Education – Widening the Lens

Often we talk about the decline of educational standards, an expanding cultural deadness driven by excess dependence on – and adverse effects from – social media or “screen time” absorption. All this is true, often persuasively written about by policymakers and thinkers. But there is more.

Any serious policy maker, or parent, or student of history for that matter, understands that “education,” broadly construed, involves more than book learning. It involves learning how to learn, plus a moral compass, the power to think for yourself, reason, distinguish good from bad, and then having the life skills to prosper in life.

I am reminded of Einstein, who put his money – and mind – on the power of learning, not formal “education.” He valued creative minds seeking truth, finding their passion, and following it. He cared not if that were with our hands or mind, creating in physical terms or mental ones.   

After all, Einstein – the brilliant author of “Miracles,” the “Special” and “General theories of relativity,” failed his entrance exam to the Swiss Polytechnic School, because he had little interest in languages, botany, or zoology. He just wanted to change our entire understanding of physics.

Some of the greatest people in history focused on learning. Einstein wrote: “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education,” meaning…learn to think for yourself.

Why does learning, education in a real, philosophical, spiritual, and practical matter so much? Because, for one thing, it links our past – all the learning mankind has acquired – to the future, carrying that precious football upfield, to keep scoring touchdowns. Without the past, we are lost.

If you listen to thinkers like Jefferson, C.S. Lewis, and some of the world’s real changers, learning – never stopping that, teaching how it is done – is central. To Thomas Jefferson – and John Adams – education, thinking with grounding, was the foundation on which our republic was built, premised.

Wrote Jefferson: “Whenever the people are well-informed, they may be trusted with their own government.” The corollary: Beware of uninformed citizens;  they will mess things up.

Wrote Adams: “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people,” and “Let us tenderly and kindly cherish…the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” Adams cut to the quick. “In vain are schools…if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years…” Incredible. How prescient was Adams?

But there is yet more. C.S. Lewis knew you had to feed the unfed minds, help young people find their passion for learning and apply it, from working with their hands to nurturing minds eager to write. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts,” wrote the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, a powerful thinker, writer, and devout Christian.

So, what does all this mean today? It means stop, think, consider what is incumbent upon you, what we need to do now, as adults responsible for passing what we know forward. We need to enable learning, encourage it, push it, nurture it, and help the future grow with it.

In practical terms, as I run to be Maine’s next Governor, it means this: Get practical learning, classic books, and industrial arts back into all Maine schools, whatever people have a passion for. There are too few resources teaching the purpose, how to excel in the trades, and why we should expand them.

Do the thing done for us: Teach kids to imagine, dream, hope, conceive of things, how to believe they ARE within us, then how to work hard, gambling on yourself with grace and resolve.

If we do that – get kids reaching up again, not dwelling on the negative, dreaming up ideas in shop and with their imaginations, learning conviction and grit, can-do and “I got it done,” everything changes. Everything! We now have to do this.

That – in a nutshell – is what widening the lens on education looks like. As Nelson Mandela noted, consistent with Einstein, Jefferson, Adams, and C.S. Lewis, “Education is the most powerful weapon…to change the world.” That is true on the big stage and right here at home.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!