Saint Augustine, the erudite bishop and lettered professor of rhetoric, once wrote about his role as an educator: “Consider this great puzzle. The sounds of my words strike the ears, but the true Teacher is within. Do not think that any human teaches another. The sound of our voice can admonish, but the one who teaches is on the inside. The sound we make is useless.” (Tractate on I John III)
It is only through being in right relationship with this Inner Teacher that we can follow the North African Doctor of the Church’s counsel: “Search in ways by which we can make discoveries, and discover in ways by which we can keep on searching.” (De Trinitate, IX)
As someone involved in Catholic education from kindergarten through a doctoral degree, and now on the other side of the desk/podium for quite a few years, I would argue that the overall goal of such institutional formation is to foster precisely this relationship, one that can take the great intellectual achievements gathered in the storehouse of human knowledge and interrogate, employ and increase them by examining them in light of the master who imparted learning on the learned scribes as a child and said, “You have but one Teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters together.” (Mt 23:8)
There is a common claim bandied around that 65% of children entering primary school in the coming years will eventually work in jobs that don’t currently exist. While that’s very difficult to pin down demographically with any kind of precision, as people continue to study to be lawyers and teachers and police officers and doctors and theologians, it is certainly clear that the future promises unimaginable developments in terms of occupational opportunities.
Not too many of us said at an early age that we wanted to be blockchain analysts or podcast producers or unmanned aerial drone operators. At the very least, the image of a worker spending decades at one company before receiving a gold watch as a sendoff at a retirement dinner is fading when compared to the actual experience of people in the workforce today. Most Americans will have from 12 to 15 jobs in their lifetime, and the median tenure at any one job in 2022 is less than five years.
Thus, for it to survive and thrive, Catholic education absolutely must continue to have as a primary goal the development of critical thinking capacities. It must prepare people to live lives of passion and imagination, and equip them with the moral compass to navigate the treacherous rapids of the modern world. The information that many of us once needed to memorize or learn to be able to research in a library is now broadly accessible with a few nanoseconds of keystrokes, clicks or swipes. But discerning how and when and whether to use that information constitutes a different set of skills entirely.
Those of us carrying forward the grand heritage of Catholic education must help students realize that the voice of the Inner Teacher has an indispensable role to play in the quest for understanding, but also that this is a far cry from a conveyor belt catechism churning out plaster saints, form fitted with the same pre-fabricated parts focused on “what” to think, instead of “how” to think.
The Catholic intellectual heritage is, at its best, able to hold both of these perspectives in a healthy tension – looking to the real and lasting contributions of the past, as well as to the dynamic and auspicious possibilities of the present and future. We find there the charge for each of us involved with Catholic education as lifelong learners, for as Augustine made clear, all of the Christian life is “a school in which God is the only teacher, and it demands good students, ones who are keen in attendance, not ones who play truant to their duties.” (Sermon on Ps. 39).
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”
