Critique and Analysis of Education Based on Divine Illumination in Augustine's Philosophy of Language

The present paper aims to evaluate Augustine's view of education and its affinities with language in teacher talk. It accomplishes its aim by proposing three teaching models based on recollection, ostension, and illumination. Adopting a descriptive-inferential research method, the article first describes Augustine's view on the role of language and word in education and then discusses its implications for the method of teaching. According to Augustine, education, in its normal sense, begins with a focus on the use of words as indicators of reality, but, in later stages, it has to move from the verbal signs to the reality behind them as the primary purpose of teaching. The study shows that, based on Augustine's view in the illumination model, teaching and learning occur not through language but through internal understanding and some kind of insight and illumination. In fact, from Augustine's point of view,