"What Does a UD Education Bring to the World Today?" Read On ...
Sarah Erickson/Rhetoric Competition Winner
Issue date: 5/3/06 Section: Commentary
- Page 1 of 1
Midway along the journey of our life [or maybe more a quarter of the way, given life expectancy]
I woke to find myself in Irving, Texas for I had chosen to follow the wandering path to wisdom.
How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of academia, rigorous and broadening (Though, the thought of it brings back fond memories) a strange place! And Formidable. But if I would show the good that came of it, I must talk about things other than the good.
When I began this speech, I almost unconsciously reached out to grasp a core text to hide behind. Even after years of writing, I still struggle to find my own voice, instead of merely parroting what I've heard. Dante seem particularly pertinent to the topic because he demonstrates that in order to gain a vision of truth (which is, of course, the ultimate goal of this program) you have to go through hell. There are certainly times when academia is, shall we say, hell-ish. Like the times when you attempt to write a speech about what a UD education brings to the world while trying to complete your own education: finish a thesis, write term papers, and figure out what you'll be doing in two weeks when you will be unceremoniously booted off of this campus, ahem, when you will graduate. To give a speech in praise of my education during the period when I am most frustrated by it seems a little incongruous; I hope, however, this will prevent me from being unjustly swayed in its favor.
You see, when I first read the question, "what does a UD education bring to the world today," I found the answer to be quite obvious: what the UD education brings to the world today is UD students. My mind, naturally, followed with the question, "and what is the UD student, that I should be mindful of him?" a question which I, as a UD student, am quite prepared to answer, due to my overabundance of first-hand experience of the subject. Flowing mental praises ensued. And it dawned upon me that any response to this second question, given by a UD student, on the University of Dallas Campus, to an audience consisting of UD faculty and students, might become merely an exercise in navel-gazing. I began to wonder - what's the point? Why am I writing this speech? Most of you I daresay approve of the UD education, or you wouldn't be here. This little piece of rhetoric would be nothing other than a communal self-assessment, with the conclusion presupposed from the beginning: I would get up and explain what this school has given me, and continue with what I will now bring to the world. Because, of course, my entire life has been progressing in coherent chapter-like incidents, which all combine gloriously to prove the thesis of a work that will express my theory of life, history, or education!
That is just what I hope this speech is not. I feel no desire to place myself alongside the likes of St. Augustine or Henry Adams. Nor do I believe I have the ability to justify the ways of UD to man. Besides - I'm preaching to the choir here. That being said: what I do hope this speech communicates are my observations, made with an admittedly biased eye, of what a UD education is: what it offers, and the sort of person it tends to produce. I feel that, in gratitude, I owe it this institution to praise what I believe it has given me.
I look at the UD community a people of contradictions: As a university marketed to "independent thinkers," we are singularly like-minded. We encourage being well-read and intellectually curious, yet we seem to produce more academic snobbery and lack of interest in certain fields than I see elsewhere. We have donated money to get out of the classes we've already paid to get into. Life here often consists of emotional soap operas that rival only junior high for their stupidity, but still result in numerous seemingly happy marriages and lasting friendships. The core gives us a language common to thousands of years of Western tradition, and yet leaves so many of us inept in communicating with anyone of our family and friends who have not been soaking in the Core as we have. [Why is there no more cheese in the fridge? --Do you want to know the efficient cause? Quite simple: I consumed the cheese. Or did you mean its final end? Because I don't know that you can assign a teleological end to the refrigerator's lack of cheese]
We the students (and, I imagine, professors) of the University of Dallas have lost sleep and sanity over what we do here,we have taken out massive loans to get an education that admittedly gives us few, if any, immediately marketable skills. Still - we love it, and most of us will continue to love it for the rest of our lives, coming back as often as is humanly possible, sending our kids here if we have them, scoffing at the "UD-lifer" but secretly harboring a faint sense of envy for his shamelessness in just staying here.
What is this thing, this beast, that brings out such behavior?
If an outsider were to ask anyone on this campus what the UD education is all about, the word "core" would probably figure prominently in the answer. The core brings all UD past and present, together; it is a figure to be reckoned with! We read all kinds of good books, and get a grounding in veritable cornucopia of subjects: literature, mathematics, politics, history, philosophy, science, theology, psychology, and so forth. We learn to think critically and take things to their source!
So what're you gonna do with all that - teach?
(If you've been here long enough, you start to just ignore that question)
The UD education is not designed to give us specific skills, but rather to develop the whole mind and person to enable us to better do whatever it is we choose to do. A liberal arts education is not designed to make us marketable, but to make us better men. When mankind ceases to be interested in things in themselves, when he finds his world boring, our future as humans is lost.
