Many times every day I think about what has happened with education. I don't know as much myself; people I know have said a great deal over the years of its decline. In a need to keep things balanced, I have been acting devil's advocate to the idea of the decline of education in my own head at least, but I do wonder, because I see what I think is a decline. Either I'm way too idealistic, or there has been one.
Reading Scholars Online's site again reacquainted me with my thoughts as a teenager under Dr. McMenomy's tutelage (I don't think I was a good student, but I loved those years). I got to join with my siblings a forum, back in those days, which students who knew each other well chatted about whatever. The other students knew each other before my family joined the online schools (we took classes on Regina Coeli Academy as was; I don't know what it's called now), so we joined into a group of friendly folks who debated theology and other things and fell on swords like good bad Romans.
There was a sense of striving for excellence among us, a sense I have not felt since in any other place. Maybe there is striving-for-excellence-lite in other areas of my life, but I have not felt that good pressure of challenge since, and it hasn't really been good that I've lost it. It was a very good thing for me. I pushed myself to become a virtuous person, in a sense I did not want to be ashamed, but I could distinguish between the bad shames and the necessary shames.
I remembered today that education can push one to a virtuous life. There is such a thing as rigour- oh, how I miss it! High school students studying college texts? Crunchable. I learned from these friends because many of them were better at some things than I was. I learned that I was, at least then, inferior in some ways merely because I wasn't willing to try- I was lazy. I insist that it is probably still so, but in the places I am now, it seems almost normal to be this lazy, in the name of following your dreams, being authentic. I would never try the things I do now if I had not had the pressure I had then. I loved that pressure... a lovely constant hum of desire to be better, and the constant improvement of my soul. If I envy anyone, I envy my past self.
Nothing can possibly be better than being pressed by the excellence of your fellows (whom I keenly felt were my superiors in some ways at least) to be better yourself. The love of truth, the love of truly doing right, the love of excellence... nothing can compare. It was a taste of the Best. Perhaps I most saw the good in it, and there was plenty of bad, but after reading Scholars Online's site again, I realise that I wasn't dreaming. It is out there, in some places. I want to find it and amplify it.
I do need to remember the good and apply it now. I have lost touch with the excellence that is possible because I am afraid of setting high hopes; I have killed the sense that this is real. I don't know if it is a threat to society now, but it feels that believing in these deeper, Greater somethings is a threat now.
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