Santa Clara University

Convocation Speech 2000

The Valley: A Mural of Educating for Culture

Paul Locatelli, S.J.
September 15, 2000

Santa Clara begins the academic year 2000 by celebrating 150 years of Jesuit education in this Valley. The Valley of Heart's Delight for those who remember its past, and the Silicon Valley for those caught up in the digital revolution.

Jerry Sullivan's mural, The Valley: Now and Then, shows us a place that is much more than any labels. As we can see, Ohlone culture gave way to orchards, which turned into an aerospace industry, and now high tech and biotech campuses. This valley is as much a state of mind as a place as Kevin Starr implied in his book on Americans and the California Dream  1.

Our unique location and how our students learn -- raise new questions for teaching and research and learning.

As in previous convocations, I want to explore with you the meaning of Jesuit education. Last year I argued that a humanistic education in the 21st century can no longer ask simply "how should I live?" Now it must ask, "how should all of us live together in this world?" There is no escaping the reality of global injustice and the need to set things right. Today I want to bring that question into closer focus and consider how Jesuit education helps us to live humanely in the unique culture of this time and this place. I want to look at this issue from the perspective of our students, who bring some of that culture to campus.

In every time and place, there are central commitments in Jesuit education. Academic excellence is a sine qua non; Ignatius of Loyola would not stand for anything less because he was convinced that God was glorified in the search for knowledge and wisdom. We find God by finding truth. For his own education and that of his companions he chose Paris and Salamanca, the best universities in Europe.

Discovering the truth has consequences for how we should conduct our lives. Ignatius wrote in the Constitutions for the Society of Jesus that education is for the improvement of learning and living to benefit the community -- for the greater glory of God. [440] Later he would say that "the well-being of all Christianity and the whole world depends on the proper education of youth." 2

Jesuit education has, at its best, appreciated the richness of cultures, from the indigenous culture of the Indians in Paraguay to the elaborate cultures of China and the Grand Mogul of India. Just like knowledge and service, human cultural expressions can reveal traces of God's own richness and beauty. To be true to our Jesuit and Catholic roots, this university must acknowledge that not all culture emanates from Western Europe and that other cultures have a richness to contribute to the conversation of life. The cultural richness of this Valley and this campus derives from a wide spectrum of lands and traditions, and can provide a window for the meaning and purpose of a Jesuit education.

Cultural plurality shapes our students and challenges our pedagogy and research. At the same time, we can learn from students who bring to us their own culture. In the dialogue between Jesuit education and culture, we must constantly ask: How do we educate for culture, learn from culture, yet critique cultural trends and humanize culture? The two underlying questions, the ones I want to explore with you today, are:

A Common Culture That We All Share

Is there a common culture that we all share? In a California, where one out of every four persons was born in another country, we experience considerable tension between diversity and cultural unity. We no longer hold up the "melting pot" as the ideal of assimilation. Instead, some celebrate diversity and multi-culturalism while others retreat to gated communities where virtually everyone looks alike.

Robert Bellah told a group of educators three years ago that the United States is a multicultural society with a common culture. He went on to say and I quote: "there is an enormously powerful common culture in America, and it is carried predominantly by the market and state and by their agencies of socialization: television and education." 3

Paradoxically, one of the central elements of this "powerful common culture" is individualism, particularly a utilitarian individualism that approaches politics, markets and even religion from the perspective of what any institution can do to advance self interest. Part of the magnetic attraction of American culture to many peoples is the freedom to decide how and where to live, what to believe and say, and what to do with our lives -- while achieving some level of economic security.

This individualism takes a particular form in young peoples' lives today, notably when it comes to involvement in political life. As we approach the presidential election, we need to recognize that civic engagement has been declining for the past 30 years. Does this decline mean that our common democratic culture has eroded? If democracy depends upon informed citizens willing to take part in public affairs, does it unravel when the majority lose interest?

As recent studies have shown, young people are willing to work in community service programs but uninterested in government and the political process. A researcher at the PEW Foundation reports that, for young adults, no statistical relationship exists between voting and doing community service such as working in a soup kitchen, tutoring or helping to clean up a local park. In fact, only 14 percent of young adults have ever joined a club or organization that deals directly with government or politics, while 64 percent have joined other kinds of clubs or organizations. 4

They don't see their vote making a difference in a political system dominated by special interest groups or by those who contribute large sums of money because money -- not their vote -- determines the outcome of the political process.

The tension between individualism and a common culture shows itself in the cultural plurality that looms large on our campus and in our society. Individuals find themselves, in part, by identifying with specific groups. Women and various ethnic minorities define themselves as distinct voices in American culture and on campus. To many, the notion of a common culture seems suffocating, an oppressive uniformity that minimizes their distinctiveness. Others who are told that they represent the "dominant culture" find the language of multi-culturalism more threatening than promising. Ironically, the individualism that characterizes our common culture both ties us together and separates us.

