. Because everyone’s financial situation is unique, providing guidance to students and families wanting advice on college planning can be tricky. This brief overview should help advisors think through the different categories most colleges are operating with.

Let’s think about financial aid as filling up different buckets. All of these buckets will contribute to the total cost of attendance at a college. In other words, we need to pour all of these buckets into the larger pool of the cost of attendance (COA), which comprises tuition, fees, room and board, and miscellaneous other expenses. The FAFSA determines an index number that is used to assess the financial need of a family. This index number used to be called the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) but will now be called the Student Aid Index (SAI) starting in 2024. The financial need of a family is then the COA minus the SAI.

The two big buckets that go towards a family’s financial need are need-based aid and non-need-based aid. Non-need-based aid is often referred to as merit-based aid. In other words, these are scholarships or grants that are awarded based on a student’s performance in some area, such as academics, athletics, leadership or some other category. Often these are awarded by the institution, but some scholarships are available by independent organizations such as denominations, private trusts, or guilds.

Need-based aid is another big bucket in the financial aid picture. Here we have grants, loans, work study and institutional funds. These funds are distributed based on the need assessment that is generated by the FAFSA. Since many of these funds are sourced by federal programs such as the Pell Grant, Federal Work-Study, subsidized and un-subsidized loans, and PLUS loans, they are regulated by federal policies. This means there are limitations on how much of any source a student will be eligible to receive. These regulations and policies can change over time, so families with multiple children may find it confusing and frustrating to keep track of all the details of their award package.

Knowing about these two big buckets provides a substantial orientation about what families can expect in terms of paying for college. Most families will not pay full price for college. However, the full price still needs to be paid from some source or another. So typically, a family will receive a financial aid offer letter outlining multiple sources of funding contributing to the total cost of attendance, with a bottom line that expresses the remaining amount to be paid by the family.

An aspect of this picture is that colleges have different processes for how they determine the aid eligibility. Some colleges emphasize merit-based awards. Some colleges are need-based only. Some colleges offer guaranteed four-year packages. Some colleges issue new awards each year. Some colleges begin with merit-based awards and then fill in the remainder with need-based sources. Some colleges issue their final offer in their award letter, while other colleges expect some amount of negotiation. All of these factors make it so that comparing offers from different colleges can be comparing apples to oranges. Because of this, it is important for parents and students to develop open dialogue with both the admissions office and the financial aid office at the colleges they are applying to.

This is a complex picture, but hopefully it also provides a positive outlook that funding is available for students to be able to access colleges that fit their profile. I have seen over the years that the financial component of college guidance is complex and at times frustrating. Yet, when we prioritize the student’s vision for what God is calling them to, and then finding the right institutions to support them on that journey, I have found that the financial picture comes together nicely. In some cases, families choose to send their child to the more expensive option because they have been convinced that the school is the best place to develop their child. In other cases, I have seen ways that God has moved in mysterious ways to make a financial pathway available for a student to attend a great school that seemed a remote possibility during the early days of the application process.

If a family has special circumstances that the FAFSA does not accurately represent, or if the amount the family has to pay after receiving aid is still beyond their ability to pay, they should contact the financial aid office. There may be an appeal process where adjustments to the FAFSA can be made or additional funding the student may qualify for. It is always worth asking and having a conversation with the college to see if there’s anything more that can be done. As college guidance counselors, knowing that this process is available can be a way to enable families to speak up for themselves, especially when they have found a college that is an ideal fit for their child.

Thinking Differently about the Cost of College

Having looked at the value of college versus the cost of college, I think it remains the case that a college education has retained its value as an investment. When we consider how there is funding that can go a long way towards defraying the cost of attendance, it still seems like there are great opportunities for families to identify schools that fit their financial profile.

Here is where I think it is worth considering a different perspective on the cost of college. All too frequently, college finances pit a family against a college. The family wants to keep as much money as possible. And the college wants to receive as much money as possible. This framework actually makes the whole college journey about money and not about higher values. Now let’s be clear, we’re talking about a lot of money. So I don’t want to be flippant about how important a life decision it is for a family to choose a college for their child.

Yet, I believe there is a different way to think about the relationship between the family and the college. If we have begun the college journey by identifying the student’s gifting, passions, vision for their future, and God-given calling, then what we want to do is back that mission-driven impulse with a partner college that will enable the child to flourish in carrying out this mission. What this means is that our search process becomes less about how a school ranks on the US News and World Report rankings or about the relative costs of the school. These numbers become far less important if we’ve found a location where a child will be mentored, nourished and trained to enter the world well supported on their journey.

