God’s Homework
The hosts discuss a central irony of Jefferson’s educational vision – intending the University of Virginia to be an entirely secular institution, it was only as students became more religious in the mid-18th Century – as the second “Great Awakening” swept the country – that they became more serious too.
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*Note: this transcript is from the original show broadcast. There may be slight differences from the rebroadcast.
ED: So Peter, you know, Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia– one of the things he wanted to be remembered for is often held up as sort of the beginning of the modern university. Sort of a vision of what higher education could be in this country. To what extent does UVA become a model?
PETER: Ed, it doesn’t. Oh, it’s a controversial institution from the get go. That is because it was secular. That’s its chief claim to fame.
But there was a lot of agitation against the university thinking by people– good Christians– who thought this was a very, very bad idea, and that taxpayers’ money should not be spent on it. It was a failed experiment in giving privileged young men of Virginia– maybe even a scholarship student or two– access to the best knowledge, the best learning in the world.
BRIAN: So Peter, how did the brilliant Jefferson so miscalculate about the kind of students it was going to attract? A bunch of cutups, apparently.
PETER: Well, he didn’t have any boys in the house, so he didn’t have that learning experience at home. But Brian and Ed, you know, the funny thing that does happen is that things do stabilize. As Carlos was suggesting, he mentioned killing Professor Davis. But what really changed things at Virginia was the Second Great Awakening. And the irony here is that–
BRIAN: What was that second?
PETER: It’s the great revival of Christianity, the Second Great Awakening that takes place over the early decades of the 19th century. And it hits big in the 1830s at Virginia. So even while their students are still acting out, there’s the beginnings of a new culture on the campus– a more evangelical, religious culture.
It’s an irony, because Jefferson wanted to keep Virginia separated– his university separated from religious teachers. This was not going to be a conventional religious college. Not that they did better in terms of maintaining order on campus.
All over the country, it’s the success of revivalism in finally creating that kind of serious student that Jefferson had been looking for, but now serious about things that Jefferson wondered about himself. That is, these were serious Christians.
ED: So Carlos was talking about all the violence in the South, and that’s certainly the case. Honor really did saturate the culture. The main enemy of honor was the Evangelical Church.
PETER: That’s right.
ED: And so the churches established universities across the south, the colleges across the south. Places you think of– Wake Forest, and Duke, and Emory, the great Southern universities– all are basically religious in origin, and they are in tension. They’re trying to train to break the spirit of these young men. That’s what Jefferson missed, going back to your idea, Peter. What was actually going to make these guys behave in ways that they had been raised not to behave?
PETER: Well, it wasn’t the Enlightenment, because they didn’t get enlightened. But they did get Jesus, and it was the revivals. And that’s the irony, because this was supposed to be a secular place. Jefferson needed serious Christians at his school for it to fulfill his original vision.
BRIAN: So Peter and Ed, what model of higher education does become the successful model for training America’s citizens in a democratic republic?
PETER: Well, I think, ironically, Brian, it’s actually following the cues of the expanding society of preparing people for work in the world. You begin with a seminary, a divinity school as a component, and then you train people for law, and then you graft higher learning on top of that.
ED: And Mr. Jefferson wouldn’t like this answer, Brian, but I think the answer is Harvard, which grows in this way that Peter’s talking about– incrementally adding new dimensions and layers and capacities on the old ecclesiastical foundation. I think Harvard’s path becomes the path of American higher education, Peter, which is a gradual diminution of the religious impulse.
PETER: Yes, absolutely.
ED: It’s not that they are founded as secular institutions, except this very weird place of Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago. Generally, colleges are founded denominationally, sustain that for a while, and then gradually become secularized. I bet if you look around at American higher education today, 90% of the schools have their origins in a Catholic or Protestant religious origin.
PETER: Right, yeah.
ED: And so what you find, even as those new branches develop, the old core of religious tradition fades away.
BRIAN: So yet again, Mr. Jefferson is just a bit too radical.
PETER: Yeah, and we can use him now, we can turn back to him for inspiration because of his devotion to things that matter to us. That is, if you think of UVA as, at least in his vision, the first great graduate school, it wasn’t. But that idea that people would do the kinds of things that we scholars do– it’s something that we can identify with and take inspiration from.
ED: It’s time for another break. When we get back, we’ll go to the phones.
PETER: You’re listening to BackStory story. We’ll be back in a minute.