What is the value of an “authentic education”? The question lingers as this year’s annual convocation ceremony winds down. This is my third year attending and, aside from the always admirable words of the Morehead Award winners, the story doesn’t change.
But, like all good history, its meaning multiplies.
As Dean Kathy Wolfe dutifully explains how Roanoke College was in the hot spotlight of national controversy over a century ago, deja vu settles in. The focus of the speech is John Morehead’s battle to defend the usage of a textbook against the Confederates in the community who bitterly disagreed with the book’s contents. It’s a moving story about defending an education based on diversity and honesty. Morehead avoids making his choice based on his own opinions on the content of the book, instead choosing based on the value of an authentic education.
In this sense, we can get an idea of how Morehead might have answered my question. He valued it more than appeasement and approval. He valued it more than his own personal safety, and even more than the continuation of the school. After all, what would be the point of continuing a school that failed to uphold the basic tenets of diversity and honesty in its education?
I hope it doesn’t shock you that Morehead valued being honest and open with his students more than he valued fundraising and building projects– both of which he sacrificed at the time. Then again, in this avaricious time both in America and in our own backyard, I can hardly blame you if shock still strikes you.
At the end of the speech, Shushok proudly tells students, “As you walk by the aging pillars of the Administration Building, remember that it stands today because Roanoke College took a stand for authentic education”.
In Mikaela Gantz’s “Overloaded and Overworked?” article, she writes, “Dr. Robert Willingham said the administration’s announcement of this increased load created an atmosphere where it felt like ‘faculty input on the decision was unwelcome and something to be overcome rather than addressed.’”
I walk past a massive building project and sit in the newly refurbished Cavern moments after meeting with my underfunded and overworked professors, and wonder.
I don’t envy the situation our administration faces. I don’t pretend to have answers. What I do know, is that I will never have any answers to offer when my right to the truth is taken away from me. And I, like Morehead, question the value of an education given to me by the same hands that hand out half-truths and concealment. The same lips that preach convictions they do not practice to our youngest and most impressionable.
“The students must feel that the college in its professors is sincerely devoted to the truth, in all departments, and at any cost. Thus only will they have respect for their instructors, and will themselves learn the vital lesson of intellectual honesty.” – John Morehead.
Maggie Raker
Opinion Section Editor