What I am talking about here is a framework where the college becomes a partner. We’re looking for schools where the family would feel like they would want to donate to their cause. That the tuition cost makes sense as an investment not only in their child, but in the institution that is going to promote the wellbeing of their child. This framework does not pit the family against the school, but instead sees a high degree of alignment. It is my firm belief that there are schools out there that families will find that fit this framework once we cut away some of the marketing around colleges and some of the fears families have about the college search.

Speaking to college guidance counselors, it may be that your most important work is to uncover for families some hidden gems that really fit what they are looking for as a college experience. In some cases, it is the role of a college guidance counselor to help change the perspective of a family who might have cheered on a college football team for generations, who actually need to fall in love with a new college that will do a better job of cultivating their child’s talents. In some cases, it is the role of a college guidance counselor to get the student and parents talking with each other about values, goals and expectations. I think the vision of college partnerships is sound and compelling, and this idea will help you to provide good counsel.

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One consequence of these trends is the exclusion of literature and humanities from the broader conversation about education, its goals, methods, and ideals. Charlotte Mason, for one, found novels, fictional literature, and poetry to be a potent source for her educational philosophy. While certainly we can understand the reticence to feature too prominently the imaginative portrayal of a person’s education or development in exact recommendations for how to teach, literature and the humanities have as their subject matter what it means to be human. Therefore, they concern the education of human beings in all their complexity, glory, and fallenness. 

Poets, novelists, and fictional writers might not be good guides as to the length of school days and the exact details of curricula and lessons. But they have a farsighted imaginative perception that has the power to shake up, challenge and inform our philosophy and practices. Because of the very unreality and singular nature of their imaginative portrayals, they are able to shock us out of our complacency and restore our ideals and vision for the educational art.

In this article, we will be transported to the 19th century post-Napoleonic era in France to witness the education of Edmond Dantès, a poor first mate of a merchant’s vessel in the south of France. In the classic adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, young Dantès, who is on the brink of perfect happiness, about to marry his love Mercédès, is fatefully betrayed by two seeming friends, and sentenced to imprisonment without trial (Barnes & Noble, 2011 edition).

While in the dungeons of the Château d’If, an island fortress off the coast of Marseilles, Edmond Dantès receives a first-class education from one of his fellow prisoners, a learned Italian man called Abbé Faria. He also will learn from Abbé Faria of a tremendous fortune hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo. After Abbé Faria’s death, fourteen years in prison, eight of which he spent learning from the Italian, he will escape to become the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. His education has transformed him and enabled him to seek out the hidden crimes of his persecutors, who have only grown in power and riches since his own demise. 

In this article I will avoid any spoilers about the end of the book, which I myself am still reading–I also have not watched any movie version–and instead will confine myself to an analysis of the education of the future Count of Monte Cristo.

The Teacher-Student Relationship

When Edmond Dantès is found by his future teacher, he has all but given up hope in despair. Without seeing another soul than his jailer for six years, he has committed to starving himself to death, when he begins to hear a sound of file and digging. He breaks his resolution to try to discover what this is and Abbé Faria reveals himself in answer to Dantès’ prayer:

“Oh, my God! my God!” murmured he, “I have so earnestly prayed to You that I hoped my prayers had been heard. After having deprived me of my liberty, after having deprived me of death, after having recalled me to existence, my God! have pity on me, and do not let me die in despair.” (111)

Their relationship comes about as a result of God’s mercy, providentially arranging for Dantès to be lifted out of his despair in a dark and unjust world. Dantès’s relationship with his teacher has a unique beauty about it because he has been starved of human-to-human interaction; he is open to friendly and familial love in a way that few students are. As he says to Faria at their first meeting, “If you are young, I will be your comrade; if you are old, I will be your son” (113). 

The Abbé Faria quickly develops a paternal affection for Dantès. Like an expert psychologist and counselor, and with the piercing perception of a Sherlock Holmes, Faria helps Dantès discover from only his memories who it was that thus betrayed him and sentenced him to his unjust and torturous imprisonment. But their relationship has a moral and spiritual mentorship at its heart rather than a professional detachment:

Faria bent on him his penetrating eyes: “I regret now,” said he, “having helped you in your late inquiries, or having given you the information I did.”

“Why so?” inquired Dantès.

“Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart–that of vengeance.” (136)

As their relationship develops Dantès’s promise, “I shall love you as I loved my father” (113), holds true, and after 8 years Faria will adopt Dantès (“whom Faria really loved as a son,” 154) by granting him the secret of his treasure.

Unlike the situation of many modern classrooms the teacher-student relationship of Faria and Dantès is of long duration, spans multiple subjects of study (as we’ll see), and is more akin to personal mentoring and tutoring, with a familial father-son air. The mutual interest, joy in companionship and holistic integration challenges our factory model assumptions. Why is it that we have abandoned the tutorial or the multi-year influence of a teacher on a student’s life and development? Perhaps it is because we have also abandoned a traditional vision of the ideal teacher.

