The Fall and Rise of the Liberal Arts College

Out of the Ashes

Anthony Esolen in His Own Words: ‘Why I Left Providence College for Thomas More’

The acclaimed Catholic translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy shares with the National Catholic Register his reasons for leaving a tenured professorship to join the Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts.

Peter Jesserer Smith
NC Register

PROVIDENCE — Professor Anthony Esolen has thought deeply about the connections between excellence in literature and the cultural renewal of America. For a long time, he has fought a battle on the campus of Providence College, where he holds a tenure as an English professor, for a Catholic worldview that values cultural diversity anchored in truth and virtue, against a politically-inspired moral diversity that he believes homogenizes culture by celebrating mediocrity to the exclusion of Christian civilization’s wide patrimony of letters and learning.

In this interview with the National Catholic Register, Esolen explains in his own words why he decided to leave Providence College behind. The esteemed translator of The Divine Comedy, and recent author of Out of the Ashes: Restoring American Culture, will soon commence a new chapter at the Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where he will have a hand in establishing its new Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture.

Why are you leaving a tenured position as a literature professor at Providence College for a faculty position at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts?

First, because Thomas More College is a sound and sweet and wise place that deserves the prayers, the attention, and the support, financial and otherwise, of every Catholic who wishes to see culture — the real thing, not its mass-produced counterfeit — restored in America; culture in general, and a vibrant Catholic life in particular. I came home recently from a day at Thomas More College, full of good cheer and energy, and for somebody who isn’t getting younger, those can take you a long way. They can add many years to your life as a teacher, whereas discouragement and disappointment lead to exhaustion.

Second, it is a great opportunity, because of the center for cultural renewal that the college has begun; it is as if they had read my mind, or I had read their minds, when I wrote my book, Out of the Ashes: Restoring American Culture.

What Makes an Education "Christian" in Quality and Character?

A Christian Liberal Arts Education

The term "liberal arts" has entered the scrapyard, and  is awaiting the crusher.  It appears to be following the course of the dodo.  But for Christians the matter is urgent, pressing, and thoroughly modern.

The first hurdle in coming to understand why the study of Christian liberal arts is vital is to parse "liberal" correctly.  The common understanding of that particular adjective these days refers to something without bounds, limits, or controls.  In today's parlance, a liberal is someone who confronts controls or limits as something to be smashed.  The social conservative might argue that marriage is a sacred life-long institution between a man and a woman.  The "liberal" would rise up against that notion as an affront to human fulfillment and self-realization.  For the liberal, marriage is whatever you might want it to be--a term referring to a relationship between both genders or between a man and his pigeon, or whatever.

But the meaning of "liberal" in the phrase "Christian liberal arts" is something of another order entirely.  It derives from the classical world and refers not to breaking down order and restraint, but the exact opposite.  According to Wikipedia,

The liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (Latin: liberalis, "worthy of a free person") to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for Ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service.  [Emphasis, ours.]

In this usage, "liberal" means to live and act in a disciplined manner, so as to take up the roles and responsibilities of citizenship.

Fast forward to the beginning of the Modern period.  In the sixteen hundreds, Christian liberal arts schools and curricula and education abounded, particularly under the influence of the Puritans in England and New England.  But, at the same time, these institutions and schools were drawing upon Luther and Calvin and the earlier Reformers.

According to Leland Ryken, Luther had written to the councilmen of Germany:

If I have children and could manage it, I would have them study not only languages and history but also singing and music together with the whole of mathematics. . . . The ancient Greeks trained their children in these disciplines; . . . they grew up to be people of wonderous ability, subsequently fit for everything.

To which Ryken adds:   "Fit for everything: this has always been the goal of liberal education, as distinct from vocational training."  [Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Academie Books/Zondervan, 1986), p. 164.]

The goal of a Christian liberal arts education was to mould the student into a capable and qualified person, able to fulfill a variety of callings and roles.  Milton said it most succinctly:

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which  fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.  [Cited by Ryken, op cit., p. 169.]

