The DtK Book Club {Introduction}

I never know how to write about an introduction. An introduction is, by definition, incomplete. It usually asks more questions than it answers. It is often overly simplistic — but all the while making promises to make one wise if one will only keep reading.

So far, I’ve kept reading. In fact, I’ve read this introduction three times now. Surely this portends great things.

Ahem.

So, are you going to be reading along with us? Have you bought your copy yet? If not, we are only in the introduction, meaning there is still time.

The thing that baffles me about this introduction is that the author is quoting some of the greats without actually quoting them, if that makes sense. Isn’t it amazing how good ideas are so universally true, to the point where we can arrive at them by different paths? I mean, Smith is writing a book on education without quoting many of the educationalists, right? At least, not the ones we’ve been reading around here over the years.

So Smith writes:

What if education, including higher education, is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? {p. 17}

And I’m thinking about CS Lewis’ wonderful little essay collection, The Abolition of Man.

Again Smith writes:

What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? {p. 18}

And I’m checking the index to see if he cites Russell Kirk — and his somewhat famous concept of the moral imagination — anywhere.

Smith starts discussing the power of liturgy — and here he defines the term broadly, rather than strictly — and he says:

[E]very liturgy constitutes a pedagogy that teaches us, in all sorts of precognitive ways, to be a certain kind of person…[I]mplicit in them is an understanding of the world that is precognitive, that is on a different register than ideas. {p. 25}

And I’m wondering if Smith has ever read my favorite book ever, ever, EVER, James Taylor’s Poetic Knowledge.

When Smith says,

I will propose that the primary goal of Christian education is the formation of a peculiar people… {p. 34}

he’s not saying it the same way that David Hicks said it in Norms and Nobility, but I was one who heard the echoes, nonetheless. Isn’t that really what Hicks meant when he said the goal of true education is virtue?

Reading the introduction was like walking through a hallway and noting pictures of old friends, and yet…and yet the hallway is new. This is what I’m enjoying about Smith. Because he hasn’t read the books we’ve read, he’s saying it in a different way, which, I think, tends to round out the understanding.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to read more.

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More DtK Book Club Introduction posts can be found over at Mystie’s blog!