Educational Reform in Gondor

Reflection 5 (and maybe 6)
Educational Reform in Gondor

Part I

When we apply principles and theories to new and alien contexts, our understanding usually deepens. This reflection will attempt to do just that.
Leaving our hot and over-familiar island for another world and another age, we arrive in Middle Earth after the great war of the Ring. Sauron and his dark empire have fallen. The elves have left for happier shores. The heroic hobbits are back in the Shire.

King Aragorn reigns in Gondor over the last descendants of the ancient Numenoreans—the great fallen civilization of the Second Age. A new golden age has seemingly begun for this ancient kingdom. Their great enemy is no more, the orcs are scattered, and enemy human kingdoms are humbled. But clearly, many things are far from well. The loss and destruction during the war of the Ring have been enormous. The already small population has been further diminished, many irreplaceable talents have been killed (like the old Steward and his eldest son), the old capital Osiligath is still a mound of ruins, countless buildings in Minas Tirith have been destroyed, trade has been disrupted, and probably most farms around the city have become orc fodder. The economy is in the grip of a deep recession and there is no money for stimulus spending and no central bank that can cut interest rates. Most of the territories that used to be part of the empires of Gondor and Arnor are either depopulated, desolate or in enemy hands.

Gondor, the last outpost of golden Numenor, is clearly a third-world nation with a glorious past. How can judicious policies by Gondor’s MOE save the day?
First, we must recognize that the MOE has limited resources. Despite the large dowry that probably came with the new elvish queen, public finance is in a precarious state after years of deficit spending. The first question then is whether a state educational system directed from the white tower of Minas Tirith is a sound proposition, or whether King Aragorn should simply leave education to the vagaries of the free market and the preferences of individuals and guilds. At most, perhaps, given the positive externalities of education, Aragorn should channel an inner Milton Friedman and distribute educational vouchers to private citizen as a form of indirect subsidy.

Yet Gondor is a civilization with ancient traditions that date back more 6000 years to the ‘Eldest Days’. A state directed education with a centralised curriculum and the state training of teachers has a higher chance of preserving these traditions than private education in the hands of unpredictable private citizens. After all, state education allows the elite to dictate what is valuable and worth perpetuating, and that would no doubt include the fine traditions and beliefs that would produce future crops of brave soldiers with a taste for elvish literature. In addition, a state education system compels all young Gondor citizens to undergo a shared ‘national’ experience that is likely to lead to greater bonding. State education could be also designed to be uniformly Spartan in nature, including rigorous physical training that produces young men and women who can run for hours in full armor after marauding orcs. State education could inculcate a proper reverence for an aristocratic political tradition that has lasted since the remote age of the Edain. State education can inculcate discipline and obedience, and train the people of the lower classes to defer automatically to their betters and to accept their place in a glorious hierarchy where they are at the bottom. State education allows master artisans to train the young in making chairs, tables, swords and giant statues exactly as the ancient Numenoreans made them 5000 years ago. It will help shape the aesthetic tastes of apprentices and preempt any unseemly and unelvish innovations.

In short, if Aragorn wishes primarily to conserve the glories of the past, and ensure a supply of docile peasants and loyal soldiers, state education is the way to go. After all, is not one of the main purpose of education to ensure the ‘social continuity of life’? As Dewey puts it:

“Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas or social standards. Each individual who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.” (Democracy and Education)

The medium through which the life of a group is renewed is education. It seems logical for Gondor to aim at perpetual conservation through education. Thus, should Aragorn arduously raise funds to supplement his meagre MOE budget? Perhaps he can persuade his queen to share the recipe for baking elvish bread. Giant state confectioneries baking these energizing delights for export will certainly generate enormous profits.

Yet given Gondor’s precarious situation, is mere conservation sufficient? Gondor’s technological prowess, excepting its exceptional skills in building lofty structures and monuments, is nothing remarkable. It is probably somewhat at the level of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Certainly there is no evidence from the Silmarillion or the Lord of the Rings trilogy that Gondor or Arnor have made any improvement to the craft and knowledge of Numenor over 3000 years. Indeed, there is every possibility of that technical skills have regressed. And civilizations with such primitive technology is ever in danger of being destroyed by lusty barbarians. Witness the fate of the western Roman empire, or the numerous and successful invasions of China from the north. Gondor, despite its great victory in the war of the Ring, is surrounded by hostile Harad and Umbar, and threatened by remnant Orcs.

Clearly, with a small economic and population base, and with its resources further diminished by war, merely conserving the old ways is not sufficient. It is probably a recipe for eventual national extinction.

Part II

Now, theoretically, Gondorian state education need not be merely conservative. Aragorn can wake up one morning and decide to build thinking schools and a learning nation. He can exhort his sages to teach less, so that his peasants can learn more.

