Favorite Quotes

In the wake of my Wheaton College liberal arts education, I picked up this book by Mark C. Henrie, called A Student's Guide to the Core Curriculum (Wilmington: ISI, 2000). I think I plundered it from one of my roommates (probably Nolan Lynch) who were getting rid of unwanted books. I've so far found it a penetrating analysis on the nature of the university system from the perspective of a proponent of the classics of Western heritage. The opening essay included many highlights on the necessity of a liberal arts education, as well as some scathing critiques of a variety of false ideas out there since Enlightenment Rationalism. His press toward wisdom is admirable and his advice for students is helpful, even if I have a few questions about some of his conclusions (I would see Christ more clearly at the center, though I think he is aiming at a secular audience...). I'm using it as part of the process of connecting more of the dots from my Wheaton education. I'm seeking to continue integrating faith with learning, as well as integrating the multiple disciplines and theories of education and knowledge into a collective whole. I want to take seriously the biblical claim that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and so that's something I'm going to pay special attention to as I finish reading all the sections that give his recommendations for courses in all the major departments.

But before I get to that, here are 12 of my favorite quotes from his introductory essay:

1. "For while the advanced research conducted at U.S. universities is the envy of the world, it is also clear that at most institutions the basic undergraduate curriculum has been neglected and consequently experienced a dissolution." (1)

2. "Some say that college is simply preparation for a career. But no human life is defined completely by paid employment. Professional man, therefore, cannot be the true end of a university education." (3)

3. "For Newman [John Henry Newman, 1801-1890], the goal of a university education is always 'enlargement of mind,' or 'illumination' or 'philosophy'. With none of these terms he is quite content, however. Rather, he gropes in his text for a term that may be predicated to the body. The end of liberal education is the health of the mind. We desire health for what a healthy body allows us to accomplish, but also for its own sake; and so too with an 'enlarged' or 'illuminated' mind. And just as with bodies health is achieved through exercising all the parts, so, Newman claims, the health of the intellect is achieved through the broadest education possible." (4)

4. "Newman's response to the partisans of specialization and Wissenschaft [the "scientific" style of higher education then flourishing in Germany] was twofold. First, he observed that while the concentrated intellectual development of the German-style scientists had perhaps a practical advantage, the cost was the narrowing, the diminishment--in fact, the partial mutilation--of the mind of each individual. No more could such specialization be recognized as intellectual health, desirable for its own sake, than could an overdeveloped right arm in an otherwise neglected body be understood as bodily health." (5-6)

5. "Second, Newman insisted that a true understanding of the whole could be achieved only through a broad and balanced approach to the whole. The specialist, naturally impressed by the explanatory power that his discipline gives him in one narrow area of inquiry, is apt to overestimate his grasp of other matters: the nuclear scientist or the biochemist presumes to speak on moral and political questions, as if ethics is not itself a serious study with methods very unlike those of the natural sciences. In fact, Newman would argue, there is less justification for crediting the ethical judgment of a scientist who has not received a broadly liberal education--even in such debates as nuclear deterrence or cloning--than there is for crediting the judgment of a liberally educated man wholly lacking in any specialized knowledge of either science or ethics." (6)

6. "Learning proceeds with the assumption that there is a unity to all knowledge, and that there is truth out there to be found. The mind is opened by the variety of studies so that it will at length close upon an ordered view of the whole that is as capacious and as rigorous as possible." (6-7).

7. "For the properly educated man knows both what he knows and what he does not know; and consequently, he displays habits of consideration, courtesy, and fair-mindedness which are both moral and intellectual virtues. Moreover, there is a certain pleasing modesty to the philosophical gentleman. Because he possesses a view of the whole, he does not make the mistake of believing that intellectual virtue is the sole criterion of human value; the perfection of the intellect leads to the realization that intellection is not the whole of human life." (9-10)

8. "Thus, our culture's historical narrative for the purposes of the old-fashioned "Western Civ." consisted of the story of the advance of freedom and democracy, leading to their apotheosis in contemporary America. This educational project is frequently denounced today as having been nothing but a kind of pseudocritical indoctrination into the unexamined "excellences" of one's own culture, and therefore not truly a liberal education at all." (11)

9. "The other twentieth-century effort to retain a spirit of liberal learning in the American university was the Great Books curriculum." (12) "In their effort to avoid "indoctrination" and to convince students of the more-than-historical value of a small number of truly great books, anti-historicist defenders of those books sometimes go so far as to assert that the history of the West is not a history of "answers," but a history of questions--"permanent questions"--that can never have conclusive answers." (13) "But to hold that all important questions remain permanently open is itself to presume, dogmatically, that history does not matter and thought does not progress. It also curiously fails to do justice to the writers of the Great Books, since these writers were without exception in the business of seeking answers and not merely engaged in thought experiments concerning questions they knew to be irresoluble." (14)

10. "Within all traditional cultures, the teacher is highly honored, and the obligations existing between teacher and student are a subject for deep reflection. Confucius taught that the teacher-student relationship is one of the five fundamental human forms. The teacher is understood to have something to give to the student--his wisdom--and the student in turn gives the teacher respect, gratitude, and loyalty. The formalities of such a relationship have been obscured in contemporary society. Not only are Americans less mannerly than the ancient Chinese, but we are also skeptical that anyone might actually possess wisdom. We tend to understand teachers more as trainers in methods of inquiry than as bearers of an ethos." (18-19)

11. "You should choose your friends wisely, not only for the negative reason of avoiding moral hazards, but also for the positive reason that if you can find your way into a group of serious intellectual friends, you will learn immensely more than if you try to "go it alone." Indeed, such friendships will change your life." (20-21)

12. "The ancients, however, understood work as the absence of leisure. Leisure (otium, in Latin) was the substantial thing, and work the negation or absence of that (negotium). The ancients understood that human beings wer made to enjoy their leisure seriously: the serious use of leisure is the cultivation of the mind, which is pleasant and good for its own sake." (22)