A Career In Living
To Be Or To Do?
Strange as it may seem, the remarks of a man who lived 2400 years age can affect your whole life and the type of education you choose for yourself.
The man was Plato; the remarks were simply these: "There is a big difference between a good carpenter and a good person. A good carpenter, "Plato continued, "is proficient at building a house just as a good shoemaker is expert at making shoes. But proficiency and expertness in making things are not the same as excellence in being a person; and, after all, being a good person is the most important task that every person has while he is on earth."
Perhaps, you will agree with Plato. Suppose you do; then you will also have to agree that the type of education you choose for yourself is most important; for your education will either develop you into a good person or train you to be a good professional. If you are more concerned with learning trades or acquiring skills, you will choose a vocational or professional school. But if you think that being a person is more important, you will attend a school which will show you what it is to be a person, a good person, before you submit to training in doing or making things well. You will make sure to complete your liberal education before you begin your vocational or professional training, be it in business, education, dentistry, pharmacy, law or medicine.
Now what are the studies involved in the process called liberal education? They are, in general, theology, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, and especially literature. A well-balanced liberal curriculum, of course, will not fail to include mathematics and the physical sciences; but it is liberal (which means non-vocational, non-professional). A close look at these liberal studies shows you that they are all concerned with a person and his relations with God, his fellow person and the material world in which one lives.
Theology and philosophy, for instance, tell a person who and what they are, whence they come from, whither they are going, how they should live to be fully human, to realize fully God's plan for him. History record's a person's successes and failures in reaching the standards and achieving the goals which theology and philosophy make known. Sociology, like history, studies people in groups, rather than as an individual; unlike history it observes groups as they live and act today rather than yesterday. Psychology studies persons as individuals and also in groups, seeking to probe the subconscious and conscious motives that move us to think and act in the way that we do.
Each of these disciplines can evidently help you towards self-discovery. (You must know yourself well, before you can set about fashioning yourself into a full human being.) But none of these can contribute as much as literature, because they are all, more or less, concerned with man in the abstract. Literature, on the other hand, whether it be poetry, drama, a novel, or a short story, is always concerned with individual human persons like yourself.
Literature is like a mirror in which you see your own image. You can, of course, see yourself in your relatives, teachers, classmates and friends; and from them you can learn a great deal about what it means to be a human being. But literature, of its very nature, reveals to you the inner thoughts of people, of the authors themselves and of the characters they create. The characters in a play or a novel show you your good qualities as well as your weaknesses, and so help you to gain a new perspective on yourself. For this reason, literature can exercise a strong influence on your formation as a human being.
The study of literature, of course, involves the study of language, not only of English but also of other modern foreign languages and especially of the classical languages-Latin and Greek-whose literatures have so strongly influenced an even molded the modern literature of Europe and America.
As you make plans for college, you should consider well and decide exactly what you want college to do for you. If the remarks of Plato make sense to you, you will be well-advised to plan a program of liberal studies before you embark upon professional studies. And you will choose a liberal program which stresses courses in language and literature. For, as Plato would say, a person should first learn to be a good person before he begins to learn how to be a good carpenter.
Written by: Fr. E. M. Bienvenu, S.J.