John Henry Newman and Today's Liberal Arts Community

Modern Language Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Language Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

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

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 129.242.9.12 on Sat, 22 Aug 2015 10:15:35 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mls

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27647882

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp



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

54 36.1



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



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

56 t? fe 3 F ft S USII?SE S T II a , ? % 36.1



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



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

58:830?t9h L?NSU??E S?ul?IES 36.1



"[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



WORKS CITED American Association of University Professors. AAUP Policy

Statement "Contingent Appointments and the

Academic Profession." University of York. 12 May 2006.

<http://www.aaup.org/statements/SpchState/Statemen

ts/contingent.htm >.

Anderson, Charles W Prescribing the Life of the Mind: An

Essay on the Purpose of the University, the Aims of Liberal Education, the Competence of Citizens, and

the Cultivation of Practical Reason. Madison: U of

Wisconsin I> 1993.

Aronowitz, Stanley. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher

Learning. Boston: Beacon, 2000.

Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York:

Simon, 1987.

British Department of Education and Skills. The Future of

Higher Education. White Paper., 2003. <www.

dfes.gov. uk/hegateway/>.

Bunting HI, Josiah. Introduction. The Idea of a University.

By Cardinal John Henry Newman. Washington:

Gateway, 1998. ix - xv.

Cameron, James M. "John Henry Newman: Apostle of

Common Sense?" EWTN Global Catholic Network. 15

May 1993. Lamar State College. 14 August 2003.

<http://www.ewtn.eom/library/HUMANITY/FR89402.T XT>.

Cere, Daniel. "Newman, God, and The Academy."

Theological Studies 55 (1994): 3-24.

Frost, Susan H., and Paul M. Jean. "Bridging the Disciplines:

Interdisciplinary Discourse and Faculty Scholarship." The Journal of Higher Education. 74.2 (2003): 119-149.

Herman, Roger E. "Liberal Arts: The Key to the Future." USA

Today (November 2000): 34-36.

Holyer, Robert. "The Oriel Common Room: General

Education & Faculty Culture." Liberal Education 88

(2002): ProQuest, University of York. 12 May 2006

< http ://biblos. lamar.edu: 225 l/pdqweb>.

Kerr, Clark. Troubled Times for American Higher Education: The 1990's and Beyond. New York: State U

of New York 1^ 1994.

-. The Uses of the University. Cambridge: Harvard U?^

1963.

Link, Eric Carl and Frye, Steven . "Foundations of the New

Traditionalism." The Midwest

Quarterly 44 (2003): 249-267.

Mallory Bruce L. and Thomas, Nancy L. "When the Medium

Is the Message." Change

35 (2003): 10-17.

Newman, Cardinal John Henry. The Idea of a University.

Washington: Gateway, 1999.

Pope, Loren. Colleges That Change Lives. New York:

Penguin, 1996.

Reeves, Marjorie. The Crisis in Higher Education:

Competence, Delight and the Common Good. The

Society for Research into Higher Education and Open

University Press: Milton Keynes, 1988.

United States. Department of Education. US Department of Education Strategic Plan for 2003-2007. Washington:

GPO, 2002. <www.ed.gov/about/reports/strat/index. html>.

60 K 0 ? fc P S l ? ? 8 t? ? ? E Sr??i?S 36.1



John Henry Newman and Today's Liberal Arts Community

Documents

Transcript of John Henry Newman and Today's Liberal Arts Community