PRESIDENT’S ESSAY head, heart, hands
Dr. Stephen R. Briggs The purpose of Berry
HE HEADLINES ARE BERRYRELENTLESS: undertaking all manner of work necessary to differences. This practical learning occurs in “College costs too much,” “How sustain the institution, from growing crops, the residence halls, on the playing fields, in TLiberal Arts Colleges Are Failing tending livestock and preparing food to work settings, with work teams, with study America,” “The Campus Tsunami,” “The constructing the buildings in which they groups, and in the classroom. Learning how future of online vs. residential education,” lived, worked and studied. Martha intended to improve Berry as a campus community and “Come the Revolution.” to break the cycle of poverty in the hill provides a practical and principled lesson in Two articles landed on my desk recently. country of Northwest Georgia by investing in how to improve any community. One was titled “The End of the University as educated and morally sound families who Berry is also part of an extended commu We Know It.” Its central claim was that with would become the foundation for strong nity, the community of Rome and Floyd major universities providing access to free rural communities. County. Berry’s health and continued prosperity online lectures, half of America’s universities Martha sought out deserving and talented are contingent on the well-being of this larger will be closed in 50 years and “ten years boys and girls who had “sparkle in their neighborhood. Thus, Berry has a vested interest from now Harvard will enroll ten million eyes,” but her goal was not simply or in improving the community in which it students.” The logic is that “the Internet is a primarily to advance their eventual success resides by promoting economic development, great destroyer of any traditional business and prosperity. Students were taught to encouraging educational attainment, and that relies on the sale of information.” honor work. As she explained to them, “The building a vibrant culture for the arts and The other article highlighted “whiz kids co-ordination of the hand and head will recreation. Learning how Berry faculty, staff who were dropping out of college to pursue strengthen your earning ability and your and students can partner with other agencies riches and experiences through their own character and will enable you to render a to improve Rome and Floyd County, including entrepreneurial initiatives.” The point was valued service to humanity.” a specific commitment to early childhood that college is an unnecessary and time- And, for Martha, this valued service was education in South Rome, provides a consuming expense. normally rendered in one’s home community. practical and principled demonstration of What are we to make of these assumptions? service to an extended community. Is a college education really about the sale of AGENTS OF IMPROVEMENT Every year, Berry students and faculty information? If so, books should have put A century later, the world has changed also travel to communities afar – in places colleges out of business long ago. dramatically, as have the communities that like Costa Rica and Uganda – to invest time And is college primarily a means for send students to Berry. Yet, the purpose of and resources in children and families in increasing one’s personal wealth? Evidence Berry endures: to prepare graduates with the order to promote economic development, demonstrates that a college degree is knowledge, experience, integrity and passion healthy families and educational attainment associated with many benefits including to improve the places where they choose to in our global communities. These students higher salaries, better health, more stable live and work. And the means for achieving are deeply affected by the relationships they marriages and better opportunities for one’s this purpose – an education of the head, form and the resiliency and warmth of these children. Even so, a college degree that does heart and hands – remains effective, which is developing and rural communities. not focus on what it means to live a why Berry holds firmly to a residential model Berry also occupies a large footprint. worthwhile life – a life imbued with meaning of education. Although never wholly self-sustaining, the and purpose – leaves one uneducated in the As a residential campus, Berry is a living college has land resources and assets that most profound way. laboratory where students experience allow it to serve as a model of stewardship in firsthand what it means to form, sustain and the production of food, water and timber SPARKLE IN THEIR EYES improve a community of learners. Each year resources. In particular, Berry’s land holdings When Martha Berry first established her anew, the community must organize and provide an opportunity to define a healthy residential school, she emphasized a model govern itself to create shared expectations, place – one that emphasizes environmental that “teaches by doing” with students pursue goals, resolve conflicts and negotiate well-being and assesses the role of environ
