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A study about the
conflict between two ideals that guide the history of higher education
in the United States has won a College of Education doctoral student,
Jason Edwards, the prestigious Salvatori Fellowship from the Intercollegiate
Studies Institute (ISI).
ISI is a national organization dedicated to "a better understanding
of the economic, political and spiritual values that sustain a free society."
In addition to publishing books and providing educational programs focused
on the study of American intellectual, philosophical, and cultural history
and the ideal of ordered liberty as conceived of by the Founding Fathers,
ISI also sponsors a number of highly coveted fellowships for graduate
students studying the history and continuing development of American intellectual
and philosophical thought.
ISI Salavtori Fellowships are awarded each academic year to two graduate
students whose post-graduate research involves study into a further "understanding
and appreciation of the principles of the Founding Fathers and the culture
that formed their values and views."
Edwards, a doctoral student in the Department
of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation at UK, has grounded his
research into the conflicts inherent between two philosophies that have
exercised tremendous influence on higher education in the United States.
The first and oldest
of these is termed by historian Paige Smith as the Classical Christian
Consciousness. This philosophy "is characterized by a belief in natural
law and original sin." The greatest achievement of this ideal, according
to Smith, is the Federal Constitution of the United States.
This ideal was the principal guiding philosophy of higher education for
nearly a century. However, writes Edwards, for the last century and a
half, a second ideal, whose origins extend back to the Enlightenment,
has supplanted the Classical Christian Consciousness. Historians have
termed this second guiding ideal the Secular Democratic Consciousness.
This ideal gained spectacular momentum as the dominant philosophy in American
higher education with the founding of Johns Hopkins University in 1876,
he said, the pinnacle defining moment of this consciousness.
"By its [the Secular Democratic Consciousness] creation, the modern
university system was born out of the faith that science and reason would
combine forces to 'redeem the world from ignorance, superstition, and
religion and usher in a more just and rational social order,'" writes
Edwards.
While in the modern university system, the secular consciousness is clearly
the dominant guiding ideal, Edwards research is dedicated to charting
the efforts of certain groups of writers and intellectuals who have attempted
to "return students to the wisdoms and traditions" of the Classical
Christian Consciousness in higher education. One of the most influential
of these groups was formed in the 1930's out of Vanderbilt University.
Collectively known as the Vanderbilt Agrarians, these writers openly criticized
the "modern" culture of higher education and its "blind
faith in science and the infallibility of human reason." Among the
many notable intellectuals in this group was Kentucky writer and poet,
Robert Penn Warren. In fact, notes Edwards, the majority of the Vanderbilt
Agrarians were Kentucky and Tennessee born writers.
Although the nation still embraces a secular philosophy, Edwards notes
in his research that the ideas promoted by the Agrarians have taken root
in a number of movements gaining momentum in the "post-modern"
era, notably, the Agrarianism of Wendell Berry and the Paleoconservatism
of Pat Buchanan, to name but a few. "Though diverse, these groups
may all trace some of their thought back to the Vanderbilt Agrarians who
anticipated and predicted their contemporary concerns," Edwards said.
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