THE
P RTAL
August 2015
Page 18
Lead, kindly light
Reflections from Dublin: John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
and the philosophy of education by Fr Simon Ellis
I
walked through the streets of Dublin recently and reflected, as Ordinariate priest and school
chaplain, on one who had walked there 160 years earlier: our patron, Blessed John Henry Newman.
I considered there one of Newman’s greatest, but the Church in Ireland needed to “reconnect” with
perhaps least acknowledged achievements: the young people.
University he helped create in 1852. Newman’s “The
Idea of a University”, which remains in print, constitutes
a coherent educational philosophy. He maintains:
• that education has value in itself.
• hat subjects are important, but that
collaboration between subjects and disciplines
provides the best education.
• the need to see faith in its context of supporting
liberal values and connecting with the culture.
Firstly, education has a value. Newman’s University
was going to be about learning for its own sake,
training the mind and equipping it for intellectual
work. Newman writes: “I am asked what is the end
of a University Education, and of the Liberal or
Philosophical Knowledge which I conceive it to
impart. … It has a very tangible, real and sufficient end,
though the end cannot be divided from knowledge
itself. Knowledge is capable of being its own end.”
Newman was not dismissive of contemporary
culture, but criticised the creation of a type of
humanity which recognises no source of authority
outside of its own self, running the risk of “selfcontemplation”. Newman is quite clear that a liberal
education makes a ‘gentleman’, but it doesn’t make a
Catholic. It is fine to have a civilised intellect, a delicate
taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, but they
are “no guarantee of sanctity or conscientiousness”.
Newman’s words have relevance today, for even the Newman extends this line of thought into the concept
most well-meaning educational institutions have been of conscience, where he writes of the danger of people
sucked into a competitive, utilitarian frenzy, making thinking and acting as if there were really nothing
learning into a commodity; a thing to be compared in objective in their religion because they do not look out
of themselves but become victims of an intense selfthe market with other products.
contemplation.
Secondly, Newman believed the main aim of a
Harsh words? Newman is challenging a world which
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