University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 2, No. 10, Ed. 1 Wednesday, March 7, 1979 Page: 1 of 8
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Vol. II, No. 10
March 7, 1979
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Colloquium '79
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Independence in education has
been the persistent goal of
renowned educator Dr. John Fen-
tress Gardner.
The departments of education
and psychology are sponsoring a
series of lectures March 6-8, in
which Dr. Gardner will address
current issues in education, with a
special emphasis on the freedoms
needed in our learning institutions.
On March 7 at 10:30 a.m. in Up-
stairs Haggar, Dr. Gardner will ad-
dress the question, “What Does It
Mean to Teach?” This lecture will
be of special interest to education
and psychology students and
faculty, but is open to all.
7
.....
with a view toward counteracting
this state of affairs. In his ad-
vancement of a concrete plan, he
took a step the other lecturers
avoided, and although he left him-
self open for more direct criticism,
he also showed a great deal of
courage. Starting at age four in-
stead of age six, the student would
go through a conventional six year
grammar school. Following that he
would study for six more years in a
secondary school, during which
time his liberal education would
take place. Only after four years
away from school would the
student have the opportunity to go
into some specialized field. Dr.
Adler left no doubt about his hopes
for the implementation of his plan.
His predictions for the future of
liberal education were unrelievedly
bleak. An intelligent response by
Dr. Robert Sardello followed.
At 2 p.m., moderator James
Patrick called the third session to
order.
Malcolm Muggeridge, an ad-
vocate of nondenominational
Christianity, and one of the
foremost humorists of modern
times, has been at various stages
in his life rector of Edinburgh
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In a public lecture entitled
“Common Sense—The Road to
Freedom: Observations on the
Crisis in Public Education,” Dr.
Gardner will discuss attempts to
free schools from government con-
trol. The lecture, on March 8 at 7:30
p.m. in Lynch Hall, will be followed
by a reception in the Gormon
Faculty Lounge.
Dr. Gardner has achieved
prominence both as an educator
and as an innovative spokesman
for the idea of independence in
education. He has been instrumen-
tal in founding the Council for
Educational Freedom in America.
Dedicated to creating a better
relationship between government
by Joe Peabody
When Dr. John Sommerfeldt
described them as giants, he
voiced the collective opinion of the
audience as well as his own. The
six McDermott professors who
came together, perhaps for the last
time, on March 2 and 3, stirred both
our intellects and our hearts to a
degree that, in view of the imper-
sonality of the lecture format, was
truly remarkable. Much of this was
due to the fact that while they all
addressed the stated topic, “The
Importance of a Liberal
Education.” and did so brilliantly,
none became so entrenched in it
that he failed to give us a glimpse
of himself as well.
Marshall McLuhan, certainly the
best known of the six, and the
author of many volumes, including
“Understanding Media” and “The
Gutenberg Galaxy,” led off the first
session with a presentation en-
titled “Liberal Education: A
Necessity as Freedom.” His thesis,
which he illustrated with a painted
diagram of the human brain, was
that the left hemisphere of the
brain, which governs the more
scientific, technological aspects of
the brain, is overexercised in
modern universities. This, said
Professor McLuhan, causes the
right side, which governs the ar-
tistic and spiritual aspects of
knowledge to atrophy, to the
detriment of the complete person,
and by extension the society as a
whole.
The only solution to this un-
balanced brain development is the
pursuit of a liberal education,
which, through equal emphasis on
both cranial hemispheres, restores
the student to intellectual com-
pleteness..
In the question and answer
period that followed, McLuhan’s
premise was slightly undermined
by someone who brought up the
fact that, due to some new medical
evidence concerning the
neurological disease of dyslexia,
there is an indication that the right
and left hemisphere theory of brain
activity may not be correct. Rather
than go into technical details,
McLuhan made light of the matter,
probably indicating that the objec-
tion was either unsubstantiated, or
immaterial to his metaphor.
McLuhan was followed by Dr.
Christian Norberg-Schulz, inter-
nationally known architect and
scholar, and past head of the
School of Architecture at the
University of Oslo. Professor Nor-
berg-Schulz has written many
celebrated books and papers, in-
cluding “Genuis Loci;” he was also
city planning consultant for the
city of Khartoum, Sudan, and will
join the faculty of the University of
Dallas next year.
His topic, “The Architecture of
Learning,’’ dealt with the
elimination of imaginal thinking in
the modern world. Because we
have lost the capacity of imagery
our perception of things as having
meaning is drastically debilitated.
This leads to a loss of the world, in
that the world, through image,
supplies us with insight and real
truth.
Norberg-Schulz also warned, as
would Mortimer Adler in his turn, of
the flawed perception of the world
occasioned by an overspecialized
education. Because university
students are pressed to concen-
trate solely on their majors to the
near exclusion of other studies,
their view of things is fragmented
and abstract. Rather, he said, the
colleges should encourage a roun-
ded, liberal education, which leads
to perception of things in their
totality.
