Some Elements of Transformation

Earlham College Convocation
September 2, 1998
Douglas C. Bennett

In my remarks at inauguration last March, I set forth five aspirations for Earlham, five directions in which I propose we grow and change over the next several years. I drew these aspirations (accurately I hope) from conversations I had with the faculty, students, staff, alumni and Board members over the course of my first nine months.

Let me just mention the first four aspirations:

 


I'll have more to say about these four, about how I want us to proceed with them, on another day. Today I want to focus on the fifth aspiration -- because it is special. It is more fundamental than the others. It is not so much a direction of change, but a way of staying true to ourselves.

In this fifth aspiration, I said that our ultimate goal was to have 'transformative programs for the 21st century.' I said that 'we have no small or ordinary missions at Earlham. We do not merely seek to give those who come better skills or improved capabilities.' Rather, we seek to offer an education that "quicken[s] the central aims and ideals by which [our students] are henceforth to live." I said I wanted this question to be the lens through which we see what more we can do, and how we can do it better. Today I want to say more about 'transformative education.' What does it look like? What activities and experiences further transformation? What does it ask of students? And what does it ask of teachers?

I do not speak about this today because I believe I have a set of answers to give you. I am quite sure I don't. I speak about it only because I am sure that we should all be thinking about this matter. I want to invite you into a conversation: today I want to tell you what I have been thinking about, hoping you will find an occasion to tell me, and to tell others here, your thoughts as well.

We seem to be more than a little reluctant to talk about such fundamental change or improvement in character in higher education. It used to be common. Earlham catalogs (like the catalogs of many colleges) earlier in this century talked often of character. Now to find talk of character you have to look at business self-improvement books. When I told the college's senior staff I was going to speak on "Some Elements of Transformation," they immediately began suggesting zippier titles. How about "The Seven Habits of Highly Transformative People," on suggested. Another suggested "Transformation for Dummies."

Over the past week I had heard some other interesting reactions to the title, a title which seemed to me to suggest very little. (I was trying to give myself a fair amount of room--I didn't really know what I wanted to talk about when I set the topic.)

Bill Harvey, for example, sent me via e-mail a biological definition of transformation:

"Transformation is the conversion of normal, healthy cells to tumor or cancer cells."


I'm aware that "transformation" is a word with precise meaning in many fields. In mathematics it means something like "the operation of changing (as by rotation or mapping) one configuration or expression into another in accordance with a rule." In linguistics, a transformation is one of an ordered set of rules that converts the deep structures of language into surface structures." In all these senses it is fundamental change, in some orderly or expected way.

An e-mail message from Tony Bing was more to my purpose. Tony wrote to say that Freshmen Humanities classes are reading "Blessed are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Nonviolence" by Thomas Merton. He passed along the following passage from that essay:

 

"A real understanding of Christian nonviolence (backed by the evidence of history in the Apostolic Age) shows not only that it is a power, but that it remains perhaps the only really effective way of transforming man and human society. After nearly fifty years of Communist revolution, we find little evidence that the world is improved by violence. Let us however seriously consider at least the conditions for relative honesty in the practice of Christian nonviolence" (written in 1967).


This is more what I had in mind. Merton is talking about fundamental change in human character and human relationships. About fundamental improvement in human character and human relationships. That is the sense in which I I want to talk about transformation.

After Tony's contribution, I began to have some hope that my remarks might be written for me. Alas, not much more came in. But with just that thought in mind, I stumbled across this from Liffey Thorpe. She didn't send it to me as a suggestion for Convocation, but there it was at the bottom of her e-mail. It is Socrates talking in Book VII of The Republic:

 

"That's what education should be, the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be as if we could implant sight into a blind eye, but should proceed on the assumption that the eye already has the capacity and needs alignment, focus, direction..."


Plato is talking about transformation. And what's more, talking about how it's done. In his view, it's done by turning the soul.


Transformation can happen elsewhere than liberal arts colleges.

A life can be quickened by accident, even disaster, by sudden inspiration, by sacrifice or service, by friendship, or by love. This is far from an exhaustive list.

It is something that can be at the center of other institutions or practices: Churches. Psychotherapy. The arts

But liberal arts colleges, I believe, and Earlham as much as any, have transformative purposes in an unusually effective way.

I want to talk today about how we do transformation at Earlham.


