Education teaches students how to love, not just what to love, according to three Hillsdale professors who spoke in a panel hosted by the Hillsdale College C.S. Lewis Society Feb. 27. The panelists spoke on an assortment of issues pertaining to classical education through a Lewisian lens. 

“Part of the question is less about how we get students to admire the things that are worthy of admiring but how we get them to admire something at all,” Assistant Professor of Education Jonathan Gregg said.

Seniors Justus Hume, the society’s president, and Mark den Hollander, the society’s vice president, shared the stage with panelists Assistant Professors of Education Jonathan Gregg and David Diener, and Professor of History Bradley Birzer to discuss what Lewis says about classical education in the modern world. Hume and den Hollander asked the panelists a variety of questions submitted by the Hillsdale faculty and student body.

Den Hollander asked the panelists about their first experiences reading Lewis’s famous work, “The Abolition of Man.” 

“I was and still am haunted by ‘The Abolition of Man,’” Gregg said. “It’s so prophetic. You’d think it was written yesterday, and there are some moments that are just genuinely dark.”

After sharing their experiences of “The Abolition of Man,” the panelists discussed how Lewis might reply to the question of whether education is meant to be a student-led enterprise aimed at open inquiry or something that is led by teachers tasked with transferring true information to their students. The panelists said Lewis would say both and neither. 

“I think Lewis thought of teachers as master learners, so the teacher is guiding the students on this journey of inquiry, but in such a way that points them toward the givenness of reality,” Diener said. “So it’s not that you jam facts into students’ heads because that’s ultimately what makes them educated, but education is about orienting students toward a correct understanding of the world.”

Den Hollander then asked about how to talk about classical education with those without a liberal education.

“I think a conversation about what the end of education is would go a long way,” Gregg said. “And I think even a non-liberally educated person has to recognize that education has an end, and maybe that’s the place to start.”

Dr. Diener and Dr. Birzer both stressed the importance of pointing out the negative consequences of rejecting universal objective values.

Hume then asked the panel how parents and educators can go about cultivating love within the hearts of their kids and students.

“There is an element in education where we need to find the wonder,” Birzer said. “The wonder isn’t just saying, ‘Let’s find what’s wonderful.’ It’s really trying to figure out what is wonderful in life and expressing that as a professor.”

Diener posed a series of questions that parents and teachers can ask themselves when tasked with educating the next generation.

“What do you want your students to love differently when they leave your classroom?” Diener said. “How do I want them to leave my classroom with their soul or heart inclined differently than when they enter? What do I want them to love?”

The panelists closed the discussion with an assortment of book recommendations pertaining to C.S. Lewis and his views on education. Gregg recommended Lewis’s work “The Discarded Image” and his essay “Medieval and Renaissance Literature;” Diener recommended Wendell Berry’s book “The Loss of the University,” and Birzer recommended “The Abolition of Man” and C.S. Lewis scholar Michael Ward’s “After Humanity.”

Freshman Karis Lim said she enjoyed the evening’s panel.

“I really liked the part about how education shapes affections and ignites affections in the first place because we have forgotten how to love,” Lim said, “It is kind of a scary thing when we stop caring about things and stop being vulnerable; then there is a destruction of love and education.”

Junior Jonathan Williams said he appreciated Lewis’s approach to non-Christian literature and how that approach broadens the field of study for classical education.

“I thought they did a really good job at figuring classical education as always bringing you closer to the source of truth in Christ even through all of these other non-Christian things.”