This article is motivated by twin concerns. The first is with the talents of people that are often unrecognised in schools. The second is the Bible’s teaching on gifts, hand in hand with its central injunction to seek God’s justice. The shape of formal education is fundamentally an issue of justice: how may we deal equitably with the lives of young people compelled to submit to a regime that is supposed to do them good? I explore the understanding that knowing has many forms besides the analytical, that the love of wisdom rather than the acquisition of knowledge should be primary, and how an approach building on these themes would promote the goals of “quality schooling”.
