Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2012 13:02:25 GMT
SOme of Whelan's comments require closer attention. He begins by recalling the view of a Northern Ireland police ombudsman that it would be a mistake for the PSNI to have a separate police academy on the grounds that this promotes a separate "canteen culture" of separateness from and superiority over the wider population. (Whelan omits one specific factor involved - fear that such a mentality leads to identification with one side in a communally divided society - which is not really at issue here.)
EXTRACTS
St Patrick’s College in Maynooth is taking steps to more clearly separate the seminary environment from the wider university environment. It is a move towards further enforced separation between the Catholic priesthood and society generally and is therefore a step in the wrong direction.
Non-clerics of both genders who studied at Maynooth in the post-Vatican II years speak affectionately of the role which seminarians, then a critical mass, used to play in college life.
In those days the seminarians argued, debated, larked about, partied, got involved in emotional entanglements and attended to their studies as hard and as often as the non-seminarians at Maynooth did.[HERE'S THE FIRST ISSUE - IS IT REALLY APPROPRIATE FOR SEMINARIANS, WHO ARE TAKING PRELIMINARY STEPS TOWARDS A VOCATION REQUIRING CELIBACY TO "LARK ABOUT, PARTY, AND EXPERIENCE EMOTIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS" TO THE SAME EXTENT AS LAY STUDENTS? EVEN IF ONE WERE TO ARGUE THAT THIS IS A MEANS OF TESTING VOCATION, DOESN'T IT INVOLVE THE RISK OF IRRESPONSIBLE AND SELFISH BEHAVIOUR BOTH BY SEMINARIANS AND BY LAY STUDENTS WHO MIGHT BECOME INVOLVED WITH THEM, AND IN THE 1970S CONTEXT DIDN'T IT ENCOURAGE THE SORT OF FALSE HOPES - WHICH ARE SUCH A FEATURE OF HARDING'S REMINISCENCES - WHICH LED SOME SEMINARIANS TO ASSUME CELIBACY WOULD SOON BE ABOLISHED AND THUS TO PROCEEDING TO ORDINATION UNDER FALSE PRETENCES?]
In recent years, of course, the number of seminarians has dwindled because of the fall in vocations... [AND MIGHT THERE NOT BE A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE FALL IN VOCATIONS AND WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DESCRIBED? SHOULD THEY NOT BE FOCUSSED ON LEARNING FROM MENTORS - BOTH BY WORD AND BY OBSERVATION - WHAT THE PRIESTLY LIFE ENTAILS BEFORE DECIDING IF IT IS FOR THEM?]
Given their dwindling numbers, the institutionally protective mindset which contributed to the errors made in handling allegations of clerical child abuse [SO IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH HIS VIEW ON SEMINARY EDUCATION YOU'RE PROMOTING CHILD ABUSE?] and the need for a revitalised church to integrate more into the community[WHAT EXACTLY DOES HE MEAN BY THIS? NOTE HE SEES THE CHURCH ONLY AS THE CLERGY, AND DISMISSES THE IDEA THAT THE CLERGY HAVE A SPECIFIC ROLE WITHIN THE CHURCH], one would have thought the apostolic visitation should be encouraging greater integration of their seminarians into college life rather than less.
The church is not the only organisation which should be integrating its education into mainstream third-level campuses. The freeze on recruitment has left the recently expanded Garda training college campus in Templemore almost vacant. Financial pressures and competition law concerns have put the future of separate education institutions for the legal professions in doubt. These difficulties should be seen as an opportunity.
Most of the education of doctors – apart from necessary hospital-based course work – has long been carried out in medical schools anchored in the main universities. More recently, the education of nurses, once done on the wards and in adjoining nurses’ residential halls, has been transferred to universities and upgraded in the process.
Even primary school teaching, which was once based in designated institutions where trainee teachers lived, is now more diverse. Many primary school teachers get all their education in universities and indeed an increasing number of them acquire their professional education online.
If professional education in a university setting works for doctors, nurses and teachers, then there is no reason why it should not work as well for barristers, solicitors or gardaí.
