Wisdom and Hospitality in the Classroom

In the book of Proverbs – a book addressed especially to young people, particularly young men – Solomon commends wisdom as a “lady.” Lady Wisdom is a beautiful, warm, and welcoming woman: she is described in terms of her loveliness and riches as well as her hospitality.

“Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars,” begins Proverbs 9. “She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table,” Solomon continues. Wisdom is industrious, yet she is also plainly interested in hosting a feast.

After setting her table, Wisdom sends out messengers to invite guests, to “call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” Lady Wisdom invites the simple to sup, the dumb to dine, saying, “Come, eat of my bread… Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

Wisdom, as Solomon’s rich metaphor reveals, invites. Wisdom summons and welcomes. Wisdom is hospitable.

Wisdom’s welcoming character is – or ought to be – evident in the realm of education. Unfortunately, much of modern education casts the student not as a guest to be welcomed and fed but a machine to be programmed or a consumer to be entertained.

Both anthropologies – man as machine and man as consumer – gleam out from the regular operation of the American public school system. Public schools shape much of their curriculum around standardized tests and statistics, revealing their aim not to shape students as people but to impart to them certain marketable skills, skills that will help them get into college and “get ahead.” Our country’s rush to instill STEM education at every level of learning likewise reflects a machine-anthropology: education leaders today want to program students to achieve advanced jobs and engineer new technologies, to extend scientific knowledge to new heights and stretch our industries to new lengths of innovation.

Even while deifying the successful pursuit of scientific knowledge, modern education also casts man as, at a fundamental level, a consumer. Even while pushing students to extend themselves for the sake of STEM innovation, students cannot, according to much of the public education system, be expected to extend themselves in the traditional ways that young men and women have in the past. Students need not read ancient works that test their minds and their patience, according to the modern educator. Let them read the easy, new books – and let them read only portions of these books, for whoever needed to read a whole book to be satisfied? Students need not write any paper longer than five pages, and they certainly need not be able to speak eloquently for more than five minutes. Let them bring in their devices and use them as “tools” for learning; let them watch movies as part of their classwork; let them make films for their final projects instead of presenting speeches.

Both anthropologies of man-as-machine and man-as-consumer drip from the curricula and operation of the average American public school. Sometimes one side of this modern anthropology is emphasized, but typically both are present. Either way, the modern system of education regards its students as anything but humans – made to be creative, rational, and relational in the image of their Creator and made, per the creaturely status, to require the nourishment that Wisdom can bring.

As Proverbs implies, however, any education that truly has to do with Wisdom will be relational and nourishing. As one writer and teacher wrote in an article for the CiRCE Institute, “In the mold of Lady Wisdom herself, a good teacher is not unlike a good host at the table. He welcomes those who come to a table of stories, ideas, and convictions with warmth and generosity, sharing a rich feast with them of both food and community.”

The classical schoolteacher, aiming after Wisdom, should follow the example of Wisdom herself. A teacher who wants to grow his students in true knowledge – not in the specified, career-oriented cast of STEM knowledge – will care to invite his students to the feast. A teacher who wants his students to enjoy their education – not to be passive consumers but active participants – will care to summon his students to delight in what is truly good. In other words, a good teacher is hospitable.

But what are the means by which a teacher invites and welcomes his students? Naturally, a teacher’s general approach and attitude ought to be one of kindness and welcome. Teachers must be charitable to students and their families. In doing so, teachers imitate God, who welcomes even the most unworthy to his table. In welcoming students, teachers may obey Paul’s direction in Romans 15: “Therefore welcome one another as Christ as welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

Yet the hospitality of the teacher must extend beyond a general attitude of welcome. Indeed, God’s hospitality to his people extends beyond a general attitude, for God invites his people to his table to sup with him. Lady Wisdom likewise shows us that hospitality by nature does something: Wisdom summons. Hospitality is by nature active: as Rosaria Butterfield writes in The Gospel Comes with a House Key, “Hospitality shares what there is.” Hospitality requires particular actions.

