This quote is from C.S. Lewis’ essay “On the Transmission of Christianity” from the book God in the Dock. In the essay, he gives a reason for why Christianity is no longer common among British school students. He says, “As the teachers are, so they will teach.” It is an excellent essay. Here is a longer quote about how current educational failures cannot be remedied by looking at the present generation, but we must look at the generation, which is currently teaching the present generation.
“This very obvious fact-that each generation is taught by an earlier generation-must be kept firmly in mind. The beliefs which boys fresh from school now hold are largely the beliefs of the Twenties. [This was published in 1946.] The beliefs which boys from school will hold in the Sixties will be largely those of the undergraduates today. The moment we forget this we begin to talk nonsense about education. We talk of the views of contemporary adolescence as if some peculiarity in contemporary adolescence had produced them out of itself. In reality, they are usually a delayed result-for the mental world also has time bombs-of obsolete adolescence, now middle aged and dominating its form room. Hence the futility of many schemes of education. None can give to another what he does not possess himself. No generation can bequeath to its successor what it has not got. You may frame the syllabus as you please. But when you have planned and reported ad nauseam, if we are sceptical we shall only teach scepticism to our pupils, if fools only folly, if vulgar only vulgarity, if saints sanctity, if heroes heroism. Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next. It is not a closed system. Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils. We shall all admit that a man who knows no Greek himself cannot teach Greek to his form [class]: but it is equally certain that a man whose mind was formed in a period of cynicism and disillusion, cannot teach hope or fortitude.”<>