A Portrait of the Ideal Teacher

We are introduced to the learned Abbé Faria as an intellectual, certainly, but also as a paragon of moral insight: “The meagerness of his face, deeply furrowed by care, and the bold outline of his strongly marked features, announced a man more accustomed to exercise his moral faculties than his physical strength” (115). When he learns from Dantès of the removal of Napoleon from power and the restoration of the monarchy in France, he exclaims in a sort of biblical doxology:

“The brother of Louis XVI!–How inscrutable are the ways of Providence!–for what great and mysterious purpose has it pleased heaven to abase the man once so elevated, and raise up the individual so beaten down and depressed?”

And then later, 

“Ah! my friend!” said the abbé, turning toward Dantès, and surveying him with the kindling gaze of a prophet, “these are the changes and vicissitudes that give liberty to a nation.” (118)

Faria’s prophetic gaze is not only political, but has a spiritual or theological source. His later refusal to consider killing a guard during an attempted escape confirms him as a man of conviction and scrupulous character, whatever else he may be (121-122). 

Because of his moral fiber and his endless invention and great learning, he has not succumbed to despair, like Dantès, even though he has been imprisoned much longer (117), but has secretly made himself tools (115) from the odds and ends in his prison, pens and cloth to write his magnum opus, A Treatise on the Practicability of Forming Italy into One General Monarchy (123), and of course he has carried out a multi-year project of digging in an attempt to secure his escape. In addition to all this, he has used his free time in his cell as an opportunity to improve himself, continuing his own personal education. How is such a feat possible? Faria explains to Dantès:

“I had nearly 5,000 volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times I found out that with 150 well-chosen books a man possesses a complete analysis of all human knowledge, or at least all that is either useful or desirable to be acquainted with. I devoted three years of my life to reading and studying these 150 volumes, till I knew them nearly by heart; so that since I have been in prison a very slight effort of memory has enabled me to recall their contents as readily as though their pages were open before me. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli and Bossuet. Observe, I merely quote the most important names and writers.” (123)

In addition to this detailed knowledge of Great Books, through which Faria possesses “a complete analysis of all human knowledge,” Faria also knows five modern languages, as well as Latin and ancient Greek, through which he teaches himself modern Greek. If this description might have seemed to classify Faria as merely another arcane, ivory-tower intellectual, we should note the applied practicality of his slimming of the 5,000 volumes down to a select 150 and his further comment that he names the “most important names and writers.” This is a teacher who can discriminate between various authors and is able to distill for his eager pupil the essence and summation of “useful and desirable” knowledge. He knows how to do this for another because he has first done it for himself. 

It is worth noting again that Faria is not driven to despair by his imprisonment because his vast reading has provided for him an endless source of employment and joy in his own ongoing learning. The flow of thought overrides his unfortunate circumstances. He has spent his time, among other things, making a vocabulary of the words he knew in modern Greek and turning them back and forth in his minds in order to develop facility with the 1,000 he knew in order to be able to express perfectly anything he wanted (123).

But Faria is not a humanist and linguist alone. He also is an eminent source of useful information and scientific knowledge, as well as the inventiveness and crafty resourcefulness already displayed in his tools and excavations:

“The elder prisoner was one of those persons whose conversation, like that of all who have experienced many trials, contained many useful and important hints as well as sound information; but it was never egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his own sorrows. Dantès listened with admiring attention to all he said; some of his remarks corresponded with what he already knew, or applied to the sort of knowledge his nautical life had enabled him to acquire. A part of the good abbé’s words, however, were wholly incomprehensible to him; but, like those aurora borealis which serve to light navigators in northern latitudes, they sufficed to open fresh views to the inquiring mind of the listener, and to give a glimpse of new horizons, enabling him justly to estimate the delight an intellectual mind would have in following the high and towering spirit of one so richly gifted as Faria in all the giddiest heights or lowest depths of science.” (136)

Such an ideal teacher surely surpasses what any of us who are employed in the profession might hope to attain; nevertheless, he represents an expansive vision of the intellectual life that we cannot do without. Faria’s title, Abbé, names him a member of the clergy, whether cleric or Abbot, and recalls the term for “father” used of abbots and priests. He is a spiritual and theologically grounded intellectual, who has also attained to the breadth of humane learning and obtained a practical and deep scientific understanding. He is a polymath or renaissance man. He is therefore able to situate the various branches of human learning in relation to one another.

How far a cry is this ideal from the high school teacher or college professor, plyer of trade knowledge and skill development in but one area, yet without a comprehensive philosophical understanding of the whole!

