What are the central features of education according to Newman?

Newman weaves together a set of arguments that combine to demonstrate the special nature of a Catholic university and why this is superior to other institutions that claim to be universities. Newman presents these arguments as if they are deductions from the definition of liberal education. Newman opens his discourses on the Idea of a University (henceforth Idea) by stating his definition of what a university is fundamentally about:

Newman composed his Idea to help his original audience (in Dublin) understand what was different about a Catholic university. In these discourses Newman wanted to set out what was special about a Catholic university and to explain why young Irish men ought to attend this type of university rather than one of the other universities in Ireland. As Turner explained,

Starting from this practical context Newman developed a set of arguments that began by noting the way in which a Catholic university would include the study of theology. However, Newman was at pains to emphasise that he was arguing for a university and not a seminary (Ker Reference Ker2011). The Catholic university in Dublin would be like other universities and it would include the study of theology as a legitimate part of universal knowledge.

In the second, third and fourth of his discourses Newman constructed further arguments about the importance of theology within a university, and the ways in which theology plays a key role in ensuring that a liberal rather than a utilitarian education takes place. He launched his argument from an analysis of the concept of a university, declaring that

He went on to add

Newman maintains that a Catholic university alone is the only kind that can provide an authentic liberal education. In his opening discourses he maintains that in a Catholic university proper recognition is given to theology as a genuine branch of knowledge. Newman was critical of the Queen's universities that had recently been opened in Ireland because these on principle did not teach theology. In contrast, the strength of the Catholic university is that it is able to take seriously open questions, about the existence of God and the possibility of divine revelation, that are part of theology. Newman argues that if God existed then this would have a number of implications for the education offered by the university. At a fundamental level, all knowledge would have its origin in the creative impulse of the one God. There would be a unity to all knowledge that could be traced back to a divine origin. More practically, theology would be a legitimate subject in the university because it involves both a higher knowledge (about God) and it involves the study of the fundamental truths of human existence. Also other subjects would need to understand themselves in relation to the totality of human knowledge. This would mean, for example, that science would not be exploring a neutral or impersonal universe, a brute fact, but rather creation – the work of the creator.

Newman sought to defend the status of theology as both a genuine academic discipline and branch of knowledge. He argued that its exclusion from the curriculum of a university would reflect flawed logic because all knowledge forms a unity and as such theology ought to be part of it. Newman argued that given the definition of a university, it would follow that a university should in principle be committed to the teaching of every branch of knowledge. His deduction is elementary – theology is a branch of knowledge and thus it too ought to be part of what is offered in the curriculum at a university. An institution that prohibited and excluded any science (including the science of theology) on principle was, according to Newman, one that by definition could not be a true university.

Moreover Newman maintained that in a Catholic university theology, along with all the other subjects, has a role to play in providing the necessary counter-balance to the competition that occurs between different academic disciplines. There is a tendency for some subjects to assert themselves over rival disciplines. Newman cited the example of economics. He argued that in the secular university economics is given a disproportionate importance in the curriculum and in the underlying rationale of the university. Newman maintained that the inclusion of all subjects (including theology) helped to safeguard against economics, or any other subject, becoming superior in the university curriculum. It is as if theology's inclusion has a symbolic significance. The university teaches all branches of knowledge, including theology, and this is how a university is able to foster what Newman refers to as the ‘philosophical mind’. It is this philosophical mind that can recognise where one subject is over-reaching its proper limits and unfairly seeking to dominate the curriculum. The inclusion of theology serves this important goal. Newman is not saying that theology is the highest discipline nor that it has the authority to oversee and correct any excesses in other disciplines within the university (Cornwell Reference Cornwell2010, Ker Reference Ker2011). This role he assigns to the philosophical mind trained by a liberal education. However, theology given its presence in the university plays a role in developing this philosophical mind.

In the closing discourses of the Idea Newman considers theology and the Church's presence in the Catholic university. In the last discourse he deals with the Duties of the Church towards knowledge, where he argues in favour of a special relationship between Church authorities and the university. The Church has oversight of the truths of theology and this gives it the right and responsibility to protect the revealed truth both inside and outside of the university. Newman explains that this does not mean that the Church would censure the content of subjects such as literature, but rather it would insist that theology should be studied alongside whatever is being studied. The Church would promote and guard knowledge and university education, and as such enjoy jurisdiction over the university. Ultimately there is no clash between religion and natural sciences, indeed these will be fostered and pursued in the Catholic university. This is because Newman is arguing for a university rather than a seminary. Equally the study of literature will be a feature of university learning, despite the realisation that it is the product of a fallen human nature. The study of literature needs to be part of the liberal education delivered at a university in order to prepare the student for the world. However it needs to be juxtaposed with Church teachings so that the student can learn to understand other subjects in a more balanced way.

