On Thursday, November 7, Timothy O’Malley stood at the podium inside the University of Saint Francis’ Achatz Hall of Science during the first of what organizers hope will be a successful series of lectures on building up the culture of life in Fort Wayne and the wider community. O’Malley, who is the director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life and the academic director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, as well as a parishioner at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger, was the inaugural speaker for the Cultura Vitae Lecture Series, co-hosted by the University of Saint Francis and the Chesterton Academy of St. Scholastica, a new classical Catholic high school in Fort Wayne. TIMOTHY O’MALLEY According to the Chesterton Academy’s website: “The Cultura Vitae Lecture Series was established during Chesterton Academy’s inaugural academic year as an effort of the school to educate the greater community and to build what Pope John Paul II called ‘the culture of life.’ To that end, the series is dedicated to bringing scholars and accomplished individuals to speak on a variety of issues that directly affect the protection of the human person, the family, and the building up of the common good.” Kicking off the series with his lecture on “Contemplative Education and the Dignity of the Human Person,” O’Malley encouraged educators to give their students space and time for curiosity, to foster a sense of wonder, and to allow them to think deeply. The goal of education is – or should be, especially in Catholic schools, O’Malley said – to form students who love to learn for the sake of knowledge instead of solely memorizing material in order to pass the next test. Photos by Scott WardenTimothy O’Malley, director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, speaks on the importance of contemplative education at the University of Saint Francis on Thursday, November 7. Toward the beginning of his talk, O’Malley used an example from his own family to illustrate the importance of allowing a child to learn at his or her own pace – to have them build on their own interests and allow this desire of knowledge to grow organically. His 7-year-old daughter, O’Malley said, began tinkering with the family’s piano one day. She progressed to imitating songs she heard on the radio. O’Malley said that unlike many parents in today’s culture, he and his wife didn’t rush out immediately to sign her up for formal lessons. They let her interest build, allowing her to progress at the pace she desired. “Only after she came to see the gift of the piano did she ask for lessons,” he said. This is the gift parents and educators should give to their children – especially if the goal is to foster a culture of life in our society, O’Malley said. “If an educational apostle is to respond to this culture of death, this technocratic paradigm that elevates practicality over the pursuit of truth, it will be through the mission of cultivating contemplative dispositions among young people,” O’Malley said. “Classical education is often perceived exclusively as a rebellion against curricula that ignores the classics of civilization, all the while relying on technology to do the work of instruction. But what if classical education is practiced as a prophetic exercise in cultivating the human dignity of the student, the teacher, and thereby the whole social order? Of awakening those nascent, contemplative dispositions that foster a way of perceiving creation not as raw material for technique but as a gift to be received, pondered, and ultimately loved?” O’Malley noted that the curriculum proposed by most educators these days – at all levels, from the kindergarten classroom through college lecture halls – are aimed at giving students the skills to succeed once their education ends. “But an essential dimension of education is forgotten here: the need to slow down, to wonder, and therefore to first behold the gift that is being proposed in the educational act,” O’Malley said. “The classroom is not first a place of work or labor but of wonder. True happiness for all creatures is grounded in this wonder, in the leisure to first receive the world as that which is graciously given rather than posed upon the will.” Too many educators today – including parents – are teaching through force, which strips away the dignity of the child. Instead, O’Malley suggested, we should be introducing material to our young people and encouraging them to ask simply, “What is it?” Then we must allow them the space to find the answer. When this happens, “the educator ceases to be some agent of the state, training a future generation of young people whose telos is economic production,” O’Malley said. “The teacher is a co-participant in fostering wonder, of creating a festive classroom infused with material worth beholding.” This should extend beyond language and math skills to include the beauty of creation, O’Malley said, as “students must spend time outside, beholding and wondering what they see. They should look upon beautiful works of art, letting their sight be formed to see more than what is initially visible.” Fostering this type of learning forms the whole person, giving students the tools to help them figure out not only if a thing is worth looking at, but is it true? “And if it’s true,” O’Malley proposed, “what are the consequences for me?” Getting children to ask these types of questions will allow them