This summer, my son picked up a book from the library about soccer. The story follows another child who joins a soccer team, but he quickly discovers that he is not a very good soccer player. To get better, the child’s parents tell him that he must “train.” 

This idea of “training” was new to my son. As a five-year-old, he has never consciously trained to do anything. His whole life, as far as he is concerned, is play. However, after we read the book, he decided that he needed to train if he was going to play on a soccer team. He promptly grabbed his soccer ball, ran outside, and chose the most obvious training ground he could find: the trampoline. 

I was fascinated by his sudden realization. It occurred to me that training is precisely the whole purpose of school and a hallmark of the Christian life. But training for its own sake is never useful. We must train for something. So, what exactly does school train us for? 

Thinking about these questions, the words from St. Basil the Great’s Hexameron came to my mind. In the Hexameron, St. Basil reflects on the meaning and significance of each word and phrase of the creation account in Genesis. When he comes to the phrase, “In the beginning, God created…,” St. Basil writes: 

“You will finally discover that the world was not conceived by chance and without reason, but for an useful end and for the great advantage of all beings, since it is really the school where reasonable souls exercise themselves, the training ground where they learn to know God; since by the sight of visible and sensible things the mind is led, as by a hand, to the contemplation of invisible things.” (Homily I, my emphasis). 

For St. Basil, the world itself is a kind of heuristic: it gives us the tools and scaffolding we need to learn how to see and understand God. The visible world, if we learn to see it correctly, will allow our minds to move to the invisible. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” as the Psalmist writes, but we must train our eyes and ears to see it. 

This idea of the world as a school for the soul is true all the way down to its most basic elements. In school, when a child learns his multiplication tables, he is not merely memorizing a unique fact about numbers. He is starting to develop an awareness of symmetry and balance in the world. This developing awareness in a child, the slow but patient training of the mind, forms and in-forms a child’s capacity to eventually recognize higher and more complex forms of order. Eventually, by God’s grace, he will also recognize the corresponding divine attributes from which the cosmic order springs: goodness, truth, and beauty. 

St. Basil takes this a step further: “I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator,” and again he argues that “A single plant, a blade of grass is sufficient to occupy all your intelligence in the contemplation of the skill which produced it” (Homily V). 

Whether we are learning basic facts about math, science, history, or literature, the soul of every student is being trained to see God. We are in constant training throughout our whole lives, but a K-16 educational institution is a unique space where the training can be heightened and accelerated. 

School is not primarily a training ground for career readiness or utilitarian ends. Learning calculus won’t necessarily help you balance a checkbook, in the same way that reading Homer or studying Astronomy or learning Latin won’t pad your resume for job applications. 

We undergo the training of school first and foremost for the sake of preparing our souls to see God. As educators, this purpose should guide curriculum decisions and pedagogy. As parents, it should govern your decision about when and where to send your kids to school. As college students, it should inform your decision about which college to attend. All of us should worry less about the latest college admission statistics and employment numbers.  

Our time spent on the school training grounds should be aimed at making us eager to follow St. Basil’s final exhortation: 

“Let us glorify the supreme Artificer for all that was wisely and skillfully made; by the beauty of visible things let us raise ourselves to Him who is above all beauty; by the grandeur of bodies, sensible and limited in their nature, let us conceive of the infinite Being whose immensity and omnipotence surpass all the efforts of the imagination. Because, although we ignore the nature of created things, the objects which on all sides attract our notice are so marvelous, that the most penetrating mind cannot attain to the knowledge of the least of the phenomena of the world, either to give a suitable explanation of it or to render due praise to the Creator, to Whom belong all glory, all honour and all power world without end. Amen.” (Homily I)