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    Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?
    Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?
    Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?

    By Peter Milward

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    About this ebook

    Reflecting on the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom in higher education and in life, this thoughtful treatise considers the roots and philosophical underpinnings of university education. Examining such subjects as philosophy, science, nature, art, religion, and finding one's place in the world, Peter Milward shares his sage thoughts on obtaining a well-rounded base of knowledge.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFulcrum Publishing
    Release dateMar 1, 2009
    ISBN9781555918286
    Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?

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      Book preview

      Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life - Peter Milward

      Wisdom

      and the Well-Rounded Life

      What Is a University?

      Peter Milward

      © 2006, 2009 Peter Milward

      First US publication 2009

      Originally published in 2006 by Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd., London, England

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Milward, Peter.

      Wisdom and the well-rounded life : what is a university? / Peter Milward.

      p. cm.

      Originally published: London, England : Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd., 2006.

      ISBN 978-1-55591-651-0 (pbk.)

      1. Education, Higher--Philosophy. I. Title.

      LB2322.2.M5 2009

      378.001--dc22

      2008048705

      Printed in Canada by Friesens Corp.

      0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Cover and interior design by Ann W. Douden

      Fulcrum Publishing

      4690 Table Mountain Drive, Suite 100

      Golden, Colorado 80403

      800-992-2908 • 303-277-1623

      www.fulcrumbooks.com

      Foreword

      Education should consist of a series of enchantments, each raising the individual to a higher level of awareness, understanding, and kinship with all living things.

      —Author Unknown

      Intelligence plus character—

      that is the goal of true education.

      —Martin Luther King Jr.

      It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy

      in creative expression and knowledge.

      —Albert Einstein

      What is the essence of life?

      To serve others and to do good.

      —Aristotle

      This book—a meditation on the state of our souls and of our education—was written by a man whom I am proud to call my mentor, friend, and teacher. I first met Father Milward in the early 1990s in Tokyo, when I visited the Renaissance Centre at Sophia University. Since then, I have been much inspired by his work and writings, too little known in

      the West.

      As you will discover when you begin to read this book, he is a truly remarkable man. His charming innocence, universal compassion, and thirst for true knowledge mark him as a teacher in the great tradition of religious and philosophical sages who embrace the one universal truth. He is a giant among men who truly deserves to be described as a Renaissance man, a friend to mankind, and a bridge of reconciliation between cultures. It goes without saying that I was delighted and honored when he asked me to write the foreword.

      The world of knowledge and competence is in a constant state of flux. The same can be said for the universe of visions, aspirations, and dreams. Changes are occurring every day on a national and international scale—we are faced with economic globalization, revolutions in information technology and biotechnology, growing inequality and social exclusion (leading to a renewed struggle for citizens’ rights), violence of all kinds, environmental pollution, and climate change. All these things are increasing the need for new knowledge and skills, for new scenarios for our global society. Love, courage, honesty, justice, spirituality, religion, altruism, vocation, creativity—the components of life itself—are again becoming major issues.

      In today’s largely decadent, money-driven world, the teaching of virtue and building of character are no longer part of the curriculum at our universities. The pursuit of virtue has been replaced by moral neutrality—the idea that anything goes. For centuries it had been considered that universities were responsible for the moral and social development of students and for bringing together diverse groups for the common good.

      In the last few decades, however, and especially since the 1970s, a new generation of educational reformers has been intent on using places of learning, and universities in parti-cular, to solve national and international economic problems. The economic justification for education—equipping students with marketable skills to help countries compete in a global, information-based workplace—has overwhelmed other historically important purposes of education.

      The language of business management is now being applied to educational establishments: schools and universities are downsized and restructured, and their staffing is outsourced. But if there is a shared national purpose for education, should it be oriented only toward enhancing this narrow vision of a country’s economic success? Is everything public for sale? Should education be answerable only to the bottom line? Are the interests of individuals and selective groups overwhelming the common good that the education system is meant to support?

      I have been part of these changes and have witnessed their negative consequences for students and staff. An educational system that has turned students into customers or clients, pitted members of staff against each other, removed collegiality, and turned classrooms into mass-production factories, financed by profits from the sale of alcohol, ciga-rettes, medical drugs, and arms, has brought a bitter harvest and needs to be changed. Education has to be reunited with its roots in theology, philosophy, and the virtues.

      This treatment of students as customers and courses as goods and services disregards the truly important human values and creates unhappy, purposeless, and dysfunctional people who don’t know who they are or where they are going.

      From 1980 onward, for the next twenty years, I taught economics in universities, enthusiastically demonstrating how economic theories provided answers to problems of all sorts. I got quite carried away by the beauty, the sophisticated elegance, of complicated mathematical models and theories. But gradually I started to have an empty feeling. I began to suspect that neoliberal economics was an emperor with no clothes. What good were elegant theories that were unable to explain all the poverty, exclusion, racism, corruption, injustice, and unhappiness that exist

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