The Ideal Student and Course of Study

We have already seen Edmond Dantès’s readiness to learn and relational receptiveness above. In many other ways he represents the ideal student for so grand a teacher. He has the proper sense of wonder and curiosity, as well as the right early experiences to be an attentive learner:

“Though [he was] unable to comprehend the full meaning of his companion’s allusions, each word that fell from his lips seemed fraught with the wonders of science, as admirably deserving of being brought to light as were the glittering treasures he could just recollect having visited during his earliest youth in a voyage he made to Guzerat and Golconda.” (125)

The process of learning or education is here compared to uncovering the glittering treasures of the east (two territories in India known for grand buildings and diamonds). Because of this proper disposition toward the value of learning, Dantès became so “absorbed in the acquisition of knowledge, [that] days, even months, passed by unheeded in one rapid and instructive course” (137). He enters the time-warp characteristic of the flow of thought already possessed by his teacher. But of course, they first determine the appropriate course of study before embarking on a journey limited only by the qualifications of the student.

“And that very evening the prisoners sketched a plan of education, to be entered upon the following day. Dantès possessed a prodigious memory, combined with an astonishing quickness and readiness of conception; the mathematical turn of his mind rendered him apt at all kinds of calculation, while his naturally poetical feelings threw a light and pleasing veil over the dry reality of arithmetical computation or the rigid severity of lines. He already knew Italian, and had also picked up a little of the Romaic dialect, during his different voyages to the East; and by the aid of these two languages he easily comprehended the construction of all the others, so that at the end of six months he began to speak Spanish, English, and German.” (137)

Not all students will have Dantès’s natural qualifications of memory, calculation and poesy. But these are nevertheless the key ingredients in a rapid and effective course of study. It would be incorrect to say that Abbé Faria taught him everything; in fact, he makes an interesting set of distinctions between principles and application, the sciences and philosophy. “Human knowledge,” he says, “is confined within very narrow limits; and when I have taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I do myself” (136). He then sets a term of two years as all that would be required to compass the principles, but not the application of this knowledge, noting that “to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other” (136). 

Faria here alludes to the Aristotelian distinction between true scientific knowledge, which involves the ability to demonstrate, and the mere memory or understanding of a thing. He also describes philosophy as “reducible to no rules by which it can be learned”; it is rather “the amalgamation of all the sciences, the golden cloud which bears the soul to heaven” (137). For such a prodigious intellect, Faria has a proper humility about what the teacher can convey to the student and what the student’s own learning and continuing education after schooling must do to complete the enduring love of wisdom (“philosophy”) that “bears the soul to heaven.” 

For the Count of Monte Cristo in the making, this scientific course of study is enough, and presumably his own efforts at blessing his friends, enacting vengeance on his enemies, and making a new life for himself when all is done, will be necessary to complete his journey. But one further thing is needed to prepare him for that task: the Abbé Faria’s finishing school:

“The abbé was a man of the world, and had, moreover, mixed in the first society of the day; his appearance was impressed with that air of melancholy dignity which Dantès, thanks to the imitative powers bestowed on him by nature, easily acquired, as well as that outward polish and politeness he had before been wanting in, and which is seldom possessed except by those who have been placed in constant intercourse with persons of high birth and breeding.” (139)

We often overlook the powerful effect of the teacher’s mode of being, “polish and politeness,” upon the students, or the natural effect of “constant intercourse” or social interaction with a certain type or class of people. We might describe some of these habits and customs as the result of enculturation, without which a student would be unprepared for certain callings in life. Dantès, for instance, could not have become the Count of Monte Cristo without this “air of melancholy dignity.”

Conclusion

Let us close by summarizing in the form of several propositions what we have discovered in our fictional excursion into the singular education of the Count of Monte Cristo. 

The bond between teacher and student should be more than professional, but friendly and even familial, on the order of adoption or apprenticeship. This reality makes our modern era’s rapid change of teachers and professionalized teaching staff conducted at economic scale a liability, rather than a benefit. Tutoring and tutorials, as well as smaller schools with teachers teaching the same groups of students across multiple years in multiple sub-disciplines, become desirable from the perspective of teacher-mentorship. 

The ideal mentor-teacher, especially at the secondary or collegiate level, is a man or woman of moral and spiritual standing, not just an intellect or a capable deliverer of content through an engaging PowerPoint lecture. The ongoing education of the teacher and his active engagement in interdisciplinary inquiry are not extras to be dispensed with at will but necessarily influence the ideal student who is to become like his teacher. We must avoid hiring teachers as subject-experts or mere practitioners, rather than as spiritual, moral, and intellectual guides with a commitment to lifelong learning.

