Education is important, right?
Right.
We have to function as part of this world – this collective – with its means of exchange and its laws and norms.
We have to provide, put food on the table for our families, and read and write and pay bills.
But education (and with it everything else in this life) is something much deeper, isn’t it?
Gosh, I think so.
You only need to ask “why?” or “so what?” half a dozen times and suddenly you are at the crux of it all.
Education is important because all of the rest of life is important too.
Understand: Everything matters, forever.
While “it is obvious that man’s education must be concerned with the social group and prepare him to play his part in it,” and therefore it is true in a sense that “[ m] an finds himself by subordinating himself to the group,” nevertheless, “[ t] he ultimate end of education concerns the human person in his personal life and spiritual progress, not in his relationship to the social environment.” It is vital, Maritain believes, to grasp “that man has secrets which escape the group and a vocation which is not included in the group.”
-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)
