Ep. 16 – The Way to Make Thy Son Rich: The True Purpose of an Education

This is Episode 16 of the Consortium Podcast, an academic audio blog of Kepler Education.

Aristotle famously noted that poetry is more philosophical than history because while history teaches what man has done in particular, poetry teaches us what he can and might do universally. This quite evident in George Herbert’s Poem, “The Church-Porch.” In this Episode, Scott Postma and Joffre Swait unpack a few stanzas of Herbert’s delightful poem and discuss the perennial human questions–really, the causes and effects–centered around raising children, education, and its effects on society. One important note Herbert makes–The way to make thy sonne rich, is to fill His minde with rest, before his trunk with riches:–alludes to one of our most championed causes in education–Scholé (restful learning) before job training.

George Herbert’s “The Church-Porch” from The Temple, stanzas 16-19:

O England! full of sinne, but most of sloth;
Spit out thy flegme, and fill thy brest with glorie:
Thy Gentrie bleats, as if thy native cloth
Transfus’d a sheepishnesse into thy storie:
Not that they all are so; but that the most
Are gone to grasse, and in the pasture lost.

This losse springs chiefly from our education.
Some till their ground, but let weeds choke their sonne:
Some mark a partridge, never their childes fashion:
Some ship them over, and the thing is done.
Studie this art, make it thy great designe;
And if Gods image move thee not, let thine.

Some great estates provide, but doe not breed
A mast’ring minde; so both are lost thereby:
Or els they breed them tender, make them need
All that they leave: this is flat povertie.
For he, that needs five thousand pound to live,
Is full as poore as he, that needs but five.

The way to make thy sonne rich, is to fill
His minde with rest, before his trunk with riches:
For wealth without contentment, climbes a hill
To feel those tempests, which fly over ditches.
But if thy sonne can make ten pound his measure,
Then all thou addest may be call’d his treasure.