In early youth the cultivation of a student’s interest, wonder and curiosity, as well as habits of attention and strength of memory are crucial to his later development. Students should learn languages and have vivid experiences that will serve as the hinges on which the doors of later learning will swing open easily. In secondary education, 150 Great Books well studied will be a better summation of human knowledge than 5,000 books indiscriminately encountered. In addition, the understanding of principles in the sciences must be supplemented by application and demonstration, in order to bubble up to that highest of attainments, the true philosophy or love of wisdom. 

Life itself will be the test of a student’s education, and especially those decisions and choices of prudential wisdom upon which a life is made new or wrecked upon the shoals of an unjust world. (P.S. I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Count of Monte Cristo.)

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For some students, they adeptly navigate these rules of the game from the outset. They understand that getting good grades contributes to their college entrance profile. These students often approach teachers about their grades and have a decent understanding of their cumulative GPA. They often prep themselves for standardized test either by watching YouTube videos, attending a Khan Academy class or find a local tutor who might promise to boost their test scores by a certain amount. More often, however, students enter high school unaware of these pieces of the puzzle, and they need the support of a guidance counselor to understand how these fit into the big picture of college entrance, college choice and career ambitions.

What this article aims to do is equip college guidance counselors with a good understanding of the typical rules in the game of college admissions. These come down to the big three items: the cumulative grade point average (GPA), test scores on standardized college entrance exams (SAT, ACT, CLT), and the application essay. For each of these items, I will offer some advice for how to coach your students.

The High School Transcript and Calculating GPA

Let’s begin with the high school transcript, the place where college admissions counselors will find the first item of interest, the cumulative GPA. Every grade received in high school is calculated on a scale, multiplied by the amount of credit that class is rated for, and averaged amongst all classes.

Here’s an example of a typical Freshman courseload:

The B+ this student received in her humanities class is equivalent to 3.3 points on a 4-point scale. This 3.3 is multiplied by 1 credit, the value of this class during fall semester. The B+ in biology is likewise earning 3.3 points, but this time is multiplied by 0.5 credits. The C in geometry is then calculated as 2.0 times 0.5. The A in Latin multiplies 4.0 times 0.5. The same happens for the rest of the classes for fall semester. The product of each calculation is then added up, totaling 11.95 grade points. This total is then divided by 3.5, to total credits earned during the semester to arrive at a grade point average of 3.41.

If you were able to follow all of those calculations, you’re doing well. Over the years I have taken time with many students and parents to walk them through those calculations, and there are always questions about how the calculations work. Calculating GPA is not an intuitive process. Just like any other game, you have to immerse yourself in the rules and conditions. Consider how these calculations compare to the rule sets for, say, chess or cribbage. All of this to say, as a college guidance counselor, it is worth your while to provide students and parents with basic information about your grading scale, how grades are converted into grade points and the calculations involved to arrive at GPA. And, having gained their audience, help these parents and students avoid fixation on GPA, instead show them that quality of classes and quality of work are what really matters.

Notice how the GPA of 3.41 tells us very little about the quality of courses taken during fall of freshman year and is disconnected from the rest of this student’s academic performance over her four-year career. Here’s where you come in as a college guidance counselor. You can tell the story in your letter of recommendation. Is this the typical freshman year for students at your school? Is this an academically challenging courseload? Did the student improve over time? Insights like this are ideal points to make in your letter of recommendation because it sets a context for an admissions committee to make sense of the numbers. In other words, a transcript tells a story of an academic journey. But it requires explication in order for that story to come across to the admissions counselors who receive the transcript amongst hundreds of transcripts from different high schools who all have differing grading scales, point scales, course options and calculation methods.

Telling the Story through the Letter of Recommendation

Speaking of admissions counselors, it is worth knowing that despite all your hard work to accurately calculate GPA, many colleges recalculate GPA. They have to compare many diverse expressions of GPA received from high schools across the country. This recalculation attempts to level the playing field so that they can get as accurate a point of comparison as possible to assess their incoming freshman. As a college guidance counselor, you can help these admissions committees understand your transcript by writing letters of recommendation that tell the academic journey of the student as well as how challenging the overall program is. For instance, does a transcript tell the story of increasing GPA each year? In the example provided above, you can already tell that the student has increased her GPA from one semester to another. If that trend continues, then there is a story to tell of increasing aptitude and college readiness. Parse out for the admissions officers reading your transcript courses that might be new or different to their ears, such as rhetoric, humanities, Bible or theology classes.

As you are writing your letter of recommendation, go above and beyond the academic transcript. Tell the admissions counselors about opportunities students have for leadership and mentorship in the school. Were there service projects or events where this particular student demonstrated tangible qualities? Did this student participate in any sports or performing arts? Even for courses that are core curriculum such as fine and performing arts, mention their participation in shows or on the crew. Tell about how this student is a well-rounded individual who will be engaged in the wider community of whatever campus they step on next year.

