Bill Ferny:
Hail and well met. * bows an affable greeting, offers you a bit of Southern Star, lights a conversational bowl of pipeweed himself *
With pleasure I've come across this renewed thread after a long absence. You address so many worthy topics ... for tonight I'll choose just one.
Soothly, your post of April 26, 2003 10:15 PM can be answered by an entire book called "Beyond Humanism" by John Julian Ryan, published by Sheed and Ward in 1950.
The author very much agrees with your take on education being a preparation for life as a whole rather than for life in terms of mere paycheck-earning-and-spending ability, as seen in the following quotes:
Quote:
|
... we must rid ourselves of bookishness and become once more realistic -- in the sense in which a saint is realistic.
|
Ryan then goes on to suggest that we shape our teaching around points including the following:
Quote:
8) That, although ideas are real, they are meant primarily to serve as lenses, enabling us to see the reality of things; hence, they are not so much to be sought and enjoyed for their own sakes as they are to be sought for the focussing of our minds on whole things, that we may not only see these, but may see into them to their nature and through them as specimens of His infinite wisdom and love, to God Himself;
9) That any education is therefore unrealistic, disintegrative, and diabolical which trains a student to study and formulate the apppearances of things as if these appearances had no substantial basis, unity or meaning, and as if the principles governing them were the true and final objects of study, all whole substances being merely mysterious, accidental combinations of these principles, not really meant, not historically meant, by God; that any education, indeed, is tragic which trains him for living only one side of life, the animal, and concentrates his attention on living intensely only certain parts of life (the moments of highest sentimental pleasure, however intellectual) merely coercing him into living as cooperatively as he can without losing his individuality; for nothing could be more unreal than training one part of the student -- the faculties needed for scientific investigation and voluptuous enjoyment -- to deal with one section of Nature, one set of aspects at a time, in order to live a life as a wilful part of the cosmos, and to enjoy, even so, only those parts of his existence in which he is thrilling most intensely to one isolated experience;
|
The craftmasters of the Shire as you point out are indeed just the sort of teacher that Ryan presents as an ideal and wishes there were more of. I'd add to that, the loremasters and artisans of the Elves, who as one Elvish leader told Pippin, "put the thought of all that we love into all that we make."
Myself, I was fortunate to have a father who introduced me to various hobbies. In particular, to the wonders of the stars by teaching me astronomy, and to the wonders of magical presentation (close-up, stage, mentalism, and everything in between) by personal instruction, until eventually I joined the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
More to come soon.
I look forward to discussing these and other points with you in more depth.
Gandalf the Grey