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mental influences on human and animal • Understand the use of empirical service, why should our graduates embrace health through epidemiologic and laboratory reasoning to test ideas and draw as an obligation that which is often not investigations. Berry’s opportunity in this conclusions rewarded or valued by society? To my mind, area is substantial because it aligns with a • Understand how complicated systems the need to probe this question reinforces the national “One Health” initiative “dedicated operate, whether those systems are social position that a college education must focus to improving the lives of all species – human (economic, political, cultural) or natural on what it means to live a life of value to BERRY and animal – through the integration of (biochemical, ecological, organismic) others and why we must do so; otherwise, it human medicine, veterinary medicine and • Recommend practical, principled and is instruction that leaves one uneducated in environmental science.” Learning how to creative solutions to the problem. the most profound ways. improve and inhabit Berry as an ecosystem In the liberal arts tradition, analytical In our moment of time, when provides a practical and principled model of skills of this sort, which can be used to technological advances are pervasive and stewardship of place and creation. generate inspired solutions to the kind of communication immediate, it is easy to take What makes Berry special, then, is how it thorny issues that confront society today, are our freedoms and relative affluence for purposefully prepares graduates through learned in and across many disciplines. granted – as if we were entitled to them. Our academic rigor and practical experience to While no one discipline provides the perfect culture and our own impulses encourage us be agents of improvement. Berry’s success lens, each contributes in a distinctive and to seize this moment and live it to the fullest. can be evaluated in terms of whether its content-rich way when it purposefully helps What makes us most human, however, is our graduates employ the analytical, problem- students to reason critically about pressing very ability to not take things for granted – to solving and persuasive skills needed to make problems. be self-aware about our moment in time and a place better. Does a teacher have the vision At the heart of this same tradition is an to wrestle with the deep and enduring and insight to improve a whole school and exploration of what it means to live a “good questions of our own fragile and fleeting not just one classroom? Does a real estate life.” Are we obligated to serve? If so, what is existence and what it means to live developer have the desire to improve a the basis of this obligation? responsibly. whole corridor and not just the parcels he or For Martha Berry, the basis was compelling. In the end, critics are correct to assert she owns? Does a medical doctor have an Serving (“to minister,” as Berry’s motto puts that the residential model of education is obligation to improve the local hospital? it) pours directly and reflexively from a well- time-consuming and expensive. (Although in Asking graduates to think beyond their formed Christian faith, which is why the terms of debt, for most students four-year own immediate assignment is asking them to “heart” portion of Berry’s motto was critical college debt is less than the cost of a Ford embrace a broader sense of “ownership.” If in her mind. The message of Mark 10:45, F-150.) After all, the residential model Berry asks its graduates to serve in this from which our Biblical motto of service was endeavors to do more than sell information capacity – to be agents of improvement – drawn, was countercultural in Christ’s time, via digital lectures distributed through then it should be clear about how it prepares just as it is now. “massively open online courses.” I agree with them to this end. What is service from this context? Timothy columnist David Brooks that “people learn Keller (see Every Good Endeavor) defines from the people they love” and that THE PRACTICAL AND REFLECTIVE VALUE OF this kind of service as “putting the needs of acquiring information more readily online THE LIBERAL ARTS others ahead of our own, or putting the (which is but the first and most trivial level What enables people to be agents of needs of the community ahead of our of learning) allows liberal arts colleges to improvement? Of course, they must be able individual needs.” Service of this kind move “up the value chain – away from to communicate ideas clearly and concisely – teaches self-knowledge, promotes community information transmission and up to higher orally and visually as well as in writing. At and yields joy. Service offered in humility things.” We should all care more about these the least, they also must be able to reason teaches us to understand our own aptitudes, higher things. critically about complex problems. In other draws us away from our consumer (meet my The purpose of Berry – the Berry model – words, as part of their essential learning at needs) mindset and into relationships, and is to develop critical and creative problem- Berry, they should be able to: allows us to see ourselves as part of a larger solvers who care enough to want to be • See a problem in context and from story. Paradoxically, if we serve primarily to agents of change in the communities in multiple perspectives bolster our identity, it isn’t really serving, and which they live and work – agents of • Gather and interpret evidence relevant we miss the benefits. improvement and peacemakers who are life to the problem Absent a well-formed foundation for ready. B
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