Musonius Rufus, Lectures 1.4

The one reluctantly and slowly, and fairly pried loose by a thousand arguments, will perhaps in the end give sign of assent—I mean of course the dullard. The other quickly and readily will accept the argument as cogent and relevant to himself, and will not require many proofs nor a fuller treatment.

Was not just such a lad that Spartan boy who asked Cleanthes the philosopher if toil was not a good? He made it plain that he was so well endowed by nature and by training for the practice of virtue as to consider toil closer to the nature of good than of evil, in that he asked whether toil was not perchance a good, as if it were conceded that it was not an evil. Thereupon Cleanthes in surprise and admiration of the boy replied,

"You are of noble blood, dear child, so noble the words you speak."

Can you doubt that such a lad would have been readily persuaded not to fear poverty nor death nor any of the things which seem terrible, and again, not to seek after wealth nor life nor pleasure?

A rather long and gruesome stretch in the world of education has shown me how much people like to argue about which subjects should be taught, or in what order they should be presented, or whether this or that new fashionable curriculum is best.

Yes indeed, let us ask what should be learned; yet what we sadly neglect is also asking what needs to precede any learning at all, the right conditions for the seeds to take root. There is no point to planting in untilled soil. There will be very little learning if we have not already helped form better learners.

We are also, I suspect, interested in producing obedient followers of this or that ideology, efficient producers and consumers, and young folks who will gladly do what they are told. I’m no longer sure if it is education or indoctrination, on all sides of the spectrum.

There is a great interest in the results, what the education industry likes to call measurable outcomes, and very little interest in the cause of genuine understanding, in asking students to freely think for themselves. Only they can be the measure of that.

Throw a textbook at someone, and then give him a multiple choice test, and you have taught him nothing. Ask him to merely repeat what you have told him, and he has learned nothing. You have groomed him only for conformity, not for being human. Without a foundation for building his own insight and character, you have made him an object, not a subject.

Everyone has very different degrees of disposition for learning, and I would claim that so much of being a teacher is trying to work with what is already given. You will find some brilliantly prepared, and others grossly unprepared. With some, you may begin right away on the straight and narrow, while with others you will need to try undoing years of broadly bad habits.

Some athletes show up for training in a state of ideal fitness, while others appear in a state of terrible neglect. Some recruits enter boot camp as sharp as a knife and full of commitment, while others can’t even manage to get out of bed or do a dozen push-ups.

Building up a physical strength and stamina is quite important, but building up an intellectual and moral strength and stamina is ultimately so much more important. The greater part, the mind and will, should gracefully rule over the lesser part, the body and the passions.

I can only nod when I read the story of Cleanthes and the young Spartan. The lazy, the entitled, and the spoiled will come to you with the assumption that they deserve the most profit with the least effort. I know full well that sense of joy and wonder when I have come across a student who actually wants to learn, who is willing to face difficulty, and who is eagerly in search of something better.

He is ready. He has been well prepared. He will most likely advance in wisdom and character quickly.

Should one then heartlessly cast aside those who are not ready or prepared? Not at all. One should rather help them to first become ready and prepared. Otherwise, no later rigorous and directed study will be of any use to them at all, a fault that will not be theirs, but our own.

I need to remember, of course, that the young Spartan was, from a Stoic perspective, technically mistaken. Hardship is not in and of itself a good, but only when it is employed rightly. Yet his inclinations, whether from nature or from nurture, allowed him to see the very possibility that it could well be a good, and to see that gratification could well be an evil.

He was half way there. He was on his way to focusing in on the truth, instead of hunting and pecking over the whole field.

Written in 2/1999