Faith, the Real World, and Liberal Arts: Turning College on Its Head at Hildegard

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | April 27, 2022 | Corey Kendig

[karpov]

A new college is opening its doors to students in the fall of 2023. In Costa Mesa, California, Hildegard College is offering students the chance to take their faith and combine it with rigorous academics focused on the liberal arts. This liberal arts Christian college seeks to change the ways of both secular education and Christian education by emphasizing the classics and a well-rounded education. On the college’s website, it states “Christian and secular colleges alike have abandoned the practices that enable deep learning—practices of active, personal, rigorous, and creative engagement. In the name of efficiency, universities have become ineffective.”

The campus will be located at FLDWRK, a “work collective and peer coaching space designed to launch and incubate businesses, creatives, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs whose endeavors aim at the common good.” There will be no dorms at Hildegard, as students will be required to either rent an apartment or commute. The administration says its decision forces Hildegard’s students into real-world situations and does not allow them to hide behind their dorm walls. In order to achieve the community feeling that the administration strives for, the college will have a student body of roughly 200 students. This way everyone can know everyone, as they will all be forced to take the same classes and work together on group projects.

Before the college officially opens its doors, it will be offering programs for students entering college in 2023 or 2024. The Summer Scholars program allows for scholars to discuss classic texts while being outside in the city next to Yosemite National Park. The program starts in the summer of 2022, and applications are open now.

[PGR88]

When cleaning out my deceased grandfather’s things years ago, I came across his HIGH SCHOOL coursework in a course called Rhetoric and Logic

It was assumed the students already knew some Latin and Greek, and had knowledge of classical figures.

The course focused on what are called “logical fallacies” and also - detailed use of literary/rhetorical devices - things like Anaphora, Tricolon, Chiasmus, Anadiplosis etc.. These things were recognized and used over the last 2000 years by people like Shakespeare, Churchill or MLK to make their words memorable, for reasons that today people are totally clueless about

Having myself gone to a public-union factory school and thus being poorly educated, I was confused and bewildered about what this stuff was - and why schools would teach such arcana

These things are not even taught university any longer.

[hinckley buzzard]

Hosted at a “work collective” for people “aimed at the common good.”
I don’t think so.