A Princeton Senior’s Thoughts on the Purpose of Education

Annabel Green '26

As I complete my undergraduate studies at Princeton University, I find myself reflecting on the purpose of education. This article aims to articulate my understanding of education in an abstract sense and to advance a normative argument grounded in the classical tradition. I address more concrete implications of the historical vocation of education in greater depth in my essay published last October by PFS,  The Ideal of the University.

My fellow students and I are frequently encouraged to construct our own meaning, determine our own values, and in doing so, invent ourselves, so to speak. Ironically, I think this pursuit leads to nihilism, self-destruction, and despair. From its Latin roots, the wordeducare means “to lead out” or “to draw out.” This etymology raises an important question:what exactly is being drawn out, and toward what end?  Increasingly, I have come to believe that education is not primarily the construction or expression of the self. The classical tradition understood education quite differently and in light of this understanding, I believe education ought to be understood as a process of discovery oriented toward truth, beauty, and goodness, and entailing a gradual orientation of the person toward these objective ends. 

All three of these ends, I argue, are indicative or evidence of each other. A helpful illustration of my argument is in Plato’s vision of intellectual ascent in theSymposium. Through Socrates’ recounting of Diotima’s teachings,eros (love) becomes a movement upward from attachment to particular beautiful things toward increasingly eternal things. Beginning with admiration for individual instances of beauty, the soul gradually learns to perceive beauty in more universal abstract forms until it ultimately reaches the highest end of contemplation which isauto to kalon (the Form of Beauty itself). Education similarly, should train the soul to move toward deeper truth.  Education, then, is the process of refining our taste and therefore, refining what discern, orient ourselves towards, and admire. 

Catastrophically, I think the notion that these unified ends (i.e. beauty, truth, and goodness) are subjective, has made the process of learning seem subject to personal preference. Classical thinkers (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas), understood beauty as a way in which truth manifests itself. This understanding differs from the contemporary tendency to reduce beauty to subjective preference or personal expression. I have found the late English philosopher Roger Scruton persuasive on this point. In his renowned workBeauty: A Very Short Introduction, Scruton argues that beauty demands reverence because it directs us beyond narcissism and toward what is real. He writes that “beauty is a call to renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world.” 

The classical understanding of education is ultimately rooted in humility in that it assumes that truth precedes us and that the world possesses an inherent order. Furthermore, I believe the process of discovering this order is a much better pursuit than self-discovery, so to speak. Education ought to be the formation of the person through an encounter with what is already real, already enduring, and already worthy of our attention, which I believe is the most humble pursuit. 

Annabel Green ’26 is a senior from Boulder, Colorado, majoring in Public and International Affairs and minoring in Global Health and Health Policy. She is a PFS student writing fellow.