1978 Academic Freedom within the University. 11th E.G.Malherbe Academic Freedom Lecture. Delivered at the University of Natal (Durban) on 2nd August. SRC Press (1978) (original) (raw)

CLASSICAL ROOTS OF MODERN UNIVERSITY FROM THE RUDIMENTS OF UNIVERSITY TILL MIDDLE AGES

Education is and has always been among the scope of interest of people. We are all aware of what modern higher education looks like and what role it plays in the development of a person, but it is also very interesting to trace back and find the roots and reasons why and by whom education was started as a field and what stages higher education system has undergone in order to obtain the current state. Knowing the history of education also enables contemporary scholars to avoid mistakes in the future, as a lot can be studied or examined from the past failures in the " realm " of education. According to J. Klein, the reason of human education can be found in the human nature itself. Questioning about all unknown or forgotten things, humans' curious nature, etc. have given the way to education. The paper explores the development of higher education from the rudiments of university till the Middle Ages. It underlines those aspects which are of great importance in contemporary higher education. This historical review mainly focuses on the social role of higher education. While reading the article, the reader will vividly see the similarities and differences between the contemporary higher education system and the system of one of the historical periods.

Education and Its Institutions

This is a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought. For theological education, the nineteenth century was one of the most creative and tumultuous periods in the history of Christian thought. Patterns of both deconfessionalization and theological renewal, changes in church-state relations, the rise of the modern research university in Berlin, and new fields like religious studies all contributed to the displacement of theology as the ‘queen of the sciences’ in the wake of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic era. This chapter examines some of the major developments, including the institutionalization of Protestant theology in the modern research university, key issues confronting Catholic scholarship, and the inception of the seminary in North America. Finally, it discusses the challenges modern academic theology faced in its increasing appeal to the political community of the modern nation-state and the academic community of science, rather than Christianity’s historic creeds, confessions, and traditions of ecclesiastical authority.

The becoming of University

The article is devoted to the becoming of the university in the Middle Ages (XII-XIII)-in the epoch of transition from the Mediterranean to the European civilization. From the philosophy of Hugo of St Victor to Bonaventure. The author seeks to show the connection of the doctrine of Augustine, Hugo and Bonaventure in the formation of this new educational institution, which is the University, thus asserting that the university is a sign of European civilization. The problems of the transmission of knowledge (Hugo and Bonaventure) and the transmission of holiness (Jacob de Voragine) are examined. The birth of translation as an intellectual activity.

A Theology of Higher Education

2012

By all accounts higher education-including Christian higher education-is in crisis. In A Theology of Higher Education, Mike Higton offers a Christian theological account of higher education, showing that the DNA of the university as a species contains uniquely Christian traits. Higton is Academic Co-Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme and Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter, so he is well situated to offer this analysis, not least because of the explosive push-back being felt in the Oxbridge context. Instead of turning the book into "a diatribe, or into a melancholy, long withdrawing roar of retreating academic faith" (2), Higton crafts an argument meant to rehabilitate confidence in university education by celebrating what it does well, or could do better. Part I of the volume traces the evolution of the university through the histories of the universities of Paris, Berlin, Oxford, and Dublin. Typically, the tale of these great universities is construed as the shedding of the constraints of religious orthodoxy in favor of the emancipation reason offers, the triumph of reason over tradition and freedom over authority. Higton contests this myth, arguing instead that in genesis of the university, "reason emerges not over against Christian devotion, but as a form of Christian devotion" (13, emphasis original). Practices at the University of Paris, for example, could only make sense in the context of certain theological assumptions. "It was assumed that to discover that harmonious ordering was not simply an intellectual game, but one of the means (or part of the means) for discovering the good ordering of human life before God, including the good ordering of the social life. It was assumed, moreover, that this discovery of good order was possible only through a certain kind of conformity to it: the good ordering of the scholar's life in humility, piety, and peace-and this both as

The origins of the university: Questions of identity and historical continuity

Church, Communication and Culture, 2024

In this article I intend to make an inquiry into the essential values of the university in its medieval origins and to compare them with the present situation of the institution, and the main challenges it faces today. In the first part of the article, I examine the core values of the university in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (‘Origins’). In a second section, I describe the main structural and governance features of universities in the Middle Ages, which have survived almost intact to the present day (‘Structures’). Subsequently, I detail the early difficulties the university encountered due to its first bureaucratization and formalization in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (‘Troubles’). Finally, I venture some conclusions on the desirability of revisiting some of the current debates surrounding the university, arguing for a return to the origins (‘Current Debates’).