Can a Liberal Education be a Christian Education?

Patkai Christian College’s inaugural ‘Tuisem A Shishak Annual Lecture’ interrogates

Morung Express News
Patkai | March 21

What is the idea of a Christian College? Can a Liberal Education be a Christian Education? These, among others, were some of the key questions interrogated in the inaugural of ‘Tuisem A Shishak Annual Lecture’ which kicked off at the Patkai Christian College (PCC) Autonomous on March 19.

The lecture series, a joint collaboration of PCC and its Alumni Association (AAPCC), had Rev Dr Tuisem A Shishak, the college founder and Principal Emeritus, as the inaugural speaker. He established PCC, the first Christian liberal Arts college in Nagaland in 1974.

Introducing the series, Dr Zhoto Tunyi, an alumnus and faculty of the college, noted that it was instituted in recognition of Dr Shishak’s contributions in the field of education and his vision to provide quality education for the highlanders of Indo-Myanmar, particularly in the North-East.

This is manifested in the college’s vision as a Christian liberal arts institution, where teaching and learning is central to the intellectual life and public imagination and offers a holistic approach of integrating the Christian worldview, the pursuit of knowledge, values and engages with the socio-economic conditions of the society, he said.

Patkai intends to continue to take his vision forward by creating a space for eminent individuals in various fields to deliver lectures and engage with the society at large, he added.

Stating that series is envisioned to be dialogical, he added: “Dialogue is the central defining activity of any educational institution. It is what academic freedom and vitality is all about: the freedom to think and present one’s ideas and views openly, provided one is willing to subject those views to open examination and debate.”

The series is intended to be a platform where young and old minds enter into a dialogue, he added.

Starting his lecture, Dr Shishak noted that one of the trends across the world in the recent years has been the rise of concepts such as ‘post truth,’ ‘fake news,’ and ‘alternative facts.’

“Counter to this we recall the words of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it,’” he said.

Accordingly, he reiterated the original vision the PCC was founded upon to be a “liberal arts institution of higher learning based on biblical truth, symbolised by its motto: Light and Truth” and firmly believing that “education is for the whole (hu)man in a framework of spiritual and moral absolutes.”

Education and Liberal Arts
Thereafter, he delineated three important problems to be analysed by the lecture: What is education? What is liberal arts education? And whether Christian education can be liberal education at the same time?

The simplest definition of education is “the process by which people acquire knowledge, skills, values, attitudes,” he noted, citing World Book Encyclopedia.

While sharing other definitions of education, Dr Shishak, however argued that the meaning of education can be understood better by knowing the meaning of “liberal arts” which refers to a set of academic disciplines and in Middle Ages denoted a trivium entailing the art of language: Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic; and Quadrivium—Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Astronomy.

“Thus, liberal arts had to do with language and thinking, and became the ancestors of what we call the “arts and sciences,” he said.

The classic definition of liberal arts comes from the early Renaissance, he said, highlighting, among others, Peter Paul Vergenrius’s description liberal studies as education “which are worthy of a free man” which “calls forth, trains and develops those highest gifts of body and of mind which ennoble men…” to John Henry Cardinal Newman’s view that it entails “neither to inculcate virtue nor to prepare for a vocation, but rather to train the mind.”

Besides the great definitions, they all agreed that liberal education is the education of a free people in the role they must play in life beyond their remunerative (vocational) work, Dr Shishak added.

Accordingly “Education in a Christian liberal arts college must develop the capacity to think and make right judgments—research skills, analytic and critical skills,” he underscored.

It makes sense to me to expect a Christian college to simply offer a good education plus Bible studies in a Christian atmosphere. But are these the essence of a Christian college? Or is the idea of a Christian liberal arts college to train people for church-related vocations? Dr Shishak posed.

Ethical thinking and social action
To this, Dr Shishak postulated that “the integration of faith and learning remains the distinctive task of the Christian liberal arts college” and it must “provide an education that cultivates the creative and active integration of faith and learning, of faith and culture.”

This, he noted, requires the analysis of worldviews. “Secular colleges will have their own worldviews. But the Christian worldview held by a Christian liberal arts college requires Christians to think christianly about everything,” he said.

“A Christian worldview provides a framework for both ethical thinking and social action…in which biblical beliefs and values can guide constructive thought and action,” he added.

However, he regretted that often Christian institutions of higher learning have failed to integrate the Christian faith and secular culture in higher education.

Further, Dr Shishak stated that a Christian college like any other college should be concerned with universal knowledge, which has essentially to do with natural intelligence.

“In the words of Maritain, ‘endeavors only to make the student understand the meaning and grasp the basic truth of the various disciplines in which universal knowledge is interested,’” he asserted.

He further said that such institution should be both “unapologetically Christian in commitment and uncompromisingly excellent academically,” citing Rodney J Sawatsky.

Dr Shishak also noted that Christianity and the liberal arts have reinforced each other throughout history, and scholars have noted no final split between the two.

This could be due to a joint heritage, he maintained, citing Harbison: “From Athens and Jerusalem, a Greco-Roman respect for (hu) man as something more than the beast and Judeo-Christian respect for (hu) man as made in the image of God.”

The lecture was followed by an interactive session where Dr Shishak expounded on various issues, including his stand for academic autonomy and opposition to proselytization and crass commercialisation of education, among others.

Source: https://morungexpress.com/can-a-liberal-education-be-a-christian-education