The standing of many once overly revered professions or careers has taken a hit in recent decades. That is a healthy thing. Respect from the community they serve is something they should earn rather than something to which they are entitled. Learning and living in the real world, at least in their student days, can only be a positive thing for people.
END
A couple of points:
First, he assumes that university life constitutes the "mainstream" rather than being a particular sort of hothouse environment in which students are partly exempted from some of life's responsibilities - a milieu with its own advantages and limitations. Indeed, it is frequently noted that the move from on-the-job training to university education in certain professions has had damaging effects in come cases - for example, a view of the nursing profession in which the bodily care of the sick with its necessary unpleasant aspects, instead of being at the centre of nursing, is seen as beneath the dignity of an educated nurse, or the tendency for university-educated journalists to see the world through a set of politically correct attitudes acquired at university rather than learning from experience as their predecessors did. (It does not occur to Mr Whelan, for example, that the orientation courses which the IRISH TIMES runs for its new recruits, and the weekly editorial conferences at which its editorial staff discuss their coverage, produce an "us against them" mindset of exactly the type he is criticising in the professions - but of course he only disapproves of groupthink when it inculcates views with which he disagrees.) And of course the insistence on university attendance as a precondition for professional qualification itself tends to produce certain types of class division. (In this context, the view that one should necessarily get an university degree before considering the priesthood has some problematic effects IMHO.)
Second, he sees a profession as a 9-5 job rather than a vocation requiring the commitment of one's whole life, a vocation requiring a certain espirit de corps to sustain its challenges. This is part of a wider post-60s shift (going back further, I think it owes something to Cold War liberalism with its emphasis on individual rebellion against conformism) which criticises older views of professional formation as being authoritarian mystification and conspiracy against the public good, rather than as necessary to uphold certain standards and perform certain tasks (e.g. doctors need to cut people open without being squeamish, soldiers need to go into battle without succumbing to their natural impulse to run away when someone shoots at you). One might call it a turn away from an Aristotelean view - that virtue is exemplified by certain practices which cannot always be reduced to writing and which require embodiment within a milieu and learning by example/imitation/conformity - to a Platonic one - that virtue is based on certain abstract principles which can be stated and against which practice must be judged and criticised. Of course the libertarian reaction did rebel against genuine evils (certain forms of medical malpractice, police corruption, abuse of authority etc) but it has its downside which also needs to be assessed.
EXTRACTS
St Patrick’s College in Maynooth is taking steps to more clearly separate the seminary environment from the wider university environment. It is a move towards further enforced separation between the Catholic priesthood and society generally and is therefore a step in the wrong direction.
Non-clerics of both genders who studied at Maynooth in the post-Vatican II years speak affectionately of the role which seminarians, then a critical mass, used to play in college life.
In those days the seminarians argued, debated, larked about, partied, got involved in emotional entanglements and attended to their studies as hard and as often as the non-seminarians at Maynooth did.[HERE'S THE FIRST ISSUE - IS IT REALLY APPROPRIATE FOR SEMINARIANS, WHO ARE TAKING PRELIMINARY STEPS TOWARDS A VOCATION REQUIRING CELIBACY TO "LARK ABOUT, PARTY, AND EXPERIENCE EMOTIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS" TO THE SAME EXTENT AS LAY STUDENTS? EVEN IF ONE WERE TO ARGUE THAT THIS IS A MEANS OF TESTING VOCATION, DOESN'T IT INVOLVE THE RISK OF IRRESPONSIBLE AND SELFISH BEHAVIOUR BOTH BY SEMINARIANS AND BY LAY STUDENTS WHO MIGHT BECOME INVOLVED WITH THEM, AND IN THE 1970S CONTEXT DIDN'T IT ENCOURAGE THE SORT OF FALSE HOPES - WHICH ARE SUCH A FEATURE OF HARDING'S REMINISCENCES - WHICH LED SOME SEMINARIANS TO ASSUME CELIBACY WOULD SOON BE ABOLISHED AND THUS TO PROCEEDING TO ORDINATION UNDER FALSE PRETENCES?]