To which Ryken appends: "a liberal education is comprehensive.  It prepares a person  to do well at all that he or she may be called to do in this life. . . . Learning a certain amount of information will not by itself constitute a liberal education.  Such knowledge becomes worthwhile only as it is instrumental in forming a qualified person; . . . .  education influences people in their personal lives, and it makes them productive members of society."  [Ibid.]

As Nehemiah would have said, it's time to start building, folks.

Drones and Worker Bees

Education and Civilisation

From time to time I, as a professor in a public university, receive a form from the legislature asking me to make an account of the hours I spend working.  I think someone ought to send a form like that to the legislators.  The comparison might be very interesting.  The faculty in my acquaintance are quite literally devoted to their work, almost obsessive about it.  They go on vacation to do research.  Even when they retire they don't retire.

I have benefited enormously from the generosity of teachers from grade school through graduate school.  They are an invaluable community who contribute as much as legislators do to sustaining civilization, and more than legislators do to equipping the people of this country with the capacity for learning and reflection, and the power that comes with that capacity.

Lately we have been told and told again that our educators are not preparing American youth to be efficient workers.  Workers.  That language is so common among us now that an extraterrestrial might think we had actually lost the Cold War.  [Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), p. 24.]

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Book of the Month/August 2012 

Engaging the Culture - Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 01 August 2012

This month's book selection is part of a larger series, and if this first one that I read is anything to go on, I want to commend the whole series. The series is new from Crossway, edited by David Dockery, and is entitled "Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition." The book I read is by Gene Fant, and is called The Liberal Arts: A Student's Guide. This book has two things going for it. First, it is a very fine introduction, and the second is that it is an introduction to something that really needs to be introduced.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Anemic Ads for Christian Colleges

Education
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, February 07, 2011

The Bible requires Christian leaders to not be bellicose (1 Tim. 3:3). And at the same time we are called to put on the full armor of God, and to contend with principalities and powers (Eph. 6:11-12). What gives?

"Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the LORD deliverl thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD’S, and he will give you into our hands" (1 Sam. 17:45-47).

Modern scholarship has shown that David had the dickens of a time getting this little speech past the boys in marketing. And then the legal department weighed in as well, and before all was said and done, there was quite a set to in the boardroom of the Davidic Global Outreach Ministries. But in the end, the (sometimes controversial but) always charismatic leader insisted, and then went out and killed the giant. That caused some other problems with the donor base too, but that's another story.
Some of you have seen the "Yo, secularism" ad that NSA recently ran. I am pleased to note that the ad did what an ad really ought to do -- which is get people's attention and make them think about it. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks about these things carefully, and so we have the opportunity for some follow up. Here it is, straight from King Lune of Archenland, the man who gave the final okay on that ad.

"'Shame, Corin,' said the King. 'Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please'"

One of the perennial fears that faithful supporters of Christian ministries have is that once established (or nearly established), the pressure for respectability immediately descends. That is a fact of life, and nothing whatever can be done about it -- except to resist that inevitable pressure when it comes, resisting it the right way. Going back to our original question, this is why every true eductional reform will need to be led by certain kinds of men -- the kind of men who hate petulant quarrels, and who love an honest fight.

I have often told the story of one of the reasons why I got involved in the start up of New St. Andrews College. It was because of the anemic ads from Christian colleges. When our oldest daughter Bekah got to the age that we were thinking about college, we started getting all kinds of mailers from all kinds of Christian colleges. I concluded that the purpose of Christian higher ed had devolved to the point where the central purpose was to allow the kids to make lifelong friends, eat pizza, and ride horses.

Look. Every college in the nation has photogenic females. That is not a philosophy of education. And if that is what you are about, you might as well go to Behemoth State U where the photogenic females would let you do something about it. But the course of study ought to be the liberal arts, not the libidinous arts.

New St. Andrews is a college full of real promise, and is worthy of your support. If you are one of those donor types, and you come to read this post, and your pen has been quivering with indecision above that checkbook, I would not only urge you to write out that check of yours, but also to add a zero to the end of it.