Inaugurating a trend that was to
be followed throughout the
colloquium, Norberg-Schulz was
less than congratulatory in his in-
direct comments on McLuhan’s
• lecture, citing his predecessor’s
division of the brain as exactly the
type of fragmentation that was so
much to be deplored.
Dr. Frederick Wilhelmsen
responded to Professor McLuhan’s
lecture and assisted in the presen-
tation, and James Hillman replied
to that of Professor Norberg-
Schulz. Dr. Donald Cowan acted as
moderator, and President Sommer-
feldt welcomed the McDermott
Professors to the University of
Dallas.
The second session began the
next morning at 9 a.m., with Dr. Leo
Paul DeAlvarez moderating. The
first speaker, Hans-Georg
Gadamer, lectured on “Education
and Tradition.” Professor Gadamer
is a well known expert in the field
of philosophical hermeneutics,
and studied under Martin
Heidegger in Marburg.
Dr. Gadamer, in the most com-
prehensive, most precise lecture of
the colloquium, first defined
education as formation and
crystallization of that which is
already felt and experienced by the
student. The difference education
makes is bound up with the word
used to illustrate what education
imports, namely culture. Culture,
from cultivation, implies the or-
dered use and development of
existing assets, such as the native
intelligence of the student, and the
traditions of the past. Liberal
education means education that is
free from the constraints of utility,
and the study of and participation
in that which is evidently beautiful,
regardless of its usefulness.
The beautiful, however, does in
fact have some practical use,
asserts Gadamer. Common ap-
preciation of the beautiful leads to
sharing, friendship, and most im-
portant, cultural solidarity.
It is precisely this cultural
solidarity which is lacking in the
modern world, and which is
responsible for the general
mistrust that each segment of our
society feels towards the other
segments, and which in fact is felt
by most individuals towards most
other individuals. Thus a liberal
education, with the accent on
beauty Yather than practicality, is
in fact the most practical of pur-
suits.
In the second part of his lecture,
Gadamer analysed what he felt has
supplanted this liberal education
in today’s universities, namely an
undue emphasis on science and
mathematics. This is due to a
misunderstanding of their nature.
In a metaphor that Professor Nor-
berg-Schulz could have used,
Gadamer called science too
“narrow a foundation” for the con-
struction of an accurate world
view. Rather, science should rest
on a sophisticated, well developed
social and moral base. Otherwise,
man sees himself as part of a vast,
impersonal network which leads to
“homelessness” and a sense of
disillusionment.
Following a response by Dr.
Michael Platt, who gave a clear,
fresh insight into Professor
Gadamer’s lecture, Mortimer Adler,
this year’s McDermott Professor,
chairman of the board of editors of
the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. and
director of the Institute of
Philosophic Research in Chicago,
took the floor.
In a somewhat more concrete
talk entitled “Everybody’s
Business,” Adler focused on the
and education, the Council’s
ultimate goal is to protect
teachers’ freedom of initiative and
parents’ freedom of choice.
Dr. Gardner has written several
important papers and a book on
education entitled The Experience
of Knowledge.
For twenty-five years Dr. Gar-
dner was Faculty Chairman of the
Waldorf School in Garden City.
New York. He is the retired director
of Adelphi University’s Waldorf In-
stitute for Liberal Education. In
addition, he has served as Chair-
man of the Board of the Myrin In-
stitute for Adult Education, writing
and lecturing extensively on its
behalf.
See Colloquium, Page 5
Hands off our schools----
university news
A Bi-weekly Publication of the University of Dallas, Irving, Texas
problems that have resulted from
the replacement of a general
education with one emphasizing
some specialty or another.
According to Adler, over-
specialization can occur within any
discipline, and a study of the arts
to the exclusion of science and
mathematics is just as damaging
as its opposite. However, overem-
phasis of technical training is far
more prevalent in modern times
than overemphasis on aesthetic
subjects.
The villains of this academic
tragedy are the graduate schools,
claims Adler. Their influence over
their undergraduate counterparts
has led to a situation similar to
that of a professional baseball
club’s patronage of a farm team for
the sole purpose of training young
players for the major league club.
The result of this subordination
by the graduate schools is that un-
dergraduates fill their schedules
with electives relating to their
majors, to the exclusion of all else,
and emerge with no knowledge
outside their specific sphere. This
ignorance of all but one aspect of
one’s tradition sounds the death
knell of culture.
Dr. Adler proposed that we
restructure our educational system
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University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 2, No. 10, Ed. 1 Wednesday, March 7, 1979, newspaper, March 7, 1979; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1218370/m1/1/: accessed June 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Dallas.