B. Earlham as a Witness for the Religious Society of Friends

This summer I spoke to the two Yearly Meetings about "Earlham as a Witness for the Religious Society of Friends." I tried to explain as best I could how Earlham is deeply grounded in the perspectives and teachings of Quakers. I was trying to explain why I believe Earlham is a college which embodies their best and deepest hopes.

At the time I wasn't thinking very much about these Convocation remarks. But the main points I made in those remarks speak very much to how we seek to carry through our deepest purposes--transformative purposes. I organized my remarks to the Yearly Meetings under four headings--four main ways Earlham educates deeply consonant with Quakerism.

(1) First, we devolve considerable responsibility upon students. We do not educate much by sitting students down and telling them things. We don't do that in the classroom or laboratory. And we don't do that in matters of campus life or conduct. Ours is not a didactic approach.

Instead, we set high expectations for students, we provide them with a fruitful environment for learning and growing, and we ask them to take on responsibility for a very high proportion of what happens at Earlham--for themselves and for others.

The Community Code is one of the most extraordinary examples of this approach. It is the means by which we ask and expect students to bear responsibility for their own conduct on campus. But (again) it is noteworthy that this is the same strategy or approach we take in curricular matters.

Bearing responsibility can often be a transformative experience, especially when the responsibility is carried in a nurturing environment, where mistakes and failings can be learning experience, and where an individual can be guided and supported by others.

(2) Second, we insist upon unreserved respect for each person. At Earlham we build our community on this principle, both in the classroom and outside the classroom. Quakers believe that all of us are children of God. (Of course not only Quakers believe this, but this belief is fundamental to Quakerism in all its varieties.) We signal this respect in greeting one another as we pass walking across campus. But this is only the most superficial way of according respect. We show this respect by engaging deeply with one another, by expecting no less than the best of one another, by committing ourselves to working through disagreements and conflicts, by investing in one another.

Our practice of consensus decision-making — I prefer to say our practice of 'seeking unity' in decision making — is one very full expression of this insistence upon unreserved respect. We honor our belief in the worth of every individual by being reluctant to move against the grain of deep, expressed reservations from even one person. We ask that each join the search for the best way to proceed, and we honor that participation.

Our belief in the unreserved respect for each individual undergirds our approach to athletic competition, I believe. Seeking excellence in physical activity and expecting it of one another: this, too, is a measure of respect. It leads us to compete with others in athletic contests. We delight in seeing how good we can be, and we delight in seeing how good others can be. And no matter how hard we compete, we show our opponents unreserved respect.

Being respected, being truly accepted for who one is, being expected to be the best that one can be. These, too, are elements of Earlham's approach to transformation, I believe.


(3) A third basic feature of Earlham: we organize some very important programs around Quaker testimonies. Testimonies are value commitments and actions that flow from our deepest convictions. Quakers hold that if you genuinely believe something, you cannot help but led to act in accordance with that belief: you are compelled to testify on its behalf in the way you live your life.

Perhaps the most dramatic of these is the peace testimony. Believing that there is that of God in every individual, Quakers mostly believe it is wrong to take the life of another. Quakers have been very reluctant to approve of any participation in war. Instead, they have devoted themselves to seeking peaceful reconciliation of conflicts.

Of course we have a Peace and Global Studies program in our curriculum which is organized around this testimony of Friends. Our longstanding connections with Japan grew out of efforts to seek reconciliation with the Japanese people after WWII. And we have other programs and activities organized around Friends testimonies. The Earlham Volunteer Exchange and the Bonner Scholars program are organized around deep commitments serve others. Our management program is organized around commitments to consensus decision-making. Miller Farm is one expression of a Quaker testimony towards simplicity.

I could offer quite a number of additional examples. What I believe is especially transformative in these and other such programs and activities is a commitment to living ones' values and beliefs. As a liberal arts college, we place primacy upon the search for truth. But we are reluctant to separate that search for truth from a search for a meaningful way to live one's life. Experiencing the power of ideas in an environment that insists upon acting in accord with the conclusions: that, too, I believe, is an element of transformation at Earlham.

 

 

(4) Finally, we are a crossroads of intellect and spirit. The 1960 Earlham Catalog says "the college is a place of intellectual discipline."

 

"It is part of the function of a college that it should be an institution in which, by careful and steady intellectual work, the members develop the habit, in a situations, of looking for the evidence and of drawing conclusions only in the light of relevant evidence. Such a college should place its first emphasis on intellectual discipline because it is this emphasis which distinguishes it from many other social organizations."


