Education--and the Price We Pay

Who pays for our education is a question that well could be considered. (And a corollary question, “Who benefits by it?”) Both are a matter of proper concern, with mounting costs to public and parents and pupils. (As a sidelight on the subject, this should be said: “The only thing more costly than education is ignorance.”)
As to the student, by the time he has worked his way, and suffered long, and paid much in effort and time and tuition, he might actually come to feel that he has paid for his education. But this is far from the fact. No one ever pays for his own education, no matter how much he contributes to it⎯because what comes to him from the past is beyond price.
Anyone⎯any student, any professional person⎯who thinks he has paid for his own education is grossly deceiving himself, for the knowledge, the skills, the tools, the privileges and opportunities of any occupation, any profession⎯the trial and error and truth⎯all come to us in larger part from the past and an incalculable price has been paid for them. And therefore every graduate, to use a trite phrase in the sincerest sense, does owe a debt to society, a debt to God and man, and to the immemorial past, and to the eternal and everlasting future.
We are our brother’s keeper. And our brothers of the past have done much to make us⎯and our Father also⎯and we do have real and everlasting obligation to other people, and to the great purposes that move through time and eternity. Tangibility, materially, intangibly, spiritually, every generation inherits more than it produces. No generation ever pays its own way.
On this theme, Emerson said: “[It] is base,… to receive favors and render none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.”
This is but another way of saying what occasionally needs to be said⎯that no man is selfmade; and no student ever pays altogether for his own education, no matter how hard he works, no matter what he brings to it. And in the working years ahead, there is an earnest obligation to give sincere service⎯for there is no man who is not a product of the past. There is no man who is what he is except as many have helped to make him.