Throughout the Idea Newman argues in support of a liberal education, as opposed to one which is bound up with professional or vocational preparation. In the fifth discourse Newman explains that knowledge is its own end. At university students are free to pursue studies according to their individual preference not for any utility. Learning is to be done for its own intrinsic sake.

It is a liberal education as opposed to a servile one that is on offer at university. In this Newman was making a stand against those who wanted to make ‘utility’ or usefulness the point of acquiring knowledge and education. Knowledge is its own reward.

To be educated is to be able to use your mind rather than having to passively absorb a mass of information.

According to Newman it is liberal or philosophical knowledge that is the goal or end of university education. The person educated at university gains a connected view or grasp of things, and this Newman calls philosophical knowledge or the enlargement of the mind (Newman Reference Newman and Turner1996). This could be summed up as the capacity to think. It is important to note that this argument for liberal education is not connected or supported through any theological argument. In Newman's argument for liberal education there is no attempt to justify or ground it in theology.

A further characteristic of Newman's account of education is an emphasis on the intellectual rather than on the moral development of the student. He pointed out that

A few sentences later Newman goes on to state that

Newman explains that a liberal education does not necessarily lead to virtue or to being a more ethical person. In the final set of discourses a significant distinction is drawn between what a student can gain from a university in terms of faith development. As a human institution the university can bring about the education of the gentleman but this is different to helping the individual overcome their fallen sinful nature as a human being. Newman maintains that persons of genuine ethical virtue can only come into being through faith formation as a Catholic Christian. At university the student receives the kind of liberal education that helps him to develop his natural human capacities (through becoming a gentleman). At a Catholic university the student has the advantage of being reminded through the presence of theology that Church teachings give numerous insights into the ultimate ends of human life.

The relevance of Newman to the theory of catholic education?

There are three main themes that emerge from the arguments and points made in his Idea that bring into focus Newman's positive contribution to the theory of Catholic education. The first is about the inclusion of theology in the curriculum. Newman argued that theology ought to be included in the curriculum because it is a genuine branch of human knowledge. As such, its inclusion expresses that there are no sections of human knowledge that are excluded, in principle, from the curriculum. In this, Newman could be depicted as foreshadowing parts of Hirst's arguments about the forms of knowledge (Hirst 1965). For Hirst ‘religion’ (here treated as more or less equivalent to theology) was one of the eight forms of knowledge that inform and guide the curriculum. Hirst and Newman would agree that ‘religion’ could not legitimately be excluded from the curriculum. A further resonance between them would be Newman's argument about the role of all branches of knowledge having a part to play in overcoming the danger of academic imperialism. This would parallel Hirst's insistence that all eight of the forms of knowledge were needed and they were not in competition with each other. Newman's argument about the need to include theology is grounded on the unity of all knowledge. Including theology allows Newman to develop a theological perspective on the curriculum. The various subjects of the curriculum through which the universe is studied and investigated enjoy a unity thanks to theology and can be traced back to a divine origin.

The second theme in Newman's Idea is the similarity between the Catholic university and other types of university. When Newman wrote about the university education whether Catholic or not

To reiterate the point, Newman's Idea is advocating a university education and not arguing in support of a seminary in which theology is the central subject. Like any proper university the goal of a Catholic university education is to gain a liberal education. This is different to professional training or acquiring knowledge for some utilitarian purpose. There is an intrinsic value to knowledge, and knowledge is its own reward, and this is exactly the same in Dublin as it is in Oxford. The enlargement of the mind is the defining characteristic of a genuine university. Newman argued that an educated person acquires understanding and the ability to think carefully. He explained that

Newman did not argue for a distinctly Catholic variant of this kind of university education but rather insisted that any genuine university would be committed to this kind of liberal education. Like all universities the Catholic one that Newman wanted to establish in Dublin would be committed to the enlargement of the mind. The advantage of a Catholic university was that it included in principle all branches of knowledge (as epitomised through the presence of theology) and this meant it could ensure that economics, and utilitarianism more generally, would not be able to dominate the curriculum. This would help to safeguard a liberal education.

