Jacques Maritain and Some Christian Suggestions for the Education of Teachers

"What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?" According to third-century Christian apologist Tertullian, not much. From precisely the opposite perspective, the twentieth-century "secular humanist" John Dewey would have echoed Tertullian, although he was as greatly indebted to Christian thought as Tertullian was to the pagans; he would have described himself as deeply religious, while explicitly rejecting religion. Between the two is the remarkable thirteenth-century synthesis of reason and religion by St. Thomas Aquinas, applied to modern education by the twentieth-century philosopher Jacques Maritain. As some writers suggest, Maritain's thinking provides a Christian corrective to Deweyanism for public as well as private school-teachers who wish to honor both their sacred callings and their secular contracts. However, the author believes that Maritain and Dewey have enough in common to be synthesized for classroom purposes by intelligent and informed teachers, whether they be believers or not. In this article, the author compares areas of similarity and possible synthesis between the two philosophers' thinking, and provides some Christian suggestions for the education of teachers. (Contains 13 notes.)