The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of DublinNewman, John Henry
Religion
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin
Newman, John Henry
Education, Higher; Universities and colleges
It must not be supposed that, because I so speak, therefore I have some
sort of fear of the education of the people: on the contrary, the more
education they have, the better, so that it is really education. Nor am I
an enemy to the cheap publication of scientific and literary works, which
is now in vogue: on the contrary, I consider it a great advantage,
convenience, and gain; that is, to those to whom education has given a
capacity for using them. Further, I consider such innocent recreations as
science and literature are able to furnish will be a very fit occupation
of the thoughts and the leisure of young persons, and may be made the
means of keeping them from bad employments and bad companions. Moreover,
as to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, and geology, and
astronomy, and political economy, and modern history, and biography, and
other branches of knowledge, which periodical literature and occasional
lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the community, I
think it a graceful accomplishment, and a suitable, nay, in this day a
necessary accomplishment, in the case of educated men. Nor, lastly, am I
disparaging or discouraging the thorough acquisition of any one of these
studies, or denying that, as far as it goes, such thorough acquisition is
a real education of the mind. All I say is, call things by their right
names, and do not confuse together ideas which are essentially different.
A thorough knowledge of one science and a superficial acquaintance with
many, are not the same thing; a smattering of a hundred things or a memory
for detail, is not a philosophical or comprehensive view. Recreations are
not education; accomplishments are not education. Do not say, the people
must be educated, when, after all, you only mean, amused, refreshed,
soothed, put into good spirits and good humour, or kept from vicious
excesses. I do not say that such amusements, such occupations of mind, are
not a great gain; but they are not education. You may as well call drawing
and fencing education, as a general knowledge of botany or conchology.
Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and
a resource to the idle, but it is not education; it does not form or
cultivate the intellect. Education is a high word; it is the preparation
for knowledge, and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that
preparation. We require intellectual eyes to know withal, as bodily eyes
for sight. We need both objects and organs intellectual; we cannot gain
them without setting about it; we cannot gain them in our sleep, or by
hap-hazard. The best telescope does not dispense with eyes; the printing
press or the lecture room will assist us greatly, but we must be true to
ourselves, we must be parties in the work. A University is, according to
the usual designation, an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not
a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.
9.
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