You’re about to be beatified.
I’ve always liked what you have to say about the nature of a real university education.
… [A university should create] a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes… [The student] profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called “Liberal.” A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or what in a former Discourse I have ventured to call a philosophical habit. This then I would assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a University, as contrasted with other places of teaching or modes of teaching. This is the main purpose of a University in its treatment of its students.
In the same chapter, you describe, similarly, the university’s cultivation of “a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind.”
The university student, having been introduced to the breadth and variety, the lights and shades, of human knowledge and experience, attains some distance from the particular set of beliefs and preferences she happens to have inherited from growing up in a certain family and in a certain social setting. Freedom here is freedom from unreflective prejudices and emotions that undermine your ability to be fair, to see things clearly. The student gains all of this from exposure to professors and others at the university who embody, in their teaching and their conversation and their daily behavior, a truth-seeking ethos.
I like “candid” as well. From Newman to Orwell to Hitchens, a primary mark of an educated person is the consistent statement of unvarnished truths.
… [E]ducation is a higher word [than instruction]; it implies an action upon our mental nature, and the formation of a character; it is something individual and permanent, and is commonly spoken of in connexion with religion and virtue. When, then, we speak of the communication of Knowledge as being Education, we thereby really imply that that Knowledge is a state or condition of mind; and since cultivation of mind is surely worth seeking for its own sake, we are thus brought once more to the conclusion, which the word “Liberal” and the word “Philosophy” have already suggested, that there is a Knowledge, which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labour… Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence.
Ultimately, what you enter into at a real liberal arts college is the drama of mind and spirit constantly being transformed by dispassionate engagement in thought.
September 11th, 2010 at 7:12AM
“a truth seeking ethos”
“freedom from unreflective prejudices”
Since I am on sabbatical I have been thinking about stuff like this a lot.
One of the problems I have with the theory above is from the student’s point of view. Without going into specifics I’ll use politics as an example. I am afraid that some of my colleagues of the liberal persuasion – the same argument holds for conservatives – perhaps push their agenda too far in the classroom.
The faculty members hold the cards in such discussions and some of them seem to think that only the know “the truth.” (apologies)
The same goes in matters of religion. Again using a slightly hypothetical example: the militant atheist who feels that he/she has to make fun of a student’s religion…
One of the things that drove me to science is that the problems mentioned above can be minimized in the classroom.
My two cents. Thoughts?
p.s. – a little anecdote. I once gave a lecture about genetic engineering of rice to put a gene for a vitamin into it – so-called golden rice. I asked for comments. A student stood up and read me the riot act over the matter, calmly, articulately, and dispassionately. This was probably the best day I’ve had as a teacher.
This is what a university should be.
September 11th, 2010 at 7:32AM
Oh, but spirit of Newman, can you MEASURE and QUANTIFY “freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom”? If not, you have no business at all in 21st century American academia.
Or rather, American hackedemia.
September 11th, 2010 at 8:10AM
Bill: I think this is why the word “dispassion” keeps appearing in Newman’s work. It’s in your comment as well.
It’s an obvious point to make that Newman himself had a cultural/spiritual agenda, etc. And that no form of educating or being educated is ever perfectly dispassionate. But universities are institutions positively devoted to the discipline, to the ideal, of dispassion for the sake of getting closer to the truth about things.
As to faculty members holding the cards in discussion and therefore having the ability to rather bully students toward the professors’ truths — I’m sure such professors exist, and I’m sure they’re able to bully some students. I’ve always believed, though, that very few professors — even in the humanities — conform to this model. And even fewer students.
Professors may advocate with varying degrees of explicitness for various polemical positions. A professor in a literary criticism survey may, at the end of the semester, offer a lecture in which she says that having surveyed the many points of view one can take relative to a text, she has always, for the following reasons, found this one most compelling, etc.
That is a perfectly ok to thing to do, it seems to me.
