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Modern Language Studies
John Henry Newman and Today's Liberal Arts Community Author(s): Cassandra Falke Source: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Summer, 2006), pp. 54-60Published by: Modern Language StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27647882Accessed: 22-08-2015 10:15 UTC
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John Henry Newman and
Today's Liberal Arts Community
CASSANDRA FALKE, L?MAR UNIVERSITY
The US Department of Education Strategic Plan for 2002-2007 opens by announcing that
"Education is not just another policy area. 2002
is not just another year. The nation is at a special
point in history. Under attack from those who
wish to destroy democracy and civilization, it
has responded with resolve, strength, and com
passion" (US DOE 5). Stated goals for higher education include reducing gaps in college access and enhancing the literacy and employ
ment skills of American adults. The latter, I
should point out, seems to have inspired great
vigor in the Plan's author, who notes, "The
economy of the 21st century requires more
workers than ever to develop skills and master
knowledge beyond the high-school level" (57). In Britain the outlook is not much better. The
2003 White Paper, issued by the British
Department of Education and Skills, identifies one of two major goals for higher education as
"harnessing knowledge to wealth creation" (1). If the economy requires skilled workers,
then it seems obvious to Anglo-American heads
of state that the colleges and universities in
which we teach should produce them. This sup
ply/demand paradigm echoes UC-Berkley President Clark Kerr's famous likening of the
university to a factory1 With a little science here,
a little literature there, and a good dose of eco
nomics to hold it all together, colleges assemble
wealth-producing agents. The implication of this economic focus seems to be that democracy and
civilization must fight back against would-be
tyrants with loaded pocketbooks. If democracy and civilization derive their purpose and impe
tus from money, so schools should too.
When Cardinal John Henry Newman set
forth "The Idea of a University" as a series of lec
tures in 1852, he was also at a special point in
history. The population of Britain had doubled between 1800 and 1850, just as ours has done in
the last fifty years. Britain's wealth and military
might have granted it a sense of political and moral primacy. Inundated with telegraphs, mass
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mailings, and popular pamphlets, Victorians
stood amazed and perplexed at the new wave of
readily available information. And, as Newman
pointed out, "fashion, celebrity, the beautiful,
the heroic will suffice to force any evil upon the
community" (183). Then, as now, celebrity and
industry justified everything from soap to
tobacco, and chaos, as Carlyle warned us, can
only be apprehended by going to work. Sound
familiar? Victorian educational debates were
replete with hopeful images of industry, and I
doubt that in a hundred years the monitorial
"moral steam-engine" of the early nineteenth
century will sound much worse than the
"knowledge industry" of our own. Because of
the similarities between Victorian pressures on
higher education and the pressures we face
today, the "The Idea of a University," with its
clear and humane sense of purpose, provides
insight worth revisiting.
As many of you remember, "The Idea"
Newman proposes relies on several key con
cepts. First, the purpose of higher education is
neither to make men good, nor to make men
employable, although it tends to make them
both. Rather, its main purpose is to produce a
habit of mind, which is free, equitable, moder
ate, calm, and wise (93). In order to pass on
these mental traits, the university must operate
upon these assumptions: that knowledge is an
objective unity and worth pursuing for its own
sake, that knowledge may be attained through the pursuit of an inclusive liberal arts curricu
lum, that interaction among faculty and stu
dents will occur across disciplinary boundaries,
and that the dichotomy between thought and
action is false.
Viewed from a biographer's or a theolo
gian's perspective, these assumptions pose no
problems, but viewed from our perspectives as
educators in a comparatively faithless and
increasingly materialistic age, the Cardinal's
assumptions seem incommodious, at best.
Newman's reception, therefore, among contem
porary American educators has varied. His
model for a purpose driven, inclusive, liberal arts education continues to prove effective in
colleges such as St. John's or Reed, which the
book Colleges that Change Lives calls "the two
most intellectual (and indispensable) American
colleges" (Pope 231). Also, Newman's seminal
ideas on college life, such as interdisciplinary
exchange, active learning, and individual fac
ulty/student interaction, are being proven
repeatedly in contemporary pedagogical
research. Advocates of liberal education accord
ingly crown him with unmitigated praise calling him a "rigorous apostle of the classic ideal of lib
eral studies" or even "the apostle of common
sense" (Anderson 52; Cameron 1). But regard
less of the effectiveness of Newman's idea, indi
cators of the state of Anglo-American higher
education such as the US Strategic Plan, the
British White Paper, and the curricular design of
many research universities evoke goals for
higher education that implicitly deny Newman's
primary assumptions.
