Philosophical: The Best Education for a Human Being

A liberal arts education aims to cultivate wisdom and virtue which results in human flourishing. The “longing to know” is the essence and heart of what constitutes a rational human being (Schall 2006, 9, 32). “Nature has given us a mind full of curiosity” (Seneca 2007, 96). Aristotle remarked, “‘To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures,’…‘not only to the philosopher but to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity’” (Schall 2006, 33). Being rational, thinking, and contemplative is what makes human beings unique in all of God’s creation.

Through carpentry one can know something; but not develop that capax omnium, the capacity to know all things, and to learn to think. While intellectual pursuits can be dangerous (Jeffrey 2003, 49), the liberal arts provide that disciplined exploration of truth, beauty, and goodness opening the heart to virtue, wisdom, and noble actions (Cicero 62 BC, 69).

Along with developing wisdom and virtue, it is also most suitable to humans (Cicero 62 BC, 84–85). We are not just tools, we are souls. The trades produce beautiful crafts; however, they are often solely for moneymaking, and the human becomes an extension of the tools. Vocational studies have their place, but they are our “apprenticeship, not our real work” (Seneca 2007, 98). Education systems in Africa focus on skills training and test taking thus teaching a student to do one thing, whereas the liberal arts teach one how to learn to do anything. With the rapidly changing economies of the world, a liberal arts education is better preparation for the future. Computer courses come and go; however, Plato’s dialogues are still relevant (Schall 2006, 27).

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

Since it is the best education for a human being, a Christian liberal arts education would exceed the goals developed by UNESCO for universal learning. In 2015, as the Millennium Development Goals were being reviewed, 30 organizations came together to form the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF).The objective of the project was to “make recommendations to help countries and international organizations measure and improve learning outcomes for children and youth worldwide” (LMTF 2013).

Comprised of representatives from governments, donor agencies, and civil society organizations, it worked for 18 months to develop educational goals for children and youth worldwide. Soliciting feedback from more than 600 individuals around the world, it developed learning domains important for all children and youth to master—how it should be measured and implemented. Emphasized within the educational goals was the need for the development of critical thinking, good citizens, lifelong learners, and values (LMTF, 2013); a Christian liberal arts education, implemented across the church, would foster all these thus fulfilling these worldwide educational goals.

Political: Preserves and Nurtures Freedom

A liberal arts education is the education of free men; free materially and from themselves (Schall 2006, 28). The ancients viewed the vocations as work for slaves. Illiberal learning was focused on moneymaking tasks and servants were viewed as property and instruments (Aristotle Book I part IV). Slaves are capable of virtue but only need it developed in so much as they can perform their duties well, whereas the free man needs to aspire to perfection and thus the liberal arts education (Aristotle Book I part XIII). Seneca in his letter titled, “On Liberal and Vocational Studies” made his views on a liberal education clearly known. No study focused on moneymaking had his respect. Only the liberal arts education was fit for a free-born gentleman. “But there is only one really liberal study,—that which gives a man his liberty. It is the study of wisdom, and that is lofty, brave, and great souled. All other studies are puny and puerile” (98).

Not only were the liberal arts viewed as the education of free men, but it was also the definition of education, period. Plato in his dialogues addressed this beautifully, “This [the liberal arts] is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all” (Plato Laws, 16). Why continue to educate people only for the work of slaves? Why not provide an education that fosters freedom both within and without? A job provides limited self-sufficiency or happiness, but the liberal arts expand self-sufficiency by enabling us to know our destiny and truth thus freeing us from ourselves (Schall 2006, 42). We are freed to become what we were intended to be because within that tradition there is an emphasis on acquiring virtue and avoiding vice, and it provides self-sufficiency even with limited means (Schall 2006, 32–33). Aristotle said, “For self-sufficiency and action do not depend on excess”…“and we can do fine actions even if we do not rule earth and sea” ( Ethics

1179a 2–6). Ordinary people can engage in actions that express virtue. This means that countries with large numbers of people living below the poverty line can live virtuously. Corruption does not have to be the result of poverty. Since the greatest hindrance to development in Africa is corruption (Hanson 2009), imagine what changes a Christian liberal arts education could provide. As one Kenyan church leader stated, “Classical Christian education is the solution to fighting corruption in Africa” (Kaniah 2019).

