What first impressed me when reading the article ’Approaching the Grand Union’ by Jay Heinrichs was the more than familiar atmosphere it brought to me. Appreciating the personal impression rather than the objective content is not as inappropriate, though, as it may seem. Not in this case. When we look for a non-explicit message in the writing, we do exactly what Heinrichs is talking about: we draw out a moral, which can be completely different for everyone. For me, it was the recognition that education has a role which may remain hidden, yet is more important than the visible functions.

The article shows us, through several impressive examples, that after finishing our schools, very little stays with us. And what does so is not really about the subjects, but more about an unexplainable moral of our experiences. However much we learn and are taught, there is hardly anything we really understand of the world. On the other hand, there is this implicit insight, an undefined concept of our existence that we feel we need to find. Heinrichs says that this is the real value of our school-years. Thinking over my own experiences, I completely agree with that. Such a moral can be the true reason for life; therefore, it is a lot more important than it appears. Education has the first chance to help us to this recognition, and to set us to work on it. So my addition to the article’s conclusion would be that, according to the above, teachers have an extreme responsibility lying in the way they treat and look at students. Unfortunately, very few teachers and professors seem to be aware of this. Or fortunately, some are.

Looking back at my school-days, I feel I have met some of these teachers with the celestial vocation that passes on something of their ’wisdom or sentiment’. Although primary school does not come at the time when we are in any kind of search, I was given the first package of my ’mission’ there. It was a special music school where we were surrounded by the greatest composers from a very early age. This might explain why this early chapter of my story was significant. All this harmony was led to us by a confident and strict teacher, whose classes resembled sacred sessions. I still remember being lifted high above the world without knowing or asking how.

I also have vivid memories of a famously rigorous history teacher from secondary school. He was so rigid and even somewhat cruel that he had been ’renamed’ after Haynau. Once in our fourth year, he used a class to talk to us individually about our future plans. The register book said ’philosophy’ by my name. I had chosen it for immature and silly reasons without having the slightest idea about ’real’ philosophy. After getting a worthless and bluffing answer to the ’Why’ question, he asked me about my favourite philosophers. That put me in an even bigger helplessness. I felt he could see right through me. He said and did nothing unusual, but the gaze he gave me will always stay with me. It was quite disapproving but even more inspiring. From then on I didn’t fear him at all. I knew he had given me some guidelines and trust, only I didn’t know what for. He knew all that, I believe.

Another secondary school teacher was with a similarly strong influence was my Russian language teacher. There were only six of us in the group. Such family-like surroundings naturally led to demolishing the normal structure of classes. We ended up talking about music, poetry, love and everything that seemed important to us at the time – with a remote connection to the subject. Now I realize that what we did we were revealing the importance of this ’hidden moral’. She had the same sort of aura or inspiration as our Haynau, but she wasn’t hiding her helpfulness behind some pose. She was as naturally human as one can be, with the same silent and confident smile in her eyes as the other two mentioned.

Following the history of my education, I arrive at my philosophy studies at university – where I eventually got to, partly owing this to my ’tutors.’ Nothing can be nearer to hidden morals and values than philosophy, one would think. We would, therefore, expect professors teaching at such a course to be aware of their ’real’ task. Instead of this, as Heinrichs says, ’academia shows an increasing aversion to any course that smacks of appreciation for anything…’. Unfortunately, that applies to most of my professors, too. But there are exceptions. For these few, too, the official emphasis is still on the subject. At the same time, they are constantly presenting students with the ’Grand Union’s’ unexpressable moral, or with the call for it. I don’t think they do this deliberately, it must be more about instincts. ’Whether this is wisdom or sentiment, I still don’t know…’, and I don’t think it matters. What does matter is that we can benefit from having such teachers - for our whole life.

In conclusion, I would say that education has a far more important purpose than simply giving knowledge. It should awake our sense and desire to search for ’the moral of our own story.’ Long-remembered teachers are those who really have more than we do. They seem to have found their stories’ morals. That makes them important to us. I have said nothing concrete about these morals, which is not simple obscurity. This message cannot be put into words; it’s between the lines. I believe that worthy teachers are capable of reading that way. In my opinion, education is, or it should be, cultivation – in the sense that it sets us the open task: Find your own lines and start to learn to read between them. Teachers suspecting this are the ones we are to learn from.

 

by Péter Zachár