GUEST OPINION: Visualizing the Enduring Importance of Education in Education | Opinion

I am proud to say that I am set to graduate from Our Lady of Walsingham Academy in 2025 as a first grade student who will have attended all four years of this still new classical Catholic high school. But before I went to this one, I attended another school—a school that promises and is widely accepted as delivering an excellent education. Our Lady of Walsingham also emphasizes excellent education, of course, but it provides more than that. It provides formation.

These related but different concepts require some exploration. You cannot have education without education, but you can have education without education.

Education without a background can produce brilliant researchers who will take cutting-edge fields like artificial intelligence beyond ethically responsible applications. It can produce skilled surgeons who use their skills to manipulate—and even destroy—human life. It can produce lawyers who know everything about the law but know nothing about justice.

In short, education is the study of subjects. Formation is the formation of the whole person morally, emotionally and spiritually. The school is well organized in the study of theology, which in turn leads to the formation of our will and desires. Prayer, sacraments, community service, and personal reflection are part of our school experience designed to build deep and abiding faith.

I follow sports.

And this reminds us of the relationship between wealth and wisdom. We have seen this scenario: a young person becomes proficient in football, football or basketball.

These skills led him to great success and he suddenly made a ton of money. Then comes stupid spending, false friendships, addictions, suffering, abandonment, disappointment, self-harm. He learns the hard way that wealth without wisdom is no gift.

The same thing happens with education and education. Just as wisdom points to the right use of wealth, education points to the right use of education.

In astronomy lessons, we are introduced to the planets of our solar system, which revolve around the Sun and move through space under the influence of gravity. But our education teaches us that these miracles are glimpses of God’s wonderful creation. As an education, we study complex choral arrangements. We sing beautiful liturgies as our formation. We study logic formulas as our education. We use these tools to protect our faith as our education.

Education can be thought of as a well-stocked museum—endless rows of unique and beautiful works of art.

Each of them is good, true and beautiful in its own way, but they all reflect the goodness, truth and beauty common to the timeless ideas of Western thought. This long beautiful gallery of masterpieces on the wall is my education. My formation is a wall.

Without this infrastructure, without the reinforcement of meaning and purpose, all these masterpieces turn into an incoherent mess. But with the gift of formation, they assemble into something like a divine order of things. Thus, these lessons from our past that make up our curriculum ironically provide us with a clear path to the future.

When I look back on my time at Our Lady of Walsingham, I remember my education, but I will treasure my education.

Michael Zimmer is a senior at Our Lady of Walsingham Academy, the first classical Catholic high school in Colorado Springs.

Michael Zimmer is a senior at Our Lady of Walsingham Academy, the first classical Catholic high school in Colorado Springs.