to interact with the material not only through the eyes of their instructors but in a unique and personal way. This, O’Malley said, fosters a key aspect of education that is too rare in today’s society: dialogue. “It is not simply the great work of literature or the ideas that matter,” O’Malley said. “It is the voice of the student and educator alike wrestling with the material, seeking to know and understand what is proposed in the text or idea alongside one another. … That freedom to ponder, to ask about the truth of what is being offered, is the difference between indoctrination and education.” O’Malley continued: “A contemplative education grounded in a dialogical pondering upholds the dignity of the student by refusing to indoctrinate. The writings of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Teresa of Avila are worth reading because they present truth. … The intelligent student will have critiques, but they present a dimension of truth, which any wise person should wrestle with if they are to become pursuers of the truth themselves. It is never enough to say that something is worth reading because it is a ‘great book.’ Rather, a book is great because it presents a facet of the truth essential to human flourishing. And knowing the truth can set you free. If the proposal about human life offered by great thinkers from the past is true, then it changes the meaning of my life here and now,” O’Malley said. “We study great works of literature or mathematical proofs not because one day we will need to do so as laborers,” he said. “Such an assumption reduces every man or woman to their careers. Yes, human beings should be able to pursue (one day) meaningful work, but they should pursue this work in a way that each person, no matter their career, has become a seeker of truth. They ask questions, often critical or discerning ones, that unveil the various manipulations of political or cultural propaganda. This is a vocation of every person, whether they attend Harvard, a local community college, or enter a trade upon graduation from high school.” This is because “a contemplative education of pondering inoculates against and empowers graduates to seek and pursue the truth,” O’Malley continued. “It is always worth asking the question in conversation with our neighbor, ‘But is it true? And if so, what does it mean to me?’ Again, this is a slower education, one incompatible with the kind of things measured by standardized tests. But it is one necessary for the flourishing of a culture of life in our own day.” Timothy O’Malley, director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, speaks on the importance of contemplative education at the University of Saint Francis on Thursday, November 7. O’Malley, who also teaches theology at Notre Dame, told the audience that he often asks his students which they enjoy more: the scholastic or extracurricular dimensions of the university. Unsurprisingly, 75 percent or so say they have “apathy for the educational environment, that they are only in college because they need a credential for whatever comes next.” This way of thinking, he added, “is a mark of anti-humane education, one that has confused the classroom for the mechanism of the factory.” What is needed to counteract this mindset, O’Malley said, “is a reclamation of the festive quality of education. Education is always more about festivity than force.” Quoting the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, O’Malley said that “true festivity is always grounded in loving recognition of the gift that is received and given. The presence of worship, therefore, in the Catholic or Christian school, is not ancillary to the curriculum. Again, it is the prophetic introduction of a transcendent love into all that student and teacher do. The Eucharist gaze and reception at Mass is a doxological act, a profession that I am not my own – and, therefore, I need Jesus Christ to come to me, to complete me. This liturgical way of being, founded in a love that I cannot create but can only receive, becomes defining of every dimension of the school. Every act of bending the knee of worship underlines that, before anything else, we are made for gift. And it reveals the meaning of all education: We are created as receivers of a gift that surpasses all human understanding, but if we look lively in the present, we can begin to see the presence of that gift even here.” O’Malley concluded by showing how a strong, foundational, contemplative education can build up the culture of life. “Slowing down, pondering truth, and loving this search may not seem like the kind of exercises that will end abortion, the death penalty, or the wars that disrupt human society,” O’Malley said. “But if the culture of death is defined by efficiency and inhumane reduction of the human person to a machine, then developing contemplative habits necessary for human happiness in the school is the beginning of developing a culture of life. Perhaps among educational apostolates, the most prophetic thing we might do as people of faith, in a late modern context addicted to speed and control is to look, think, and love. Such an education, especially in a Catholic milieu, should be available to every person created in the image and likeness of God who desires it.” Scott Warden is editor-in-chief of Today’s Catholic. The post Lecture at Saint Francis highlights the Importance of a Contemplative Education appeared first on Today's Catholic.