Newman’s vision

Joe Humphreys at the Irish Times asks whether John Henry Newman’s vision for Catholic universities has died.

He speaks with Paul Shrimpton, author of a new book on Newman’s vision of higher education, The ‘Making of Men’. The Idea and Reality of Newman’s university in Oxford and Dublin. Below are excerpts from that interview.

On Newman’s vision of education:

Newman stressed that the essence of a university lies in teaching, not research, and that a combination of lectures and small-group – or even individual – teaching is needed to promote intellectual culture and the training of the mind.

Was Newman’s vision ever realized?

No. He considered that a fully fledged university ought to be residential if it was to impart a deep formation, and that ideally the residential college – or its equivalent – and the university should operate in harmony.

However,

The liberal arts colleges in the United States probably come closest to Newman’s ideal. And, as philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre points out, so do some Catholic seminaries.

On universities today compared to Newman’s vision:

In every age there are aspects of the university which flourish. The level of knowledge and technical expertise on offer nowadays has probably never been higher, nor has the level of organisation. But at the same time there has been a loss of a coherent vision. 

(…) Newman stressed that a university should be ‘an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill’.

Is the university a religious enterprise?

Newman saw his university as ‘a secular institution, yet partaking of a religious character’; it was ‘to fit men for this world while it trained them for another’.

Read the whole thing.