Not only fostering freedom from self, a liberal arts education also enables a people to be free from domination from others. The best citizens who can develop and maintain a free state are those who are liberally educated. Free societies are the exception and not the rule, it takes a liberally educated populace to maintain free civilizations. “But civic education for a free society cannot remain wholly political and pre-philosophical for long; because free societies are the exception rather than the rule, and because they are frequently tempted to abandon their freedom for the despot’s promise of comfort and ease, their citizens must learn to distinguish between liberty and slavery and to recognize the conditions of freedom”

(Papadopoulos, 2018). The prescription for shoring up democracies in Africa includes these constituents: “democratic principles and institutions, popular participation, and good governance” (Doss 2020). How can that be achieved if the citizens do not know what democracy and freedom really are? The roots of democracy lie in Athens and Rome. What does Athens have to do with Abuja? Plenty, if Abuja or rather Africa wants to avoid another round of colonization, then Athens or the liberal arts tradition provides a way. Unfortunately, the liberal arts education model has not been tried in a broad scale on the continent of Africa. This situation has its roots in the early twentieth century as the educational policies taken in the United States (US) towards the freed slaves were adopted by the colonial powers and even mission agencies. This model emphasized vocational arts rather than liberal arts.

The Phelps Stokes Fund was set up by a US philanthropist in 1911 mainly for the education of blacks in Africa and the US. One of the chief architects of the education plans for Africa was Thomas Jesse Jones who had studied the education of blacks in America and served at the Hampton Institute. The Phelps Stokes commission conducted visits to east, west, and southern Africa territories to ascertain the necessary requirements for the improvement of education of blacks in Africa.

Their decisions had far-reaching implications. The overall philosophy adopted was that the best education for Africans was one that centered on industrial and agriculture skills. Thus, the liberal arts were deemed irrelevant to their needs as seen in these comments, “Thomas Jesse Jones, the study’s author, recommended that schools for Negroes should place more emphasis on the industrial and agricultural aspects of education. He found few redeeming qualities in the so-called ‘academic’ schools, e.g., Fisk and Howard, and suggested that the literary bias of these institutions should be curbed” (Berman 1971). “Education for the African masses—as for the Negro masses—was to be simple, utilitarian, and rooted to a strong agricultural bias.” (Berman 1971, 135). While this was the posture taken by the colonial office of the British, Africans in Ghana had a very different opinion, “To a man they are convinced that the teaching of the Classics is a sine qua non of higher education” (Berman 1971, 138). While in some cases, the liberal arts tradition was made available in Africa, this commission had a significant impact, and the curriculum for education in Sub-Saharan Africa was dominated by an emphasis on basic literacy and functional skills.

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

The liberal arts, which are devoted to exploring truth wherever it is found, would be of great benefit to the African people because it not only would expose them to the great conversation but would also allow for the addition of African oral tradition and history that contributes to truth, beauty, and goodness to be included in the great conversation. Much of indigenous education was overrun by the colonial powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Within that tradition were oral histories, legends, stories, and fables. In addition, great societies did flourish on the continent, and those stories need to be told. Cultivating inquiring minds who are seeking truth in the past could launch much exploration into the oral literature, histories, and societies of the indigenous peoples of Africa.

For good or for ill, colonization did bring various international languages (English and French) and exposure to Western ideas, technology, and governance. Globalization is here to stay (Mosweunyane 2013), thus the African continent should receive the education that fostered some of the greatest minds in the world to thrive on the world stage.

Biographical:

Examples of Classically Educated Africans

A Christian liberal arts education can apply to people from all walks of life, in various states of economic ability, and across ethnicities. This is an important part of this apologetic because one might object to a liberal arts education in Africa due to the high poverty and low literacy rates. While there has been significant progress in these two areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, compared to other parts of the world, the continent is still lagging substantially. In education, African countries have seen increased enrollments especially in primary school and while the “ratio of students completing lower secondary school increased in Sub-Saharan Africa from 23 percent in 1990 to 42 percent in 2014 [it] remains low compared with a global ratio of 75 percent. Increased enrollment at school leads to an empowered citizenry and a more productive labor force” (World Bank 2017). Along with these improved enrollment rates, literacy is on the rise as well. “The statistics show that the literacy rate for Sub-Saharan Africa was 65% in 2017. In other words, one third of the people aged 15 and above were unable to read and write. The comparative figure for 1984, was an illiteracy rate of 49%” (Shiundu 2018). Despite the improvements, the research indicates this might be misleading because it is possible governments are using school enrollment rates to measure literacy, which, in a continent where oral tradition still dominates, might not reflect the full picture regarding literacy on the continent.

