In “Our English Syllabus” Lewis discusses his views on schooling and acquiring knowledge. One of the points that grabbed me was that Lewis says in education the teacher is far superior to the student and is trying to make him a better person and teach him humanity. Learning on the other hand, Lewis describes as two people more equal and the lesser is already human so to speak and is trying to gain knowledge. In learning the superior is not trying to make a better person or give humanity to the lower. Learning is deeper and Lewis says that college is for learning and not for educating.

I’ve never heard these terms used like this, but Lewis has a point. In my earlier years of schooling I had to mature. I had to learn to write, think, talk, spell, reason, perform arithmetic, and so on. There was no deep understanding or knowledge acquired in those years; as Lewis would put it, I was becoming human. Once that was through with is when we can begin to learn. You have to have that base of education before you enter college and preferably before you finish high school. Lewis says that he spends some of his time educating college students, but he wishes it wasn’t so. If we are educated then we can begin to learn, to go deep into understanding various subjects and learn new things about the world we live in.

Different institutes of higher education have developed different methods of how to help their students in their quest for knowledge. Lewis calls the typical approach a composite. Colleges usually have some kind of core where they have a simplified version of many different subjects which every student will take. This better serves the purpose of education then the purpose of learning. One of Lewis’ main points is that we should go to school and take courses to acquire knowledge, not for a grade, not to make money later, and not to graduate. We should learn for the sake of knowledge. If we are simply taking a simplified course on all these subjects we aren’t really searching for our knowledge. It’s being given to us. Lewis’ problem with this is that someone else is choosing our path. I think it’s valuable to be able to look at a problem from the perspective of different subjects. Lewis agrees by saying in order to completely understand anything you must know everything about everything. In our learning we should then find the knowledge from all areas that helps us with what we are trying to learn and what is important to our learning.