A New Wave In Education?
Time to step back, if only briefly, from the nitty gritty of current events and take note of bigger cultural issues and possible trends. After all, if we want to MAGA, cultural and spiritual change are the sine qua non. Education is ground zero for cultural formation--well, maybe next to social media--so it’s a sign of hope to see new forms or types of institutions being developed to fill the need.
The article here is devoted specifically to developments in the Catholic cultural sphere, but perhaps there are similar developments in other Christian contexts. The author seems to assume the Great Books version of “classical liberal arts” education as the ideal. YMMV. I certainly don’t question the value of studying the wisdom of the ages, but there’s more to wisdom than simply that. OTOH, the idea of combining a grounding in Christian formation and traditional education with learning a trade has a definite appeal. Especially for those who are counter-culturally inclined, as we all need to be to varying degrees if we hope to survive in a truly human way.
A New Wave in Catholic Education
A growing new wave in Catholic post-high-school education demonstrates a changing view of its purpose. Six new schools in particular reflect this change.
People are losing their admiration for higher education. A degree from Harvard or Princeton doesn’t mean much anymore, as the Ivy League falls into the slumber of woke-ism. College graduates are less and less learned and deeper in debt than ever before. Why bother spending (or borrowing) the money and time to go to college if one leaves uneducated, unemployable, and impecunious?
There is no longer a consensus about what one even goes to college for. Many believe it’s to study subjects and earn a degree that will help them get a job. For some, it’s simply an extension of adolescence. A rite of passage, it’s mainly about the experience (images from the movie Animal House come to mind). These are somewhat recent developments in the idea of higher education. For centuries, the traditional classical liberal arts education has been valued because it enables one to enter into the “Great Conversation” with the greatest minds who have gone before. The purpose is to liberate the mind to embrace truth by opening it to the wisdom of the ages, handed to us in the form of the great works of culture. It makes one more fully human.
This is not, however, what most people experience when they enroll in their local or state college, a big-name university, or even the Ivy League. Majors have proliferated to the point of such specificity that, after four years, college graduates may know a good deal about one esoteric field, with precious little (if any) wisdom tossed in—at best. At worst, they have swallowed an enormous quantity of propaganda and rejected the intellectual heritage of the past. Universities are considered “good” when they turn out identical, androgynous careerists, ready to step into the glamorous world of worker bees making the elite producers who employ them wealthy.
The good news about this bad news is that problems usually bring out solutions from creative minds. There’s a growing trend of dismissing the worth of spending four years at an increasingly expensive university to earn a degree in a meaningless major. It hardly seems worth the cost in time and money. Many more people are embracing jobs and businesses that are both necessary in every society and do not require college. What we often call trades are looking more attractive to young adults, as are artisan crafts. Entrepreneurism is very accessible in the age of the internet.
The voices of people like Mike Rowe have been advocating for the value of hard work in jobs that keep our society going. Is there really a need for so many lawyers, financiers, managers? Not as much as there is for carpenters, electricians, mechanics, farmers—those many jobs that keep us fed, sheltered, and comfortable. Not to mention the vacuum of an ability to reason deeply in our college “educated” young adults.
Many young people are expressing the desire to get started with the most important work there is: raising a family. Young Catholic men are considering more often what work they can do that will support their future family sooner. Young Catholic women, even when highly educated and skilled, are feeling free to follow the desire in their heart to become a mother of a family. Debilitating debt is the last thing a young Catholic family needs in order to flourish.
The author goes on to provide examples of five such institutions. This development fits in with the rapid growth—still small in absolute numbers—in recent years of home schooling and private schooling, which combine solid education with character formation.