The Grammar of Education

Latin has a way of sticking to you, if you learned it at school. Far from being a dead

Source: theguardian.com

language, at least in the minds of those who have particularly unhappy associations with the context in which they were taught, it is very much alive. For one thing, it has shaped a good deal of the English which we still speak, as well as the more classical Latinate languages like Spanish and Italian. Bits of it can also remain lodged in our consciousness in their original form.

Take, for example, the two cognate verbs, dicere and ducere. Conjugating them in parallel, as we were taught to do as an aide memoire, makes a pleasing jingle – dico, dicere, dixi, dictus alongside duco, ducere, duxi, ductus – if I remember rightly. The first, ‘dico’, means ‘to say, tell, speak, or name’ and sits neatly alongside the second, meaning ‘to lead, consider, or regard’. The word ducere is the root from which is derived the word ‘education’ and it resonates with, or perhaps evokes, the meaning of dicere. In other words the two are not only cognate but, in a sense, inseparable.

People are educated, in the early stages of schooling, by being ‘told’ things, by having them ‘named’. But this is only a means to an end. The purpose of education is not simply that a person should absorb enough information to pass a test, or later to qualify them for a job, but that they should use what information they absorb in their early years, as well as what is learned later in life, to inform the way they ‘regard’ the world, other people and themselves, or how, in whatever capacity they find themselves in, they ‘lead’ it.

Consider the current debate over a return to grammar schools. Is it really a return? I am not an expert in the field, but I would have thought that it is difficult, if not impossible, to return to the way things were done in former times when it comes to education, or even to how we structure the school system itself. We were ‘told’ things differently in those former times and there was a great deal less to tell, or else it was told wrongly, in the light of advances that have been made in virtually all the academic disciplines. Society functioned differently too. As a result, and with the wisdom of hindsight, we are now aware of the sociological effects of creaming off talent, both for those who might find themselves in the new grammar schools and those who will not.

It would be interesting to know if people sense the same kind of social limitations where the best sporting or musical talent has been creamed off. Do the ‘not so goods’ who are left behind feel more motivated? Do the talented who have been creamed off feel a sense of partial isolation? 

Good independent schools often model what society ought to look like, as do good comprehensives, because the achievement emphasis is less on streaming, or creaming off, and more on building the individual’s confidence as a person who is part of a community which is being educated, in the fullest sense, to be the society of the future. They are ‘told’ in order that they may ‘regard’ the world and others with greater wisdom, or at least that is what we wish were happening.

Would it not be better then, in sport, as well as in the classroom, if the gifted were taught to ‘consider’ or ‘regard’ those less gifted as being themselves a gift? Imagine if all faith schools were taught that those of other faiths, or none, were the most precious of God’s gifts to the rest of humanity. In this ideal community all would be educators, preparing themselves and others to realise their gifts, as and when they emerged, in such a way as to bring hope and healing to society. It sounds like the kingdom of Heaven for which we are taught to pray; that it might come about in the here and now.

Oxford Faith Debates - The Future of the Church of England. How can Anglicans of all kinds be engaged in the Church of the future?

Last Thursday’s Oxford Faith Debate at the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford was a timely reminder of the fact that there are other things at stake, when it comes to the future of the Church of England, than those which have occupied its attention in recent years. In the time scale of eternity these divisive issues will, in any case, be ultimately consumed within the unfathomable depths of God’s love. What is really at stake today, however, is the credibility, and not just the viability, of the Church of England. In this respect, there are only two things which matter: a passionate desire to know and be known by God and a corresponding desire to know and understand others and to take responsibility for the deployment of the gifts which they bring to the Church, and hence to the people the Church is called to serve.

This is not as obvious, or as easy, as it may sound. If, for the purpose of argument, we restrict these two essentials to the life of the Church, we find, as I did for quite a bit of the discussion about how Anglicans of all kinds could be engaged in the Church of the future, that they become occluded by peripheral considerations. Questions of church attendance and how to get younger people there on a Sunday, questions of representation and management, especially where this has to do with authority, are all important, as they would be for any organisation. But few of these considerations have any direct bearing on the central question. While they may serve as checks and balances against which the Church can measure its viability in the present, and have an idea about its longer term future, they do not inspire. They do not draw people to God.

The Church is not an organisation like any other, although there are things which it can learn from the organisational model. The Church is contextual. It is shaped by a particular story and exists in a particular environment for a reason. It needs to be able to communicate what it is about, which is all things pertaining to God and to his purpose for the world, in ways which make it meaningful to those it seeks to reach, not all of whom are shaped by the same cultural context.

The idea that the Church of England is still viable enough to be thought of as the national church begs a number of questions. Is being the national Church a cultural precedent? Is it national because it is established, thereby linking it culturally to England and to English history? What culture is it representing in the multi-cultural, ethnically and religiously diverse society of today (a question which might well be asked during the course of the next Oxford Faith Debate on November 20^th)? And what of the people to whom the specific cultural connections which make for a national established Church mean little or nothing? These are people who the Church needs to reach but who often feel alienated by arcane traditions rooted in the tangled web of its English history and legal system.

During the course of my ministry as a university chaplain and in the context of rural parishes in Wales, I have learned that many people ignore the nuances of establishment vs. disestablishment. They assume the Anglican Church to be the Church of Wales, rather than the Church in Wales, a subtle but important difference. The Church in Wales is neither established or national. It is simply that part (or province) of the Anglican Communion which exists primarily to serve the people of Wales. But like the Church of England we, in the Church in Wales, are not really in touch with those we are here to serve because we are unsure of what we are about, what we have to bring to them from the store house of our particular treasure, from all the gifts which we are given in people, and from the gift of God himself. The Church in Wales is not a bearer of meaning for many people. It is like a frame hanging on a wall minus the picture. It is not saying very much.

I was reminded of this at Thursday’s Oxford Faith Debate. At the heart of the discussion was the unspoken question ‘What is the Church of England really for? What is it about?’ The question pertains to the whole Church, the whole body of Christ, but it also needs to be addressed separately, by each of its individual parts, all those different denominational limbs which make up the body.

Perhaps the question needs to be placed within the framework of another more specific question, as one of the panel members so eloquently stated, ‘How does the Church identify gifts and experiences?’ She went on to remind us of the fact that low morale, among clergy especially, has to do with their particular giftedness not being recognised or used. Gift is more than talent or aptitude. It is not a ‘skill’. It is that particular aspect of a person which is unique to them and vital to the missional life of the Church. Their gift is what makes them the  person they are. That person is called to minister to others as Christ. To ignore their gift is to ignore, or refuse to know, that person.

We only become persons in the fullest sense when we are in communion with other persons, those we know and those we have not yet met, all of whom God would like to know through what the Church calls its ministry. Where the Church erects barriers of gender or status (to name only two), the particular ‘treasure’ which many people bring to its life is lost and the Church, along with those it is there to serve, is the poorer for it with the result that the meaning which people hope to find when they join a church is somehow absent.

The search for meaning is really a search for God. It is a search for holiness. When people come to church for the first time, they are like the two men who approached the apostle, Philip, with a simple request, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus”. Those who remain on the edge of the Church’s life, who perhaps only set foot in a church at Christmas or for the occasional wedding or funeral, would also like to see Jesus. They would like to meet him on other Sundays as well, and in every context in which the Church plays a part. Making this possible is the Church of England’s purpose and its hope for a future.