When it comes to mathematics in Africa, “84 percent of children and adolescents have not achieved the minimum proficiency for mathematics; for context, the global average is 56 percent” (Madden, Kanos 2020). But this is not the entire story. Africans have quickly adapted to digital technology, and this is being dubbed the fourth industrial revolution which may propel the African continent to be an economic powerhouse (Ndung’u, Signe 2020). That being the case, a liberal arts education in the PreK–12 age range with exposure to digital technologies would prepare the next workforce to not only be able to use these rapidly developing tools but use them responsibly and for the benefit of others.

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

One might doubt that people in such materially impoverished situations with severely limited education resources would find a benefit from the Christian liberal arts. The lives of two Africans, one African American, and a West African college illustrate how people from any ethnicity and with challenging circumstances can embrace and navigate this type of education and not only benefit themselves but also benefit others.

Phillis Wheatley was a seven-year-old slave girl born in 1753 in what is today known as Senegal/Gambia, West Africa. She was abducted and put on the slave ship Phillis to Boston in 1761. Within one year she showed a propensity to learn and was taught the English alphabet by the daughter and mother of the family that owned her. She was trained as a domestic, but because of her intellect she received a religious, theological, and liberal arts education by the family and new England clergy.

Her abilities were astounding and cultivated through classical education which gave her a voice against slavery of her day. She learned to read Greek and Latin before she was 11 years old. She read Milton, Homer, Ovid, and Virgil and was baptized a Christian and was quite fluent in Scriptures. In 1773, she became “the first person of African descent to publish a book” (Carretta 2011, preface).

Wheatley was a student of orthodox Congregationalist theology. She wrote about natural and special revelation, the attributes of God, biblical authority, redemption, the image of God, the depravity of man, and the need for a righteous Savior. She also wrote against American Christians who preached that the Bible justified slavery, exposing the inconsistency of defending slavery using Christ’s teachings (Ellis 2017). Inspired by classical Greek and Latin poetry Phillis used a style of writing called elegiac (Phillis Wheatley Historical Society 2021). Ovid, who was a leading elegiac Roman poet, greatly influenced her work, and she was known to translate his work into English. Phillis was also influenced by philosophers and eighteenth-century English poets and embarked into writing her own poetry. She was an abolitionist, and although she faced opposition, she was a poet whose work was recognized by leaders (such as George Washington) in the US and Britain. She was also supportive of mission work to Ghana and Sierra Leone (Ellis 2017 and Carretta 2011, 164–165). By giving her the liberal arts education of that time with a biblical foundation, she was able to have this impact.

Other Africans or African Americans in the early years of America who were liberally educated were Samuel Ajayi Crowther, who studied Latin and Greek at Fourah Bay College and was the first indigenous Anglican Bishop of West Africa, and Edward Jones, the first black man admitted to Amherst College in 1822 and principal of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. Bishop Crowther translated the Bible into indigenous languages and his training in Greek and Latin would have aided his abilities to do so accurately (Anderson 1994). Edward Jones is of note because of his classical education and his missionary work in West Africa. This demonstrates the appropriateness of liberal arts for Africans coming from a less than ideal background or situation (Anderson 1998).

One other development of note was the establishment of the Fourah Bay College in the nineteenth century in what is now Freetown, Sierra Leone. Fourah Bay College (FBC) was established by the Church Missionary Society in 1814 as the Christian institution and developed into the first western style education institution in West Africa. It is now affiliated with the University of Sierra Leone and was once associated with Durham University (1876–1967) (FBC website). Freetown was populated by freed slaves and indigenous peoples, and Christian philanthropists and missionaries founded the college to spread the gospel and Western education. “Fourah Bay College…was the first institution of higher learning in modern Sub-Saharan Africa after the collapse of the one at Timbuktu. Until the Second War, Fourah Bay College offered the only alternative to Europe and America for British colony West Africans who wanted a university degree”

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

(UNESCO

2012).