September 11th, 2010 at 8:13AM
“DISTANCE from a particular set of beliefs and preferences”…I suspect that in many cases today, though, the professor *thinks* he is challenging received beliefs while actually reinforcing them. Professors often seem to have an image of their students as something out of a novel about the 1930s or 1950s: Dad is a farmer or runs a car dealership, mom is a housewife who is active in the PTA. They are rock-ribbed Republicans who attend church every Sunday, and are a little suspicious of Jews and even Italians. The student believes the Bible is the absolute word of God, and is sexually very repressed.
Whereas actually, Dad is a “creative” type in an advertising agency and mom is a psychologist. They’re agnostics but go to the Episcopal church. They’ve always voted Democratic and are concerned about what they see as the spread of “Islamophobia.” The student has had 4 sexual partners so far and hooked up with 5 more. And the “challenging” beliefs propounded by the professor are merely a reinforcement of everything that the student has heard from his family, and from their part of the culture, for his whole life.
There are of course exceptions…the class you described in “theater of the classroom,” where you tried to geet students beyond the “Anything can be art!” “Everything’s subjective!” sounds like a genuine challenge to common received beliefs. I had a similar experience in a philosophy class I sat in on several years ago, in which the professor developed an intelligent critique of cultural relativism…you could tell that some of the students were actually *disoriented* by the thought that there might actually be alternatives to this worldview.
But I’d bet on the whole, belief-reinforcement rather than belief-challenge happens a lot more than most academics would like to believe.
September 11th, 2010 at 8:34AM
— I’m sure such professors exist, and I’m sure they’re able to bully some students. I’ve always believed, though, that very few professors — even in the humanities — conform to this model. And even fewer students.
___
Of course I only know about what happens in humanities classes from my undergrads who are scientists. Oddly, perhaps,some of them have strong religious backgrounds…
From what I hear, UD, there are more folks conforming to this model then you believe. And the students aren’t actually bullied, meaning they do not change their mind at any fundamental level. But they feel that they have to parrot back – on exams and such – whatever position they faculty member has been pushing. This is intellectually dishonest and leads to a certain degree of cynicism, so to speak, on the part of students.
If you recall the situation in the College of Education here, where sheep safely graze, that is the sort of thing I am writing about.
Best,
Bill
September 11th, 2010 at 8:54AM
No argument on schools of education, Bill. But the situation in most of these schools is widely known and widely discussed. Students have been warned.
September 11th, 2010 at 9:20PM
Incoming freshmen at Georgetown when I began were instructed to read two books over the summer in preparation for orientation seminars (and, although I didn’t realize it at the time, in preparation for their entire undergraduate experience). One was Newman’s The Idea of a University. The other was C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. I probably only absorbed a tenth of the wisdom in those books from my reading and the seminars, but that tenth remains with me still. I can’t imagine a better introduction to higher education. But of course that was when good undergraduate education was still Liberal in Newman’s sense.
September 12th, 2010 at 8:10PM
Long article on Newman in the weekend Financial Times, focusing on his rocky relationship with the Pope of his era.
September 12th, 2010 at 9:24PM
Thanks, dave.
September 13th, 2010 at 2:51PM
For whatever it’s worth, the FT article is an ahistorical mish-mash of present politics and theological angst. Newman’s legacy has, as the author says, been hijacked by the Catholic right. But stealing it back for the Catholic left is no answer. Newman was an advocate of faithful dissent, but only within the church; when it spoke, he silenced himself – as after the definition of papal infalibility. He saw no contradiction in this, but others have, then and since. Thus he enraged the conservatives of his own day, even as he regularly disappointed its liberals. But why let the Newman of history get in the way of a good polemic, from either side of fence?
September 13th, 2010 at 3:46PM
Colin: Mr UD said something very close to what you’ve said. Indeed he asked me why I chose that, of all that articles about Newman and the Pope, to link to. I’m afraid I had no good answer…
September 13th, 2010 at 8:45PM
I wouldn’t worry about it: poor Newman is being dragged about at the moment. Perils of being almost a saint, I suppose. If you’re interested in such things, there is a brilliant essay – more a polemic – in the current issue of The Journal of Ecclesiastical History by Simon Skinner. Like most historians who have worked on Newman, I’ve been appalled by the various attempts to make him either a gay icon or a conservative pin-up.