Schoolwork: Catholic School, Moral Capital

For:
English Theory
Dr. Eva Badowska

“Fordham University, ‘Moral Capital’: A Lofty Seat in the Canon Debate”
Salvatore Brown

John Guillory’s “From Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation” brings a skeptical eye to Fordham University’s mission statement: “Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York, is committed to the discovery of Wisdom and the transmission of Learning, through research and through undergraduate, graduate and professional education of the highest quality. Guided by its Catholic and Jesuit traditions, Fordham fosters the intellectual, moral and religious development of its students and prepares them for leadership in a global society (http://www.fordham.edu/, #1).”
The religious and theological text tradition, an integral part of Fordham University’s core curriculum and broader historical and social underpinnings, acts effectively as a second “cultural” monolith alongside the philosophical body of traditional text described in Guillory’s “Cultural Capital.” Viewed within Guillory’s model of the school as an institution, the Jesuit university’s congenital inclusion of both theological and philosophical text traditions in its curriculum must result in an even more confused, convoluted, and archaic educational vision than is typical. This addition of theology to the traditional, humanities-driven core curriculum only overstuffs it with dated, ideological stipulations characteristic of the traditionalist “right” in Guillory’s canon debate. Little room is left to incorporate even the most rudimentary of theoretical progressions in the debate from the “multiculturalist” side.
The university’s mission statement already evokes Guillory’s descriptions of the widely-held, misguided beliefs in “cultural capital” about the power of universities to transmit national culture. But it then goes further by suggesting that the school can also impart a kind of “moral” capital as well. And if the university’s transference of national “cultural capital” to its students is a false promise given to patrons and parents, a “most deluded assumption (Guillory, 1472),” then what can one say about a university’s promise of “moral” transference? Guillory has already shown “Culture” to be a word too much abused and exploited in the world of education. What is “Morality” then but a similar, flexible concept used to tempt possible patrons and students with some illusory benefit? Guillory says that schools transmit not a greater national culture to their students, but the individual cultures of schools themselves. Schools effectively have to sell their particular “culture” as an item that will prove to be nationally or socially advantageous. Fordham University holds the bar even higher, attempting to sell “capital” with value not only in the national, social sphere but also in the “spiritual” one. Although this concept may seem to complicate a Guillory view of the school, this additional brand of “capital” can be viewed in much the same way as cultural capital, only with slightly different sources and aims. The promise of “moral capital” works to target the specific group of potential patrons and parents who ascribe to a popular, historical ideology idolizing and elevating classical “Jesuit” education. The specific “culture” this supposedly projects upon Fordham students is most desirable to this select subset of typically privileged Catholic patrons who ascribe to Catholic religious ideology, but the school also targets a much broader group by drawing upon the historical connotations of “Jesuit” institutions as places of higher learning with traditionally rigorous educational standards. By viewing Fordham University’s core curriculum and institutional statements in light of John Guillory’s consideration of cultural capital and the canon debate, the ineffectual, deluded, exclusive and dated nature of the school’s current approach to curricula can be realized.
Fordham lags tragically in the canon debate, offering a core curriculum saturated with humanities and theology. Only recently has the institution begun to incorporate more leftist, obligatory multicultural elements; but these multicultural elements appear almost nowhere in the core curriculum. “Pluralism” and “Globalism” requirements appear tacked onto the university’s heavily traditional regimen of Theology, English, Philosophy, Sciences, Arts, and Mathematics. The two courses exist to address the modern political preoccupation with national and international diversity. Only a few of Fordham’s other required subjects, such as Social Sciences and Fine Arts, contain options that could be viewed as slightly leftist or multicultural, and these are all laughably headlined with the word “Urban” or “Urbanism.” The inclusion of these minor leftist components of the Fordham curriculum not only come late in the debate’s progression, but like most leftist attempts at canon resolution they once again highlight the grand mistake of modern educational theory: “The fact that we now expect the curriculum to reflect as a principle of its organization the very distinctness of cultures, Western or non-Western, canonical or non-canonical, points to a certain insistent error of culturalist politics, its elision of the difference school itself makes in the supposed transmission of culture (Guillory, 1476-7).” The traditionalist presence in Fordham’s core curriculum is obvious. The statement on the first year philosophy requirement reads like an illustrative example of Guillory’s critique, promising to “introduce students to some of the