It was the main place of higher education for West Africa and achieved the title of the “Athens of West Africa.” The curriculum under the leadership of Edward Jones, the Amherst graduate, who served as principal from 1840 to 1858 consisted of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Trigonometry, and theology. In addition to these subjects, students also studied the African languages of the region. Rev. S. W. Koelle, a German missionary, with FBC students produced in 1854 a collection of vocabularies of some 100 African languages spoken in Freetown—languages from the Sahara to Mozambique—resulting in FBC became a missionary center, the “literary and linguistic workshop of West Africa” (Paracka 2003, 39). Thus, not only did graduates of this institution start schools but translated the Bible into many indigenous languages. Many West African elites trace their education to FBC. These graduates were instrumental in the independence of West African states, resistance to racist and imperialistic colonial policies, and in the development of African studies to retain African heritage. What was lacking during this time was minimal engagement of local culture or heritage. For the liberal arts to be fully embraced, this is an area that will need to be more fully developed in African church school systems. Unfortunately, from the 1960s onward, the university arising out of FBC neglected traditional culture and deemphasized the liberal arts much to the lament of Koso Thomas, Vice Chancellor of the university from 1985 to 1991. In an article in Sierra Leone Journal of Education (1970), he wrote, “the fundamental role of education in any country must be the fulfillment of the spiritual and material requirements of society. In developing countries, however, the haste to produce much more of their own skilled manpower has resulted in a sad neglect in their educational programmes, of those aspects of culture and art, which form the essential ingredients for developing moral and spiritual values in an educated man” (Paracka 2003, 175).

These individuals and this college demonstrate that this type of education can work across cultures, and it cultivates men and women who contribute to society. Practical:

Classical Christian Education Outcomes

In addition to the aforementioned reasons that the Christian liberal arts are appropriate and essential to Africa, recent research of classical Christian schools in the USA provides evidence of the outcomes that can result from a Christian liberal arts education.

In 2018 the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) sponsored a parallel study with the University of

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

Notre Dame to compare ACCS member school alumni to the Cardus data. This survey measured the alumni of ACCS schools against public, private evangelical schools, Catholic schools, prep schools, and homeschoolers. Remarkably so, on every metric, alumni from classical Christian schools did best.1 Not only is it working in America, but it also works in Africa too.

The Rafiki Foundation operates model classical Christian schools in ten African countries. Established in 1985 to bring Bible study and to help people raise their standard of living, Rafiki has concentrated its work in ten African countries. Now with a 50-acre campus in each country with a fully established children’s home, PreK–12 classical Christian school, and a teacher’s college in seven countries, Rafiki is poised to help not only the 3200 African students and staff cultivate wisdom and virtue but also to equip a thousand African church schools to do the same. The organization has developed an international level classical Christian curriculum and three-year teacher’s college courses for the purpose of providing this not only within the ten Rafiki Villages but for the many church schools in Africa. The material has been field tested for over 15 years with African children and African teachers and by initial local measures is providing an excellent education for young people in Africa in the Christian liberal arts. In these countries, graduates have performed well on national exams and qualified for tertiary education well above the national averages. In many of the countries, the pass rate on national exams runs 50% whereas Rafiki students have a 95% pass rate.

1 The full 57-page report can be found here: https://www.classicaldifference.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Classical-Difference-Good-Soil-7-outcomes-full-research-report-Draft-3-28-2020.pdf

A day in the life of one of our schools noted this: “You would see children in grade one learning phonics, grade three introduced to writing and rhetoric, grade eight making pyramids in history class and later in the day studying formal logic, grade ten learning about famous scientists during biology class, grade eleven reading Much Ado About Nothing , and grade twelve finishing their two-year course in rhetoric” (Allinder 2021). Included in this curriculum is also African art, music, languages, history, and literature. Thus, not only would students have experienced this feast of an education, but also been exposed to a skill so that they could support themselves, and all students study the Bible daily in the classroom as the first class for the day.

This education can supply men and women who can be carpenters and corporate leaders, farmers and financiers, businessmen and women and theologians—all godly contributors to society.

Conclusion

The Christian liberal arts educational model is not only appropriate for the church schools in Africa but essential for the future development of Christianity and ensuring freedom across the continent. Scripture urges God’s people to make disciples and the liberal arts foster the reflexive praxis that can develop one’s relationship with Christ and the ability to think Christianly. With the diverse people groups within the church in Africa, the historical foundation of the church in the liberal arts would serve as a unifying basis (in addition to Scripture) thus spanning borders and tribes and strength- ening the church. Christian liberal arts tradition would transcend tribal culture and strengthen the church. If we are what we remember, then the liberal arts would develop a common history across a multitude of people groups (Jeffrey 2003, 21). This is of interest not only to Africans but globally since it is the future generation of the world. The question is not, will there be a church in Africa, the question is what kind of church will there be? The Christian liberal arts would establish a firm foundation and birth the next generation of theologians and scholars who, much like the Irish who saved civilization, will preserve Christian doctrine, wisdom, and virtue for the next age.

