Why Educate?
by
Willam
Van Til
August
2001
Note: I mentioned when I started this on-line series of articles that I hoped to include on occasion selected works of William Van Til - the man who has inspired me to write these columns. The following is one of Dr. Van Til’s pieces written in 1968 entitled "Why Educate?" As educators ready themselves to begin a new school year, this column of a third of a century ago still has relevancy to us today. I thank Contemporary Education at Indiana State University for granting me permission to use this article. JB
Every so often, many Americans forget what education is supposed to do for human beings. Then crises in the culture come along which shock them into recognition. This happened in America in 1968.
It took the quagmire in which Americans were mired in Vietnam, the rebellion of world youth against meaningless and obsolete educational practices, the alienation and the hostility of protesting students on scores of American campuses, the decay of the central cities, the rioting and looting as Negro ghettos burned, the persistence of poverty in the richest nation the world has ever known, the fouling of the air we breathe and the waters that wash our shores, and the assassination of such magnificent human resources as Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, to remind many Americans that education is supposed to be related to improving the lives of human beings.
Even so, as we return to schools, some among us are not yet aware of the major tasks before education. Some sleepwalk on the periphery of education and blindly skirt the central challenges. The challenge to help young people to cope with the social realities of our times. The challenge to relate learning to the motivation and concerns of the learner. The challenge to develop commitment to humane and decent values based on mankind's winnowed and reconstructed experiences. These are the proper foci for our best reflection, creativity, and action in education.
We will never deal with these challenges through pretentious and precious mumblings about ill-defined structures of disciplines for study by elites, through organizational innovations for unclear purposes, through indiscriminate acquisition of the gimmickry and gadgets of technology, or through trivial research on inconsequential topics. Studies, organizations, tools, and research are essential in education. But they cannot be applied in vacuums void of purposes. Studies, organizations, tools, and research have relevance as they are brought to bear on the major challenges before education.
Let us deal in our schools with the real and urgent problems of our times, including the most difficult problems of all, the problems of international understanding and the problems of democratic human relations at home. Let us see young people as individuals, as persons, each with his own uniqueness, his own drives and tensions and concerns. Let us recognize that the anger and violence of the youthful activists and the indifference and apathy to current society point as never before to the crucial importance of educators helping young people to develop the values by which a democracy must live if we are not to witness in our times the death of the democratic dream.
Fortunately, there are many educators who are aware that education is inextricably related to lives. They recognize the challenges. They seek for ways to consider the social realities, to relate to the individual's needs, to foster his search for values by which to live. They do not have all the answers. But they know what the crucial questions are. To ask the right questions is a step toward wisdom and toward intelligent action.