The third theme in Newman's Idea is the way that he down plays the religious and moral aspects of education. For Newman education involves fostering the dispositions noted above about the capacity to think, or what he described as enlargement of the mind. According to Newman this disposition was a defining characteristic of being a ‘gentleman’. One of the outcomes of a Catholic university would, like others, be the formation of ‘gentlemen’. Newman described being a ‘gentleman’ in very positive terms:

On first impression this would appear to be about character education. However, on closer inspection Newman is clear that it does not involve either moral or catechetical aspects. A university education does not involve the catechesis and formation of the student into a Catholic Christian or even into a ‘Christian gentleman’. Newman was emphatic about this, and in the preceding sentence to the above quote, he insisted that

One does not become a Catholic through the formal education one receives whilst at university, and Newman was willing to concede that this would be the situation even within his Catholic university in Dublin. In this third theme, Newman brings into focus the vagueness in the concept of Christian education. His rejection of the catechetical interpretation of this concept is clear. Newman is concerned with the theory, or in his terms the ‘Idea’, of what education as a whole ought to involve. Newman does not even attempt to argue that it ought to involve catechesis and moral education.

However, this observation should be partially qualified because Newman attached importance to the residential and pastoral aspects of a university education. Newman was committed to students living in the university and having a close relationship with their tutors. It was through this non-formal education that students might be able to gain both moral and catechetical formation. Rupert (Reference Rupert1998) has drawn attention to the way Newman's practical plans for the university in Dublin had as one of its initial projects the building of the university church. No doubt Newman assumed that the students would be attending it and perhaps gaining religious formation through it. This means that catechesis and moral formation would in this partial way be a part of the Catholic university that Newman proposed. However, it was certainly not in the formal education that took place there. In this Newman is characterising a basic similarity between the good practice he was involved with as a Fellow at Oriel and in the Catholic university he planned for Dublin. Newman's stance on how a liberal education does not make someone a Christian is suggestive of another way in which he foreshadowed arguments subsequently developed by Hirst, in that Hirst argued both that Christian education was a contradiction in terms (Hirst Reference Hirst, Astley and Frances1992), and that there was a fundamental difference between the formation of someone as a Christian (catechesis) and a genuine education (Hirst Reference Hirst1976).

A Critical Discussion of Newman and the Theory of Catholic Education

The theory of Catholic education that emerges out of Newman's discourses on the Idea has many positive features. However, these can often be obscured by the standard criticisms that are leveled against Newman's broader account of university and liberal education. It should be noted that many of these criticisms although significant are not the primary focus for this thesis, and as such little sustained attention will be given to defending Newman against them. It will be argued that the most striking feature of Newman's argument in support for liberal education is made without recourse to theological arguments. He merely argues in favour of including theology in the curriculum and does not support or underpin liberal education on theological grounds.

Newman's arguments do not provide a religious or theological justification for liberal education. A Catholic university, like any other, is a place where liberal education can be pursued. However, in this claim Newman has not explained how theology could underpin liberal education. Newman can be criticised for juxtaposing liberal education and a Catholic university without providing any kind of supporting argument about how the ‘Catholicity’ of a university would ground or justify the liberal education that ought to take place there. Newman does not specify why the education in a Catholic university would need to be a liberal one. It might well have been that the Irish bishops who invited him to run the Catholic university would have preferred a super-seminary (theology plus other subjects), however this is not what Newman argued for (Cornwell Reference Cornwell2010; Ker Reference Ker2011; Rupert 1988). Newman modelled his proposed Catholic university not on the seminary but on what he saw as the best aspects of non-Catholic universities (such as Oxford). Moreover in Newman's argument for a liberal education it was the enlargement of the mind (the capacity to think) rather than any subject, theology included, that played the key role. A liberal education does not prepare you for a specific profession but it does develop the disposition of enlargement of the mind. For Newman this disposition is the defining characteristic of the ‘gentleman’. A successful liberal education resulted in the formation of the ‘gentleman’ and this is different from the formation of someone as a Christian. This indicates a dissonance between a Catholic university, liberal education and the catechesis of someone as a Christian. According to Cornwell (Reference Cornwell2010) there is a striking paradox at play in Newman's argument here given his audience, in particular the Irish bishops who wanted a Catholic university which was established on religion. He explains that Newman was proposing that

A university will, according to Newman, be geared to a liberal education in which the enlargement of the mind is fostered, rather than the formation of the Christian.

This brings into focus an ambiguity in Newman between the relationship between liberal education and theology. This stems from the way the arguments of the Idea lead to two separate sets of claims. Some of the discourses are aimed at justifying the inclusion of theology in the curriculum of the university, whilst others deal with the distinctive features of liberal education. If there is a tacit connection between these sets of claims, it is weakened by the quality of some of Newman's arguments for the inclusion of theology in the university curriculum. Newman blends together a number of arguments about theology's place in the university in order to make two points. The first is to insist on its legitimate place in the university curriculum and the second is to argue for the special role that theology plays within the curriculum. Newman argues that theology is an essential or defining feature of the concept of a ‘university’. Without it there is a distortion of what universal knowledge consists of. There can only be a unity and cohesion of knowledge if all branches of knowledge are present within the curriculum. Newman comes close to presenting these points as a syllogism, arguing from his definition that a university is a place where there is a universal teaching of knowledge. However both the logical form and the soundness of the premise in this syllogism can be challenged. Newman takes it as a given that theology just is a branch of knowledge, yet this is an assumption. Given Newman's experience of studying and teaching at Oxford where he had learnt and taught the discipline called divinity or theology, it is an assumption grounded on his faith. However, as Loughlin pointed out

