Publisher's Synopsis
John Henry Newman's lengthy thesis upon educational theory and the teaching of theology and spiritual insight is insightful, forward-looking and informed by the author's extensive experience.
Although his career was as a priest and theologian primarily concerned with religious education, John Henry Newman was also an academic with experience working and tutoring in universities. Through his experiences both as an educator and a representative of God, he felt the need to compose a manual in which his opinions on higher education were organized and presented in a single book.
Newman sets out a comprehensive thesis of what he believes should comprise a university education, split into two parts:
Part One combines Newman's philosophy on education and the acquiring of knowledge with how he believed teaching should proceed. Writing from a theological perspective, he is wary of how theology should impact the remainder of the teaching program, and vice versa. How pure knowledge and facts ought to be viewed in comparison to Christianity and the religious texts therein is also discussed.
Part Two concerns the subjects to be taught in university classes. A chapter is devoted to each subject - be it Literature, the Physical Sciences, Catholic Literature and Preaching - while discusses how education should proceed to best profit the student and institution.
Although somewhat archaic in the modern day, The Idea of a University in Nine Discourses sheds insight upon how the universities of the mid-19th century were run. Many universities in the United Kingdom at the time could trace their roots to the monastic and religious traditions of scholarship which appeared in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Many famous academics and scientists, such as Isaac Newton, were also religious.
At the time Newman wrote this book, higher education was available to only a privileged and gifted few in society, and there were competing theories behind how exactly such education should be furnished upon students. Newman was an influential figure in his time, and it is likely his ideas on education had some influence over Oxford, Cambridge and his home university of Birmingham. Appointed as a Catholic Cardinal, and a frequent visitor and speaker in universities around the country, this book may be considered as Newman's supplement to his more studious works on the subject of Biblical theology and the history of the Christian church.