Education -Truth, Goodness and Beauty

On Education as a Tapestry of Three Threads.

 Weaving Together the Three Eternal Qualities. When speaking of learning and the human mind, we are speaking into a mystery. But like many mysteries, there are hints as to how to best understand them. One hint regarding the purpose of learning is to consider what has been historically called the three divine qualities of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. When we try to determine the qualities of the whole mind, we can do no better than to look carefully at these “deepest realities,” the “Big Three,” the “attributes of being,” and if we want to get fancy here, the “Three Transcendentals,” which simply means “that which exceeds.” In fact, Truth, Goodness and Beauty have long been considered by many the true goals of learning.

The Big Three all sounds abstract until we look at how schools can help students grow in all three qualities… Discovering truth through the student’s intellect; cultivating goodness through the student’s conscience; inspiring beauty through the student’s imagination. Any school that doesn’t tend to these three facets of the student’s mind is going to miss out on the adventure of developing a student’s whole mind.

1. Sharpen the Intellect. Give the children in the home or school the tools to pursue and understand the truth; train them in the ability to reason effectively; enable them to develop insightful common sense and logical thinking; help them be comfortable in exploring the truth intellectually and spiritually; strengthen the ability to memorize and grasp factual data; sharpen their discernment between wise and unwise, true and false, loving and unloving, mindful and mindless, logical and illogical.
2. Cultivate the Conscience. Nurture goodness in the lives of the students; help to develop their integrity and virtue; hold them accountable so they are trained for righteousness; promote a wholesome character and moral intelligence; strengthen their will to make sound decisions; help clarify moral confusion; help them develop shrewd street smarts; enable them to apply principles of wisdom to daily choices; help them embrace a default reaction of love; strengthen their ability to empathize.
3. Inspire the Imagination. Inspire creativity in the children at home or in the classroom; help them distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly; provide opportunities for creative self-expression; train them in basic artistic skills; capture their imagination in the home through story, music, drama, and the visual arts; help them gain confidence in expressing themselves; help them take risks artistically; stimulate their creative impulse; help them be sensitive to their intuition.

Entrepreneurs of Learning. Teachers and parents need to feel comfortable with a wide variety of teaching methods. Methods like the following will go far in helping each teacher and parent to sharpen the intellect, nurture the conscience and capture the imagination of each student.

• Sharpen the Intellect– Ask Good Questions; Give a Variety of Discourse; Offer Object Lessons; Prompt Guided Conversations; Test the Memory; Use Repetition; Don’t Be Afraid to Think Out Loud and Model Sound Reasoning.

• Nurture the Conscience – Set Firm Boundaries with Kindness and Accountability; Don’t Forget the Personal Example of the Teacher; Provide Demonstration and Reenactments; Give Reasonable Elbow Room for the Students to Be Human; Discuss Sound Moral Reasoning Out Loud.
• Capture the Imagination – Offer a Wide Variety of Novels, Poetry, Stories, Biographies and Parables; Use Humor Often; Discuss Metaphor; Expand a Teaching with Creative Illustrations; Use Visual Aids; Creatively Wonder Out Loud; Allow Artistic Mistakes without Being Perfectionistic or Sloppy.

The Final Goal: Wisdom and Love. What is the bottom line of learning? What is the teacher and parent finally aiming for? I suggest that the end goal of learning is wisdom and love. Wisdom, love and truth seem to have a profound interrelationship in the learning process. Truth is the substance, the content, the grist for the mill. Wisdom is truth-in-action. Wisdom is acquiring the knowledge that leads to moral understanding, the art of practicing the truth in daily life. Along with wisdom in education is love. According to St. Paul, “Love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth;” “Love finds its joy in the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:6). And, “Active, genuine love is proof that we belong to the truth.” (1 John 3:19). So I suggest that wisdom and love are the twin goals of education, because those qualities reveal understanding at a deep and meaningful level. A teacher’s aim for the children in the classroom, or we could say the parent’s goal for the children at home, is that they become wise, loving, creative, and filled with the truth.

Relationship. The context for learning anything worthwhile, let alone wisdom and love, is relationship. Teachers are to incarnate truth, goodness and beauty in the classroom, fleshing out what learning looks like through the teacher’s loving and faithful relationship with every child. Truth, goodness and beauty are best stimulated in a child in the context of a relationship, for that is how learning is accomplished for the long haul. Only children who trust and respect their teachers and parents are able to give themselves fully and wholeheartedly to the learning process. Only teachers and parents who intentionally establish relationships of mutual respect and trust with the children are able to engage them at the deeper levels of learning. ZOOM is not the answer, nor is distant learning. Computers may be one way to gather facts, but only in relationship will students learn at meaningful levels. For, computers don’t know the best learning style or motivations of a student. Machines can’t understand the ups and downs of childhood. IT can’t enlighten a teacher to a student’s personality, upbringing or character. Virtual learning is true to its definition, a “sort-of,” “almost,” “not fully real”-type of learning. Human beings made of flesh and blood will learn best in relationship with teachers and parents who are likewise flesh and blood.

Historian Joseph Pearce put it this way in a recent essay… “Love is the path to goodness; reason is the path to truth; creativity is the path to beauty. The way of love leads to the Good of God, reason leads us to God’s Truth, and creativity leads us to the presence of God’s Beauty. The beautiful always leads us back to love and reason.”