Dear TRA Families,
For centuries, the purpose of education was NOT to prepare children for a fruitful life of work. In fact, from the beginning of Western civilization, the thought leaders in education—people like Plato and Aristotle—didn’t really think education needed to equip children for a specific job at all.
But if it wasn’t future job preparation, what was it? And what does this mean for a TRA education?
For Plato, the end goal of education was actually character-oriented in nature. “There is one element you could isolate in any account you give, and this is the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure and pain, which makes us hate what we ought to hate from first to last and love what we ought to love. Call this education.” (Plato, Laws 653b1-c4). In other words, Plato believed the purpose of education was to cultivate the loves or the affections of the student so that they “love what they ought to love.” Does this sound familiar? “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)
Rightly ordered affections and appetites are what Plato elsewhere calls virtue. What is interesting to me is that while Plato’s motivation may be different than ours as Christians, his chief aim of education is actually the same. Plato wanted virtuous citizens because he believed it would result in a more virtuous society. For us, we want our children to be virtuous so that they might live a life that glorifies their Heavenly Father, and will also lead to a more virtuous society as a byproduct. Yet the value placed upon virtue as an end goal for education is the same.
Plato’s articulation of the main purpose of education being the cultivation of virtue became the dominant theme in the history and philosophy of education up until the 20th century. This view was first held by pagan philosophers, but was eventually picked up by prominent Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Basil, and Aquinas. Over time, those virtues that Plato articulated in basic form became codified in what we now understand to be the Cardinal Virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude (courage), and temperance. In the Sixth Century A.D., when Gregory the Great codified the list of Seven Deadly Sins, the church took the Four Cardinal Virtues and juxtaposed them to the Seven Deadly Sins but added Three Spiritual Virtues to make both lists of seven. The Three Spiritual Virtues are faith, hope, and love.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to discuss the ways in which we at TRA are hoping to help our students grow in love and appreciation for these virtues in a way that they begin to “love what they ought to love and hate what they ought to hate.”
Have a great week!
Eric
Extra Credit: See if you can figure out which of the Four Cardinal Virtues is missing in Raphael’s painting in the Vatican entitled “Cardinal Virtues.”
Check your answer: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_and_Theological_Virtues_(Raphael)