Now, you cannot possibly remember all these details about every student. So one of the items I have all juniors complete is a bullet-point resume of all of the activities they have participated in during their high school career. This includes school activities, but ought to go beyond school to include jobs, clubs, music or dance lessons, sports, missions trips, church participation, volunteer work, scouting badges, etc. I will come back to this bullet-point resume in the future, but for now it is important to see how this document will help you write a letter of recommendation that really captures the qualities of the student beyond what the transcript can say.

A Very Basic Overview of Standardized College Entrance Tests

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) first appeared in 1926 as the first test to incorporate intelligence testing as a means of verifying the innate ability of students entering top universities. The College Board, originator of the SAT, had been providing essay exams for the previous two decades. These were hand-written and hand graded, taking weeks to complete and assess. Now with a single test, students could be compared to other test takers across the nation, with the hope that colleges could assess the merits of entering students in an unbiased manner.

Prior to the founding of the College Board in 1899, universities in the United States had students sit entrance exams either on site or at testing locations in major urban centers across the country. As an example of the rigor of exams at the time, the Prince University Archives notes in an example of a typical exam from 1880 that, “the exams included English grammar and composition, world and U.S. history, geography, Latin grammar and literature, Greek grammar and literature, and mathematics” (Course Examinations Collection (AC054), Box 1). It is interesting to see how fundamental a classical education was at the time.

After World War II, the was a rapid increase in the use of the SAT, reflecting the influx of new students taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. An alternative to the SAT was created in 1959 called the American College Test (ACT) administered by ACT, Inc. Even more recently the Classic Learning Test (CLT) was created to provide an alternative utilizing classical literature and historical texts for its reading selections on the test.

Today, students are able to take any of these tests or all of these tests. In fact, students are permitted to take these tests multiple times. Unlike the original vision of the College Board in the 1920s, these tests are far less markers of individual intelligence than they are about the ability of students to achieve scores in keeping with the amount of work they have put into preparation for these tests.

The Scoring of College Entrance Tests

Beginning with the SAT, a student takes three subtests: Reading, Writing and Language, and Mathematics. The Reading and Writing components receive a combined score out of 800 points, which is then added to the Math section with a score out of another 800 points totaling 1600 possible points.

The ACT comprises four subtests: English, mathematics, reading, and science. Each subtest is calculated by taking the raw score as a percentage and then scaling that score in a range of 1-36. The composite score is the average of the four subtests, with a 36 the highest possible score on the test.

Finally, the CLT provides three subtests: Verbal Reasoning, Grammar/Writing, and Quantitative Reasoning. Each subtest is scored taking the percentage correct and then scaling that score in a range of 0-40. The overall score is the sum of each scaled subsection, with 120 begin the highest possible score.

All three tests offer an optional essay that is graded separately, meaning that the essay results are not factored into the composite or overall score. Because the subtests and scoring are so different for all three tests, each test offers concordance tables to show the equivalencies between the tests. For instance, a student earning a 110 on the CLT has achieved the equivalent of a 1520 on the SAT or a 34 on the ACT.

When it comes to guiding students, know that each test has its own peculiarities, making it such that some students perform better simply as a factor of the mechanics of the test. Students can take all three tests are allowed to take any of the tests multiple times. Many colleges offer “super scoring” which means that they will take the highest score of each subtest and create a super score from those multiple test results.

Since COVID, many colleges have made test scores optional. I think this has revealed the limited value of test scores in the decision-making process for many admissions committees. Gone are the days when you could chart GPA and SAT on the X and Y axes to determine both the admissions standards and the scholarship award. Still, the entrance test remains one of the essential tools used by schools to differentiate applicants. As you advise students today, the optionality of the test might mean that a student is better served by not submitting their scores. In the next article, I will help to build a framework for guidance that will enable you as a guidance counselor to provide insight into whether to submit scores. In most cases, they should still submit scores. And in all cases, they all should take at least one test.

Telling the Student’s Story on the Application Essay

The final component of the standard college application process is the essay. The essay must be well written, personable, authentic, and help the applicant stand out amongst thousands of candidates. It needs to convey the qualities of the student’s personality, his or her academic potential, and itemize some of the accomplishments achieved during high school. The essay obviously needs to showcase the writing abilities of the student, demonstrating the capacity to engage in college-level work. In addition, it needs to show awareness of the programs and characteristics of the college to which the student is applying. An excellent essay even develops themes about life and meaning. All of this in the space of 300-500 words.

