Reading Without Learning: On Not Missing "Sublime Passages" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Reading Without Learning: On Not Missing "Sublime Passages" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | May 22, 2006

I.

We are near graduation weeks again (see "Catholic Commencements", IgnatiusInsight.com, June 4, 2005). The perennial question comes up: "What did our students get for their education money during their high school or college years?" No one, as far as I can tell, thinks anyone is getting too much, whatever too much of knowing might mean. And I know that we cannot measure in economic terms what we are supposed to learn in school at whatever level. Moreover, if we do use this economic criterion, we know that what we measure by such means is not what we most need to know.

Still, the question is not frivolous. Even if intangible, something is supposed to happen in our souls in college or graduate school, something that makes us more human, more of what we are supposed to be, being what we already are. As Professor E. O. Hirsh has pointed out (Education Week, April 26, 2006), it does seem possible systematically to teach children how to pronounce words, and in this sense how to read and write, without their ever actually coming to learn anything from their reading.

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Comments

[Jackson]

Yet another great article from Father Schall. Please do keep them coming.

"If our schools or universities conspire, by their theories or their atmosphere, to prevent us from wondering about the highest things, we are on our own. We need not be defeated by a very expensive education that teaches us that relativism is true, or by a free education that teaches things that corrupt us."

We need not be so defeated, but how many are! I'd give a leg to have had a teacher like Fr. Schall in college. It was only after a long search that I found his book, Another Sort of Learning, which provides fuel for a lifetime of great reading. It would be interesting to see what he might add in a second edition.