ABSTRACT
How can people learn to understand the truth? Augustine of Hippo tries to answer this question about the education of the mind in The Teacher (De magistro). There he refutes the knowledge-transfer model of education, according to which a teacher transfers knowledge to a learner by means of speech or writing. The teacher transfers knowledge by encoding it into language and uttering the appropriate sounds; the learner, hearing the utterances and knowing the language, decodes language back into thoughts. Augustine formulates the transfer model as follows: “Nor is there any other reason for signifying, or for giving signs, except for bringing forth and transferring to another mind the action of the mind in the person who makes the sign” (On Christian Doctrine 2.2.2). Augustine’s alternative view is that much, if not all, of what we know we learn from the teacher within, who is Christ. How can people learn to do the good? Augustine narrates in his Confessions an account of how his own heart was educated and he was brought to do the good. His story refutes the naïve view that knowing the good is sufficient for doing it. He holds that God had to convert him before he was able to commit himself firmly to doing the good.
