The Chief Responsibility of Education
What is Education For? - Pt.2
In Part 1, I asserted that far too many educators are ignorant of, or confused about, the meaning of education even after years of study meant to prepare them for the vocation of teaching. I further asserted that while classical Christian educators are typically more adept to grasping the meaning of education, there is still much disparity between statements of purpose and expressed methods of teaching even among these.
I assured readers that while it might be a bold claim, Donald Cowan offers the most comprehensive description of the meaning of education in the fewest words. The former president of the University of Dallas describes the meaning of education this way:
The chief educational motive is the imaginative act we call learning; the chief educational responsibility is the perpetuation and extension of culture.
To fully grasp the scope of his statement, we can try to understand his attempt at providing the meaning of education by analyzing it in two parts, motive and responsibility. Last week, I tackled the first part, motive. This week, I’ll try to unpack the second part, responsibility.
Cowan says the chief responsibility of education is the perpetuation and extension of culture. But what is culture? And why, and how, is it to be perpetuated and extended?
The word culture is often difficult to nail down because of the variety of ways it is commonly used. For the sake of expediency, I am going to leave off tracing out its scientific and biological uses—e.g., the scientist’s culture remained in the Petri dish.—and focus mainly on its humane uses.
Defining Culture
It’s not uncommon to hear someone speak of youth culture, athletic culture, or gun culture. This use of the word culture refers to “a way of life or social environment characterized by or associated with the specified quality or thing; a group of people subscribing or belonging to this.”1 It’s the specific activity, hobby, or social convention that unites people who are characterized by such things.
Similar to this use of culture is something like corporate culture. This extends the meaning from an individual participating in an ambiguous or unofficial group to a group participating in an organization that is more defined. In other words, this use of the word is slightly nuanced to mean “The philosophy, practices, and attitudes of an institution, business, or other organization.”2
Around the mid-19th century (1860s), the word culture began to take on its current, most broadly used meaning as a word that refers to “The distinctive ideas, customs, social behavior, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period. Hence: a society or group characterized by such customs, etc.”3 In this broader definition, we would use it to talk about Black culture, American culture, or Southern culture.
However, another common way we use the word culture today, and one that gets us closer to its etymological roots, is to refer to one’s “Refinement of mind, taste, and manners; artistic and intellectual development,”4 or “The cultivation or development of the mind, faculties, manners, etc.; improvement by education and training” e.g., John has a cultured taste for music while his wife Jane does not.5 People began using the word culture this way beginning in the 16th and 17th century.
Perhaps the earliest use of the word is the most instructive for our purposes. In the 15th century, two varied uses arose almost simultaneously, and both from the idea of cultivation (i.e., Latin, colere). One way of using the word is to refer directly to “The action or practice of cultivating the soil; tillage” (i.e., the culture of the soil).6 This is the idea derived from Scripture, that when God put Adam in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it, he was telling him to cultivate the garden, to prepare the ground for seeding (Genesis 2:15). We call this agri-culture.
The other way, which is nearly obsolete in our 21st century post-Christian society is “Worship; reverential homage.”7 This use carries the idea that who, what, and how we worship works itself out in the practical and ritual ways we live our lives. How could it be otherwise? Man is, at his essence, “at the deepest reaches of his being,” a religious creature. Regardless of what that religion might be, it cannot merely be some aspect or compartment of a man’s life, no matter how often the secularists attempt to convey this irrational idea. What a man believes about ultimate things is the central essence from which all his actions will inevitably flow. No God? That will work itself out in a man’s choices and behavior. Theistic determinism? That too will manifest in a man’s lifestyle and politics.
When we account for the various ways in which the word culture has been applied, we can understand why Henry Van Til notably argued that “Culture is religion externalized and made explicit.” Paul Tillich similarly asserted, “Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion.”8
In an effort to limit the scope of our discussion, I will merely mention in passing that Matthew Arnold, J. Gresham Machen, Emil Brunner, and Richard Niebuhr all affirmed very similar notions as Van Til and Tillich—essentially, that culture is what we believe, lived out. This implies a few noteworthy characteristics worth thinking about.
Implications of the Meaning of Culture
First, the fact that culture is a manifestation of belief, it cannot be neutral; thus, there is no such thing as purely secular culture. What we believe about the cosmos, about the Creator of the cosmos, and about the Creator’s purpose for the cosmos will all manifest itself in the way we order our homes, in the way we build buildings, in the way we do business, in the way we make art, etc.
Second, what is believed will necessarily be transmitted or perpetuated to the next generation by its teachers. Says Carl Trueman, “Culture is, after all, the name given to those traditions, institutions, and patterns of behavior that transmit the values of one generation to the next.”9 This indicates there are means by which those transmissions take place, a means by which sacred orders become social orders.
Since children learn by imitation (mimetically), what we believe is often passed on through observation. If what we say we believe and what we actually believe do not align, it is highly probable that what we actually believe will, more often than not, be transmitted to the next generation by way of mimesis. In other words, “do as I say and not as I do” is a meaningless mantra.
Third, this implies that perpetuation and extension of the culture—not ensuring college entrance or a good job—is the chief responsibility of education. That is what education is for.
In short, considering both the chief motive and and chief responsibility of education, we can say boldly that good educators must intentionally create for the next generation imaginative learning opportunities by intelligently verbalizing and modeling the best of our inherited wisdom and values—the best of what has been said and done. That is the truest meaning of education.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense III.7.b,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6299687102.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense III.7.c,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5123151662.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense III.7.a,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5142415889.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense III.5.b,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1491676617.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense III.5.a,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5788836946.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense I.1.a,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5591036717.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “culture (n.), sense II.4,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5224374065.
Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 37.
Carl R. Trueman and Rod Dreher, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 89.