When we develop a framework for guidance in the next article, we will return to the application essay to capitalize on this opportunity to say something meaningful to an admissions committee. For now, it is important to understand that most applications provide an essay prompt. Popular prompts might ask a student to share about learning from an obstacle, or to describe a person he or she admires. Christian schools might ask for a personal testimony. Non-Christian schools might prompt a student to describe a situation where they challenged a belief. Often these prompts are open-ended and general in nature. This can be very frustrating for students who find that the prompt gives little guidance on what the committee is actually looking for.

As an individual providing guidance, have your students write sample application essays during their junior year. Give them a few typical prompts so that they get a feel for what will be asked of them. Provide feedback about how they can convey the story of their life’s journey and how the potential college will be the next step on their journey. In essence, this is the simple maneuver of the application essay. It’s a succinct piece of communication between a student and a college. It needs to speak in the language of the college. And it needs to tell the college why this particular student would thrive at that location.

A good portion of the time you will spend with students during the application process is reviewing application essays. Coaching students in this way can be a great moment of connection as you help them craft their story and envision themselves at the next stage of their career. Sometimes these personal details are the hardest for them to express in terms that are authentic but not overly vulnerable. So carve out time to meet with your seniors early in the school year to go over application essays. If you have a large senior class, you may need to deputize some of your faculty to do some essay coaching. These moments of guidance are critical to the success of their applications. But I have also found that these moments also strengthen their relationship with the school.

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As we go into this historical review, we will keep in mind that much of what our educational renewal movement has been about stands against the erosion of values that came with industrialized education. I think there are great opportunities once this history is understood to guide students to colleges and universities that will be excellent destinations for students to build on their educational foundation at our schools and homeschools.

Universities Prior to Industrialization

Let us begin by considering how higher education became what it is today. We can go all the way back to the medieval universities. With the founding of the University of Bologna in 1088, numerous intellectual centers were established throughout Europe including Paris (1150), Oxford (1167), Cambridge (1209) and St Andrews (1413), among many others. These universities were representative of the Aristotelian scholasticism of high middle ages. Our understanding of the trivium and quadrivium within the modern classical education movement is significantly shaped by the medieval universities. Renaissance humanism, far from being a break from the universities, was an outgrowth of these universities which became centers of scientific and humanistic thought.

The word “university” is a composite of “unity” and “diversity.” The goal of the liberal arts curriculum was to find unifying principles across the diverse arts and sciences learned at these institutions. This unity of diversity was also seen at places like Oxford where multiple colleges were federated as a university, something that modeled the federation of states, such as the United States. Taking Oxford as an example, the career of a student began with oral examinations. All students entering Oxford were required to know both ancient Greek and Latin (this was true even into the early 1900s). The first year ended with an examination on the classics. Most students then went on to study degrees that would place them in law, politics or the church. In essence, they received the education of a gentleman as they were the sons of gentlemen who were to be placed in the positions of civil leadership.

The university model struggled to keep up with changing times, as advances in technology and medicine occurred largely outside these centers of learning. Thus Spencer Walpole took a dire view of the education on offer at Oxford, writing:

“‘The education imparted at Oxford,’ wrote the Oxford University Commissioners in 1852, was ‘not such as to conduce to the advancement in life of many persons except those intended for the ministry of the Established Church.’ Few medical men, few solicitors, few persons intended for commerce or trade, ever dreamed of passing through a university career.”

Spencer Walpole, History of Twenty-Five Years, Vol. 4: 1870-1875 (Longmans 1903), 136-137.

From Walpole’s perspective, the old medieval model was not suitable to meet the demands of a more technical age. In many ways he was correct that advances in scientific research were neglected in favor of the liberal arts, which had eroded into a status-confirming exercise for the aristocracy. Walpole was expressing the prevailing opinion in British society as educational reforms substantially overhauled the system from the 1870s to the 1940s.

As an aside, the widespread educational reforms in Britain set the backdrop for authors such as Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and others who lamented the loss of the liberal arts. Chesterton, for instance, lamented how modern reforms gutted education of any philosophical insight when he wrote, “But there is something to be said for teaching everything to somebody, as compared with the modern notion of teaching nothing, and the same sort of nothing, to everybody” (Chesterton, All I Survey, 50).

The same story as laid out here for the British educational system can be repeated as it regards American education. Harvard, Princeton, Yale and any number of schools underwent similar kinds of reforms, leading colleges to shift their emphasis from liberal arts education to technical job training and scientific research. To be fair, there is certainly a place for science and job training. However, as Chesterton astutely recognizes, the loss of the liberal arts was not simply about a change in the curriculum, but about sweeping social changes that emphasized secular atheism, gutting education of its life-giving ideas that empowered learners to consider what it means to live with meaning and purpose.

