Educating for Freedom

Miss Fain is a student at Armstrong State College, Savannah, Georgia.

Albert Jay Nock observed that there is a practical reason for prefer­ring freedom: “freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed.”’ It is clear that Mr. Nock is referring to the fact that to form a moral character one must be free to make his own choices, and his own errors. Good deeds, under compulsion, whatever they may be, bear no relation to the character of the individual; for without the op­portunity to do wrong, correct ac­tions are morally meaningless.

One element in the development of moral fiber is education, in al­liance with the family and the reli­gious institution. The essential requirement, if any of these factors is to effectively aid the development of the individual, is the existence of freedom. Deprive the individual of his freedom to respond or not to these influences and the result may be an obedient automaton, but not a moral, reasoning individual. Thus the “crisis in the schools.” Compul­sory schooling has been so inimical to the purposes of education that Frank S. Meyer could write in 1962, “The symptoms of deterioration in our educational system, long apparent to serious observers, have become so obvious that the fact of deterioration is now a matter of pub­lic concern.”² Much of the failure may be traced to government inter­vention in the field of education.

What then, is the role and purpose of education in a free society, as opposed to the prevailing collectivist influence? Richard M. Weaver wrote that, “education means not merely the imparting of information to the mind but the shaping of the mind and of the personality… education is unavoidably a training for a way of life. Education… goes beyond instruction to a point that makes it intimately related with the preservation of a culture.”³ Meyer sup­ports this view by stating that tradi­tional education, “was based on the assumption that the function of the school and the college is to train the mind and transmit to the young the culture and tradition of the civiliza­tion, thus forming a firm foundation for virtue.”⁴ And Nock defines edu­cation as, “a process contemplating intelligence and wisdom, and employing formative knowledge for its purposes; while training is a pro­cess contemplating sagacity and cleverness, and employing instru­mental knowledge for its purpose. Education, properly applied to suit­able material, produces something in the way of an Emerson; while training, properly applied to suit­able material, produces something in the way of an Edison.”⁵

Education vs. Training

One of the first errors of modern education was a failure to distin­guish between education and train­ing. The concepts of democracy and egalitarianism were applied to edu­cation in such a manner as to downgrade the exceptional, and exalt instead the mediocre and the common. The “right to an educa­tion” became the excuse for such practices as the lowering of admis­sion and graduation standards, grade inflation, and the purging from academic curriculums of any materials that might require effort and intelligence for their com­prehension.

The failure to recognize degrees of educability among various individ­uals has resulted in the degenera­tion of scholarship to its least com­mon denominator. From this comes the belief that education must be equal for all, that any differentia­tion between training and education would violate current definitions of “equality.” Thus the system of com­pulsory popular education develops, “a sort of sanhedrin,” writes Mr. Nock, “a leveling agency, prescrib­ing uniform modes of thought, be­lief, conduct, social deportment, diet, recreation, hygiene; and as an inquisitional body for the enforce­ment of these prescriptions, for nos­ing out heresies and irregularities and suppressing them.”⁶

A free society acknowledges the desirability of education for its citizenry, but recognizes at the out­set the great differentiation in indi­vidual potential for achievement. Under conditions of freedom, vary­ing institutions will emerge to cater to the diversity of individual inter­ests and abilities. A free society al­lows each individual to choose and pursue his goals on his own initia­tive and ability. Government neither prohibits nor demands the pursuit of education; to attempt to compel the pursuit of knowledge is as ludicrous as attempting to impose a taste for caviar.

The Market Will Provide

If an individual desires a more advanced education and possesses the ability to pursue higher learn­ing, a free society will respond to this demand as it does to the provi­sion of luxury goods for those who desire and can afford them. The case of the individual who has the desire and the ability to pursue knowledge, but lacks the financial resources necessary thereto, would find no lack of private assistance in a free society that values the education of the educable. Private contributions for higher education, even in this decade of exorbitant government taxation and subsidies, run into the billions; and this supports the con­tention that there would be no dearth of voluntary funding if gov­ernment were removed from educa­tional financing. Private support would also result in a far greater diversity of academic opportunities.

Currently, in order for a needy in­dividual to obtain financial aid from government, he must pursue his ed­ucation according to the dictates of the State, and in institutions of the State’s choosing. Those seeking financial assistance must conform to the values of the State or be denied that which they seek. With private funding, the applicant need only convince one patron of the legitimacy of his pursuit. Even unpopular goals would thus find their champions.

The Need to Know

Let us now explore in greater de­tail the purposes of education in a free society. The traditional view of education held that there is a body of knowledge worth knowing for its own sake, worth passing on from one generation to the next, and that outstanding achievement in acquir­ing this knowledge—scholarships to be venerated. The Biblical and Classical heritage of the West was based on belief in a transcendent order. It maintained that in order to serve God, one had to know God’s will, and that this required disci­plined study. This heritage also rec­ognized the infiniteness and unattainability of total knowledge, so that its pursuit encompassed a life­time, was unceasing, yet incapable of achievement. The belief that Man is made to serve a transcendent end provides the primary motivation for the pursuit of knowledge and wis­dom.

It is implicit in this that man should attempt to utilize his inher­ent potentialities and talents, and that therefore, he has a duty to de­velop his whole nature; he must school his emotions, learn some skills, develop his mind. Albert Jay Nock described this view succinctly when he wrote, “Cicero was right in saying that a person who grows up without knowing what went before him will always remain a child. One may know it thoroughly, too, in an academic way, and still remain a child. Knowledge has to be rein­forced by emotion in order to be maturing.”⁷

Cultural Requirements

In addition, there are cultural needs which play a role in educa­tion. The formulation of a culture appears to be an inherent trait of mankind, and the preservation of a culture, once created, answers Man’s desire for an identity beyond the individual. There has always been, until recent times, a strong pre­sumption in favor of traditional in­stitutions and values, and chal­lenges to these fundamental values were not undertaken lightly. Thus the stability of a culture was pre­served, and men felt secure within it.

Reverence for tradition, then, is among the tenets of traditional edu­cation. One studies the past with a view to understanding that which went before, to trace the continuity of the culture, and to find his place in this historic evolution. Education, thus construed, results in an under­standing and maturity of outlook that sees the present, not as an iso­lated occurrence, but rather in terms of the historical background from which it was formed. This was the purpose underlying “the grand, old fortifying classical curriculum.” “Progressive education” has under­mined this cultural identification, destroyed the stability of the his­toric perspective, and resulted in the social nihilism of modern man.

Education in a free society must, therefore, return to its roots in the Biblical-Classical-Western tradition because this reflects the needs of men’s minds, and the cultural identity inherent in human nature. The quest for knowledge finds its basis, not in conformity to the needs of the State, nor in the desire to adapt to mass preferences, but rather in the needs of the individual to uncover his identity—spiritually, intellectu­ally, and culturally. Until education begins to answer these needs, the educated man will, always be “superfluous” and the mass-man will reign as the symbol of the soci­ety.

A society of mass-men will not long remain free, for the presence of the few who oppose mass values will soon become intolerable. It is the abandonment of the traditional role of education that has brought about this profound threat to freedom, and it will only be by a return to these traditions that the erosion of our freedoms will be curtailed.

—FOOTNOTES—

1Albert Jay Nock, Cogitations (Irvington, New York: The Nockian Society, 1970), p. 63.

²Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1962) p. 156.

3Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1964) p. 113.

⁴Weyer, In Defense of Freedom p. 157.

⁵Albert Jay Nock, The Memoirs of a Super­fluous Man (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1964) p. 270.

6Nock, Cogitations p. 22.

7Nock, Cogitations p. 72.