An excellent short service of welcome for the new Ecumenical Chaplain (Andy Markey) to Oxford Brookes University yesterday included a concise expression of the university's hopes of the Chaplaincy from Mike Ratcliffe, the Director of Academic & Student Affairs. I was struck by his quotation from an 1854 volume of lectures by John Henry Newman on The Idea of a University in which he argues that a university training
aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspirations, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political powers, and refining the intercourse of private life.
I'm not sure I entirely understand all of that, or necessarily agree with it, but it's 'full of meat' to say the least. Although clearly 'of its time' it does present a challenge to contemporary universities which, in Newman's words, are in danger of becoming "a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill" rather than "an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one".
A United Reformed Church (UK) minister and Oxford City councillor (Green Party), working at the interface between organised religion and the secular world, shares ideas to stimulate and challenge, and invites your response. Bigots excepted.
Reading at the moment
- This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
- Cities Are Good For You : the genius of the metropolis by Leo Hollis
- Salt : A World History by Mark Kurlansky
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Views expressed by the host do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Reformed Church, either locally or nationally.
1 comment:
Newman's thoughts on higher education are more widely read in the US where they still have a stronger conception of general education being a part of the purpose of the University curriculum. Here in the UK we have rather narrowed the focus of higher education to the degree being about the subject itself.
That provides a challenge as to how to provide access to civilising elements, which for many would include exploration of spiritual matters.
Another good quote comes from a major Nineteenth Century thinker, not often linked with Cardinal Newman, J S Mill. He said the following in his inaugural address as rector of St Andrew's University:
"Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings …
Men are men before they are lawyers or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians. What professional men should carry away with them from a university is not professional knowledge, but that which should direct the use of their professional knowledge, and bring the light of general culture to illuminate the technicalities of a special pursuit."
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