Hospitality in the classroom will require the teacher’s purposeful creation of a particular environment. The student must be able to feel at home in the classroom. Now, this is not to say – at all – that the child’s feelings should be made the center of the classroom. In fact, some children will not enjoy the peaceful experience of a well-run classroom. But a child must understand that they are not, contra the dominant anthropologies of the modern education system, a computer or a consumer but a human. Humans thrive in environments that are both orderly and personal, just as a well-ordered home is. Cluttered, wildly colorful homes or classrooms, just like sterilized, computerized homes or classrooms are not conducive to wisdom.

The ideas of Charlotte Mason, a nineteenth century educator, writer, and mother, speaks to how a child ought to be made to feel at home in the classroom. One of Mason’s famous statements is that education is an “atmosphere, a discipline, a life,” and Mason is known especially for her emphasis on the role a child’s atmosphere plays in education. We are shaped by the atmosphere around us, as Mason writes, drawing attention first of all to the home: a child “breathes the atmosphere emanating from his parent; that of the ideas which rule their own lives.”

Mason sees – in the home as in the classroom – that “indefinite ideas” communicated in an atmosphere can “express themselves in an ‘appetency’ towards something.” The ideas communicated in an atmosphere can draw children either towards wisdom or foolishness, towards goodness or evil. Teachers, like parents, must take this possibility seriously in their classroom schedules, order, and decor. As Mason writes in Parents and Children,

Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word of kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of these things, may never think of them, but all his life long they excite that ‘vague appetency towards something’ out of which most of his actions spring.

Creating an atmosphere of gentleness, kindness, care, etc. – in which a child will be subconsciously drawn toward the Good – requires real work. Ordering a classroom to reflect the classical Christian anthropology of student-as-human, not consumer or machine, takes time and intention. It would be far easier to allow chaos to rule in day-to-day classroom routines and in classroom décor, as many teachers do, or to simply give sterile strictures and cover otherwise-barren walls with Smartboards, as others do. But to strike the right balance between orderliness and personality in the classroom – this is a difficult task.

In decorating with a hospitable environment in mind, a schoolteacher ought to bring in the resources that have always been honored in the classical Christian tradition: books, beauty, nature. Good books may line the wall in a lovely bookshelf, several time-tested, beautiful works of art may hang on the wall, and windows may be left unshaded to allow natural light in. These suggestions are few but powerful.

Beyond décor, a further way to bring hospitality into the classroom is merely to practice the acts typical of hospitality in general: for instance, baking and cooking for students creates an atmosphere of hospitality just as baking and cooking instantiates an atmosphere of hospitality for anyone outside the classroom.

I believe we moderns recognize in theory that making and sharing food with others is a way to incarnate love and care, but I have found that many people today are surprised – even shocked – to be in fact met with a homemade meal or loaf of bread or plate of cookies. My students, for instance, rejoiced with disbelief when I brought in homemade oatmeal cookies several Mondays ago. Such surprise, I have found, especially shines out in young people, whether grammar-school students or people of my own generation. For some reason, young people today are shocked at such edible hospitality.

Part of this shock must be due to the rarity of any hospitality: our day’s individualistic mindset renders many communal endeavors old-fashioned and burdensome. But edible hospitality – home-cooking and communal meals – are particularly rare as a way of showing love and care in our culture. Why labor over cookies when one could just buy them? Why invite a family over for a homemade meal when one could simply accompany them to a restaurant?

The answer to these questions is not unlike the answer to the perennial “why classical Christian education?” question: hospitality, like classical Christian education, shapes people in an old, weathered tradition concerned ultimately with the Good, True, and Beautiful. Hospitality, like classical Christian education, “shares what there is,” to use Butterfield’s words, operating within the understanding that there is, indeed, much goodness to be shared.

I labor over homemade cookies for my students for the same reason that I teach them about ancient cultures, discuss difficult passages of Scripture with them, and require them to memorize “old-fashioned” songs: it is good to pursue and share what is good. It is fitting to live with one another as humans in God’s image. It is delightful to dine with and live from Wisdom.

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