most basic questions regarding human existence and to assist them in becoming more philosophically informed, critical and self-reflective (http://www.fordham.edu/, #2).” Fordham students read from the biggest names in the history of philosophy, from Plato to Descartes to Kant. Guillory describes how such a venerative treatment of philosophy acts in favor of the traditionalist perspective, saying: “defenders of the canon extended the debate to the question of the humanities curriculum as a whole… by resurrecting the philosophical text tradition as the basis for that core curriculum. This text tradition can be invoked… to maintain the fiction of a profound evolution or destiny of Western thought extending from the pre-Socratics to the present (Guillory, 1475).” Even separate from the rightist tradition its core curriculum embodies, Fordham specifically benefits from this philosophy-focused approach as a way to bolster its appearance as a member of the elite Jesuit tradition of education; an appearance with vast appeal for the group it targets, and one that serves to catalyze continued enrollment and funding.
In another attempt to broaden its scope and modernize, Fordham gives a generous amount of aid to disadvantaged minority students from the local Bronx community and the nation, many of whom have never read traditional philosophy texts. The most classical segments of Fordham’s core curriculum become an even less effective educational tool when presented to those students who’ve never encountered traditional humanities material before, according to Guillory: “the formal study of a set list of ‘great’ works is condemned to have something of a remedial status for those students who have not read literary or philosophical works, either historical or contemporary, at the lower levels of the system, and who will not continue to study them after their sophomore year(Guillory, 1480).” And if an upper-middle class prep-school graduate, familiar with classical philosophy, can no longer redeem value from Fordham’s freshman philosophy requirements if he or she ceases their study in the next year, then what does a graduate of a disadvantaged public school in the Bronx stand to gain from them? Regardless of this, and of whether or not the core curriculum is lost on students who have or haven’t encountered similar materials before, all students do leave Fordham University with some “cultural capital” in the form of diplomas, connections, and college name recognition. This shallow form of social value remains, despite the questionable relation of a traditional core curriculum to it and the “devaluation of the humanities curriculum (Guillory, 1478)” Guillory says is on the rise. But other of the University’s claims cannot claim even this faulted support base in reality.
This brings us to the final, most glaring indictment a reading of Guillory’s text can levy against Fordham’s core curriculum: the false promise of some ethereal sense of “moral” capital. The following are headings from Fordham’s statement on its “Jesuit Tradition”:
“At Fordham, students seek to tap the full potential of mind and heart while leading a life beyond self.”
“On both the undergraduate and the graduate level, a Fordham education embraces rigorous scholarship and adherence to ethical values.”
“True to its time-honored Jesuit traditions, Fordham endeavors to make excellence the focus of life, and the world the "home of the heart," of every student.(http://www.fordham.edu/, #3)”
These claims express aims similar to those of other traditional canons offering “cultural capital” but serve a specified ideology based on traditional Christian values. This Christian ideology meshes comfortably with Fordham’s humanities curriculum, using the same structure of relation to cultural texts (or “artifacts”) to define and construct the “social imaginary” which keeps the university’s forms of capital valuable in the public eye. Guillory describes this structural relation as “the necessity of defining … culture largely by reference to the High Cultural artifacts to which access is provided in the schools (Guillory, 1472).” The “High Cultural artifacts” that supposedly translate the “moral capital” of which Fordham’s public statements so often speak is simply the body of theological texts which students are introduced to in Fordham’s core curriculum. Guillory continually stresses the implausibility of the similar transference of cultural competence by schools to students, and the underlying misconception belying this idea: “If ‘Western’ civilization—defined by a collection of cultural artifacts—can imaginarily displace the real cultural continuities that obtain at the national level, such an exemplary expression of the social imaginary is the effect of a crucial ambiguity in the concept of culture itself (Guillory, 1473).” A Guillory view of Fordham’s mission statement begs the question: if an acute understanding of national culture cannot be imparted successfully by the education system, then how can human morality be? When considered in light of the excerpt from “Cultural Capital,” this prospect of Fordham University churning out ranks of saintly, classically-trained, spiritually-elite citizens seems absolutely ludicrous.


Works Cited

Guillory, John. "From Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 1472-484. Print.


#1: http://www.fordham.edu/discover_fordham/mission_26603.asp
#2:http://www.fordham.edu/academics/colleges__graduate_s/undergraduate_college/fordham_college_at_r/academics/core_curriculum/index.asp
#3: http://www.fordham.edu/discover_fordham/fordhams_jesuit_trad/