Newman simply rejects, without refuting, the arguments of those who would deny the truth and knowledge status of theological discourse. At a general level he could be accused of merely asserting his assumptions that theology involves knowledge, and that the ‘knowledge’ in theology is basically the same as that found in other disciplines or branches of knowledge. The concern here is that Newman is using the concept of knowledge in an unrecognisable way, in that Newman appears to be inferring from the presence of the subject of theology that theology is a branch of universal knowledge. There is of course an academic discipline known as ‘theology’, however this is not the same as establishing that this subject is a branch of universal knowledge. Moreover, it is as if Newman has failed to appreciate the controversial nature of many theological claims, not least the question of God's existence. One way of defending Newman would be to interpret him as presenting a conditional argument in which the existence of God is taken as given. In making the argument for a Catholic university, Newman was of course speaking to a predominantly Catholic audience, and he was there at the behest of the Irish Catholic bishops. In this context issues of God's existence would not have been seriously raised or questioned. This is to maintain that in effect Newman was setting out what the implications would be for a university if God's existence was known. Newman, like his audience, simply accepted the existence of God. However, Newman could be criticised for glossing between the conditional premise of ‘if’ God exists and the making of an assumption that God does exist. Indeed if God does exist a reasonable case can be made (as Newman did) to show that this would impact on the other disciplines of knowledge in the university. There is in theory a difference between the study of God's creation and the study of a universe which is not the product of a creator God. Newman's argument is weakened by the presence of his assumption about the existence of God.

Of course if the opening premise is weak, this makes it harder to accept the deductions and conclusions in the rest of Newman's argument in the Idea. One way in which Newman could attempt to support his opening premise would be to appeal to natural theology. Newman, like many other Catholic theologians in the nineteenth century, had much confidence in what natural theology could legitimately establish. During the First Vatican Council (1869–70) the dogmatic teaching in Dei Filius was promulgated and this document asserted the ability of natural theology to prove beliefs such as the existence of God. For Newman, as a Catholic speaking with other Catholics about his vision for the Catholic university, he may well have felt fully confident about natural theology allowing him to take his opening premise as being true and unproblematic.

However there are a number of problems with appealing to natural theology in this way. At the obvious level it would appear that Newman is being over confident about what natural theology can legitimately establish. Amongst contemporary Catholic theologians the common interpretation of Dei Filius (1870) is that it asserted the possibility of being able to engage in natural theology rather than teaching that it can be used definitively to prove the existence of God. The success or otherwise of Newman's account of Catholic education is connected with the question of whether or not natural theology is able to establish the existence of God. The upshot of this is that, despite the conviction of his faith and the possibility of appealing to natural theology, Newman has still employed a premise that is conditional on accepting the existence of God. As such it is a controversial premise.

What is intriguing about Newman's Idea is the way he avoids positing any relationship between his religious assumptions about God's existence and what ought to be taught to students. He more or less adopts the liberal curriculum as it currently stands and makes no recourse to theology. He has not attempted to develop an argument about why Catholic Christians ought to follow this kind of curriculum. This is the major concern with Newman's contribution to the theory of Catholic education. The problem is that it avoids exploring or understates the relationship between theology and educational theory. There is no real attempt to provide a theological explanation of why a Catholic university would be committed to providing a liberal education. Moreover, the arguments Newman employed to justify the inclusion of theology complicate the situation. They risk the danger of implying that the justification for Catholic education is dependent on assumptions about whether or not God exists. Ultimately Newman's way of arguing ends up under-emphasising the relationship between theology and educational theory. When it comes to liberal education Newman has not sought to use theology to justify why it ought to be a defining characteristic of a Catholic university.

Newman's failure to underpin his educational argument on theology can be briefly illustrated by referring to one of the more general criticisms raised against him. This concerns his definition of universities as places where there is the teaching of universal knowledge. There is certainly no theological justification for this definition. In contrast to Newman there are alternate definitions that might be more open to theological justifications. For example, many have put the emphasis on universities as centres of research rather than as places of teaching, and others have drawn attention to them as places of dispute. For example, MacIntyre (Reference MacIntyre and Rorty1998; Reference MacIntyre2009) has frequently pointed out that universities are aptly characterised as places of learned disagreement. It is not just that Newman's definition of the university is controversial, but more importantly he also fails to draw upon theology to support his argument.