Our English Syllabus contains Lewis’s thoughts on the subject of education and was read to the English Society at Oxford. What I thought was very interesting and enlightening was the idea that all subjects are connected. Lewis points out that to perfectly and wholly understand one subject, we must also understand every other subject. From this perspective, we cannot truly understand any subject in its entirety, and must settle instead for bits and pieces. This idea shows me that we really cannot ever stop learning—the world is too vast and full. Having said this, such a declaration only points out the vastness and greatness of our Creator. He alone perfectly knows and understands every subject and how they connect to one another.
I also really appreciated Lewis’s analogy of education to sports. He said playing sports has the beneficial by-product of exercise/health. If you are playing to win, you will find that you have gained this benefit. If you play for the sole purpose of the exercise, however, you will find that you have not fulfilled that goal. In the same manner, if your sole focus on school is to become educated, you will not accomplish your goal. You must at least “pretend that you are concerned with knowledge.”
Learning is a lifelong process. Lewis points out that we cannot limit our learning simply to when we are in school. Rather, we must continue learning every day we are alive. There is too much to learn about the world—to limit ourselves to only the few years we are in school gives us only a small portion of the infinite knowledge we can attain. Realize, however, that no matter how long our life, no matter how intelligent we are, we will not be able to reach the end of learning. Do not limit yourself—learn something new everyday.
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You're certainly right about each subject having to do with every other subject. The great part about going to a liberal arts school is that not only do you get to learn a little about a lot, but that you'll find that each class in your major is linked to your core classes. For example, I found that my economics class had subject matter I had already learned about in marketing, but delved deeper too. In this way our knowledge base is both widend and deepend.
ReplyDeleteHey Becca! I completely agree that all the subjects are related, and we need to study them all before we can understand just one of them. I found that throughout my years of schooling that while I was taking one class I began to gain a better understanding of a subject that I studied previously in a completely different class. This shows how amazing our God is because of the orderliness of His creation. I really enjoyed your last paragraph, and I find it so incredible that after 16 or more years of school we will still only know a very small fraction of what there is to know.
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