Tutor Talk: Dr. Cain Explores the Roles of Teacher and Student

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In presenting the first of the year’s “Tutor Talks” on Thomas Aquinas College’s New England campus, Dean Steven Cain chose an appropriate subject: the role of teachers and students.

At a Wednesday-afternoon gathering in Dolben Library, Dr. Cain delivered his remarks, titled Magistri Est Ordinare, or, “It is for teachers to order.” He began by observing that “learning follows upon teaching, and those who learn can be helped by reflections on how they ought to be taught.”

From there, Dr. Cain described the fundamentals of teaching, as St. Thomas Aquinas presents them in his Summa Theologiae. The objective of education is the ordering of the soul and mind toward truth and wisdom. For the student to be thus ordered, his teacher must be ordered in this way first. “Since the teacher acts upon the student and, in that act, is productive of knowledge,” Dr. Cain explained, “teaching is an art … that produces truth in the mind of the student.”

As he explored the primary duties of the teacher, Dr. Cain proposed that the main purpose of the teacher is to “remove obstacles and introduce order,” so that the student can seek truth and wisdom of his own accord. Dr. Cain then explained the order of the soul, defined as that which is by nature the greatest and highest of material forms, but the least or lowest of intellects. If the soul is indeed the least of all intellects, then it must be ordered toward something greater. “It is the actuality of a body that is able to bring [the soul] into communion with other bodies,” he said.

The teacher’s calling is to lead the student from the principles to the conclusions, care for the student along this journey, and keep a warm and watchful eye on his development. Dr. Cain related the relationship between student and teacher to that between a gardener and his garden. The teacher, “the tiller of souls,” must watch the student as he grows and blossoms, guide his growth, and shelter him from storms and predators, showing him how to survive on his own. “The teacher must order the mind of the student,” Dr. Cain insisted, “so that he will seek the right things and place himself on the path to wisdom.”

As he neared the end of his talk, Dr. Cain explained modernity’s difficulties with this approach to learning. Confident in technological, technical, and social prowess, man has started to devise his own order to the world, and, as the Dean put it, “We have come to see ourselves more and more as makers of our own understanding.” Consequently, many live truly disordered lives and are in need of teachers who will guide them back to the path on which they may attain true wisdom.

Dr. Cain concluded with a final exhortation for students and teachers to recognize this communion that they share — the gift of truth and wisdom, and the joy of the pursuit — and embrace the task of learning with zeal. “Hence the human soul … comes to know the natures of sensible things so that it can come to know their, and its, cause, and rejoice in that knowledge.”

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