To educate a person is not only to impart knowledge, but to form their soul, according to Robert McNamara, an associate professor of philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

McNamara spoke Oct. 29 on the deeply spiritual and personalist approach to education inspired by the writings of Catholic philosopher Edith Stein. 

“Education is never a put-together behavioral project shaped toward a uniform goal or general schema,” McNamara said. “It always involves stimulating the individual as an individual first.”

Stein, a 20th-century German and Catholic convert, held a doctoral degree in philosophy and was a teaching assistant at the University of Freiburg. She left her teaching career to become a Carmelite nun and was killed in a gas chamber in Auschwitz in 1942. Stein is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint and martyr. 

According to Stein’s theory of education, education should nurture a student’s potential for personal development and foster an intimate relationship between a teacher and student, ultimately relying on a teacher to take responsibility for their student, McNamara said.

“The genuine love of the educator never loses sight of the child, and would eventually discover an opening through which he or she can enter the child’s life by listening to them,” McNamara said. “Ultimately, the educator needs knowledge of the soul of the child.”

McNamara said the general, impersonal approach to education in the modern age has not sought to nourish souls.

“Our education system, on all of its levels, has set us up for failure inasmuch as we’ve semi-industrialized or purely industrialized education,” McNamara said. “While we can continue to work through the system, we should do the best as we can to move toward smaller class sizes and allow greater personal engagement.”

Education is not purely academic, but spiritual, according to McNamara. An educator must engage with the individual through soul-to-soul contact, interpreting the language of a child’s soul and responding with love.

“When we educate, we stand on holy ground, and we must be careful not to trample upon that which is sacred,” McNamara said. “Reverence enables the educator to conduct education in an actual personal way.”

McNamara said Stein’s analogy of color illustrates this idea.

“Edith Stein imagines the divine white light of God to be refracted into a great spectrum of personal color that spans community, across time and space,” McNamara said. “All persons bear the light of God, though each differently, by bearing a different hue. This hue is exclusive to the individual.”

Freshman Isaac Trotter said the analogy of different hues representing people’s individualities inspired him to think differently about education and interacting with people in general.

“It’s a very good reminder that every single person walking around is a living temple of the Holy Spirit,” Trotter said. “All of our encounters with people, even if we’re not educating them, should revere the fact that whoever we meet is an active reflection of God, even if they don’t know that.”

Freshman Anna Coyle said a personalist approach to education might encourage students to take school more seriously. 

“Cultivating a personal relationship with students is important, so as to know their strengths and weaknesses and how to best teach them,” Coyle said. “I think young students would engage more fully in the classroom if the education were tailored to them in this more personal way.”

McNamara said crucial aspects of personalist education are conservation, liberality, and power.

“Genuine education should conserve everything worthy of conservation,” McNamara said. “It should preserve everything authentic in the educated individual.”

Education should foster a student’s good habits and guide them through their cultural heritage — particularly the heritage of Western civilization.

Finally, McNamara said a personalist education should give a student liberality and the power over their own soul.

“Genuine education should set the integrated individual free — and I mean truly free,” McNamara said. “It should also give the student the ability to exercise the fullness of their power with the kind of independence of thought and action that shapes futures and helps a person flourish within their community.”

Coyle said McNamara’s view of education could be applied to any career, and not just teaching.

“Everyone needs the skills of a teacher at some point in their lives, whether as a leader of a team or as a parent,” Coyle said. “I think the only way you can do that well is to be attentive to the individual person, cultivating a trusting relationship and leading them personally toward the truth.”