from

Chapter I: The Aims of Education

from

Education at the  Crossroads

by

Jacques Maritain

.....the job of education is....to shape a particular child belonging to a given nation, a given social environment, a given historical age. Yet before being a child of the 20th Century, an American-born or European-born child, a gifted or retarded child, this child is a child of man.

Before being a civilized man and a Frenchman nurtured in Parisian intellectual circles, I am a man. If it is true, moreover, that our chief duty consists....in becoming who we are, nothing is more important for each of us, or more difficult, than to become a man.

Thus the chief task of education is above all to shape man, or to guide the evolving dynamism through which man forms himself as a man.

Man is not merely an animal of nature, like a skylark or a bear. He is also an animal of culture, whose race can subsist only within the development of society and civilization, he is a historical animal: hence the multiplicity of cultural or ethico-historical patterns into which man is diversified; hence, too, the essential importance of education. Due to the very fact that he is endowed with a knowing power which is unlimited and which nonetheless only advances step by step, man cannot progress in his own specific life, both intellectually and morally, without being helped by collective experience previously accumulated and preserved, and by a regular transmission of acquired knowledge. In order to reach self-determination, for which he is made, he needs discipline and tradition, which will both weigh heavily on him and strengthen him so as to enable him to struggle against them --- which will enrich that very tradition --- and the enriched tradition wil lmake possible new struggles, and so forth.

Education is an art, and an especially difficult one....Education is an ethical art (or rather a practical wisdom in which a determinate art is embodied).

If the aim of education is the helping and guiding of man toward his own achievement, education cannot escape the problems and entanglements of philosophy, for it supposes by its very nature a philosophy of man, and from the outset it is obliged to answer the question: "What is man?"

***********************************************************************************

We may now define in a more precise manner the aim of education. It is to guide man in the evolving dynamism throug which he shapes himself as a human person --- armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues --- while at the same time conveying to him the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization in which he is involved, and preserving in this way the century-old achievements of generations.

The utilitarian aspect of education --- which enables the youth to get a job and make a living --- must surely not be disregarded, for the children of man are not made for aristocratic leisure. But this practical aim is best provided by the general human capacities developed. And the ulterior specialized training which may be required must never imperil the essential aim of education.

The chief aspirations of a person are aspirations to freedom --- I do not mean that freedom which is free will and which is a gift of nature in each of us, I mean that freedom which is spontaneity, expansion, or autonomy, and which we have to gain through constant effort and struggle. And what is the more profound and essential form of such a desire? It is the desire for inner and spiritual freedom....Thus the prime goal of education is the conquest of internal and spiritual freedom to be achieved by the individual person, or, in other words, his liberation though knowledge and wisdom, good will, and love.