Practicing For Peace
Because the alternative is despair
As our institutions seem to be in a state of collapse across American society, I’ve been reflecting on a group of Catholic Worker farmers I met during graduate school. They believed that peace — a positive peace, not just an absence of war — was intrinsically linked to sustainability. “When peace breaks out,” they would say, “we won’t be importing manufactured goods from sweatshops.” So they lived a life of radical simplicity.
The Catholic Worker movement grew up during the Great Depression. The aim was to create a “new society within the shell of the old.” Dorothy Day was an urban pacifist. Peter Maurin was a rural visionary.
Today, the movement exists as a loose collection of individual farms and houses of hospitality. The original function of the house of hospitality was to assist the poor in their basic needs — and to recruit souls. Dorothy Day wrote that the houses of hospitality would bring workers and scholars together and become half-way houses towards the farming communes:
They will emphasize personal action, personal responsibility as opposed to political action and state responsibility. They will care for the unemployed and teach principles of cooperation and mutual aid.
Although the movement’s actions and writings could be seen through a political lens, and although Day was a political activist before converting to Catholicism, the Catholic Worker approach doesn’t neatly fit into a political ideology. It was an authentic attempt to live out the Gospel.
When I was studying theology in the Bay Area, this lifestyle and philosophy was intriguing to me. I pondered joining a Catholic Worker community in Oakland before I eventually made my way back to Phoenix.
Looking back now, nearly ten years later, I feel much more cynical about the world. But I still respect the approach of these idealists. Practice what you preach. Do the little things you can do.
The movement has lost influence since its heyday when Dorothy Day was publishing the Catholic Worker newspaper in New York City, but the time seems ripe for the project they believed in: Building out new institutions in the shell of the old.
There are many examples of decaying institutions in American society. Political parties. Churches. Newspapers. The federal government.
But as I often do in this space, I’m going to write about education.
Academic universities have become decadent — bloated beyond their original concept, now serving largely as a glorified job credentialing service. Georgetown professor Paul Miller wrote a piece in The Dispatch about why we’re not as educated as we think, despite the growth of college attainment:
In 1940, just 4.6 percent of the U.S. population had a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, the number is 37.5 percent. Politicians celebrate the growth of higher education as proof that we are smarter, more learned, and readier for the information economy than ever. But the content, rigor, and quality of that education has changed dramatically.
Here was the content of the old-school college degree:
To get a college degree 100 years ago, students had to master Latin, Western history, rhetoric, English literature, higher mathematics, and a smattering of theology and philosophy. This was considered to be a classical liberal arts education.
I probably wouldn’t have earned a college degree if this were the requirement. But I still could be school teacher, because they had a separate credentialing approach for these kinds of professions.
Arizona State University first began as a “normal school” for the Arizona territory. A normal school’s mission was to train teachers in the standard (normal) practices of teaching grammar school. The admissions requirement for the original Territorial Normal School in 1885 was to pass an entrance exam and be at least 16 years old. A teaching certificate required two years of training, passing the exams, and being at least 18 years old. A high school diploma wasn’t made an admissions requirement until 1925, when “high school” was a more established concept.
I’m not saying we should rewind the clock, abolish high school, and bring back normal schools for teacher training. But I do think we need a clearer sense of purpose for our schools and colleges, taking into consideration how gradual shifts over time have occurred haphazardly. To rebuild, first go back and consider the fundamentals.
The other gripe about universities these days, mostly coming from the political right but also from old-school liberals, is that they are hyper-progressive to the point of avoiding critical and open discourse about controversial issues. If you aren’t familiar with this criticism, I will refer you to this piece in The Dispatch about a free speech controversy at MIT — it involves a Twitter mob and a canceled guest lecture.
As an antidote to the discontents of the modern university, a group of thinkers and writers are launching a new type of university “devoted to the unfettered pursuit of truth.”
The University of Austin (UATX) boasts an innovative curriculum:
Our curriculum is being designed in partnership not only with the world’s greatest thinkers but also with its greatest doers – visionaries who have founded bold ventures, writers and artists of the highest order, pioneers in tech, and the leading lights in engineering and the natural sciences. Students will apply their foundational skills to practical problems in fields such as entrepreneurship, public policy, education, and engineering.
The board of advisors includes Jonathan Rauch, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Haidt, Richard Dawkins, Glenn Loury, Andrew Sullivan, and the guest lecturer who was canceled from speaking at MIT.
According to their website, the University of Austin is now in a soft-launch mode while they build out the programs, settle on a physical location, and apply for accreditation. You can find a collection of media stories on the project as well as perspectives from the collaborators on their news and updates tab.
I don’t agree with every point of view espoused by the founders or board of advisors of this new university. I don’t know if their project will work. I don’t even know if it’s the right solution.
But it’s a group of rationally-grounded idealists, creating something new, trying to make the world a better place.
These efforts give me hope.