The Most Important Question in Education
Ask toddlers what they want to be when they grow up, and the answers are wonderfully imaginative. Astronaut. Artist. Teacher. Veterinarian. And, from time to time, dinosaur.
Young children understand instinctively that the future is full of possibilities. Somewhere along the way, however, we become much more serious. By high school, conversations revolve around grades, test scores, college admissions, majors, careers, and résumés. These things matter. But after more than three decades in education, I have become convinced that we sometimes ask easier questions than the important ones.
Young children understand instinctively that the future is full of possibilities. Somewhere along the way, however, we become much more serious. By high school, conversations revolve around grades, test scores, college admissions, majors, careers, and résumés. These things matter. But after more than three decades in education, I have become convinced that we sometimes ask easier questions than the important ones.
The harder question, the oldest question in education, is this: What does it mean to be well educated
Young children understand instinctively that the future is full of possibilities. Somewhere along the way, however, we become much more serious. By high school, conversations revolve around grades, test scores, college admissions, majors, careers, and résumés. These things matter. But after more than three decades in education, I have become convinced that we sometimes ask easier questions than the important ones.
The harder question, the oldest question in education, is this: What does it mean to be well educated?
For centuries, educators have wrestled with that question. Cardinal Newman spoke of liberal education. Others of Christian humanism. The Germans used the word Bildung. But whatever the language, the idea is much the same. Education is about more than preparing young people for a profession. It is about the formation of a person.
Kids are unfinished human beings, and unfinished human beings have a remarkable tendency to surprise us, which is why I have come to believe that the work of schools is not merely to recognize excellence, but to cultivate it. Not everyone will follow the same path, and that is as it should be. Human beings are larger and more interesting than the categories we assign them.
Every August, schools begin again with unfinished human beings. Thank God. We do not know who will surprise us, and that is precisely why I begin each new school year with hope.
Education is about more than preparing young people for life. It is about helping them become the people they are meant to be. Which is why the full motto of Visitation Academy continues to resonate so deeply with me:
"Be who you are and be that well, to give honor to the Master Craftsman whose handiwork you are."
Those words remind us that education is not the manufacture of a product. It is the patient cultivation of a person. And why I still smile when a toddler announces that she intends to become a dinosaur.
Visitation Academy is an independent, private Catholic school offering a coeducational Montessori preschool and Kindergarten program, the area's only all-girl elementary program for Grades 1-5, and an all-girl middle school and all-girl high school.
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