But if you ever see this college going the way of all flesh (and you would probably see it in the ads first), then I would urge you to turn off the support, giving that spigot a quick and decisive twist to the right. Don't send your kids and don't send your money. There are numerous ministries out there which live in two different places -- one place where the compromising action is, and another stalwart place where the autopilot donors think they are.
NSA does not occupy a mysterious place where these pressures have somehow gone away. The point is to resist the pressures, not to pretend that they could never happen "here." One of NSA's mottos is "for the faithful, wars will never cease." In this world, the only way to get the conflict to go away is by surrendering. That is an option, but of course not a faithful one.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Like a Slide Rule in a Salvador Dali Painting

Education
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, February 04, 2011

One of our big educational problems today has to be seen as the undeniable success of our engineering programs. But this requires explanation.

The first aspect of this is that it is not engineering's fault. We have a problem, but it is not the problem of the engineers. If a bunch of people rush over to the starboard rail of a boat, the whole boat has a problem, and not just the starboard rail. It might be convenient to blame the starboard rail, but that is all it is -- convenient.
Here is the problem in a nutshell. When it comes to higher education, what do we do with our best and brightest? Overwhelmingly, Christian parents of high-achieving kids seek out some kind of technocratic program of study. They seek out the sciences and engineering. This is in part because Americans in general are pragmatic space shuttle builders, but there is an addition attraction here for Christians. What might it be?

We have to begin by comparing contemporary engineering to the comtemporary humanities. Christians love the truth, and when you undertake a course of study in engineering, most of what you learn is true. The bridges have to stand, and the airplanes have to fly. The software needs to run. In most liberal arts programs, most of what you learn is false, with some of it being false and stupid. So there's that.

In the old days, when the study of the liberal arts was Christian, there was a fixed standard that enabled you to navigate them. There is no problem with reading and studying error so long as you have a means of identifying it. You are an intelligent Christian participant in what Adler called the great conversation. The fact that the conversation extended over centuries does not mean that it turns out we are all saying the same thing. You need to know what Plato said in order to take issue. But when you are immersed in this world and all the standards of measurement look like a slide rule in a Salvador Dali painting, the only possible result is a nihilistic relativism. That is the first thing that has happened to us.

Secondly, engineering is hard. It is a demanding course of study. It requires sacrifice from those undertaking it. Intelligent and motivated students love a challenge, and they hate courses of study that are a waste of everybody's time. In competition with this, in many situations the natural temptation is to do the very thing that will dig your hole deeper. Make it easier to get in. Make it more colorful and appealing. Sure, but don't be surprised if the best and brightest continue to avoid your liberal arts "let's stack colored blocks" program.
And third, engineering is distinctively masculine. True, at times it can be geeky masculine, but it is still recognizably a masculine pursuit. Masculinity loves a challenge, and intelligence loves a challenge. In its way, the engineering programs have made an effective appeal to men, in a way that the liberal arts programs have not bothered to do.

In support of this overall point, take the example of poetry. The fact that men don't pursue poetry anymore is not the men's fault. Poetry went soft and floaty, and Wordsworth didn't help with his host of golden daffodils. If there has been a parting of the ways between two who were previously close, it is always reasonable to ask which one left.

If you survey the ranks of those engaged in the cultural leadership of our nation, you will be astonished at the inverse relationship of genius and talent. Somebody is flattering somebody. Asinus asinum fricat.

There was a time when the ministry of the Word attracted high talent. Now it attracts those who want an indoor job with no heavy lifting. There was a time when the humanities were a demanding course of study (which they still frequently are at the graduate level). But now relativism has rotted out the core curriculum in a way that relativism has not rotted out mechanical engineering.

And even though it is de rigueur to lament the fact that football teams tend to get way more funding than, say, your average English department, it must also be admitted that we actually have ways of telling if a football program is succeeding -- unlike English departments. Standards are inescapable, and in a world dominated by engineers, the word-smithers cannot spend all their time playing tennis with the net down. And the fact that somebody picked up on the Frost allusion does not mean that lots of people will start clamoring to get a liberal arts degree.

The need of the hour is for Christians who are committed to the study of the liberal arts in higher education to state their case, and to build their programs. The difficulties that attend this activity are many, but we need to not blame those who are doing a better job than we have done. They have built programs that teach truth, expect a lot of hard work, and expect a lot of it from men. It's a free country. We could try doing the same thing -- which is exactly what we are attempting to undertake here at New Saint Andrews.