That 1960 Catalog immediately goes on to say that Earlham is also "a living fellowship." By a "living fellowship," that catalog meant to emphasize not only that we promote learning within a close, respectful, intentional community. It also meant to emphasize that we undertake intellectual and creative work within an environment that nurtures and promotes a robust spiritual life. We do not prescribe what students should believe as a matter of religious faith. We do not even ask that students (or faculty or staff) have any particular religious faith. But we do as a college look to see that there are abundant opportunities for students to seek, to worship and to deepen their religious faith, as an integral part of their seeking for the truth.

We are a crossroads of the intellect and the spirit. This, too, I believe, is an element of our approach to transformation. We encourage and support students to seek the truth not just down one road, the road of the intellect, but to seek for the truth down every pathway. We aspire to find the crossroads within ourselves among these pathways. I believe this is part of what we mean when we say, in our mission statement, that we seek "to awaken the teacher within."

C. Some questions about our approach to transformation

I've been speaking about some significant features of Earlham that are aspects of our approach to being a transformative college, a college that promotes growth and change in character of a deep and lasting sort. Based on these, I want to turn and raise some questions that I believe are worth thinking about--worth all of our thinking about.

(1) Curriculum. First, what should be the most important characteristics of the curriculum we offer? We mean to be a place of intellectual discipline. We mean to be a place where students encounter the best, the wisest and most vital contemporary scholarship. But saying this doesn't help us make choices among the kinds of academic programs we offer. And it doesn't help us decide what intellectual work or experience should be required of all students.

There is much about the Earlham curriculum that is extraordinarily fresh and vital. And in this freshness and vitality can be found much that contributes to transformation.

I believe, for example, that our emphasis on foreign study serves transformative purposes because it draws students to see the world through the eyes of other cultures, other peoples, and not in a merely superficial way. The progress we hope to make in diversity will contribute, too.

I believe that our emphasis on interdisciplinary studies is transformative because it encourages wholeness in intellectual seeking. Our emphases on experiential and collaborative learning, our emphasis on bibliographic instruction throughout the curriculum: all these help students learn better all that they learn.

But what should be the next directions in the curriculum, and what must we require that all students experience? There are always going to be new things we might do, new programs, new strategies. Which ones should Earlham choose, to be a place of transformation?

(2) Community Life. A second question: what should be the essential features of community life as students experience it? A key to our strategy, I've said, is devolving responsibility upon students for community life, under circumstances of support and framing expectations.

We are soon to have fresh consideration of the community code, the most important way we place responsibility upon students. What should be the circumstances of support? How is this support offered? What should be the framing expectations? How are those communicated to students? How are they available in an everyday and practical manner?

Another example of the kind of question I mean to raise about the essential features of community life. As we rebuild our Athletics facilities, we're also designing a Wellness Program for students. What should be the essential features of this Wellness Program? What should be the baseline expectations for students with regard to Wellness? And how do we communicate these? I believe we have done a very good job of connecting the intellect and the spirit at Earlham, but we have done less well--for most students--at connecting the body as well. An important task for the future will be, as much scholarship in literature now puts it, "bringing the body back in."

(3) Spiritual Life. How should we nurture a robust and vital spiritual life? If we mean this to be a basic feature of Earlham, we need to have more than hopes. We need to have an institutional strategy that allows students to have an array of spiritual opportunities. What does that strategy look like? What resources are we prepared to put behind it?

These are the enduring characteristics of Earlham I have talked about:

devolving responsibility upon students,
insisting on unreserved respect for each individual,
organizing programs and activities around testimonies, and
nurturing both a robust spiritual and an intellectual life.


Each of these contributes to transformation. But each will require fresh thought about how we carry these through.


E. Contemporary Skills and Traditional Values

I want to tell you about a disagreement I've having with the Independent Colleges of Indiana. ICI is an organization of the independent or private colleges. Last year they developed a brochure to use for collective fund-raising purposes, primarily with businesses, and they proposed to say that what we as independent colleges do is to "teach contemporary skills and traditional values."
I objected to that phrase "contemporary skills and traditional values," but they used it anyway. I objected again, and they were more than a little surprised. They'd found, they said, that it played well with others.

I do object to it. I believe it fundamentally misstates what Earlham is about. (I believe it also misstates what a at least few other colleges in Indiana are about.)

