Education at the Crossroads (The Terry Lectures Series) [Paperback]

Jacques Maritain (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Terry Lectures Series | Publication Date: September 10, 1960

One of the most eminent Catholic philosophers of our time explores the American system of education. He believes that it must be based on the Christian idea of man being "more a whole than a part, and more independent than servile." In his view education is concerned with "making a man"-a man with "deep-rooted independence with regard to common opinion." This book is devoted to discovering how that can come about.

Product Details

• Paperback: 130 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1960)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300001630
• ISBN-13: 978-0300001631
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #937,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Education at Crossroads, March 26, 2009

By 

Gerard Reed - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Education at the Crossroads (The Terry Lectures Series) (Paperback)

For an encouraging and substantial discussion of education, turn to a book published fifty years ago: Jacques Maritain's Education at the Crossroads (New Haven: Yale University Press, c. 1943). If only we had a truthful understanding of human nature and society, he thinks we might more effectively design healthy educational systems.
Here Maritain writes prophetically: "The task of moral re-education is really a matter of public emergency. . . . . That teachers in public schools may not face unruliness and violence, moral authority must be recognized; and there must be a serious teaching of moral principles, I mean as grounded on truth rather than as suitable to social convenience" (p. 93). The "present agony of the world," he believed, is "a supreme crisis of the Christian spirit, which for a long time has been neglected or betrayed in democracies, and which totalitarian states are now determined definitely to abolish, then it is obvious that a revival of Christian conscience and a new work of evangelization are the primary and unquestionable conditions for the moral re-education that the man of our civilization needs" (p. 107).
Maritain begins by insisting we set forth coherent "aims of education" which gives order and direction to our endeavors. "Education is an art," he says, "and an especially difficult one" (p. 2). Thus it demands we have artful designs with clear objectives (or ends) in mind. It is an "ethical art" which truly seeks to free persons to attain the end for which they are created. As practitioners of the art of teaching, teachers are more like farmers or doctors than sculptors. There must be an attentiveness to the nature of the person, an ars cooperativa naturae (art cooperating with nature), a genuine ministering to the learner which characterizes good teaching.
At this point he cites some wise words from his master, St Thomas Aquinas, who urged students: "'Always make sure that you actually understand what you read or listen to,'" and "'avoid speechi¬fying on anything whatsoever.'" To both teachers and students, Aquinas said: "'never leave behind him any difficulty unsolved.'" "He also warned teachers--this advice was already necessary for the educators of his time--'never to dig a ditch that you fail to fill up.' He knew that to raise clever doubts, to prefer searching to finding, and perpetually to pose problems without ever solving them are the great enemies of education" (p. 50).
Above all else, education should encourage the development of moral reasoning, virtuous living, qualities of mind and character which, we early discover, cannot be mechanically inscribed in the young. Facts can, at least momentarily, be poured in. Data can be inscribed in computers. Our young people have often acquired lots of facts. But they know little about the soul, the life of the spirit, the moral dimension to life, the life of freedom. Moral persons, of course, are necessarily free persons who make moral decisions and become persons of character.
What we mainly aspire to, as persons, is freedom. Most deeply, we long for an inner spiritual freedom, the freedom which St Paul described as freedom of the Spirit. Our social world, our vocational world, have worth, but lack the eternal dimensions our heart craves. "Thus the prime goal of education is the conquest of internal and spiritual freedom to be achieved by the individual person, or, in others words, his liberation through knowledge and wisdom, good will, and love" (p. 11). The love which we need comes not from mental training, of course. It comes from strong family ties and religious examples. It is, ultimately, a gift from God, a gift of grace. The true liberation we all need is freedom from self-centeredness, egoism, sin. Thus there is, in a profound sense, an essentially religious component to genuine education.
Ultimately, he says, "our chief duty consists, according to the profound saying of the Greek poet, Pindar, 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" (p. 1). Indeed, "education is not animal training. The education of man is a human awakening" (p. 9).
What is man? What is the nature of human nature? To answer this question is the most important of educational inquiries. The failure of socialistic systems reveals their flawed definition of man--homo faber--as a worker, a tool-using animal. Where man is so defined, education becomes a variant of animal training. And since animals, such as bees, are maximal specialists, education seeks to mass-produce specialists who can methodically work in the factories of mass production.
But perhaps this behavioristic, materialistic, socialistic approach is wrong. If, in fact, the Greek, Jewish, and Christian understanding is correct, we best understand "man as an animal endowed with reason, whose supreme dignity is in the intellect; and man as a free individual in personal relation with God, whose supreme righteousness consists in voluntarily obeying the law of God; and man as a sinful and wounded creature called to divine life and to the freedom of grace, whose supreme perfection consists of love" (p. 7). And this definition of human nature leads to distinctively different educational strategies.
As educators, we are probably always at some "crossroads." Clearly that's the case today. And I know of no better consultant as to which turns to make than Jacques Maritain!