Today I want to pause at something so ubiquitous that we hardly notice it any more: our system of education.

And I find myself asking, more and more often: does it truly serve the human person, or does it serve something else? A system that, if we dare to look honestly, perhaps carries more the echo of self-interest than the breath of the Spirit.

The Birth of a System: Necessity or Derailment?

It is no secret, and no conspiracy theory, that the structure of our modern school system has its deep roots in the Industrial Revolution. Industry was crying out for a new kind of human being: the worker, the functionary. Factory owners needed hands — people who could produce. So we received the Lower Technical Schools for the factory workers, and the Higher Civic Schools for the managers who were to direct them.

Look closely at the subjects that for generations formed the core of the curriculum. Languages — English, French, German? Crucial for trade, for the expansion of markets. Chemistry, physics, mathematics? The fuel for technological innovation, for more efficient factories, for more production. Even civics and history are largely deployed to sketch a particular narrative of progress, to cultivate “good citizenship” — which in that context often amounted to being a productive, compliant citizen.

The Price of Productivity: The Forgotten Soul

And here the shoe pinches. For where, in this story, is the human person? Where is the soul, the heart that, according to Augustine, is restless until it finds its rest in God? A system aimed primarily at productivity, at economic utility, does not necessarily build up the flourishing of the human person, much less the Kingdom of God. On the contrary, the risk is that it tears the person down, reducing him to a cog in a machine, to his economic value, to his bank account. The dignity of the human being, created in the image and likeness of God, is thus subtly but steadily undermined.

Modern man, raised in this system, hardly sees it. As a fish does not notice the water, so we have grown accustomed to this utilitarian approach to formation. But there was a time — and there are still oases — where education had a different breath. Think of the monastery schools where Benedict’s Ora et Labora meant not only “work,” but work saturated with prayer, with contemplation. Where the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) served to sharpen the mind for the higher: theology, philosophy, the discernment of God’s will in all things. It was a matter of the why behind things, of right action in relation to the Creator and creation.

Pope Leo XIII, in his struggle against the excesses of unrestrained capitalism and the dangers of a rising secular modernism (think of Rerum Novarum), warned already of a society that subordinates human dignity to economic gain. And Pope Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, fought passionately against the modernism that threatened to hollow out the eternal truths of the faith. Though they did not directly criticize our current school system as such, their concern for the safeguarding of truth and for integral human development resonates powerfully with the questions we now ask. Is truth still being sought in our schools — or only applicability?

The Ignored Whisper: The Inner Voice

We all have that inner compass, that “something” in our depths, that voice of conscience whispering to us what is true and good. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, taught us to listen to the movements of the soul, to discern the will of God. But modern life, and the school system that prepares us for it, often teaches us to ignore that voice. Grades at school, the next promotion, the opinion of the crowd — these are the new idols. External success drowns out the inner calling.

So the human person becomes estranged from himself, from his deepest desires, and finally from God. He finds himself in a state of confusion, an acedia as the desert fathers called it — a kind of spiritual sluggishness and disquiet, a not-knowing-where-to-turn. Is that not recognizable around us? Burnouts? Feelings of uselessness?

Pruning for New Growth: The Way Back to Truth

It will be a painful ride, this casting off of the lies of pure utilitarianism from ourselves. Years of indoctrination, of conditioning, shape a person. It is like a garden long overrun by weeds. New ground is needed, and what still stands may have to be pruned radically. But, as the Lord teaches us in the Gospel (John 15), the vine that is pruned bears more fruit. The old, choking wood must go, so that there is room for new life, for authentic growth.

This process of “un-learning” and learning again is not the end, but a new beginning. A return to the fundamental questions: Who am I? For what am I here? What is the Truth that truly sets me free? It is an invitation to learn again to listen — not to the strident demands of the production society, but to the gentle whisper of the Spirit in our hearts. To seek a formation that not only fills our heads, but forms our hearts and feeds our souls.

Let us, “in veritatem,” have the courage to look at the systems that shape us, and where necessary to take new paths — paths that lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves, of God, and of His beautiful, often forgotten, Kingdom. The way may be demanding, but the promise is nothing less than Life in fullness.