From Seton Hall University’s announcement of this year’s faculty retreat series:
The Heart of the University Retreat Series gives faculty and administrators of all faiths the opportunity for quiet reflection guided by four members of the University’s priest community. The series is co-sponsored by the Office of Mission and Ministry, and the Center for Vocation and Servant Leadership.
The second retreat, given by Rev. Paul Holmes on the theme We Teach Who We Are: Authenticity in the Classroom, will be held on Wednesday, December 2, 2009, from 9 to 11 a.m., in the Regents Suite, Presidents Hall.
“Deep in the heart of every university are the hearts of its teachers, and as we explore the university’s identity, we naturally need to explore ourselves. Ultimately, whatever our discipline, we teach who we are – `professing’ our worldview, our ethics, our values, as well as our hopes and dreams.”
Agree or disagree.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:25AM
Hmmm…
I note that this is a Catholic institution. Nothing wrong with that per se, but I am not sure that these thoughts apply universally.
Frankly, when I teach organic chemistry, I think my worldview, ethics, values, and hopes and dreams are irrelevant. I would have been offended if my organic chem prof went into these in his course.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:46AM
An ethical move by another institution, regarding another Soltan.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:01PM
I teach Ethics — philosophical ethics. It seems to me that my purpose is to help students understand philosophical arguments, not push my positions on them. I try not to tell them what I really think on any given applied ethics issue.
IMHO, this sounds like a Parker Palmer off-shoot — this was a hot fad at my CC several years ago, and was way too emotional for me.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:26PM
This strikes me as more than a little bit narcissistic.
In "A Preface to Paradise Lost," C S Lewis contrasts the characters of Adam and Satan, as developed in Milton’s work:
"Adam talks about God, the Forbidden tree, sleep, the difference between beast and man, his plans for the morrow, the stars and the angels. He discusses dreams and clouds, the sun, the moon, and the planets, the winds and the birds. He relates his own creation and celebrates the beauty and majesty of Eve…Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace ‘all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.’ Satan has been in the heaven of Heavens and in the abyss of Hell, and surveyed all that lies between them, and in that whole immensity has found only one thing that interests Satan.."
And that “one thing” is, of course, Satan himself…his position and the wrongs he believes have been done to him.
"Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament…"
Elsewhere, Lewis refers to "the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of Hell."
One doesn’t need to believe in Hell or Satan to see the force of these points. There is indeed something disturbing about the person who has to endlessly relate everything in the universe directly to himself.
Ever noticed that weather announcements are not "THE weather" anymore? Now it has to be "YOUR weather."
Rev Holmes assertion strikes me the same way.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:41PM
(Just engaging in some Socratic dialectic.)
>More on Ethics and the Classroom
Does UD believe the classroom is the only place that a university teaches? If we conclude that ethics cannot or should not be taught in the classroom, might it be taught, or should it be taught, or is it being taught, in other ways and places by a university?
November 11th, 2009 at 7:16PM
A university is a community of serious people – people who want to think about important things with one another. The ethos of the university is implicit in all of the formal academic pursuits of the community — reading, discussing things, being tested, writing, doing research — as well as in pursuits not as formal as classroom activity — living together, eating together, attending with fellow students arts events or political talks on campus, writing for the campus newspaper, being political activists of one sort or another, volunteering in various ways, etc. All of these activities carry the essential commitment of the members of a university to free and serious thought, meaningful discourse, a collective effort toward enlightenment.
This is the ethics that the university can teach — if you want to put it that way — a selfless, non-materialistic, respectful interest in the history of ideas, in one’s own ideas, and in the ideas of others.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:03PM
> The ethos of the university is implicit in all of the formal academic pursuits of the community … as well as in pursuits not as formal as classroom activity — living together, eating together …
UD channels Samuel Eliot Morison and the Puritans:
"Book learning alone might be got by lectures and reading; but it was only by studying and disputing, eating and drinking, playing and praying as members of the same collegiate community, in close and constant association with each other and with their tutors, that the priceless gift of character could be imparted."
But is this what The University does today?
March 8th, 2010 at 10:42PM
[…] Catholic, so it features things like The Heart of the University Retreat Series: The Heart of the University Retreat Series gives faculty and administrators of all faiths the […]