If you visit the UD website, or look at any admissions brochure, you will see the phrase "A Catholic University for Independent Thinkers," a slogan which, I'm relieved to say, has held it's own against the hypnotic "Belong, believe, become". These elements, more than what I've said so far, are definitive of a UD education: that it is Catholic, and that it is liberal - directed toward freedom.
One sense of the word "catholic" - and, interestingly, the root of the word "university," - is "universal," appealing to and stemming from something common to all men. A UD education is supposed to touch on what unites us with the rest of mankind. Reading the core texts ought to engender love and respect for the countless persons who have come before us. Knowledge and wisdom cannot emerge from a vacuum. An education that is universal in this sense will therefore also be highly personal: anyone who's ever taken a literature, history, or philosophy class here knows that it doesn't just matter what has been said: you've got to know who said it. A catholic education is a human education respective of individual persons.
We unfortunately live in a world in which it's easier for me to check up on the status of the progeny of amorphous personages such as "TomKat" or Brangelina" than it is to find out my own cousin's due date. We are fixated by personalities, and assess the lives of the rich and famous for their entertainment value. It is with perhaps with a similar mindset that many college curricula seek to develop specific "skills" in students - parts and appendages of a person which can be bought or sold. The danger of such a view of reality, clearly, is that we forget about actual persons; we assume that a person's worth consists in their entertainment or utilitarian value. We cease to be Men. The world, however, needs people who are personal, who have some connection with even a few of the other 6 billion persons on this planet. This being connected with all the living is a part of a second and more familiar sense of the term "Catholic" - that is, associated with Roman Catholicism. The Catholic Christianity of the University stands as a witness to our necessary connection to something that is truly universal and relates us to every person that ever lived. (oh, yes, if you're wondering, I am referring to the mystical body of Christ,).
I know few who would deny the Catholicity of the UD education; as I noted before, it's the second part of our slogan that one might take issue with. To be independent in thought, however, is not to be merely different from everyone else; but rather to think in freedom. We are like minded because hopefully we are seeking the same thing: the true, the good, the beautiful. True freedom is to know the good and be able to act upon it.
In ferreting around for sources of funding for my studies, I discovered from the ISI an essay by Richard Weaver entitled "Education and the Individual". In it he argues that a liberal education is ordered toward liberating the educated. I found some of his words on the subject to be quite apt: "its content and method have been designed to develop the mind and the character in making choices between truth and error, between right and wrong. For liberal education introduces one to the principles of things, and it is only with reference to the principles of things that such judgments are at all possible." A UD education is intended to give us freedom in its fullest potential.
Freedom may be a buzzword in our American culture, but I think we often have a wide misconception of what freedom is. It has ever been humanity's sin to mistake a lesser need or desire for the most important one - be it money, power, entertainment, looking pretty, or keeping up - and to define freedom as the right to pursue these lesser ends. We become chained to these needs, ever demanding more and more: because they were not intended to be our all in all, they will never satisfy. This slavery to self is destructive to individuals and to those around them. Our UD education, in lauding the truth for its own sake, directs men towards freedom, the freedom to seek and believe what is real. The ultimate purpose of seeking truth is to know the final end of things, including the human person. "They shall know the truth, and the truth shall set them free". The world needs free men.
This has been at best a terse description of what we are, but I think it describes the person that UD aims to bring into the world: a free and catholic (use the little or big C, depending) person. Now, here I don't use the verb "bring" by itself, but "aims to bring." The reason for that is simple: we can't make anyone develop in a certain way. If we declare that our education makes us free, we must acknowledge that our education must be freely chosen. It is possible for a person to pass through our University and reject what it teaches.
Even the many of us who do understand the value of what we have received here may not make the proper use of it or we may commit the presumption of believing the UD education to be a cure for all of society's ills. If we are to make use of any of our strengths, we must also be aware of our weaknesses. Any education, as the product of human beings, will be limited. But if we claim that despite this, our education has brought us good, then we need to look at what that good is in ourselves.
If a UD education brings us to the world, then we, UD students, are the best and only good defense of our institution. And so the question becomes, if all that we say here about our education is true, do I myself prove it to be so? To what extent have I allowed the good of my education become a part of who I am?
I mean simply that if we will glory in our abilities to think we must demonstrate our thoughts via action. We must not believe that having developed our reason and intellect, we are excused from applying our brains in a practical fashion. We must not assume that because we have been liberally educated, we will naturally behave as free men.
The UD education, then, is not a guarantee, but a challenge. Herein lies the bold dare of this crazy Institution; a dare for lovers of the liberal arts, of learning, of truth - and most especially for those of us for whom graduation will be simultaneously the happiest, most exciting - and saddest day of our lives thus far: the challenge to be what we claim our education at the University of Dallas has made us capable of being.