The big problem is that the culture of Gondor appears to be primarily conservative, and addicted to customs and ancient literature. As Dewey wrote, ‘in static societies, societies which make the maintenance of established custom their measure of value’ education is simply about the child ‘catching up with the aptitudes and resources of the adult group.’ A good example of this would be imperial China, where classical learning and recitation, and the reproduction of tradition norms, were the most important aims of education. This is in contrast to more progressive societies, like modern industrial civilization, where education is usually viewed as a ‘constructive agency of improving society’, where education, ‘instead of reproducing certain habits, better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on their own’ (Democracy and Education). Singapore’s state education, for instance, certainly aims at producing citizens who have better knowledge, skills and habits on average than the previous generation—though how well it has succeeded is debatable.

It seems then, that if Aragorn wishes to use progressive state education as a means to strengthen Gondor, he may very well end up destroying much of its culture. This may not be a bad thing, since Gondor’s culture is apparently centred on imitating the civilisation of the Eldar (something that mostly perished in the First Age). Therefore, even at its very best, Gondor’s civilization would merely be an imitative thing, and its model citizens would be humans sculpted crudely in the alien image of immortal elves.

So let us say Aragorn takes the plunge. After all, as the first King of Gondor in a new Age, as a leader with undoubted credentials and pedigree, and with the old elite destroyed or in disarray, Aragorn has the political capital to push for such drastic reforms (unless his 3000-year-old wife, with a different perspective on things, objects). So how would a progressive Gondorian educational system look like? Given the undeveloped state of Gondor, something along the lines of modern mass education is out of the question (since it places a premium on scientific knowledge, inquiry and training—all of which clearly do not exist in Gondor). And Aragorn could not rely on private education either, since the all-pervasive conservative culture certainly implies conservative private education. For instance, the lack of progress in craft and technology over 3000 years is a telling sign that Gondor’s guild-based education is primarily about replicating the arts of Numenorean forefathers. To reform Gondor, a bold king of education with bold ideas is needed.

The best that could be done (and even that is assuming a relatively high degree of pre-existing mental culture) would be setting up institutions like Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum or the Museum of Alexandria—places where free thought and reason can flourish, and where human beings can improve their intellectual and ethical development through the cut and thrust of dialogues and inquiry. After all, one of the most crucial ingredients of a progressive civilisation is the propensity to question everything and anything. This tendency is best cultivated by institutions that encourage the use of reason to discover greater truths and critically examine existing social, ethical, technological, and religious norms in the hope of improving them. In essence, to set up educational institutions for training the philosophical heart and mind would be the foundation of a increasingly progressive and rational society, which may eventually, in centuries to come, lead to cultural, philosophical, economic, technical and even scientific achievements that surpass that of old Numenor. Such progress would make Gondor completely secure against external barbarians and less advanced nations. A parallel situation would be how western European nations managed to defeat everyone else and dominate the globe in the 19th and early 20th century.

Of course, the one problem with this cheery picture (besides the gradual or quick destruction of the old ossified culture) is that more and more citizens would be questioning the aristocratic political order. After all the rule of the ‘old Houses’ is merely customary, not based on rational justification. The military traditions of Gondor might also be undermined, with detrimental consequences for national security. And if the rule and life of reason becomes a mass phenomenon, it is almost inevitable that ordinary citizens would demand greater voice and representation in governance. Hence, the empire of Gondor would give way to the republic of Gondor. This is not inevitable, of course, since cultivating the life of reason in the masses require economic resources far beyond that of Aragorn’s Gondor and is a long-term prospect at best.

In addition, while progressive and technologically advanced societies like ours are fully secure against external barbarism, it is far more capable of mutual- and self-destruction. A prospect of a world like ours, which is threatened by nuclear apocalypse and a grisly parade of man-made horrors, is not a pretty one. Gondor may be able to avoid our fate by developing the whole life of reason in its progress instead of just a few lucrative aspects of it. Modern civilization has developed the scientific and economic domains enormously, but comparatively neglected the ethical, metaphysical and aesthetic dimensions. Nor has it succeeded in truly developing a high level of intellectual culture among the masses. If Gondor manages to do what we have failed to do, it may well be able to survive its own power.

It is a pity that both Gandalf and Galadriel, with their mystical abilities and knowledge have left for Valinor. It would be most ideal if Gandalf could be persuaded to ‘dumbledore’ a Gondor Academy of Magic, or at least train a cadre of flame-wielding wizards for national defense. If something of their knowledge and lore had been retained, it may be that Gondor can develop into mystic civilization instead of a technological one (mystic training of course requires a mystic pedagogy beyond the scope of these reflections). But since that is clearly no longer a viable alternative, it appears that Gondor has to philosophise or perish.