2008 Woodie Awards
GUEST COLUMN: On curriculum reform
Ed O'Rourke
Issue date: 5/1/08 Section: Opinion
UST is taking a hard look at its current curriculum. Since this planet is witnessing the Sixth Great Extinction, my recommendation is to concentrate on healing this world by environmental restoration and structuring our accounting, taxes, political, social and economic spheres to live well and get out of our fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway, war-ridden economy that requires 1.4 billion of the world's citizens to live in poverty.
Some of the oldest cultural values, such as "be fruitful and multiply," are no longer useful and are now destructive. Another habit to throw overboard is war. General Douglas MacArthur, in his famous 1951 speech to the U.S. Congress, stated, in no uncertain terms, that mankind must abolish war or war would abolish mankind. Pope Paul VI made called for an end to war at the United Nations in 1965.
Professors will still talk about Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire and other leading philosophers who shape the way we think. In the future, they must study people, not necessarily considered philosophers, to derive values and strategies that point the way to spiritual and environmental restoration. One candidate for inclusion in the new curriculum is "Plan 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" by Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. Among many far-reaching ideas, he advocates investing $190 billion per year in poor countries to bring about universal primary education, adult literacy, universal basic health care, planting trees to reduce flooding, protecting topsoil, restoring fisheries, protecting biological diversity and stabilizing water tables. Hopefully all educational institutions will pursue this survival path that leads to a world filled with social justice.
Catholic institutions have other changes to make. I will give my background to set the context of the next recommendation. I was born and grew up in Houston, Texas. I graduated from Saint Thomas High School and spent my freshman year at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. I started preparation for the priesthood at Saint Basil's Novitiate in Pontiac, Mich. in August, 1963. Within a month, the realization hit me that all my Catholic education to the time I entered the novitiate was superficial, certainly correct, but lacking depth. My feeling was that everyone could be a mystic or close to it. The famous theologian the Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange felt that the mystical life is a normal way of seeking Christian perfection. I stayed with the Basilian Order for another two years at UST, which was not enough time to develop the idea. In May, 1966, I left the Basilians, and only in recent years, have visited the mysticism theme again.
Some of the oldest cultural values, such as "be fruitful and multiply," are no longer useful and are now destructive. Another habit to throw overboard is war. General Douglas MacArthur, in his famous 1951 speech to the U.S. Congress, stated, in no uncertain terms, that mankind must abolish war or war would abolish mankind. Pope Paul VI made called for an end to war at the United Nations in 1965.
Professors will still talk about Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire and other leading philosophers who shape the way we think. In the future, they must study people, not necessarily considered philosophers, to derive values and strategies that point the way to spiritual and environmental restoration. One candidate for inclusion in the new curriculum is "Plan 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" by Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. Among many far-reaching ideas, he advocates investing $190 billion per year in poor countries to bring about universal primary education, adult literacy, universal basic health care, planting trees to reduce flooding, protecting topsoil, restoring fisheries, protecting biological diversity and stabilizing water tables. Hopefully all educational institutions will pursue this survival path that leads to a world filled with social justice.
Catholic institutions have other changes to make. I will give my background to set the context of the next recommendation. I was born and grew up in Houston, Texas. I graduated from Saint Thomas High School and spent my freshman year at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. I started preparation for the priesthood at Saint Basil's Novitiate in Pontiac, Mich. in August, 1963. Within a month, the realization hit me that all my Catholic education to the time I entered the novitiate was superficial, certainly correct, but lacking depth. My feeling was that everyone could be a mystic or close to it. The famous theologian the Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange felt that the mystical life is a normal way of seeking Christian perfection. I stayed with the Basilian Order for another two years at UST, which was not enough time to develop the idea. In May, 1966, I left the Basilians, and only in recent years, have visited the mysticism theme again.