Homeschooler conference: Prof. Joseph Pearce (part 2)

Prof. Joseph Pearce’s second talk was “A Matter of Life and Death: The Battle for a True Education.”

He offered his own life and conversion as proof of his thesis.  Given a mostly secular, only sort of Protestant, anti-Catholic education that skipped philosophy and concentrated all of its history curriculum on the *glorious* rise of socialism in England, Pearce grew up to become heavily involved in the anti-Catholic terrorist organizations of Northern Ireland.  After being encouraged to read G.K. Chesterton’s writings on distributism while looking for an alternative to both capitalism and Marxism, Pearce gradually shifted away from the poisons he had embraced in his life.  Eventually, he converted to Catholicism.  The first book he wrote was a biography of Chesterton.  A thank-you to Chesterton for leading him to God, he said, and a thank-you to God for Chesterton.

A true education, Pearce explained, “has to be an education where truth matters.”  If you don’t believe in the Truth, you can’t breathe life into education, you can only kill it.  We talk about “the good, the true, and the beautiful.”  Well, God is Love (good), God is Reason (true), and God is Beauty (beautiful); these things we seek to study have their utmost roots in God.  Without God, we can’t teach these ideals.  (Which is what has happened to education: if there is no God, then the good, true, and beautiful also get dumped.)

Love, of course, has converted many.  Malcolm Muggeridge, a famous journalist and satirist, converted to Catholicism after doing a biography of Mother Teresa.  Senator Sam Brownback, initially somewhat perplexed by the fuss over her, also converted to Catholicism after escorting her in DC for an awards ceremony; about to leave, she looked into his eyes and said simply, “All for Jesus.  All for Jesus.  All for Jesus.”  One of Mother Teresa’s favorite saints was St. Therese of Liseux, who described a “little way” of, not great and glorious deeds for God, but “little deeds with great love.”

Beauty has also converted many would-be atheists.  Not coincidentally, beauty has also been rooted out of our education system.  I remember a sadly funny essay from This Rock on the author’s experiences with an art teacher who told them that good art isn’t necessarily true, or beautiful, or even communicative… “Well, then how will you grade us?” she asked.  At the end of the semester, she was rather icily told she had no aptitude for art and shouldn’t sign up for the next class.  Yeah, right.  Or many people’s comments on modern art: it isn’t beautiful, it doesn’t show technical ability, it doesn’t communicate anything… why is this art?  Just because it *daringly* rebels from all ideas of beauty?

Christianity, on the other hand, has produced almost 2,000 years of art.  Tolkein saw art and imagination as a key component of humanity being created in the “image and likeness of God.”  God creates, and so can each one of us.  None of the animals create; they may use primitive tools, but they don’t make art.  The gift is uniquely man’s.  Tolkein saw a hierarchy in the world:

• Creator = God
• Creation = man, animals, plants, etc.
• Sub-creation: man’s use of Creation to reform it into new creations, either to the glory of God, or to the utility of man (lowest on Tolkein’s hierarchy)

So, in summary, Pearce argued, a true education must include reason, virtue, appreciation of the beautiful, and engagement with beauty (creativity).

The overarching problem with modern education, Pearce said, is that liberal secularism preaches tolerance, but is totally intolerant of anything that disagrees with them.  This leads to “dwemism”, racism against dead, white, European males.  “I take some issue with that, since most of my friends are dead, white, European males!”  And yes, he continued, it’s racism, since Webster’s defines racism as hatred of someone for something they can’t help being.  Well, one usually can’t help being dead, and never any of the rest of it.  Still, you only need to read a history textbook to observe how many of the DWEM’s have been excised from even being mentioned.  (My kids’ Virginia history textbook glanced over Robert E. Lee, skipped all the rest of the Confederate leaders, and spent the rest of the section on the Civil War extolling the virtues of two women who took care of wounded soldiers in their homes.  Um, that’s nice, but DWEM’s or not, aren’t there more important people to discuss?  Sorry, I guess that’s very DWEM-centric of me to suggest one person might be more important than another…)

The problem is, those DWEM’s have a lot of wisdom, influence, and culture.  Turning the usual argument on its head about education being not about force-feeding dead, white males, but of some form of socialization, Prof. Pearce concluded, “Education is not about what you know, but who… ok, sure: Plato, Aristotle, Tolkein, Dante, Austen, Shakespeare…”

Cutting ourselves loose from our history has not freed us.  A lack of history leaves you with people who don’t know where they came from, where they are, or where they’re going.  In short, lost.

Which, I would argue, answers so many Americans’ question right now of, “How did we get here?!”

 

For a less garbled, much more eloquent treatment of the subject, go here to order the actual tape of Prof. Pearce’s talks.