First, the notion of objectivity has been rad
ically undermined by deconstructionist philoso
phy on the one hand and a litany of moral,
aesthetic, and cultural diversity on the other. As
an avid promoter of inclusiveness, Newman cer
tainly was not opposed to diversity and neither am I, but our extreme emphasis on tolerating
the "Other" has undermined modern cultiva
tion of the "Self." Students shrink from dis
cussing critical issues for fear of being thought intolerant. Like any benevolent dictator, political
correctness does not precisely hurt its subjects;
it only keeps them from helping themselves.
Just for fun, I have tested Allan Bloom's well
known proclamation that all college students
are relativists (or at least think they are) thirty nine times in my short career. At most, two or
three nervous students have raised their hands,
admitting that they think one thing can be
morally right and another morally wrong.
The obvious problem with pervasive rela
tivism is that, as Newman says, "Truth is the
object of Knowledge of whatever kind" (42).
PROFESSION i PEDAGOGY 55
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Truth and knowledge may wear more perspec
tivist garb these days, but we cannot go chasing after truth or knowledge if we think that, like Santa Claus and Washington's cherry tree, they
don't really exist. Every question in every disci
pline presupposes an answer whether we
expect to find it or not. Eric Link and Steven
Frye propose a feasible solution to this problem in what they call "the myth of objectivity."
According to the myth of objectivity, scholars
may split epistemological hairs, but we all must
agree that inquiry can be productive and that
qualitative differences do exist (256). Like the
myth of Santa Claus or the cherry tree, the myth of objectivity functions as a pathway of instruc
tion. But tales of Santa Claus eventually silence
children's questions about where presents come from, and the cherry tree obscures biog
raphical truths about our first president. The
myth of objectivity neither silences nor
obscures, but like Nietzsche's Apollo and
Dionysus or Yeats's Ariel and Prospero, it offers a truth in the form of a parable. And in that truth are paths to further truth.
Newman makes no rash promises that we
will apprehend a great amount of truth during our lives, much less that students can gather vast truths during their college years. Indeed, he
compares the learner to a shortsighted reader
whose eye "pores closely, and travels slowly, over the awful volume which lies open for its
inspection" (43). Yet, the fundamental belief that truth does, however unapproachably, exist,
steadies the Cardinal, and the same belief must be there to steady us. For him, the volume of
truth emanates from God, and while he believes education should be the same for believers and non-believers (lest the believer be thrown after
graduation "in troubled waters" never having learned to swim), Newman's "Idea" cannot hon
estly be examined without reference to his the
ology (210-11). Recently however, examination of the Victorian's theology as it relates to higher education has been guarded outside of Catholic universities. This is a shame because he foresees
that readmitting theology to the university would
allow for more probing discourse into ideologi cal questions. He makes the case that "university
teaching without theology is simply unphilo sophical" (39). How can we understand other
cultures in which religion affects basic day-to-day decisions if we can't admit a primary ground for
empathy?the possibility that there might be a
god? As Daniel Cere puts it, the Cardinal attacks
the "imposition of methodological atheism on
the academy as ultimately grounded in nothing more than subjective 'bias'" (19).
In the academic self-examination prompted
by September 11th, several secular academics
have reminded us that students need a forum in which they can express ethical concerns with
out having to accommodate themselves to dom
inant cultural or religious beliefs. An article by Bruce Mallory and Nancy Thomas published in
2003 demanded a return to democratically responsible dialogue, emphasizing that "an
important mission of colleges and universities is
to serve as sites of open inquiry, leading to a
deeper understanding of contemporary social
challenges" (10). They cite UCLA's comparative study of student motivation for attending col
lege. Twenty years ago, most students reported
that they were pursuing a degree for one of two reasons: first, "to expand their commitment to a
meaningful philosophy of life and to strengthen a just and civil society" and secondly, "to
develop their own intellectual and professional capacities." Today, "being very well-off finan
cially" outnumbers the pursuit of a meaningful philosophy of life two-to-one (16). This change in student perspective is, in itself, a contempo
rary social challenge. But the search for a mean
ingful philosophy of life entails, if not reaching theological conclusions, at least not shrinking from theological questions. Newman reminds
us that we cannot just dismiss questions of tran
scendence as unfashionable and still under
stand universities as sites of open inquiry. In addition to predicating a belief in objec
tivity, Newman's theology also demands that we
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see knowledge as springing forth uniformly from one Creator. He therefore sees knowledge
itself as unified. Work by scientists such as E. O.
Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould has focused on
the consilience of the sciences and humanities
in the expectation that each discipline can
enlighten the others. Newman's motivation for
emphasizing the unity of knowledge was not so
different. Reinvoking the medieval sense of var
ious disciplines working in harmony, Newman
reminds us that different methods of inquiry balance and correct one another (158-9).
Alexander Astin's analysis of the history of cur
ricular reform confirms that a broad, rigidly defined liberal arts core curriculum is still the
best preparation for academic specialization in
the third or fourth year of school. He discov
ered that among reform attempted through a
distributional approach, a major based
approach, independent study, a contemporary
issue approach and a return to a true core cur
riculum, only the last, the implementation of a
rigorous set of core liberal arts requirements,
had much influence on student development (qtd. in Holyer 36).
By the end of Newman's own rapidly indus
trializing century, ladies and gentlemen who had never read Newman referred to his "Idea of a
University" disdainfully as over-refined and
impractical. Similar criticisms have been
launched against a strong liberal arts core.
Indeed, Newman's phrase "knowledge as its
own end" is still used to caricature a liberal arts
education as useless. Newman, however,
acknowledges that we must eat, sleep, and carry
on in an environment where our needs are
securely met. He claims that physical needs
must be met, not merely to survive, but also to
live contentedly. But can an individual taught by the media, by his role models, and finally by
higher education to prize profit over principle ever be happy? Newman says no. A man, he
says, who lacks the mental strength to grasp
things as they are, to clearly understand his own
utterances, and to see with his mental eye is as
weak and disabled as a man without physical
strength or sight (138). A man needs mental
strength to appreciate, even to apprehend, the
life he lives and cannot, therefore, be happy if
he has underdeveloped habits of thought. Newman also questions the concept of use
fulness in education. "Utility," he points out,
"may be made the end of education, in two
respects: either as regards the individual edu
cated, or the community at large" (145). In
which light, he wonders, do promoters of pro
fessional education view utility? The latter. A
British White Paper from as early as 1987 claims,
"[Tjhere is an urgent need in the interests of the
nation as a whole...for higher education to
take increasing account of the economic
requirements of the country" (qtd. in Reeves 2,
emphasis mine). Professional education priori
tizes the strength of the economy over the
strength of individual mental development.
Naturally, the good of a community and the
good of an individual do not always conflict. But if the alignment between community and indi
vidual fulfillment is to be made outside of a
class-restrictive values system, we must look
beyond a community or an individual's eco
nomic worth. Newman holds that the "training
of the intellect, which is best for the individual
himself, best enables him to discharge his duties to society," because men talk, examine, think,
and act after working hours as well as during them (159). Knowledge is worth pursuing just as health is worth pursuing, because it allows us
to fulfill our potential as human beings. The democracy and civilization that our
Department of Education are so desirous to
protect were not created to insure the eco
nomic ascendancy of citizens, except insofar as
monetary success encourages the pursuit of life,
liberty, and happiness. Rather, democracy relies
on the inclusive premise that any individual has
both the right and responsibility to fulfill
humanistic functions, like reasoning about the
world around him, weighing the morality of his
actions, and contributing to his community.
p *? u f ? ? 5* r; ?? ?- r ?* s s c i? c Y 51
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Education, of course, which etymologically
implies a "leading out" of individual potentiali ties, should focus on these rights and responsi
bilities. We are not merely "workers," nor are
our college students.
