Why Pursue an Excellent Education?

As a member of the World Leading Schools Association, MBA has the opportunity to learn from excellent schools and colleagues around the globe. The exchange of ideas and experience among these schools is invaluable to what we do on The Hill. More to the point, though, is why we do it. In the WLSA conference this summer, that why took center stage.

In some of the conference's opening remarks, Eve Jardine-Young, Principal of Cheltenham Ladies' College, rallied the attendees around our the common goal of providing an excellent education. As a perfect example of educational collegiality spanning both space and time, she quoted an excerpt from a 19th century Eton College handbook whose words still capture the why of an excellent education. 

“At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism.

“A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions.

“But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness.”

Just as we expect the boys to engage in this kind of education, the MBA faculty aims to continue learning from these exchanges among our excellent global colleagues.

Eton College