Recollection, I have learned more than once, is the key to avoiding burnout: giving ourselves time to pray, think, and be, quieting the voice telling us constantly to be doing. I’d like to suggest that one means of recollection is a deeper understanding of words.
Take, for example, my favorite humble household words: lord and lady. Humble, you say? Yes, the word has far humbler origins than we realize. Though it might now conjure images of stone castles or stately manors, Lord comes from the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) word hlaf (loaf) and ward (guardian). The Lord of the castle is really just the guardian of the loaf. What of the lady, then? She, too, works with the loaf, though she is the maker of the loaf (hlaf and daege). The word for any servant in the household was the hlaf-aeta or loaf-eater. While that one didn’t survive into Modern English, it fleshes out the picture of the domestic economy of early Medieval England. Children weren’t called loaf-eaters; only servants who had to pull their weight. Theologically, there’s even more to unpack as we consider ourselves Servants of the Lord and Lady of Heaven, but I’ll leave you to ponder that one on your own.
Instead, I want to turn to a word wrongly etymologized time and again for teachers. Let’s set the record straight. You have probably long heard, many times, that education comes from the Latin roots ex/ē, meaning “out of,” and dūcere, meaning “to lead.” While this is not false, it is so little of the picture as to be called a half-truth.
Those who don’t know (or care) about the inner-workings of Latin grammar can skip the next couple paragraphs just to read my conclusions, but this part of the argument is important. If we have formed an abstract noun from the third-conjugation verb ēdūcō, it must have a consonant-stem. That is, we would have the word eduction—as we do for induction, introduction, reduction, and so many other English words that come directly from this verb. Yet, education has that a in the middle, which shows us that it in fact comes from a first-conjugation verb: ēdūcāre.
When a third conjugation word converts to a first conjugation verb, it takes on a repetitive or ongoing meaning. Examples abound in English: dicō – to speak (cf. diction) becomes dictō – to say over and over (cf. dictation); see also canō (to sing) → cantō (to chant), pellere (to push) → pulsāre (to beat). So education is more repetitive than eduction? What does that show us?
The Romans didn’t see educāre as a merely empty repetitive act. Rather, the learned grammarian Varro used it to describe a nursing mother, and the relationship between the one receiving the milk and the one giving it. While the baby must do some work for the milk, it is always work in concert with the mother. And as any parent of an infant knows, it happens regularly, consistently, and yet not rotely. It’s also not just a leading out. It’s a relational action that requires attention from both parties. While it didn’t only apply to the nursing relationship, it often carried with it the necessary repetitions and relationship involved in “nourishing, rearing, or raising up.”
Thus, it’s far more a parental and domestic word than you’ve probably heard thus far in all the analogies to the cave of ignorance out of which we lead our students into the dazzling light of truth. As Catholics this shouldn’t surprise us, because we know the Incarnation has at its root the Lord taking flesh in Our Lady and then receiving his nourishment from her in his hidden life in Nazareth. Moreover, that same Lord founded a Church we call Mother whose Queen is His Mother. Ok, so I did have a few more thoughts on the Lord and Lady…
And so, ēdūcāre does not mean to lead someone from ignorance to knowledge: that’s not a process that can be bottled into a repeatable, relational system. It does mean to nourish, rear, or train. Thus, we as teachers stand in locō parentis for so many hours a day, giving what the parents want us to give: the nourishment of our students’ bodies, minds, and souls. This nourishment is also repetitive; we have to show up day after day and lay the feast again. We cannot pour the knowledge in, implant it, download it, or even lead it out. Rather, we offer it like bread, and the student himself must do the chewing, digesting, and absorbing.
Leadership still sits in the roots of the word ēdūcāre, though; after all, the root dūx still implies that one has authority and another has obedience. Parents obviously lead their children. It is, though, a far cry from induction, deduction, or reduction which imply a standard process or algorithm. While -ductions are systems that can apply universally, education is relational, looking to where the student is and the knowledge he should next encounter on his journey.
And so, taking the time to care for words can give us the strength we need to care for our students. We, too, are under authority and still learning from the Master Teacher. In building genuine relationships with our students, we introduce them—and so often reintroduce ourselves—to the great authors and great ideas that all ultimately lead back to Him.
Footnote: The Etymology Online compilation of authoritative entries on education and to educate agrees with me without fleshing it out as fully as I’d like.