Andre Gushurst-Moore
Angelico Press 2020
This is an important book, not only for those involved in Catholic education, but for anyone who wants to think seriously about the purposes of education in Western culture. It far outweighs anything I have read from the mass production line of education journals, leadership handbooks or the pens of (even quite distinguished) school leaders in the last thirty years. Andre Gushurst-Moore, an experienced teacher, has given us a work of scholarship and wisdom which, if given the attention it deserves and acted upon by those with the power to influence the future of education, could rescue our schools from the arid clichés that have come to claim authority but which are in reality shallow appropriations from the rhetoric of political ideology and management consultancy.
Let us leave Catholic doctrine and even religion out of it for the moment, for there is much for those who hold with neither of these to learn from this book. The book is arranged in eight logical chapters, each of which, though for the purpose of argument entails a certain amount of repetition, repays careful reflective reading (one of the themes I will focus on in this review). Its bibliography records wide and cultured reading across the spectrum of classical, medieval, early modern, Victorian (Newman is a touchstone) and modern writers (Einstein, Thomas Merton and George Steiner among them).
The whole proposition of the book is based on a particular history and the traditions flowing therefrom in order to answer the question how is it possible to offer to the modern world an education based on ancient wisdom? It is taken for granted that a Catholic and Benedictine education depends on a particular philosophy of life and that this philosophy of life no longer enjoys an assumed place in Western culture and institutions. Nevertheless, Gushurst-Moore argues that the wisdom of the pre-scientific world, in which learning is pursued not for instrumental ends of getting and spending but for living better lives, provides a powerful inspiration for the revitalising of our schools.
The central historical character is St Benedict with his many titles, Messenger of Peace, Architect of Unity, Teacher of Civilisation and Culture, Patron of the Whole of Europe among them. His monasteries, shaped by his sixth-century Rule, as a way of life requiring the art and craft of making home a place of refreshment, light and peace. It was the spread of centres of monasticism that remade the cultural unity of the West after the disintegration of Roman rule in the sixth century. The life of St Benedict himself is a story of response to urban breakdown and receptive engagement with the barbarians who both caused and were subject to the decay of Roman civility. Despite the vicissitudes of history, and the times and places where monasticism seems to have been extinguished, Gushurst-Moore reminds us that no other institution, movement or organisation has had such a decisive effect on the character of Western Christian civilisation.
Out of this history flows a tradition by which the purpose and methods of teaching took form and substance. This is a tradition that resists the modern privileging of knowledge over wisdom and challenges the prevalent ideas about equality and access as a sufficient moral programme in themselves: it unmasks the modern promotion of a certain kind of cleverness, a self-congratulatory mental agility, a habit of superficial worldly success suitable to the politics of the time, rather than cultivating the deeper life of the mind and the heart. This tradition sees teachers as links in a chain of influence through simplicity, humanity, gentleness allied to strength, a clear and sane mind, and a capacity to give and receive love: the best of its practitioners convey an awareness of the connectedness of all things and they help to form the young in those inner directions that make for an openness to truth and beauty, moral goodness, inner freedom and the voice of conscience. Here truth cannot be reduced to information, data, evidence or even knowledge: all ways of seeing the world, through art, geography and architecture, through the camera lens or the lens of the microscope, have the potential to reveal beauty. Teachers continue their relationship with a subject they discovered as students that they have come to love. In sharing that love they meet a hunger for joy and meaning in their students. Every lesson will reveal a mutual respect between teacher and pupil, because good teachers are living examples of the good life of service.
This model of teaching reintroduces a culture of deep reading in an educational world where reading has become the skimming of screens for information. The Rule of Benedict has senior monks patrol the monastery to see that the prescribed reading periods are being observed. Herereading is the gateway to human freedom. The process of reading, writing about and discussing books and texts has a transforming effect on the individual. As a result of reading (in the monastic setting lectio divina) the reader finds herself feeling, imagining, thinking and acting differently. The material given for reading should be such as to promote spiritual growth, not just intellectual curiosity, but that which promotes spiritual growth can include a wide range of reading, as Gushurst-Moore’s own bibliography exhibits. Through reading comes an understanding of self through story. In the same way, we experience the meaning of life in music and art, promoting a poetic view of the world in which the ultimate human artifact is a human life well lived.
What does leadership look like in this culture of teaching? Inner confidence and calm is the hallmark of the good leader and teacher: he makes things grow. In the monastic context the abbot is paterfamilias who expects obedience from his monks, but obedience more often in the spirit of co-operation than diktat. In that way leadership is distributed through the community. Benedict’s abbot realises he always has much to learn as a leader. Heads of schools and their staff might expect a similar obedience from their pupils, but only to the extent that they themselves set a good example, speak and act for the benefit of others, avoid favouritism, keep good order, use discretion and judgement, anticipate wrongdoing, be mindful of the abuse of power, adapt to human nature and the nature of individuals and finally, be ready to give an account of themselves. In short, heads and teachers, like abbots, must be skilful in the way they manage others. Good leadership shows itself in how well those around the leader are doing their jobs. Finding the right note and tone for criticism is especially important. Correction and how it should be done is a major subject of the Rule, as is the spirit of hospitality, which opens the leader to ideas and perspectives from outside his experience, and makes the community an organism rather than a mechanism
Where is humility in our modern politics, commerce and the cult of celebrity, Gushurst-Moore asks. Humility is about seeing yourself as you are, not as a prettified image constructed for your Facebook page. Knowing ourselves as we really are is about recognising and understanding our weakness; only then can we sympathise and empathise with the weakness of others. An education in humility is an education of the heart more than of the mind. Human beings are most likely to find meaning and happiness, as Gushurst-Moore vividly puts it, not in the “sugar-coated, brightly-coloured and noisy ephemera of a diabetic culture hooked on commodities”, but “in enduring relationships, a creativity of mind and heart, a grounding in the natural world, and a sense of value in being of service to others.” (p56)
Here we come to a popular subject in the prospectuses of many schools. Leadership requires character and teaching is about the formation of character. “Who is there with a love of true life and a longing for days of real fulfilment?” asks Benedict in the Rule. Too often schools lack confidence and purpose in giving moral direction and we have to face the fact that education is failing to develop in the young the most important human qualities, the deepest areas of human life. It is time again to hear the age-old language of Roman virtue: self-restraint, order, dignity, obedience, respect for elders. Here we find a thread connecting the modern world with late antiquity. The language of the virtues is the framework that supports the growth of character. It is virtues rather than values that make things happen. Study itself is an exercise in virtue, balanced by other creative activities such as playing sport, acting in a play or making music in an orchestra. Education in character is not an idea or a philosophy but an experience that includes other learners: that is why we need schools (for the Lord’s service or not) living out reality in real time, place and personal relationships.
Gushurst-Moore’s presentation of the history of teaching, reading, leadership and character development in the Western tradition of the love of learning, which is essentially a Benedictine deposit, is a timely call to roots to which all educational leaders, of all faiths or none, could profitably respond. The tap root of it all is, of course, the desire for the God revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sustained down the ages in the Catholic tradition of faith and morals. That is what gives the book its title, Glory in All things, and it is that which gives ultimate meaning, authenticity and power to its project of the human person and its flourishing. When Catholic schools live up to their inheritance they have it all.
On page 145 of this admirable book, Pope Benedict asks the critical question: “…what are the qualities you see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What kind of person would you really like to be?”
That is the question, and this book offers an abundance of guidance to its best answering.
Reading Hour 