From the early church fathers to present day scholars, there is support for a liberal arts education because much of liberal arts learning is more biblical than classical (Jeffrey 2007, 1). It is the best education for cultivating human flourishing, and it is the most suitable for a human being because we are souls, not tools. It fosters freedom from self and from domination by others, it has been the education of the church, and church scholars throughout the ages benefited from and endorsed the liberal arts.

The people of Africa have experimented with democracy in the last 75 years, and it is the liberal arts that will provide the definition for and enable the citizens to develop and maintain democracy in their countries. With the increasing influence from other ideologies, such as those from China (Barnett 2020), helping Africans strengthen their democracies with a liberal arts education would be beneficial not only to Africans but to other free nations. The liberal arts combined with a Christian education can work across various ethnicities and bears good fruit as shown by the Philis Wheatleys and Bishop Ajayi Crowthers of the past centuries and the Kofis and Chimwemwas of today. Moreover, recent educational research surveys attest to classical Christian education’s effectiveness as an educational model outperforming all other types of schools.

Invite Africans to engage with the great conversation so that their voices can be added to it. It not only helps people to survive but thrive. Wisdom and virtue free humans and battle corruption, a common history overrules tribalism, and a thinking, strengthened church discerns contrary philosophies and grows in the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Karen Elliott is the Executive Director (since 2012) of the Rafiki Foundation, a Christian mission agency based in Florida serving in 10 African countries bringing Bible study and classical Christian education to children, youth, and the African church. After a ten year career in banking in Houston Texas, God called Karen to serve as a missionary with Rafiki in Nigeria for ten years. Karen returned (2002) to the US to to oversee the ministry’s orphanages and schools. She has a BBA in Finance/Accounting, a music minor, M.Ed from UTA and is pursuing doctoral studies at Faulkner University.

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

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A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education From Redeeming the Six Arts

by Brent Pinkall

The church fathers did not despise their own classical, pagan tradition. On the contrary, they greatly respected it because they understood that the wisdom hidden in the tradition was a gift of God. In the same way, Chinese Christians must not despise their own classical, pagan tradition. For God gave wisdom to their ancestors just as He did to the ancient Greeks. At the same time, they should not be content merely to recover the old Chinese tradition, for Christianity gives us a clearer, more accurate perspective of the world. We do not want to reject Chinese classical education, nor do we merely want to recover it. We want to redeem it. Like the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, the Chinese classical tradition has spent its entire life on its back. It aspires to the towering peaks of wisdom, it thirsts for the vibrant waters of virtue, it longs for the lush-green pastures of ren —but it cannot move. It smells the fresh mountain air, it hears the trickling of the streams, it sees the sun-kissed horizon—and yet it is confined to a mat.

We cannot read the classics without feeling a sort of quiet dejection. The ancients describe in breathtaking detail the glories of ren, and occasionally they even speak as though someone might possibly attain it. But in the midst of their impressive, high-minded rhetoric, they betray an unsettling conviction that no one will actually succeed. “Long has the attainment of ren been difficult among men!”1 “I have never seen one who loves ren and hates what is not ren .” 2 “‘Practice righteousness to attain the Dao ’—I have heard these words, but I have not seen such men.”3 “I have no hopes of meeting a good man.”4 “It is all over! I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves sex.”5 Confucius is not only talking about other people in these passages—he includes himself in these indictments: “The Master said, ‘The way of the junzi is threefold, but I cannot attain it—virtuous (ren), he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.’”6 He is deeply aware of his own inability:

1 “ 仁之难成久矣！ ” Biaoji 表记 [Record on example] in Liji 礼记 [Rook of Rites] 54.19.1477, trans. James Legge.

2 “ 我未见好仁者，恶不仁者。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 4.6.49, trans. Robert Eno.

3 “ 行义以达其道。吾闻其语矣，未见其人也。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 16.11.229, author’s translation.

4 “ 善人，吾不得而见之矣 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 7.26.93, trans. D. C. Lau.

5 “ 善人，吾不得而见之矣 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 7.26.93, trans. D. C. Lau.

6 “ 子曰：‘君子道者三，我无能焉：仁者不忧，知者不惑，勇者不 惧。’ ” Analects 14.28.197, trans. James Legge. I have slightly edited Legge’s translation, replacing “am not equal to it” with “I cannot attain it.” The original text literally means “I am not able.” I have also replaced “superior man” with “ junzi .”