Abstract
Those who have read Wendell Berry's fiction will doubtlessly be familiar with Hannah Coulter. The novel follows Hannah recounting her life filled with love and loss. A central theme for Wendell Berry, as portrayed through the words of Hannah, is the value of people and place, a value undermined by the universities her three children attend. Hannah recalls, “After each one of our children went away to the university, there always came a time when we would feel the distance opening to them, pulling them away. It was like sitting snug in the house, and a door is opened somewhere, and suddenly you feel a draft” (Berry, 2005, p. 120).
Jack Baker and Jeffery Bilbro seek to critique and counteract this destructive tendency of higher education in their Wendell Berry and higher education: Cultivating virtues of place. Baker and Bilbro use a previously unpublished commencement speech delivered by Berry to the 1978 graduating class of Centre College as their foundation to merge several of Berry's published works to present an alternate vision for higher education.
Baker and Bilbro agree with Berry's assessment that the modern university is built on financial gain. Whereas the universities once served the polis, the church, and society, they are now designed to serve the economy (p. 29). Since greed is the driving vision for universities, “graduates of a university will be trained to operate as producers and consumers” rather than virtuous humans dedicated to serving a particular people and place (p. 31). This economic vision pulls people away from their families and homes, as they seek the greatest return on their investment in their degree (as Hannah Coulter mourned). Additionally, the pull toward a desire for profitability pushed universities toward greater specialization, which fragments the university and produces fragmented graduates who build fragmented societies: “Diverse, healthy neighborhoods with residences, businesses, and stores are replaced by segregated zones that isolate each function” (p. 35).
Recognizing this built-in tendency in higher education, Baker and Bilbro seek to answer the question “In what ways can universities shape their graduates into affectionate, virtuous members of their place?” (p. 3). Wendell Berry and higher education is their attempt to present a counter-vision for a virtuous and virtue-forming university culture.
Baker and Bilbro break their book into two parts. Part 1 unpacks the claim that “imagination, language, and work are the three interdependent means by which we come to care for our place” (p. 18). First, imagination is essential to “healing the dismemberment and displacement caused by our contemporary mode of life and education.” Like a great tree, Baker and Bilbro imagine education in the classical sense, where students learn the unity of all wisdom (the trivium and quadrivium) but whose branches eventually bear many kinds of fruit. Second, our language also has the power to unite or divide; modern jargon can be abstract and specialized to the point where our language no longer ties us to any particular people or place. Lastly, our physical work counters the dualistic value of mind over material and keeps “our imagination and words accountable to the real needs of our places” (p. 70).
If Part 1 lays out how we care for our place, Part 2 presents what types of people students must become to care for their people and place. “For imagination, language, and work to flourish in students’ lives … students also need to practice virtues or habits that form them” for this committed, responsible participation in a family, community, or society (91). Again, Baker and Bilbro integrate many themes in Berry's writing to present four virtues and their corresponding habits: tradition, hierarchy, geography, and community.
First, Baker and Bilbro name tradition, or the habit of memory, as essential to an education that seeks to preserve and pass along the human wisdom of the past. “Remembering allows us to make sense of a fragmented past … to make sense of the whole” (p. 95). In an effort to cultivate tradition and memory among students, Baker and Bilbro suggest habits such as reducing tech reliance, studying disciplinary history, and fostering institutional memory through storytelling.
Second, hierarchy, or the virtue of gratitude for limits, also allows students to become more responsible members of a place. Suggested habits for forming this virtue include keeping the Sabbath, conducting research within local boundaries, and advising students to return home.
Third, if institutions are faithful to “the particularities of their context, their students will be more likely to emulate this committed orientation when they graduate” (p. 140). Suggested habits to create this type of institution include encouraging faculty to remain for the long haul, using local curricula, and lowering tuition so locals can afford to enroll.
Lastly, Baker and Bilbro argue that cultivating a loving community is essential as an “education without love lacks a healthy telos and is adrift in a sea of competing moral and amoral ends” (p. 167). Their corresponding habits include asking curricular questions that are more oriented toward community building and modeling a form of devoted and attentive study.
Overall, Baker and Bilbro do a praiseworthy job of calling attention to modern higher education institutions’ harmful values and fundamental incentive structures that work against a vision of forming whole, virtuous students. Not only do they blow the whistle on these flaws but they present an alternate vision and an invitation for educators and institutions to pursue the flourishing, not of their bottom-line but of their students and communities. They creatively accomplish this through the lens of Wendell Berry's writing.
Though this book targets higher education, its critique and solutions are just as applicable to any institution that seeks to develop and form its members. Pastors and churches are just as susceptible to the economy's siren song; Members can easily be reduced to giving units, and sermons can shift from ministering to a congregation to nameless and faceless podcast subscribers. Additionally, the dualism that Baker and Bilbro highlight can also be found in some corners of evangelicalism, which can abstract truth to the point of no relevance to the particular people and community where a church is rooted.
Practically speaking, what types of congregational habits might foster Baker and Bilbro's four virtues? To develop a sense of tradition among congregants, pastors may regularly recite the history of their congregation: When did it start? What were seasons of abundance and hardship, and how was God faithful? Or keeping a physical membership roster where new members write their names under those who have come before. By reading through the list, we’re reminded of the many stories that have been woven into the church's shared narrative.
Regarding the hierarchy, leaders can teach and encourage the Sabbath as a cultural norm to reinforce our God-given limits. What if a rest day was just as expected among members as small group participation? Ministry leaders, like educators, can encourage the humility of those we lead and ourselves when we admit when we do not know.
Many of Baker and Bilbro's suggestions about geography also apply to ministry leaders. Pastors ought to cultivate members who are both citizens of heaven and rooted in earthly places. A pastor could lean on local history and stories in sermons rather than the generic illustrations that can be cheaply found on Chat GPT, or utilize resources or organizations that aid in conducting neighborhood studies that bring into focus the people and place God has called us to minister to (for example, see Seed to Oaks’ 360 assessment: https://seedtooaks.com/neighborhood-360/).
Lastly, community might be the virtue that ministry leaders are most likely already working toward. However, there is a reminder that the purpose of small groups or Sunday schools is not church growth or effective guest assimilation but rather creating environments for “loving connection” (p. 180). The pursuit of loving connection extends beyond local congregations, where churches in the same city see themselves as partners rather than competitors.
After reading this book, one question is how effective their proposed habits will be. They offer examples from their student body of how these habits have effectively produced virtue. Still, the brute power behind our culture's economic vision makes it feel like we are trying to swim up Niagara Falls. Even Baker and Bilbro note Wendell Berry's pessimism when considering these mammoth cultural challenges (p. 17). Though not within the scope of their writing, a helpful companion work would explore how to shift the incentive structures within higher education while acknowledging the need to pay salaries and keep the lights on.
A final word about their heavy utilization of Wendell Berry. Though they give context for each Berry quote, the passages may be unhelpful for those unfamiliar with Berry's prose. With that said, these passages are designed to illustrate their points, and thus, a lack of engagement with Berry's novels will not detract from their readers grasping their argument.