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Education Is For Life Not Just For School
By Adrian Dempsey*
It is easy to belittle the classroom: did you hear about the one in which the child when asked why he first saw the puff of smoke and then heard the bang said: ‘Because my eyes are in front of my ears’. It is this kind of thing that gets schooling a bad name. So Mark Twain must have thought when he said, allegedly, ‘My education was interrupted by my schooling’ and Ivan Illich to write a book called ‘De-schooling Society.’
Kevin Kelly tells a lovely story, against himself, in his book ‘From A Parish Base’ that whilst he was lecturing he had the idea that teaching involved him going into class and speaking to the students about all this knowledge. Only later, working in parishes with adults did he come to realise that without learning there is no education. The best definition of the worst kind of education is the transfer of the notes of the lecturer into the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either.
 Taking Jesus as a model for our education highlights several critical elements in the process of teaching and learning. In the reading for today, Education Sunday, we are told that Jesus taught the disciples many things, although in Mark’s gospel certainly it rarely tells us what he said. We have to turn to other places for his teaching. Thus in Matthew we have the great and famous sermons, in Luke the parables and in John the great discourses.
In the story of the Man born blind we learn that there are four elements in the learning process: we learn by watching, we learn by listening, we learn by questioning and we learn by doing. This emphasises the point that the learner is central to the educative process. In the story of the Man Born Blind we note that he encounters Jesus, watches what he does, listens to what he has to say, does according to what he is told, asks for clarification of the one who has done this to him and SEES, not just with newly opened eyes has an image of the physical person, but recognises Jesus for what he is, acknowledges him as lord and modifies his behaviour as a result – he has learned, has done some education, had a truth drawn out for him.
Perhaps the greatest lesson we have to learn is to learn to learn – with this lesson, received either in school, in an adult group, at work, or at home we are in a position to take on the world; to learn; to hear and be moved, to see and understand, to look at stars and wonder, to learn to relate to the world, to learn to grow old, and finally to learn to die. This is education from the cradle to the grave. It is a God-given blessing, it is to have confident hope in the teaching of Jesus that ‘the truth will set you free’ (Jn. 8:32).
The outcome of all this learning is the fulfilment of the saying by Irenaeus: ‘The glory of God is the human person fully alive’, following John 10:10, ‘I have come that you might have life and have it to the full’.
And then it doesn’t matter whether you first apprehend the truth with your eyes or with your ears.
*Adrian Dempsey works for our diocese as a School’s Adviser, and is based at the Education Centre at Balmoral Road, Lancaster. This article is based on a sermon he gave at Christ Church, Nelson on Education Sunday in January of this year.
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