Saint Augustine at School

Saint Augustine

I have “discovered” this wondrous man. He was born to a saintly mother and a drunken father. His family was not without money, but they were not rich. His parents worked hard to give him the education for him to become a rhetoric master. He was smart and talented; however, he hated his studies for a long time. He wrote in The Confessions that his teachers had to beat him to do his studies. He hated them for it and was not happy that his parents allowed it to happen. He did make it though and by the time he became a bishop he was glad that they pushed him so hard.

I will give more information about his life later, but here is a part of The Confessions where he discusses his learning experience...

"What unhappiness, what humiliation I suffered at their hands, O God my God. It was right and proper, they would tell me, for a boy to pay attention to those who advised him to get ahead in this world, and enjoy pre-eminence in the verbal arts- though these arts are no more than the slaves of human ambition and of the desire for what is falsely called ‘riches’! So I was packed off to school, and set to learning to read and write. I was miserable there, and had no idea what use these skills were; but nevertheless, if I was slow to learn them, I was beaten. This is the system that my elders recommended; and there have been any who living this life before us have built for us those highways of woe by which we were compelled to pass. Truly you have multiplied the toil and grief [Gen. 3.16] of the children of Adam!
But I have found there were man and women who have called out to you; and from them I learnt to perceive you, so far as I could, as some great Being, who, without being visible to our senses, could hear our prayers and help us. For while still a boy I began to call out to you, my Help and my refuge; tongue-tied as I was, I still found a voice and called upon you. And though I was just a little boy, it was with no little emotion that I asked you not to let me be beaten at school. And when you did not hear and answer my prayer (or so I though in my foolish way), older people would laugh at me. Even my parents, who had no wish that anything bad should happen to me, would laugh off the beatings I received, though they were bad enough and heavy enough for me at the time." (1.9.14)


This quote is from
Augustine, (2001) The cofessions. Everymans Publishers plc, London.