On the Common Value of Education

My favorite Responsory in the entire breviary appears during Lent:

God himself will set me free, from the hunters snare.
From those who would trap me with lying words
---and from the hunter's snare.

Education is one of God's most potent means to set us free from the Hunter's snare. Independent, rational, critical thinking supported by history, culture, poetry, science is liberating.

John Haldane writing in, The Scotsman, mourns the sad deconstruction of the Scots tradition of education. The article is a fine warning. Early and over specialization may not really equip human hearts and minds for the broad requirements of living a full and contributory life.

The last sentence really caught my attention:

. . . remembering the primary purpose of universities is as places where serious knowledge is shared as common wealth, not hoarded as personal trophy, or melted down into trinkets.