A man with a compass knows which way is north. That is, he is oriented.
But, in fact, even without a compass, a man who can see the sun or the stars can orient himself, as sailors and travelers have been doing forever. This orientation is what guides his life, his decisions, his beliefs. The sailor who embarks upon a trip to the high seas decidedly believes in the sun, because if the sun were to one day rise in the north instead of the east, if the sun were to lie, then how could that sailor direct himself? How could he re-orient himself? He would be lost at sea. But the sun tells the truth, and the stars do not lie. And the sailor depends on this celestial honesty since it is what moves him to turn the wheel this way or that, or raise the mainsail and catch a driving north wind.
A sailor's life depends on key celestial truths which he apprehends with his mind. Without these orienting truths, he sails no where. He may be sailing everywhere, but he does not know where he is. And without guidance, that is, the authoritative directive of sun and stars, he has the appearance of sailing freely, because he is sailing at random, any which way he pleases. But he knows he is lost. He cannot find his way back to shore without some truth to guide him, without some star to plot his course. When he finds his star, he can orient himself, and direct his vessel.
Now, he may, in some forlorn escape from the world, direct himself onto the high seas. And he may, in some hopeful return to his native land direct himself to the coast. Both are free decisions, because by the little shiny prick of light we call a star, he knows where he sails, either to gloom or to home. But often, through the influence of lost seafarers he meets along the way, the oriented sailor begins to wonder what would happen if the sun were to lie by rising in the wrong spot; how would he find his way home? He knows that the sun has never lied, and she stubbornly holds fast to the unwavering conviction that the best place for her to rise is in the east. But what if she did lie? What if she is right now, lying? How can he discern truth from lies? Is the sailor even able to apprehend the truth about the sun?
This disorientation arises in the man who disbelieves the sun when she dogmatically rises in the east. How can he orient himself if he cannot trust her? If the man clouds his mind by unsettling his presumptions about the sun, or by defamiliarizing himself with the map of the stars, or by questioning the sun's motives and proudly accusing her of deception, where can he find re-orientation? How can he return to his homeland?
The convictions we have about the world, the truths we have learned to presume in order to make decisions about the direction we go in life are necessary for orientation. To rid ourselves of these convictions, to unsettle our deepest presumptions about the truths of the world leads not to orientation but to disorientation. It leads not to freedom but to randomness. It leads not somewhere, but to anywhere, perhaps to places where a ship ought not be, like on the rocks, shipwrecked. Disorientation does not tell us where or who we are, but rather leaves us lost and alienated from ourselves.
Education should be, then, the transmission of truth from one generation to another. It should be passing along what is true in order for the young to orient themselves. GK Chesterton said that education is dogma, and that dogma is the only thing that cannot be separated from education. For as soon as dogma is removed from the business of educating the young and replaced by things like defamiliarization and the unsettling of presumptions, there is simply no learning going on. Chesterton said that "a teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching."
And so a mother will teach her little boy dogmatically that he ought not to hit his sister because it is wrong. But these days, a teacher might unsettle the boy's conviction by saying "Do not hit your sister, unless you are in a different culture where it may be acceptable to hit your sister, then, who am I to tell you not to do such a thing." The boy will surely become disoriented. And in the worst cases, the boy, when he grows, may find it convenient to switch cultures and start hitting women.
It should be the purpose of education to orient young people by giving them truths to build a life on. Harvard University, a prestigious, costly, and esteemed institution of higher learning, has produced a document through a certain Task Force outlining the college's views on what constitutes a liberal education. As a main tenet, it states that "the aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them find ways to re-orient themselves."
As I have demonstrated above, how is unsettling presumptions, defamiliarizing the familiar, or disorientation going to help young people learn anything? In fact, this may constitute the very way in which we might de-learn things. If you go to Harvard with a conviction, check it at the door, there is no need for convictions. If you are familiar with a truth about the world, say for instance that freedom of religion is a good thing, or democracy is a good thing, or even that there is such a thing as a good thing, you must relinquish your trust in such truths. For, silly young person that you are, those are things which you have learned from your dogmatic ancestors, but we have Teachers here, and we will teach you that there is no truth in the world, and that the sun may be a liar for all we know, and what is north to you may be south to another person.
How will Harvard be able to "re-orient" the young after they have convinced them that there is no such thing as due-north? How will young people find their way in the world, if all they have learned is a systematic way to disorient themselves? Will they not be lost on the high seas? Perhaps Harvard students sail in every direction, but unless they hold fast to some of their convictions, unless they have a direction, unless they can see a truth that will lead them, they may each be as lost as the other. If you cannot see universal truth in the world, a directive, a beacon, a foundation, then progress heads in every direction and goes all over the sea until it becomes shipwrecked.
The oriented traveler knows there is truth in the world, and a human being can grasp that truth. It takes humility, and open-mindedness, though, to see the truth in the world. The traveler must rid himself of the fear that the truth may lead him to redirect his travels. But he must learn to trust the stars. I have heard that long ago there were men from the Orient itself who were able to direct themselves by the guidance of a star. Those travelers knew what it was like to trust their convictions that truth could be found, and when they did complete their journey, they found truth in a cattle trough. From the Orient, from the place where the sun still rises, they were led to truth. No doubt they passed that truth along to their children.
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