Education, Gift, and Freedom: C.S. Lewis’s Idea of a University

Abstract

This article traces C.S. Lewis’s principles of education, articulated consistently through his fiction, academic writing, and theological works. It argues that, working within the tradition of his Oxford ‘Greats’ education, and through influences like Newman and Tolkien, Lewis envisions education primarily as a form of ‘Gift-love’ between persons. For Lewis, then, the qualities of the teacher and the developing habits of the student are of paramount importance at the earlier stages of education. Lewis, however, distinguishes learning from education to mark the later stages of the student’s progress, a transition from dependence on the teacher to independent exploration of a particular field in which, ideally, the student becomes the teacher’s equal and friend. For Lewis, education aims not primarily at data, research, or self-expression; rather, the end of education is intellectual freedom.