‘The Trees of Knowledge and Life Growing Together’ in the Educational Vision of C.S. Lewis: Why Medway and Stevens are Almost Right About Enlightenment and Romantic Values in English

Abstract

Peter Medway’s paper ‘English and Enlightenment’ (Changing English, 2010) and David Stevens’ response to it, ‘Critically Enlightened Romantic Values and English Pedagogy: A Response to Peter Medway’ (Changing English, 2011), address the relative merits of the quest for truth and the place of aesthetic response in English. It is suggested here, however, that each paper contains the kernel of a counter-argument to the one being presented and that, taken together, both papers might be augmented by attention to The Abolition of Man – Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools by C.S. Lewis. This article develops ideas introduced briefly in a previous issue of this journal and considers one important aim of English teaching in schools to be the fostering of ‘just sentiments’. It argues that educational values are necessary to augment Enlightenment and critically enlightened Romantic values if English teachers are to facilitate spiritual as well as moral development and do justice to the diversity of both the texts and the students they teach.