Over the weekend, my wife and I went to the National Arboretum. In the middle of this urban oasis are columns of sandstone topped by Corinthian capitals which used to grace a portico of the Capitol. A plaque informed visitors that each capital required six months of labor to carve. If such an eminent artifact of culture should require such sweat and tears, why would we expect the very basis of culture, a worthy education, to be any easier? In a piece entitled, "Invitation to the Pain of Learning," Mortimer Adler wrote: "Without thinking, the kind of learning which transforms a mind, gives it new insights, enlightens it, deepens understanding, elevates the spirit simply cannot occur. Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful."
One of the most daunting aspects of the labor of learning is the slow pace of the arduous work and the incremental, but often paltry results. Yet, therein lies one of the greatest prizes of a true education: intellectual humility. In his essay "The Parthenon and the Optative"--which I cannot recommend enough--C.S. Lewis describes two types of education: "The one begins with hard, dry things like grammar, and dates, and prosody; and it has at least the chance of ending in a real appreciation which is equally hard and firm though not equally dry. The other begins in "Appreciation" and ends in gush. When the first fails it has, at the very least, taught the boy what knowledge is like. He may decide that he doesn't care for knowledge; but he knows he doesn't care for it, and he knows he hasn't got it. But the other fails most disastrously when it most succeeds. It teaches a man to feel vaguely cultured while he remains in fact a dunce. It makes him think he is enjoying poems he can't construe. It qualifies him to review books he does not understand, and to be intellectual without intellect. It plays havoc with the very distinction between truth and error."
To our endless woe, the latter form of education seems to have prevailed in our culture at large. Not at ILS. As this third week of school begins, the demands of learning have begun to make themselves felt for ILS sixth graders. Now is the time for students to shake off the lethargy of summer dissipation and roll up their sleeves. The mountain they are climbing is steep at times, but the view at the top is unrivaled.
