There’s a part of “Good Will Hunting” that’s always stuck out to me. Will and his friends are hanging out in a Harvard bar when Clark, a grad student, starts boasting in classic more-intellectual-than-thou fashion. Will gets fed up and trounces him, finishing everything with a sweeping “you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education could have picked up for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”
Clark knows he’s caught and blusters back, “But I will have a degree, and you’ll be serving my kids fries at a drive through on our way to a skiing trip.”
Well. Is that really why college costs so much? Clark’s view of education seems hopelessly bleak: a series of hoops through which to jump, at the end of which you receive a degree entitling you to a career.
And what an expensive piece of paper a diploma is! According to Will, if you don’t want to buy the prestige, you might as well go to the library and read – you’d accomplish the same thing anyway.
Or would you? I’m not sure either of them is right. There must be more to education than this.
We are social creatures. We learn from each other, and each person has something to contribute. In truth, a good university isn’t an institution, but a community of learning.
Dr. Burton, one of the best professors I’ve ever had here at Truman State, knew this. She posted the following passage just outside her office:
When two go together, one of them at least looks forward to see what is best; a man by himself though he be careful, still has less mind in him than two, and his wits have less weight.
Homer’s Iliad 10.224-10.226
We can’t simply go to the public library and read. Though we might be careful, education doesn’t happen in isolation.
And besides, it’d be no fun, either! Dr. Burton’s upper-level ancient philosophy class brought together majors in everything from Physics to French, all taking it as part of our General Honors program.
Sometimes what we see in a text is a reflection of ourselves. Math majors showed me sides to Aristotle that I wouldn’t have seen had I been alone or surrounded by other philosophy majors like myself. By relating to my fellow students, I saw Socrates from more perspectives than I ever could have alone with a book. Together, we had ‘more mind in us’ than alone.
Dr. Burton sought out these diverse insights, and she worked with us along every step of the way, from conceiving and writing papers to study sessions outside of class. In this environment, which never could have existed in a lecture hall of 500 students, I learned about more than Plato: I learned something of the nature of true education.
Knowledge germinates. Ideas are seedlings in need of nurturing. Left on their own, even with water and sun (or perhaps library books), they may die, or grow deformed. But with the right care from a skilled gardener, they will spread their leaves and reach towards the sun.
In the end, good professors do more than enliven their material: they bring their students to life.