theimaginativeconservative.org
Education as if Truth Mattered
“The title of this essay, “Education as if Truth Mattered,” is taken from the subtitle of Christopher Derrick’s book, Escape from Scepticism: Liberal Education as if Truth Mattered, published in 1977. Derrick’s subtitle was itself borrowed and adapted from the subtitle of E. F. Schumacher’s international bestseller, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, published four years earlier. Derrick and Schumacher were friends, the former being instrumental in introducing the latter to the Church’s social teaching, and the two books have much more in common than their ostensibly different subjects would suggest. In both cases, the authors illustrate how modernity’s philosophical materialism has undermined the very foundations of civilized life and how the solution to the problem is a return to traditional concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Schumacher turned to the wisdom of the ancients to help him understand the defects of the economy; Derrick turned to the wisdom of the ancients to correct the defects of the academy. Whether considering the plight of the economy or the academy, both men showed how the denigration of the good, the fragmentation of the true, and the destruction of the beautiful have resulted in a world that is bankrupt in terms of true wealth.”