Thomas Aquinas's Theory of Knowledge Acquisition or Epistemology

Explain Aquinas’ theory of knowledge acquisition (i.e., epistemology) and the extent to which you agree or disagree with it. Answer in a brief essay of one or two paragraphs.
Smith, S. J. (2020). Windows into the history and philosophy of education. Kendall Hunt. ISBN eBook 9781792424625, Print Book 9781792424632
The following is a transcript from a video discussing Chapter 3 of the book above and addresses the topic of the assignment:
We think about the spectrum of the High Middle Ages and how you have very formal education on one end of the spectrum. So for example Thomas Aquinas who was one of the premier scholars of his day one of the main teachers out of the university that was growing in Paris. These are all sort of informal schools but then they become the universities that are centuries old today the main universities of Europe. He writes his Summa theological. It is the premier theological like survey of Christian theology document that was written by the Catholic Church. And it becomes sort of a a benchmark for what is heretical and what is not heretical? What is sound logic and what does not sound logic? It's sort of based on the teaching of Aristotle. So on the one end of the spectrum you have very formal education. It started in the monasteries or in the cathedrals. If you're a wealthy enough in the Middle Ages you would pay money to a professor who is either a monk in a monastery or perhaps a bishop and a church. And there were other somewhat informal learning opportunities that you would pay money for. But for the most part most people in the Middle Ages were learning from their parents or were learning from their bosses at work if they work for somebody. So they might be in a field and learning agriculture through their boss who was teaching them how to recognize the richness of the soil how to plant how to anticipate the weather and different things like that. They were they were learning because they were curious about something and they wanted to apply it to a work situation where their immediate dividends. So while you have formal education on the one hand and the monasteries and cathedrals most people are actually being educated when they're curious about something and their livelihood depends on it. Maybe they're eating through the winter depends on there being a good hunter or a good farmer or figuring out how to canned peaches or help preserve food to make it through the winter time. And these are skills that we often forget about in modern America because we go to the store we earn money we pay money for food that's already can that's already boxed up or whatever and that's what we take home and eat. But imagine if your livelihood was not based on a local grocery store but instead your ability to earn more in food than you needed so you could share it with your neighbors and trade and barter for clothes and do other things like that. Being a successfully educated person in the high Middle Ages the majority of people that meant you could do your job well and you had survival skills if you're in the Middle Ages the the typical scenario is you're working on a farm and you have a knight who is in charge of your property. The night defends you protects you militarily. If there is a big battle like one of the crusades that happens during the High Middle Ages. You might be call to arms to help the night fight. C would learn little bit about military effectiveness military science so to speak. But for the most part the night was educated he could read he was in charge of everybody else and he would basically tell you what to do and you would learn from him or you would learn from someone who was a little bit better at farming or a little bit better in hunting than you were. Most of the education that took place in the high Middle Ages was not with Thomas Aquinas at the University of Paris or in monasteries and cathedrals or the burgeoning universities. Most of the education that took place is actually happening within families in the farm houses just in the feudal system in general. When I think about people learning today you realize that most education takes place outside of the classroom. I mean you have your 45 minutes you're our your hour and a half or maybe if there's an intensive you have a week where you're coming together and learning a lot of stuff in that classroom. But imagine that most of the learning today still takes place outside of the classroom. Today we have the internet. People might do a search and if they're curious about something they figure it out on their own from just searching the internet and trying to figure out what's what's authoritative and what's not. Well learning has always been that way throughout history most education takes place outside of a formal classroom. The key for effective educator today is to make sure that you can get students excited. I mean get them impassioned about learning. So that when you're done teaching them inside the classroom they're going to go away from that classroom experience. And you're going to want to learn on their own. They're going to take up those ideas and maybe it'll come back to you during the next class period and say hey professor I learned about that thing that you are talking about because I went and looked it up because I was excited about it. So just like in the high Middle Ages were most education took place outside of the classroom. So even today most education takes place outside of the classroom. People learn how to learn in the classroom but then they apply it through necessity of life just like it was in the high Middle Ages.