Benjamin Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people is capable of freedom.”
If he was right, then it is imperative for any free society ‒ if it is to remain free ‒ to educate its people in virtue.
This was the exact purpose of some of the places that formed the earliest foundations of the academy, the schools of ancient Athens. The Athenians’ understanding of education consisted of something deeper than mere knowledge acquisition or career preparedness. It was “paideia” ‒ the formation of virtuous citizens.
Nearly every institution of American higher education was founded with this same goal in mind. Somewhere along the way, many in higher education drifted off the path.
Colleges have strayed from their core mission
In his prophetic work of educational philosophy, “The Abolition of Man,” C.S. Lewis details this loss of virtue education in the educational institutions of the West. In moving from being places seeking to raise up human beings of wisdom and virtue to being places that exist merely for the disconnected pursuit of knowledge, Lewis argues, we create “men without chests.”