Journal of Philosophy and Theology

University Education as Trojan Horse for the Common Good
Charlotte Joy Martin, Ph.D.

Abstract
Newman’s Idea builds his understanding of education upon his insight into the mind’s essential nature. The mind knows by continually adapting many partial notionsthrough going round, comparing, combining, mutually correcting. Thus knowledge of an increasingly particular kind, the knowledge so highly valued in today’s hiring marketplace, ends up more and more ceasingtobeknowledge. Liberal education should dominate even in the preparation of students for specialized professions because it respects the intellect’s many operations that go into gathering partial notions into mutually correcting patterns of truthful knowledge. As the excellence of the mind such education is a good in itself, and at the same time its humanizing influence also forms the intellect for its best engagement in social and political life, and so disposes the liberally educated graduate with this or that specialty a “Trojan Horse” to resist dehumanizing patterns in the work place and its societal contexts.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijpt.v3n2a1