Aristotle (Part 2)

            I’ve been thinking about the implication that Aristotle’s ideas have for education theory and practice so that I can contribute to the conversation on Tuesday. I’ve been looking through articles and highlighting and making notes, then realizing my thoughts are drifting from my original idea into tangential stuff, then stopping to clear my head, then returning to the reading and starting all over again.  I’m sure I won’t get to share all of the ideas and questions that Nicheomachean Ethics presents; I’ll probably be sticking to Aristotle’s influence on Dewey, the various discussions that fall under the “democracy and education” heading, and multicultural education.  But there is one part of the reading that has stuck with me.  Randall Curren touches on it in the afterword. He writes,

“Note well that education is preparation for leisure “spent in intellectual activity,” according to Aristotle.  It is not preparation for work, as is so often now assumed.  Greek education…was from the beginning preparation for leisure….Leisure was, in any case, not equated with mere amusement.  It was contrasted with productive labor in such a way that public service – even military service- was generally considered a use of leisure, or time not spent satisfying material needs.  For Aristotle, leisure provided the opportunity to flourish as a human being or to pursue what is intrinsically, not just instrumentally, good.

How far we’ve moved from this!  I think about students tracked into vocational programs who are deprived of even the opportunity to decide if that path is the one they want to travel. They are often the least consulted and most patronized when educational decisions are being made.  But in a larger sense, I don’t know of many people who don’t suffer from the distance education policy has put between school and the “leisure” that Aristotle described, no matter what their social position. Most American people think of the link between education and work (and the economic competitiveness of the US) as if it has always been that way, and now that the “sorting mechanism” that our education system has been is being questioned by some (http://www.racetonowhere.com/), I wonder if we’ll start looking for alternatives. (Probably not, as the idea that America should always be able “the best” is a hard one for some folks to let go of, but it doesn’t hurt to think about some different ways…)