Depth or Breadth?

I was recently disappointed (certainly not the first time) when I asked a young adult person I know what it was he liked to read.  He answered, “I don’t like to read.”  I asked him what he liked to do in his spare time.  He answered, “Play video games.” 

 

Since I am an educator I wondered who let this young man down?  Who didn’t teach him—his parents, his school teachers?  Who were his models or mentors? What distracted him away from an enriching education in his more formative years?  What’s keeping him from enriching himself now?

What a poverty it is to not have more than just a functional literacy when so much more is available.  In playing off my ‘Cultural Literacy’ posting of a few weeks ago—and not just for the purpose of making ourselves more interesting to others--  I make another pitch for greater breadth in our knowledge. Such a pursuit, I suggest, leads to a richer, fuller, more satisfying and useful life than just ‘having a job.’

My dad was somewhat like the young man I referred to in the first paragraph. Growing up as a farm boy in the Great Depression he did not have the advantages of a good education.  His elementary schooling was in a single-room, multi-grade school with a teacher(s) who didn’t inspire him.  But neither did he much take advantage of the library of his high school or the town library.  In consequence he developed a pragmatic, hands-on, somewhat in-depth education of farming and mechanics which provided materially for his small family, but gave them very little example or encouragement or influence to go beyond—to a ‘higher education.’ Dad always had a ‘job,’ and he did it well, but he was narrow in a way that I did not want to be. Moreover, since he didn’t have the vision of advanced education he was always suspicious of it.  Many were the times I heard him disparage lawyers and doctors and military officers and college professors and other professionals.  He never did much approve my becoming a teacher. He did encourage his boys to ‘learn a trade’ and learn it well—in depth. Only one son did.

Somehow, in the midst of this upbringing, I became interested in books and my world opened up.  To my knowledge I became the first young person in either my mother’s or my father’s family ever to go to college.  I went to community college and on to get my bachelor’s degree at a state university.  But even at these two institutions the pressure and focus—to my mind—were narrow; the college ‘majors’ focused on becoming well-trained for a practical vocation or profession. They did that, but did not inspire me the way my outside reading did—of history, geography, biography, philosophy, religion and thereby come closer to answering the ‘great questions’ of life. 

And then I investigated and joined a religion that went far-beyond in theology and doctrine the focus of the ‘feel-good’ churches I was familiar with.  This decision opened up my life to even greater possibilities .

 

I went on to get a ‘master’s degree,’ but that just helped make me more of a ‘master’ in what I taught in the public schools.  In the meantime I kept reading--both secular subjects and now in a vast theological and religious library. Not only did this world open up, but more illuminating was the hint of  worlds beyond this one: "And worlds without number have I created . . . but only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you . . . " (Moses 1: 33, 35).

Later, even my doctorate, had I kept strictly to subject matter requirements, was too narrow.  So I intentionally went beyond the requirements, when I had the time, and took advantage of the wonderful world of books and symposia and lectures and discussions with men and women of great minds that a great university provided.

 

Because I had to provide for my family professionally, I involved myself, of necessity, in what I viewed as ‘the thick of thin things,’ or with a depth of learning in a limited sphere with a modern advanced degree.  But my real education which I pursued on my own initiative was one of breadth—in the spirit of the pre-twentieth century doctor of philosophy.  (I heard it said that the modern Ph.D is someone ‘who knows more and more about less and less until he knows almost everything about almost nothing.’  I did not want that for myself; so I opted for the old-school variety.)

One may need a college degree to 'make a good living,' but one does not need it to make a rich life.  That is entirely up to our own initiative.

 

For me, obtaining ‘breadth’ is almost as important as obtaining ‘breath.’ Anything else will become obsolete.  Jesus said, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, [riches, degrees, celebrity, material possessions] and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

This is a good question for all of us to consider.