An Oxonian for most of his life, Cardinal Newman considered personal, and sometimes
casual, interaction among faculty and students
an essential part of college. In one of his
deservedly most quoted passages, he describes
the benefits of intellectual exchange within a
campus community:
An assemblage of learned men, zealous for
their own sciences, and rivals of each other,
are brought, by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their
respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to consult, to aid each
other. Thus is created a pure and clear
atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes. (93)
Two characteristics of the exchange just described immediately stand out; it is sponta neous and interdisciplinary. Then as now, not all
academic exchange "created a pure and clear
atmosphere of thought." Considering his possi ble appointment to a chair of moral philosophy some eighteen years before writing "The Idea of a University," Newman exclaimed, "[T]here is no
situation which combines respectability with
lightness of responsibility and labour so happily as the office of a professor" (qtd. in Bunting ix). So long as respectability could be maintained, a
notorious number of Oxbridge professors during Newman's lifetime (1801-1890) enjoyed their
lightness of responsibility and labor with little or no zealousness for either their own sciences or
their students. We could, perhaps, use more
zealots in our own day, as well. Many professors
today, however, face the opposite challenge?too much responsibility and labor. We teach any where from two classes to seven classes per semester (depending on institution and tenure
track versus contingent status), and those classes
contain increasing numbers of students (AAUP). Tenure requirements demand that we "publish or perish" as the saying goes, a task somewhat
muddier than pure intellection. Administrative
and advising duties lay claim to our time on top of these. How, when wood-paneled senior com
mon rooms have been replaced with stop and go coffee break rooms, can we reclaim spontaneous
interdisciplinary exchange? Robert Holyer proposes that it is in the
midst of fulfilling our assorted on-campus duties that we come closest to recreating
Newman's Oriel common room. He finds that
campus-wide committee work, such as curricu
lar reform, "creates, at least temporarily, .. .a dif
ferent kind of culture, one characterized by cross-disciplinary conversation and the result
ing enlargement of and correction of discipli nary perspectives" (40). Some colleges have
found that even short-term antidotes to discipli
nary isolation promote a renewed devotion to
pedagogy and revitalization of faculty members'
intellectual curiosity. The Luce Seminars at
Emory University, for example, brought together academic and professional faculty will
ing to discuss a series of thematically related texts without any immediate payoff (Frost and
Jean 120). After only a few months of examining these texts together, "eighty-four percent of par
ticipants indicated that participation altered their teaching" (129), and fifty-six percent cred ited the seminar with enhancing the quality of their scholarly thought (130).
Finally, one of Newman's most primary dis
tinctions, a distinction essential for America's
higher education system, is that the assumed
dichotomy between thought and action is false.
'Activity in accordance with virtue," as Aristotle
says, "is virtue" (93). Likewise, activity in accor
dance with "freedom, equitableness, calmness,
moderation and wisdom" (93), is free, equi table, moderate, calm, and wise. Newman antic
ipates that our actions will not always be in accord with what we know, saying that one may
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"[M]oor the vessel with a thread of silk; then
you may hope with such keen and delicate
instruments as human knowledge and human
reason to contend against those giants, the pas
sion and the pride of man" (110). Newman
denounces, however, the notion that intelli
gence and volition have no relation to one
another. It is foolishness, he says, to deny a
motive principle and think that an educated
man must limit his "independent action to the
region of speculation" (52-53). Increasingly, too, employers are finding that students coming from old-fashioned cerebral majors such as
English, or Physics, or History, actively write,
speak, listen, and create better than their pro
fessionally educated counterparts. Strategic Business Futurist Roger Herman calls liberal arts
"the key to the future" for employees-to-be.
Newman does not expect our interactions
with texts to be cold and logical either. He says,
rather, that enlargement of the mind "consists,
not merely in the passive reception into the
mind of a number of ideas...but in the mind's
energetic and simultaneous action upon and
towards and among those new ideas" (121,
emphasis mine). Just as the sweetness and light of the bumblebee are produced by long hours
of activity, so knowledge is produced by active
mental engagement. As professional models for
the habits of thought Newman encourages, we
should direct our active mental energy no less
eagerly toward the purpose and practice of edu
cation than towards our personal scholarly interests. Perhaps the purpose and practice of
education should become part of our personal
scholarly interests. Economic pressures upon
the university and upon us as faculty members
will be what they will. Thankfully, most good
teaching happens, not among the workers the
Secretary of Education would have us be, but
between the sleep deprived lady in comfortable
shoes and the brown-eyed lad in the back of the
class. It happens on clear afternoon walks back
to the office, in view of progress' cranes and
computer labs, but undeterred. The 150 years
that have now passed since "The Idea" emerged have only proven more emphatically that if we
hope to respond to any challenge as a nation
with "resolve, strength, and compassion," the
university must be more of an alma mater and
less of a factory
NOTE 1 Kerr first made this inflammatory comparison in a speech at Berkeley in 1964, commenting later that he had recog
nized rather than recommended the knowledge factory.
Stanley Aronowitz nevertheless builds an effective Kerr
like straw man in The Knowledge Factory, nor is he alone.
Kerr's own "How Well Has Higher Education in the United
States Met the Test of Service to the Labor Market" in
Troubled Times considers the historical precedence of the
university/labor relationship (53-70).
'PROFESSION I PEDAGOGY 59
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