I object, first, to the notion that we teach "contemporary skills." I believe we teach ancient skills, enduring skills, in a fresh and vital way. We teach students how to write. We teach students how to read. We teach students to work together. We teach students to think, to analyze, to question, and to seek answers with a passion for the truth. Or even better, thinking back to what I said about placing responsibility upon students: we invite students into situations where they learn these things for themselves. These are all 'skills' you might say, but I believe that term does them a disservice. Better, I think, to say they are 'capabilities' with contemporary relevance. But I do not believe they are "contemporary skills," in contrast to what might have been taught here in decades past. I believe we are teaching the same things that have been taught here for 151 years, only we are doing it in a manner appropriate to today and tomorrow.

I object second, and more passionately, to the idea that we teach "traditional values." You might think that my objection arises from the fact that the phrase "traditional values," has become a stock phrase of the religious right. And of course I would not want Earlham to be associated with any particular political ideology, right, left or center. I believe this 'branding' of the phrase is a problem with "traditional values," but this is not my fundamental objection. The deeper problem gets right to the heart of our transformative purpose here at Earlham.

My sister Kate went to a very good college. I was already a graduate student in political science when she was in her senior year. I asked her what she'd learned in her political science courses at this very good college. She paused, thought, and then said, "I learned that every question has two sides." I remember thinking, 'I'm glad she learned that, but that's not enough.' At Earlham, we want students not only to know that there are many sides to each question, but also to come away knowing what they believe, and knowing why they believe it.

And I think we expect even more. We prepare students for a lifetime of learning, a lifetime of searching for the truth. Through the same experience we prepare them for a lifetime of questioning and reexamining values. This is at least some of what I mean by transformative purpose.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates tells us that the charges for which he has been put on trial are the stock charges against all philosophers, that he is a man "who investigates things in the air and under the earth, that he teaches people to disbelieve in the gods, and that he makes the worse argument appear the stronger." What he really is guilty of, Socrates confesses, is that he shows up so-called wise men "as ignorant pretenders to knowledge that they do not possess." Socrates is not someone who teaches traditional values, but rather someone who goads people to think for themselves.

Here at Earlham, in the crossroads of the intellect and the spirit, Socrates will encounter Jesus. The Pharisees were troubled by what they heard Jesus say to the multitudes who thronged around him. The Pharisees asked him "Why walk not thy disciples according to the traditions of the elders?" Jesus teaches his followers to be less focused on the literal wording of the laws and to be more concerned with the inward experience of love and faith that is their true foundation. He preaches a new covenant--not to overturn the law, but to perfect it.

Did either Socrates or Jesus (or Muhammad or the Buddha for that matter) teach "traditional values?" Definitely not. And neither do we. We ask students to look afresh at the values they bring with them from their growing-up experience. We ask students to question those values, to search and scrutinize, to enter into dialogue with others, to seek for the truth. We hope, we expect, that at the end of their education here our students will have values that are truly their own. (I don't mean 'their own' in a merely personal or idiosyncratic manner. I mean 'their own' in the sense that they have made those values deeply part of who they are.) The values with which our students graduate may be the same values, in content, as those they brought to college. They may not be. But those values will have a much more fundamental grounding, a much more determined strength. They will have withstood tests of reason and of spiritual searching. They will have been reforged in the fire that is at the crossroads of intellect and spirit.

If we're going to have a slogan, I'd rather it were this. At Earlham, we invite students to learn ancient skills and to search all their lives for a right way to live.

I want to leave you with one more bit from the 1960 Catalog. (As you can see, I have grown fond of that catalog.) The sentences I've been quoting are right at the very beginning, from a section called "Reason for Earlham:" Here's how the section ends:

 

What inspires Earlham men and women is the vision of a society of learning and teaching and pioneering that continues to be a community of understanding whatever the prejudice and confusion of the world about us. This vision Earlham does not wholly achieve, but there are many among her sons and daughters who strive for it, and at least they know when they have failed because they have a standard by which to judge. This standard is the reason for Earlham. It is her most precious possession.


"This vision Earlham does not wholly achieve." Quite a statement. I believe this, too, is an element of transformation at Earlham: that we steadfastly reach for more than we can ever achieve.
Thank you. I look forward to hearing what you have to say about how we can and do serve transformative purposes at Earlham.