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Discipline and Influence: Newman on Teaching and Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

James Gaffney
James Gaffney*
Affiliation:
Loyola University, New Orleans
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Abstract

John Henry Newman's thoughts about education extend far beyond that philosophy of university education which is developed in his famous Idea of a University. He was acutely aware that the relationship between teachers and learners is fundamentally a social relationship, and one that can take various social forms. What he most admired was a highly personal and deeply sympathetic relationship, and what he most feared was its replacement by impersonal institutional structures. His convictions in this regard have deep roots in his personal experience, as well as in his interpretation of history and theology. To examine those roots both enlarges one's appreciation of Newman's educational wisdom and sharpens one's insight into his complex personality.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Spring 1991 , pp. 48 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1991

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References

1 A case could be made for Newman's having anticipated some important features of subsequent sociological theory, notably Weber's discussion of Charisma and Tonnies' contrast between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

2 Newman, John Henry, Historical Sketches, Vol. 3 (London: Longmans, 1872).Google Scholar

3 Mozley, Anne, ed., Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman (London: Longmans, 1911).Google Scholar Subsequently reissued as Autobiographical Writings.

4 Newman, John Henry, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford (London: Longmans, 1871).Google Scholar

5 Especially chapters 1-8.

6 Newman's insistence on the priority of oral influence in both classical and biblical tradition recalls an ancient parallel between Socrates and Jesus as having expounded a wisdom too deep and subtle to be captured in writing. Thomas Aquinas touches upon this theme in Summa Theologiae III.42.4, “Whether Christ Should Have Committed His Doctrine to Writing.”

7 Newman, , Historical Sketches, Vol. 3, 70–71.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 72.

9 Ibid., 77-78.

10 Ibid., 74-75.

11 Newman, , Autobiographical Writings, Vol. 1, 130.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 131.

13 Ibid., 132.

14 Ibid., 134.

15 Ibid., 136.

16 See for example Ker, Ian, John Henry Newman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 739–40Google Scholar concerning humiliating references to his time at Oriel in the autobiography of Lord Malmesbury, whom Newman admits having “unmercifully snubbed” nearly sixty years earlier.

17 Newman, , Fifteen Sermons, 75–98.Google Scholar

18 For an analysis of the place of conscientiousness in Newman's moral and religious thought see Gaffney, James, “Newman on the Common Roots of Morality and Religion,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 16 (1988): 143–59.Google Scholar

19 Newman, , Fifteen Sermons, 80–81.Google Scholar

20 For example, “It is no matter whether we call it faith or conscientiousness, they are in substance one and the same: where there is faith there is conscientiousness—where there is conscientiousness there is faith; they may be distinguished from each other in words, but they are not divided in fact” (Newman, John Henry, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 8 [London: Longmans, 1901], 107Google Scholar).

21 Newman, , Fifteen Sermons, 96–97.Google Scholar