Education

He starts off this episode with a story about two young children, one a Jew and one a Catholic. It turns out to be a funny joke. His talk is going to center on colleges and universities.

He says the general aim of education is to train the whole man. This includes the intellect, the will and the mind. He says he'll concentrate on talking about the intellect.

Within intellect the person should be educated in the use of truth. The subjects he studies in college should be related to each other. He calls this correlation. The third thing is the depth of knowledge.

The purpose of education should be to acquaint us with truth. Some of this includes the truth of science, the truth of literature and the truth of man. We need to learn the truth of our own existence. He says when life is meaningless it's very dull. The absence of a goal or purpose leads to fears and worries.

He says one of the things we need to know is why man was made. What is the purpose of man's existence?

He says there's a thing in psychology called ideo motor. Every idea we have tends to some kind of expression. He says we act upon our beliefs. If ideas lead to actions then it's important to put true things into our minds.

He says we should treat our minds like we treat our stomachs. We don't put garbage into our stomachs and so we shouldn't put garbage into our minds. It's important to keep the right kind of thoughts in ones head. (In today's world that would be referred to as GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.)

He says education does not always deliver us from evil and that sometimes it results in clever devils instead of stupid ones.

Then he talks about the idea that people must know evil. He says there's two ways of knowing certain things, one is from actually having something and the other is having knowledge of something but not experience with that thing. (For example, having MS is one thing, not having it but knowing about it is another thing entirely.)

He says God knows evil negatively (he doesn't have it) and humans know it from experiencing it. We can be captured by our own evil deeds.

He says the goal of all education should be to know the truth. He says when you know the truth of life you are most free.

He says the courses one takes in college should help us understand other things in other subjects. (Math helps one understand music.)

He talks about the way college should be and that is everyone takes a core of courses (which is actually the way some, perhaps many, colleges work. You take certain courses related to your major and then you can choose some other courses. For example, my core courses were science-based but I also took courses in psychology.)

He says it's wrong to just take any subjects you want even if they have no relation to each other. An educated person sees relationships between various branches of knowledge.

He says the truly educated man will have a philosophy of life.

He says one way to do things is to 'deepen the mystery.' What that means basically is that we learn about something and then get deeper learning and meaning about that something. For example Democrates actually postulated the existence of atoms but it was hundreds of years before scientists learned the very basic structure of atoms and then more years before they found sub-particles and what they do.

He says we do not want everyone to be educated exactly the same thing. Diverse subjects are the best way to go.