(T.S.) Eliot found that education had among its purposes both the "formation of character" of the student and the transmission of culture. Indeed, it is precisely through the transmission of culture that the student's character is largely formed.
Aren't our schools digging a deep hole for our children these days?
Such spiritual emptiness was apparent between the two World Wars, and it was not confined to the European continent. Thomas Merton reflects about this time at the University of Cambridge during the 1930s: "What was wrong with this place, with all these people? Why was everything so empty? ...It seemed to me that Cambridge, and, to some extent, the whole of England, were pretending, with an elaborate and intent and conscious, and perhaps in some cases a courageous effort, to act as if it were alive. And it took a lot of acting."
Contrast this with a historical perspective of the "Greatest Generation" who fought valiantly in WWII:
Stephen Ambrose writes: "In my interviews with WWII veterans, they would sometimes tell me that the reason they fought was they had learned as children the difference between right and wrong and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed..."
That the "greatest generation" went to war with confidence that right would triumph is no accident of history. (They) may have been one of the greatest examples of what an educational system that built character by transmitting its moral culture can produce.
We have a tall order ahead of us, we home schooling moms. And those of us who do not home school have it even harder. To instill a culture and a character that is all but absent from schools and society these days. To swim upstream against the present culture that is predominantly and forcefully being shoved down our children's throats.
To foster the next "greatest generation."
:)
1 comment:
ABSOLUTELY ... being a parent is hard work
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