Towards Perfect Education

Extract

The pertinent remarks of Penguin on “Modern Education” in the September number of Blackfriars invite the expression of the principles of perfect education set forth in the following pages.

There is a marked similarity between the ideal put by St. Angela Merici before her children in the sixteenth century and that set by St. Dominic before his, more than three centuries before. “Angela’s was a war for truth,” writes one of her most recent and authorised biographers. Truth was also the ruling principle, one might almost say passion, of St. Dominic. Both were no doubt inspired by their common father, St. Augustine, whose rule of life was chosen by them both. “What desire,” he asks, “is more deeply rooted in our soul than the desire for truth?” It was so deeply rooted in the soul of St. Angela that on her tomb in Brescia it is written that she was not only an Apostle in word, but a Martyr in desire. Her desire was to give her life, as Christ gave His, in testimony to Truth, in a spirit of self-sacrificing service of the Truth, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the great multitude of virgins with her who were themselves martyrs to the cause of Truth.

The Apostolate of Truth may be resumed, it would not be exaggerated to suggest, in the word “Education.” “Education,” as Newman puts it, “is a high word. It is the preparation for knowledge and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation.”