"Our English Syllabus"

One line in Our English Syllabus really caught my attention: "if education is beaten by training, civilization dies. That is a very likely thing to happen." Lewis here is refering to the type of education that creates a love of learning versus a vocational training that simply prepares one for the workforce. By civilization, he means culture, and believes that it is formed through "leisured activities of thought."

I find myself wondering if this sentiment is true today. If, as Lewis goes on to say, to be fully human is to learn and to have the desire to know, then to be fully human is today simply a matter of preference and access to the Internet or public library. This has almost nothing to do with formal or vocational education. And further, going on to higher education does not automatically make one a creator of culture. One can graduate with a BA or BS and still be a drone that simply perpetuates culture and is interested only in learning enough to remain high enough in one's field to make large amounts of money. In fact, I personally know people who fit this example perfectly.

Conversely, love of knowledge can, as it did for me, grow out of a pre-"human" state. I began to love learning as soon as I learned to read. Since kindergarten I've gobbled up as many books as I can, and most of them were outside the lists of books perscribed to me by my teachers; I was, and still am, full of curiosity. In this way, I could be considered "fully human" long before I came to participate in post-secondary education.

On a side note, most people who go to a college or university are not lower class - the lower class often attends vocational schools, and in this respect I find Lewis to be insensitive, even incorrect. Firstly, although vocational schools do not train one to persue certain fields of knowledge or cultivate a healthy curiousity for certain topics the student may be interested in, that does not mean that the students at vocational schools are less curious or less able to think for themselves. It only means they need to pay their bills more desperately than others of us do. And secondly, anyone can learn, and love learning for its own sake, outside of their job.