{"id":62,"date":"2018-05-12T15:20:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T19:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/?p=62"},"modified":"2018-05-12T16:05:06","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T20:05:06","slug":"contending-with-modernity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/cheb\/2018\/05\/12\/contending-with-modernity\/","title":{"rendered":"Contending with Modernity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gleason, P. (1995).\u00a0Contending with modernity: Catholic higher education in the twentieth century<\/em><\/a>. New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

\"\"This book covers \u201cthe historical development of American Catholic higher education since 1900\u201d (vii).\u00a0 While it is primarily from a Catholic perspective, Gleason places this development in a broader educational and ideological context.\u00a0 The introduction provides an historical overview that is developed in great detail in later chapters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The introduction explains a key issue:\u00a0 nineteenth century Catholic \u201ccolleges\u201d generally combined secondary and post-secondary work as a seven-year continuum, rather than being two separate levels and types of institutions.\u00a0 The Jesuit tradition was the most influential (Georgetown, founded in 1787, was the oldest American Catholic college), with curricula based on three successive \u201cstages\u201d: humanistic, philosophical and theological (p. 5). \u00a0Classic languages were considered the core of the program, which also included mathematics and \u201cnatural science\u201d (natural philosophy) and some modern languages, geography and history.\u00a0 College and \u201cpreparatory\u201d levels were gradually separated in the 1880\u2019s to conform to the structure of non-Catholic colleges, but the mind-set of a continuum and a prescribed curriculum of traditional subjects continued well into the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Gleason give a history of the Catholic University of America (opened in 1889) as an example of the ideology of Catholic educators\u2019 response to \u201cnew currents I the world of learning\u201d \u00a0— including a greater emphasis on science and empirical knowledge — which they saw as challenging the Catholic faith (p. 7). There was controversy between Catholic conservatives who wanted to maintain and emphasize traditional teaching and liberals (\u201cAmericanists\u201d) who wanted to integrate what was \u201cgood\u201d about the new leaning (such as the drive for free inquiry to deepen understanding) into Catholic education. \u00a0Gleason argues that the broader controversy over \u201cmodernism\u201d — \u201cefforts to synthesize the Catholic faith with contemporary modes of thought\u201d — had little immediate effect on American education beyond CUA because the controversies were primarily among theologians that were rarely read outside seminars and that institution (p. 12-13).\u00a0 However, when Pope Pius X denounced modernism in his Pascendi Dominici Gregis <\/em>(1907) the CUA was driven to demonstrate orthodoxy through a \u201cmodernist crackdown\u201d (p. 14) that included purging libraries of supposed modernist texts. \u00a0Some later authors referred to the Vatican\u2019s anti-modernist vigilance as \u201can intellectual reign of terror\u201d, but Gleason notes that the strong endorsement of Thomism (the teachings of Thomas Aquinas) led to a revival of \u201cmedieval history and culture\u201d or \u201cNeoclassicism\u201d in Catholic higher education which persisted for the next half-century and contributed to a \u201cCatholic Renaissance\u201d during that period (p. 17).<\/p>\n

In the first chapter, Gleason gives a cogent summary of the \u201corganizational challenges\u201d for Catholic educators that precipitated modernization, and which together \u201cconstituted a veritable revolution which reshaped American higher education\u201d in the last quarter of the 19th<\/sup> century and the first two decades of the 20th<\/sup> (p. 21).\u00a0 These included:<\/p>\n