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What does education and a samurai warrior have in common?

By Chaplain Johnny Phillips | The News Herald

Published: August 15, 2008

For some months there has been a yearning from within to write an installment of The Paper Pulpit focusing on the value of education.

In fact, I have waited specifically for this season, presuming that the topic would enjoy a greater appreciation right before the start of the new school year.

I must confess a significant disappointment when I began to peruse my cache of articles, anecdotes and sayings on the subject of education. Filed away over several months, most of the information I had found did not seem to take education seriously.

For example, Will Rogers' sarcastic definition of the "college-bred" as nothing but a "four-year loaf," though attractive and catchy, was not to my agreement. Nor did I sympathize with Robert Hutchins' observation, "The reason sheepskins are given to college graduates is to cover up their intellectual nakedness."

There appears to be no lack of jokes and humorous stories related to education, but little about the value of a good education.

It occurred to me to turn to the more specific field of psychology of education.
Strange as it may first appear, the results of investigations by those whom we would label as experts in the field did not particularly impress me. In 12 research articles on the subject of the value of education, all but one couched the value of education in financial statistics showing a positive correlation between years of education and earning power.

Only one mentioned the positive impact that an education has on the character of the person or society. This one article did state that the better educated an individual became, the less likely he or she would serve time in prison and the more likely that person would become a leader of their community. But even this conclusion was only one of a dozen in the same study. All the other deductions as to the value of an education were, as in the afore-mentioned articles, economic in nature.

Professors, pundits, professional comedians and pollsters totally missed the point. Most often overlooked is the fact that education is a distinct signal of a chosen lifestyle of quality.

Allow me to draw what may appear to be an extreme analogy. Pursuing an education is akin to undertaking to become a samurai warrior. Samurais are made; they are not born with an innate knowledge of martial arts. The samurai's is a disciplined lifestyle of choice achieved only after years of commitment and dedication to hard work. It is filled with obedience to self-control, endless hours of training, the sacrifice of easier ways that one could travel and a constant centering of one's self on a purposeful, spiritual existence.

Becoming a samurai or pursuing an education involves a commitment of one's self to a higher calling, whereby all of society is improved through the dedication of the individual.

As our youth begin the 2008-09 school year we, as a culture, should in turn accept our responsibility to encourage their interests as well as to honor the professionals committed to their academic guidance.

Johnny A. Phillips is the Clinical Chaplain of the J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center.