I woke to find myself in Irving, Texas for I had chosen to follow the wandering path to wisdom.
How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of academia, rigorous and broadening (Though, the thought of it brings back fond memories) a strange place! And Formidable. But if I would show the good that came of it, I must talk about things other than the good.
When I began this speech, I almost unconsciously reached out to grasp a core text to hide behind. Even after years of writing, I still struggle to find my own voice, instead of merely parroting what I've heard. Dante seem particularly pertinent to the topic because he demonstrates that in order to gain a vision of truth (which is, of course, the ultimate goal of this program) you have to go through hell. There are certainly times when academia is, shall we say, hell-ish. Like the times when you attempt to write a speech about what a UD education brings to the world while trying to complete your own education: finish a thesis, write term papers, and figure out what you'll be doing in two weeks when you will be unceremoniously booted off of this campus, ahem, when you will graduate. To give a speech in praise of my education during the period when I am most frustrated by it seems a little incongruous; I hope, however, this will prevent me from being unjustly swayed in its favor.
You see, when I first read the question, "what does a UD education bring to the world today," I found the answer to be quite obvious: what the UD education brings to the world today is UD students. My mind, naturally, followed with the question, "and what is the UD student, that I should be mindful of him?" a question which I, as a UD student, am quite prepared to answer, due to my overabundance of first-hand experience of the subject. Flowing mental praises ensued. And it dawned upon me that any response to this second question, given by a UD student, on the University of Dallas Campus, to an audience consisting of UD faculty and students, might become merely an exercise in navel-gazing. I began to wonder - what's the point? Why am I writing this speech? Most of you I daresay approve of the UD education, or you wouldn't be here. This little piece of rhetoric would be nothing other than a communal self-assessment, with the conclusion presupposed from the beginning: I would get up and explain what this school has given me, and continue with what I will now bring to the world. Because, of course, my entire life has been progressing in coherent chapter-like incidents, which all combine gloriously to prove the thesis of a work that will express my theory of life, history, or education!
That is just what I hope this speech is not. I feel no desire to place myself alongside the likes of St. Augustine or Henry Adams. Nor do I believe I have the ability to justify the ways of UD to man. Besides - I'm preaching to the choir here. That being said: what I do hope this speech communicates are my observations, made with an admittedly biased eye, of what a UD education is: what it offers, and the sort of person it tends to produce. I feel that, in gratitude, I owe it this institution to praise what I believe it has given me.
I look at the UD community a people of contradictions: As a university marketed to "independent thinkers," we are singularly like-minded. We encourage being well-read and intellectually curious, yet we seem to produce more academic snobbery and lack of interest in certain fields than I see elsewhere. We have donated money to get out of the classes we've already paid to get into. Life here often consists of emotional soap operas that rival only junior high for their stupidity, but still result in numerous seemingly happy marriages and lasting friendships. The core gives us a language common to thousands of years of Western tradition, and yet leaves so many of us inept in communicating with anyone of our family and friends who have not been soaking in the Core as we have. [Why is there no more cheese in the fridge? --Do you want to know the efficient cause? Quite simple: I consumed the cheese. Or did you mean its final end? Because I don't know that you can assign a teleological end to the refrigerator's lack of cheese]
We the students (and, I imagine, professors) of the University of Dallas have lost sleep and sanity over what we do here,we have taken out massive loans to get an education that admittedly gives us few, if any, immediately marketable skills. Still - we love it, and most of us will continue to love it for the rest of our lives, coming back as often as is humanly possible, sending our kids here if we have them, scoffing at the "UD-lifer" but secretly harboring a faint sense of envy for his shamelessness in just staying here.
What is this thing, this beast, that brings out such behavior?
If an outsider were to ask anyone on this campus what the UD education is all about, the word "core" would probably figure prominently in the answer. The core brings all UD past and present, together; it is a figure to be reckoned with! We read all kinds of good books, and get a grounding in veritable cornucopia of subjects: literature, mathematics, politics, history, philosophy, science, theology, psychology, and so forth. We learn to think critically and take things to their source!
So what're you gonna do with all that - teach?
(If you've been here long enough, you start to just ignore that question)
The UD education is not designed to give us specific skills, but rather to develop the whole mind and person to enable us to better do whatever it is we choose to do. A liberal arts education is not designed to make us marketable, but to make us better men. When mankind ceases to be interested in things in themselves, when he finds his world boring, our future as humans is lost.
