COMMENTARY: Learning from me, learning from them

(UNDATED) Back-to-school jitters aren’t only for the students. Every teacher gearing up for another term also wonders what the first day of classes will bring. Certainly, it will bring a lot of students. This year, U.S. colleges and universities will enroll about 17.5 million students — that’s nearly equal the population of Chile — and […]

(UNDATED) Back-to-school jitters aren’t only for the students. Every teacher gearing up for another term also wonders what the first day of classes will bring.

Certainly, it will bring a lot of students. This year, U.S. colleges and universities will enroll about 17.5 million students — that’s nearly equal the population of Chile — and some will be in my History of Irish Spirituality course.

They comprise every nationality and ethnic group you can imagine, all thrown into the college melting pot. They are eager, bright young people (a dean once told me never to call them “kids”) who soon enough will march across the stage, degrees in hand, ready to tame the world. First they have to tame a few papers and exams.


As for the professors, we have to learn about the new faces before us, and more than just their names. Each year, Beloit College in Wisconsin releases a college freshman “mindset” list of “cultural touchstones” for the newest students, born in 1991. The eclectic list includes some eye-openers for their elders.

For example, these newbies never used a library card catalogue, and text has always been “hyper.” They have always lived anxiously with high-stakes standardized testing. The European Union has always existed, as has the Cartoon Network. Everyone already knows the evening news well before the Evening News is televised. Someone has always been asking, “Was Iraq worth a war?” And there has always been blue Jell-O.

The convergence of pop culture and technology has created entire Jeopardy categories about which I know nothing. It has also robbed too many students of the best of Western and Eastern culture.

Students have heard of Madonna. But have they ever heard of William Butler Yeats? They know full well who Magic Johnson is. Can they identify the Book of Kells, or Seamus Heaney, or Brigid of Kildare?

We will read the history of spirituality in Ireland. Will they marvel at the trail of ancient Celts from the Burren to Newgrange? Will they wonder at the ruins of fabulous Cistercian and Augustinian abbeys? Are they curious about Anam Cara? You just don’t know.

I used to think the term “new beginning” was redundant. But every new school term is, indeed, a “new beginning.” New for me. New for them.


Some years ago, my teaching assistant would sit in front at my lectures, and signal when I used a word or made a reference that would fly by my students. After two or three years, even he had grown beyond the culture gap.

So what’s a teacher to do? That depends on what you think of teaching. I happen to think it’s fun, and a good and worthy vocation.

My profession is only partly about closing the culture gap between one generation and the next. We can stuff each other’s heads full of enough trivia to supply a thousand games of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” I can learn more about the latest fads or fashion. They can learn more about ancient burial mounds or about the Ardagh Chalice.

But what I really have to give these future leaders — these soon-to-be lawyers and doctors and rabbis and social workers — are the skills to learn about these things on their own. Yes, I’ll build the building for them, and this term I’ll paint it shamrock green. More importantly, however, will be the underlying foundation, and the scaffolding I put around the structure.

That foundation and scaffolding form the most important part of education and are the basis for what follows after. Yes, I’ll teach the history of Irish spirituality. But I’ll also teach the technical skills so they can keep on learning about religious history long after they’ve half forgotten about Croagh Patrick, or that there has always been blue Jell-O.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)


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