Our English Syllabus

C.S. Lewis begins this work by discussing education and learning.  He cites Aristotle and says that education should be preparation for leisure, which is the end of all human activity.  The purpose of education is to produced a "good man" and a "good citizen."  This a man of good feeling and good taste, and interesting and interested man, and almost a happy man.  Vocational training seeks to prepare the man not for leisure but for work.  Lewis says that if education is given up in the name of fairness and vocational training is given to all then civilization will die.  He says, "Human life means to me the life of beings for whom the leisured activities of thought, art, literature, conversation are the end, and the preservation and propagation merely the means."  Education makes one human.  In education the master is the agent and the pupil is the patient.

Lewis then moves on to talk about learning.  He says, "Now learning, considered in itself, has, on my view, no connection at all with education."  Learning is an activity for men who have already been humanized by education.  Men who want to learn must have a thirst for knowledge.  Universities are, according to Lewis, "institutions for the support and encouragement of men devoted to learning."  The university student ought to be beginning to follow learning for its own sake.  According to Lewis, universities are places of learning and not of teaching and education.  He goes on the say that in modern times Oxford has become a place of teaching.  This not the ideal situation according to Lewis because it should be the university's job to assume that its students are already human and now help them see some given tract of reality.

He then moves on to talk specifically about the english syllabus.  He says that the proper question for a freshman student is not 'What will do me the most good?' but rather 'What do I want to know?'  Lewis says students should forget about self improvement for four years and absorb themselves in "getting to know some part of reality, as it is in itself."  He says that the problem with a composite school is that it has been composed by a committee of professors.  "The life of learning knows nothing of this nicely balanced encyclopedic arrangement," according to Lewis.  If students want to learn this way they can stay in school, says Lewis.  Students should abandon this structured approach and "look at reality in the raw."  He says students must choose their own path and they are too old to have their education menu drawn up for them.  "Here's you gun, your spade, your fishing-tackle; go and get yourself a dinner," says Lewis.

This piece was a very interesting read, especially for a student at a liberal arts college.  Calvin prides itself with the breath of curriculum that is required for all students to graduate.  These core classes are claimed to be vital in making the students good human beings and good Christians once they graduate.  It seems like Calvin is using the Aristotelian logic.  They want to give their students a large breath of knowledge in order to make them a "good man."  According to Lewis this is education.  The students are being given a "menu" of areas of knowledge that a committee of professors feel will be good for them.  The students are not "pursing knowledge for its own sake."  They are not "looking at reality in the raw."

I think the undergraduate education should teach students how to pursue knowledge for its own sake, but I do not think that this pursuit should be expected form freshman.  I do not think that high school graduates are " human beings" in the sense Lewis uses the phrase in the writing.  Most are not yet educated enough yet to pursue knowledge for its own sake and almost all do not have the disciple to do it.  Providing a menu of courses selected by a committee of professors may seem restricting to some, but it is very helpful to others who do not yet know what they want to study and want to look into a wide range of options.  I think that the system that Lewis prefers would work in an ideal world that was full of passionate and driven students who knew exactly what they wanted to study.  In the real world however, it seems like there would not be enough disciple among students at the undergraduate level to make it work.