In recent years, of course, the number of seminarians has dwindled because of the fall in vocations... [AND MIGHT THERE NOT BE A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE FALL IN VOCATIONS AND WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DESCRIBED? SHOULD THEY NOT BE FOCUSSED ON LEARNING FROM MENTORS - BOTH BY WORD AND BY OBSERVATION - WHAT THE PRIESTLY LIFE ENTAILS BEFORE DECIDING IF IT IS FOR THEM?]
Given their dwindling numbers, the institutionally protective mindset which contributed to the errors made in handling allegations of clerical child abuse [SO IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH HIS VIEW ON SEMINARY EDUCATION YOU'RE PROMOTING CHILD ABUSE?] and the need for a revitalised church to integrate more into the community[WHAT EXACTLY DOES HE MEAN BY THIS? NOTE HE SEES THE CHURCH ONLY AS THE CLERGY, AND DISMISSES THE IDEA THAT THE CLERGY HAVE A SPECIFIC ROLE WITHIN THE CHURCH], one would have thought the apostolic visitation should be encouraging greater integration of their seminarians into college life rather than less.
The church is not the only organisation which should be integrating its education into mainstream third-level campuses. The freeze on recruitment has left the recently expanded Garda training college campus in Templemore almost vacant. Financial pressures and competition law concerns have put the future of separate education institutions for the legal professions in doubt. These difficulties should be seen as an opportunity.
Most of the education of doctors – apart from necessary hospital-based course work – has long been carried out in medical schools anchored in the main universities. More recently, the education of nurses, once done on the wards and in adjoining nurses’ residential halls, has been transferred to universities and upgraded in the process.
Even primary school teaching, which was once based in designated institutions where trainee teachers lived, is now more diverse. Many primary school teachers get all their education in universities and indeed an increasing number of them acquire their professional education online.
If professional education in a university setting works for doctors, nurses and teachers, then there is no reason why it should not work as well for barristers, solicitors or gardaí.
The standing of many once overly revered professions or careers has taken a hit in recent decades. That is a healthy thing. Respect from the community they serve is something they should earn rather than something to which they are entitled. Learning and living in the real world, at least in their student days, can only be a positive thing for people.
END
A couple of points:
First, he assumes that university life constitutes the "mainstream" rather than being a particular sort of hothouse environment in which students are partly exempted from some of life's responsibilities - a milieu with its own advantages and limitations. Indeed, it is frequently noted that the move from on-the-job training to university education in certain professions has had damaging effects in come cases - for example, a view of the nursing profession in which the bodily care of the sick with its necessary unpleasant aspects, instead of being at the centre of nursing, is seen as beneath the dignity of an educated nurse, or the tendency for university-educated journalists to see the world through a set of politically correct attitudes acquired at university rather than learning from experience as their predecessors did. (It does not occur to Mr Whelan, for example, that the orientation courses which the IRISH TIMES runs for its new recruits, and the weekly editorial conferences at which its editorial staff discuss their coverage, produce an "us against them" mindset of exactly the type he is criticising in the professions - but of course he only disapproves of groupthink when it inculcates views with which he disagrees.) And of course the insistence on university attendance as a precondition for professional qualification itself tends to produce certain types of class division. (In this context, the view that one should necessarily get an university degree before considering the priesthood has some problematic effects IMHO.)
Second, he sees a profession as a 9-5 job rather than a vocation requiring the commitment of one's whole life, a vocation requiring a certain espirit de corps to sustain its challenges. This is part of a wider post-60s shift (going back further, I think it owes something to Cold War liberalism with its emphasis on individual rebellion against conformism) which criticises older views of professional formation as being authoritarian mystification and conspiracy against the public good, rather than as necessary to uphold certain standards and perform certain tasks (e.g. doctors need to cut people open without being squeamish, soldiers need to go into battle without succumbing to their natural impulse to run away when someone shoots at you). One might call it a turn away from an Aristotelean view - that virtue is exemplified by certain practices which cannot always be reduced to writing and which require embodiment within a milieu and learning by example/imitation/conformity - to a Platonic one - that virtue is based on certain abstract principles which can be stated and against which practice must be judged and criticised. Of course the libertarian reaction did rebel against genuine evils (certain forms of medical malpractice, police corruption, abuse of authority etc) but it has its downside which also needs to be assessed.