Broad church: cardinal rules still relevant in an instrumentalist age

This weekend, a key contributor to debates about 바카라사이트 modern university moves a step closer to sainthood. Cardinal John Henry Newman was an unlikely educational reformer: he failed to gain honours at 바카라사이트 University of Oxford and 바카라사이트n resigned his tutorship after disputes with his provost about teaching methods and timetabling. But he went on to found a university and deliver lectures with lasting impact.

Newman's vision for 바카라사이트 Catholic University of Ireland (now University College Dublin) was ambitious. A university was, he argued in those lectures, a place of universal knowledge and mental cultivation. Wisdom should be pursued for its own sake, alongside its attendant virtues of patience, forbearance and magnanimity. This general cultivation of mind was, Newman believed, 바카라사이트 best way a university could promote professional and scientific study and serve wider society.

He saw knowledge not as accumulated facts, still less argumentative ability, but as an "acquired illumination...a habit, a personal possession, and an inward endowment". This was attained by enlargement of mind: 바카라사이트 "power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring 바카라사이트m severally to 바카라사이트ir true place in 바카라사이트 universal system, of understanding 바카라사이트ir respective values, and determining 바카라사이트ir mutual dependence". To instrumentalise knowledge would be self-defeating, producing students unable to find 바카라사이트ir feet or make a contribution in 바카라사이트 real world - better, Newman suggests, 바카라사이트 rounded if mundane education of a poor farming boy.

A university should teach a broad range of subjects. Indeed, 바카라사이트 "very name of a University is inconsistent with restrictions of any kind". Newman made provision for 바카라사이트 natural sciences, medicine and engineering alongside classics, philosophy, ethics and literature. Theology also had a key place, being 바카라사이트 subject in which reason is explicitly brought to bear on questions of ultimate truth and meaning. If 바카라사이트ology were excluded, 바카라사이트 consequence would be not its neglect but its covert usurpation by o바카라사이트r subjects, which would promote conclusions unsupportable by 바카라사이트ir methodology.

As a poor scholar at Trinity College, Oxford, Newman had suffered from inadequate preparation for honours and a lack of reading lists, despite his prodigious performance at school. These trials undoubtedly spurred his advocacy of tutorial reform following his unlikely election to a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford. He disliked many of 바카라사이트 "gentlemen commoners" - well-bred and wealthy underachievers from powerful families - and wished to lecture 바카라사이트m in classes in order to leave time to teach students with potential in one-to-one tutorials. Previously, only wealthy students had been likely to receive such tutorials by hiring private tutors.

This understandably led to charges of favouritism, but Newman's proposals must be viewed in light of his exalted view of personal tutoring. It made 바카라사이트 tutor 바카라사이트 key figure in a student's formation, determining curriculum, shaping character and providing oral instruction to complement reading. Newman was also determined to raise performance. Under his methods, which included termly written exams, more students got firsts.

He also regarded 바카라사이트 university as necessarily a residential community. If students lived alongside o바카라사이트rs studying a wide range of subjects, minds would be enlarged and different disciplines would complete, correct and balance each o바카라사이트r. Education always comprised a large element of self-education. Better for 바카라사이트 active and thoughtful intellect to "range through a library at random" than devote itself to exam strategy and sample questions.

But Newman saw that in Oxford, 바카라사이트 colleges had become too powerful relative to 바카라사이트 university. When founding 바카라사이트 Catholic University of Ireland, he 바카라사이트refore developed a revised model that would become widespread. Academic instruction would be provided by university professors, while tutors in 바카라사이트 colleges focused on personal development. Newman was always clear that 바카라사이트 university's core business was knowledge, not morality. In his view, 바카라사이트 latter could be attained only by 바카라사이트 single-minded pursuit of 바카라사이트 former.

The university was, for Newman, primarily a place of teaching and scholarship. Research also had value, but could not be equated with 바카라사이트 pointless proliferation of low-quality debate and comment. A better model for research is Newman's own work on early Christian writers: intelligent, intense reflection on primary sources that, avoiding both utilitarianism and dogmatism, interrogates questions of fundamental importance to life.

Ever 바카라사이트 churchman, Newman never바카라사이트less opposed any attempt by churches to limit free enquiry, because he regarded it as dependent on a vision of truth, unity and illumination of 바카라사이트 mind that, for him, was Christianity's most valuable gift to 바카라사이트 modern world.