The costs of learning: prudent parents have thought of better investments than financing the studies of their children

I am thinking of something I heard in Bologna, where I was a student, from a certain honorable citizen, the father of a legal scholar, who told me more than once that there was nothing he regretted as much in his life as having let his son embark on these studies. He said it had led to much trouble, first because he felt that his son’s knowledge was of no practical use, as he never wanted to distract the young man from his work to assist the family. His son, therefore, had come to count for him as one of the useless members of his household. If he had not chosen to have him pursue advanced legal studies, there were many things he might have taken care of which his father now had to pay others high fees to manage, fees that greatly reduced his profits. Things would have been much different if he could have used his son, and not outsiders, in his business. The returns would have been very little reduced by fees, nor would the family have been forced to waste money on various major expenses incurred by his son. Masters had to paid, money given to grammarians, dialecticians, other teachers too, books purchased, then more books, and more books after that, so that there was no end to the bills of scribes and others…. To this he added another good point, well known to others no doubt, but new to me: “If the money lying idle in those books and clothes my son acquired had been invested in business, as it might have been, it would have grown into a fortune, and I would not only have kept what I spent on him but taken in additional income from year to year.”

The loving father often talked this way of the damage and the loss he had suffered. He further declared that he was not so much troubled by his son’s immoderate and wasteful expenses as grieved by the realization that he could not hope for much from the young man, whom relentless scholarly labors had turned into an invalid and who, as his father observed, would take no rest on even in his weakened condition….

This prudent citizen and father, in part because he was really afraid that this way of life was undermining his son’s health, tried everything, though in vain, to get him to drop his studies. The loving father thought he would rather have a robust, happy, and healthy son, even if not so erudite, than one who was nervous, sad, anemic, and ill. Often he vowed he would rather have an ignorant son than a supremely learned one. For, he said, it is enough to have a son who causes no harm to his country and family. It was truly great grief to him that this one had to be maintained at such cost.

This very unassuming man came to his view of things not because of some prejudice, but by experience, as he watched what the scholar was costing him. If an upright citizen is worthy of belief, and this man, among the most respected in his city, bore witness as I have reported with full agreement from his hearers, shouldn’t he convince anyone that letters are not the road to wealth? Doesn’t he offer excellent proof that preparation for a learned profession not only does not bring wealth but involves a sad and exhausting life of heavy burdens and labors, a life to be avoided?

Leon Battista Alberti, The Use and Abuse of Books (ca. 1428), trans. R.N. Watkins