The Emergence of the Educational-industrial Complex

Already in the mid-1800s higher education saw significant reforms shifting colleges and universities towards research in medicine and technology. As mentioned above, this came at the expense of the liberal arts. Then in the first half of the 20^th century, higher education exploded. According the census data, the number of college degrees awarded in 1950 (432,000) were over ten times the number in 1910 (37,200). There were several factors leading to this massive expansion.

During the great depression, colleges and universities struggled with finances as did the rest of the economy. Roosevelt ignored the pleas of leaders in higher education to offer federal aid to colleges and universities, but he did create a New Deal program offering federal word-study grants to students. This opened the door for a new segment of society to enter higher education, bring greater economic diversity into American schools.

After World War 2, the G.I. Bill enabled millions of returning veterans to gain access to higher education. Just this influx of new students alone accounts for the massive expansion of colleges and universities in the mid-1900s. In addition, college campuses began to expand from small institutions to massive campuses with some state universities hosting tens of thousands of undergraduates.

Finally, the Great Society under Lyndon B. Johnson set the expectation that a college education was part of the American dream. Federal grants and loans subsidized this expectation in the Higher Education Act of 1965. From this point forward, higher education saw in influx of hundreds of thousands of new enrollment each decade.

The sheer size of higher education meant that it represented a significant sector of the economy with a huge federal budget allocated to support it. Combined with the reforms of the late 1800s, higher education was no longer about the lengthy process of forming students for leadership positions in society in the liberal arts tradition, but was now centered on technical job training. The industrial economy needed workers. It also needed consumers. Thus, going to college became a hallmark of American life where teenagers would expect to live in dorms, eat cafeteria food and tick the boxes of graduation credits. The combination of technical training and consumerist mentality. In his manifesto to change our conception of education, Seth Godin critiques what higher education had become by the latter part of the 1900s, “The mission used to be to create homogenized, obedient, satisfied workers and pliant, eager consumers” (Godin Stop Stealing Dreams).

It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who warned Americans of the “military-industrial complex” in his 1961 farewell address.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell address” (January 17, 1961).

The threat of an education-industrial complex mirrors Eisenhower’s warning. True, it doesn’t wield the same kind of destructive power, but an educational-industrial complex places its citizenry under the “unwarranted influence” of “misplaced power.” It raises the question as to whether it is worth placing our children in the institutions of higher education. What is the value of a college education? Have the rising costs of undergraduate education matched our perception of its value?

A New Post-industrial Economy

I have probably painted higher education in a rather poor light thus far. It is true that I have benefitted from my college education and regularly guide our high school graduates in the college selection process. I do not want to leave you without hope in what is becoming a rather bleak landscape when it comes to higher education broadly. There are two reasons that I am hopeful as it regards higher education for our students.

One, there remain numerous colleges and universities that offer excellent liberal arts programs. Students graduating from high school are not without great options whether they want to pursue specialized degrees or desire certain kinds of campus environments. It is actually an exciting time to be searching for colleges as classical school kids and their homeschooled compatriots are highly attractive to these colleges and universities. They know that generally speaking these are students who write well, think deeply and care about their learning.

Two, the demographic cliff colleges and universities are facing means that there is a simultaneous winnowing of small colleges and improvement of quite a number of collegiate programs. The recession in the early 2000s has meant that there are fewer students graduating in the 2020s. With lower enrollment, many colleges are needing to tighten their belts and make themselves more attractive to the smaller pool of applicants. While this might not mean savings for families paying for college, it can mean that tuition dollars are being invested in programs offering better value.

Conclusion

Having looked at the history of universities and capturing a sense of the current state of affairs, we are now better positioned to understand many of the mechanisms that exist in higher education today. In the next article we will delve into the way the game has been played for the past eighty years or so. Ultimately, we will promote a program of guidance that plays a different kind of game. Yet, understanding these rules will enable us as guides to understand the processes and procedures of higher education as it currently stands. We cannot go into college guidance naïve to the inner workings of topics such as federal funding, standardized tests and grade point averages.

For now, hopefully I have left you with a strong sense of how important the liberal arts tradition has been within the history of higher education since the middle ages. Figures at the start of the 20^th century cried out against the erosion of the liberal arts, figures such as Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis. Yet, situating the liberal arts within the broader framework of scientific research and technical training remains a significant question today. For instance, the debates between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois addressed this very question. While this question may remain prominent in our minds today, new questions are emerging with the rising costs of a college education. Is it worth spending so much in tuition only to have significant loan debt for decades afterward? Is the value of a college education worth the cost? I think these are actually significant questions parents and students today are asking when they begin asking for college guidance. Hopefully with the perspectives gained in this historical overview, some answers have emerged that address all of these questions.

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