If you visit the UD website, or look at any admissions brochure, you will see the phrase "A Catholic University for Independent Thinkers," a slogan which, I'm relieved to say, has held it's own against the hypnotic "Belong, believe, become". These elements, more than what I've said so far, are definitive of a UD education: that it is Catholic, and that it is liberal - directed toward freedom.
One sense of the word "catholic" - and, interestingly, the root of the word "university," - is "universal," appealing to and stemming from something common to all men. A UD education is supposed to touch on what unites us with the rest of mankind. Reading the core texts ought to engender love and respect for the countless persons who have come before us. Knowledge and wisdom cannot emerge from a vacuum. An education that is universal in this sense will therefore also be highly personal: anyone who's ever taken a literature, history, or philosophy class here knows that it doesn't just matter what has been said: you've got to know who said it. A catholic education is a human education respective of individual persons.
We unfortunately live in a world in which it's easier for me to check up on the status of the progeny of amorphous personages such as "TomKat" or Brangelina" than it is to find out my own cousin's due date. We are fixated by personalities, and assess the lives of the rich and famous for their entertainment value. It is with perhaps with a similar mindset that many college curricula seek to develop specific "skills" in students - parts and appendages of a person which can be bought or sold. The danger of such a view of reality, clearly, is that we forget about actual persons; we assume that a person's worth consists in their entertainment or utilitarian value. We cease to be Men. The world, however, needs people who are personal, who have some connection with even a few of the other 6 billion persons on this planet. This being connected with all the living is a part of a second and more familiar sense of the term "Catholic" - that is, associated with Roman Catholicism. The Catholic Christianity of the University stands as a witness to our necessary connection to something that is truly universal and relates us to every person that ever lived. (oh, yes, if you're wondering, I am referring to the mystical body of Christ,).
I know few who would deny the Catholicity of the UD education; as I noted before, it's the second part of our slogan that one might take issue with. To be independent in thought, however, is not to be merely different from everyone else; but rather to think in freedom. We are like minded because hopefully we are seeking the same thing: the true, the good, the beautiful. True freedom is to know the good and be able to act upon it.
In ferreting around for sources of funding for my studies, I discovered from the ISI an essay by Richard Weaver entitled "Education and the Individual". In it he argues that a liberal education is ordered toward liberating the educated. I found some of his words on the subject to be quite apt: "its content and method have been designed to develop the mind and the character in making choices between truth and error, between right and wrong. For liberal education introduces one to the principles of things, and it is only with reference to the principles of things that such judgments are at all possible." A UD education is intended to give us freedom in its fullest potential.
Freedom may be a buzzword in our American culture, but I think we often have a wide misconception of what freedom is. It has ever been humanity's sin to mistake a lesser need or desire for the most important one - be it money, power, entertainment, looking pretty, or keeping up - and to define freedom as the right to pursue these lesser ends. We become chained to these needs, ever demanding more and more: because they were not intended to be our all in all, they will never satisfy. This slavery to self is destructive to individuals and to those around them. Our UD education, in lauding the truth for its own sake, directs men towards freedom, the freedom to seek and believe what is real. The ultimate purpose of seeking truth is to know the final end of things, including the human person. "They shall know the truth, and the truth shall set them free". The world needs free men.
This has been at best a terse description of what we are, but I think it describes the person that UD aims to bring into the world: a free and catholic (use the little or big C, depending) person. Now, here I don't use the verb "bring" by itself, but "aims to bring." The reason for that is simple: we can't make anyone develop in a certain way. If we declare that our education makes us free, we must acknowledge that our education must be freely chosen. It is possible for a person to pass through our University and reject what it teaches.
Even the many of us who do understand the value of what we have received here may not make the proper use of it or we may commit the presumption of believing the UD education to be a cure for all of society's ills. If we are to make use of any of our strengths, we must also be aware of our weaknesses. Any education, as the product of human beings, will be limited. But if we claim that despite this, our education has brought us good, then we need to look at what that good is in ourselves.
If a UD education brings us to the world, then we, UD students, are the best and only good defense of our institution. And so the question becomes, if all that we say here about our education is true, do I myself prove it to be so? To what extent have I allowed the good of my education become a part of who I am?
I mean simply that if we will glory in our abilities to think we must demonstrate our thoughts via action. We must not believe that having developed our reason and intellect, we are excused from applying our brains in a practical fashion. We must not assume that because we have been liberally educated, we will naturally behave as free men.
The UD education, then, is not a guarantee, but a challenge. Herein lies the bold dare of this crazy Institution; a dare for lovers of the liberal arts, of learning, of truth - and most especially for those of us for whom graduation will be simultaneously the happiest, most exciting - and saddest day of our lives thus far: the challenge to be what we claim our education at the University of Dallas has made us capable of being.
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