There has been much in the news over the last couple years about universities and their failures. Some have taken to try to start their own universities. Others have chosen to forcibly change current institutions. But what of simply providing space for organic growth? What about just presenting knowledge, based on ancient wisdom, and inviting students in?
This past semester I was able to bring to fruition a project that was something of a personal passion of mine: I wanted to get a for-credit college course taught so that students, particularly students at the JPII Newman Center, could be exposed to something that aided them towards their degree but was also in the Catholic intellectual tradition, taught objectively. Thanks to the collaboration of several good people, that course came to completion just a few weeks ago and I’m exciting to share the results.
Dr. Carson Holloway is a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) and a good friend. We had been talking about collaborating on something like this for some time. After I had met with the very kind dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNO, Dean Melanie Bloom, and some of the staff at UNO, I was encouraged that we could pull something off. And, naturally, like most good things, funding was needed. I knew a couple who have led a life of unwavering support for authentic Catholic education. And so, with their monetary support, Dr. Holloway’s expertise, and Dean Blooms blessing and guidance, for the first time, UNO offered “Catholic Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas” as a for-credit special topics course at the university.
The class itself was smaller in terms of students with eight undergrads, but for the first class of its kind, it was an encouraging start and included not just college students from the Newman Center but from the wider university as well as two adults taking advantage of the Senior Learning Passport Program who are allowed to audit classes at a lower cost.
The class read Aquinas’ work On Kingship and selections from the Summa Theologica focusing on his work on law and justice, on rights and war, and on many other topics. I was allowed to sit in on a couple of the classes including the final one where Professor Holloway invited the class members to voice their take-aways from the course. One of the Senior Learning Passport auditors said how heartened she was to see young people reading so carefully. “There’s hope for the future,” she said. And for the younger students themselves? With their permission, let me share the thoughts of two of them.
Tommy, a student at the Newman Center and a graduating Senior didn’t have to take the class for his degree. He was simply interested in the topic. The intensive reading might have dissuaded most students, but not him. Rather, he said “I enjoyed it more than nearly every other class I have taken in college.” In fact, he thinks that this kind of class should be required for all students “as it helps develop critical thinking skills when approaching complex political and philosophical issues.” He’s not alone in that assessment. Cecilia, a sophomore student at the Newman Center, said that the class helped “develop my critical thinking skills when examining the texts as well as supplementary materials, which is something that no other college course has yet taught me.”
Most importantly for me, though, the development of the mind is not the only pursuit of academic study. Hopefully the soul is expanded as well. About that Cecilia said the class was “helpful in both my academic and spiritual life…. I walked out of this class with the knowledge of how to be a better person.” And Tommy noted that the class convinced him “that philosophical thought has practical applications within everyday life and is not limited to abstract discussions and debates among scholars.” This was a theme that many of the students made at their last class. Reading Aquinas helped them better approach and understand practical questions in their own lives. This was music to my ears.
St. John Henry Newman said about education and universities that “if then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society…. It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches them to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant.” Professor Holloway’s class did exactly this for his students. But what was his takeaway?
For starters, he said that the students rarely missed class, which is more frequent in all the other classes he’s taught. Here “the students attended faithfully from beginning to end.” And they had actually done the reading and were ready to participate in the class. Dr. Holloway say that “this was one of the best teaching experiences I have had in a number of years, and I think it will stand out as one of the best classes in my career.”
Naturally a lot of this is due to his skill as a professor; but he would acknowledge, I think, that he too was learning at the feet of the St. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor.
About that, G. K. Chesterton wrote a short biography on St. Thomas Aquinas in 1933. In it he says
I do not know for certain why St. Thomas was called the Angelic Doctor: whether it was that he had an angelic temper, or the intellectuality of an Angel; or whether there was a later legend that he concentrated on Angels – especially on the points of needles. … [] I am disposed to think that St. Thomas really was rather specially interested in the nature of Angels, for the same reason that made him even more interested in the nature of Men. … Above all, it is this which chiefly moves him, when he finds so fascinating the central mystery of Man. And for him the point is always that Man is not a balloon going up into the sky, nor a mole burrowing merely in the earth; but rather a thing like a tree, whose roots are fed from the earth, while its highest branches seem to rise almost to the stars.
It is that reaching out to the stars that makes us human. And it's a good education that can make that real in a way unique to its institutional mission. We at the Evangelium Institute would love to do more like this, but we need more donors to make it happen. Please consider reaching out to me to discuss future efforts like this for the sake of our community.
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