Educating for common culture can take on many perspectives by studying, for example,

pop culture or post-modern culture or consumer culture with its global markets. Today, however, to address the second question of what students bring to this time and place, I want to consider three perspectives of culture that they bring to campus:

Growing up in Multicultural Society

Cultural diversity is part of the fabric of their lives in ways that are radically new in America, and most of our students have grown up in a multicultural society. Contrast this acceptance of other races and cultures with the attitudes Wallace Stegner highlighted in 1945 when describing the plight of generations of immigrants who came to this country seeking a new and better life. Stegner wrote:

There is a wall down the middle of America, a wall of suspicion, distrust, snobbery, hatred and guilt. On one side is the majority of our people - white, Protestant, and gentile - with social, economic, religious patterns of behavior derived from Anglo-Saxon and North-European ancestors. On the other side are people who because of color, religion, or cultural background are not allowed to be full citizens of the United States. 5

Americans may have pledged allegiance to "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," but the reality was pervasive discrimination against ethnic groups. The multicultural society of today that Bellah speaks of, even though discrimination continues, stands in sharp contrast to the one that Stegner described. For instance, most of the immigrants in the past two decades have not come from northern Europe. White Protestants now constitute less than half the population and are no longer the dominant voice in the culture. Discrimination is now unmasked for what it is, ignorance and prejudice, attitudes that are antithetical to the meaning of democracy.

Increasingly, we recognize that this Valley's creativity and richness has its roots in many cultures. We must appreciate that this diversity is a fabric where many different strands of ethnicity, religion and history overlap. We have Vietnamese, Italian, and Hispanic Catholics; Eastern European Jews; Scotch-Irish Baptists and African American Methodists; Japanese Buddhists and Indonesian Muslims, to name but a few of these layered identities. A history of immigration did not produce a homogenized, bland nation but a multicultural one. 6

Most of our students grew up with friends of different ethnic and national origins. They may take such diversity for granted in the common youth culture that holds them together for the present. However, there are two challenges that a multicultural society poses to our students: they can be defensive or they can be dilettantes.

Defensiveness often lurks behind a casual tolerance of others. A young person who is white, middle-class and from the suburbs may not want to be characterized as representing the "dominant culture." Why should the accident of birth automatically stereotype anyone? Young males may resent having the "sins of the fathers" visited on their heads. Instead of engaging their fellow students from different backgrounds, they may stick with their own kind, learn what they need to get a good job and ignore the social complexities of the world.

Defensiveness can also arise when those who feel like historical "outsiders" look at the historical "insiders." In comparison to their suburban peers, some students acutely feel the educational gaps left by their underfunded and overcrowded public schools. On campuses across the country, diversity programs have ironically led to Balkanization as racial and gender minorities withdraw into their own safety zones.

An excessive focus on particular identities will fragment the community rather than enrich our common life. Unwarranted fears that the world will inevitably be hostile and that technology is a tool of the dominant white culture can reinforce this sense of isolation.

The other temptation is to be a dilettante. Multiculturalism can be treated like a cultural smorgasbord where you pick up a little reggae here, a little Native American ritual there, a dash of feminism and a shot of deconstruction with a little liberation theology tossed in. Instead of engaging different cultures, we merely sample them.

When Houston Smith, the historian of religions, asked an Indian guru to teach him some Hindu practices, the guru told him, "It is better to dig one well sixty feet deep than a dozen wells five feet deep." We need to know our own cultural roots well in order to enter into serious dialogue with other cultures. We need to understand and appreciate the richness and contribution each can make to the common culture.

The reason Santa Clara has started the Center for Multicultural Learning is to overcome these temptations and provide a more integrated and richer approach to learning. The center is not meant to quarantine students of color nor to encourage a superficial sampling of diverse cultures, but to raise the encounter of cultures to the level of serious scholarship and critical dialogue that will make it central to an integrated humanistic education. This is also where questions of justice can and will be addressed.

Growing up as a Multi-class Generation

The major divisions in our society do not lie along cultural lines but along class lines which brings me to the second characteristic: our students experience greater differences of class than previous generations.

Just as Californians don't like to talk about the fault lines that run beneath our Golden State, we don't like to discuss the fault lines of class. Most of our students grew up multicultural, but chances are their friends are mostly from the same class. Talent has flocked to Silicon Valley from all over the world, but these high tech immigrants are almost all from the educated and professional classes.

I suggest that multiculturalism becomes socially divisive when cultural differences are reinforced by class differences, by pronounced socio-economic disparities. When that happens, cultural differences can become sources of threat and resentment rather than assets that enrich the common good. Even when people speak the same language and have a common ethnic heritage, different classes often have different cultures.

Acceptance into American society usually comes as people move into the middle class. Except for African-Americans and Native Americans, inclusion depends primarily on where a group fits on the time line of history and education. Most of our newest immigrants begin on the bottom of the economic ladder, because of their lower levels of education and lack of English proficiency. Except for those who come here for advanced degrees, immigrants make up a good portion of the poor of our communities. This is the underside of the richness that ethnic immigration brings to this high cost Valley.

Recent reports confirm that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing in California, as are disparities of income. The two primary causes are the differential between better-educated and less educated workers and the increased number of immigrants, who make up the greatest proportion of low wage earners. From 1969 to 1997, the percentage of California's male immigrant workers grew from 10% to 36%, and this increase was clustered at the lower end of the wage scale. 7

While the vast majority of our students do not come from this class, more do than you might think. Here are four examples:

What can we learn from students who come from a different class than the majority does? We cannot underestimate how difficult it is to be candid about a background of poverty. It took Frank McCourt fifty years to write about his childhood poverty, and when he went back to his hometown of Limerick, he was roundly criticized because Angela's Ashes put too much dirty Irish linen out for the world to see.

It is difficult for college students to tell their peers that they came from families that struggle economically and socially. But these students know first hand what the class structure of our society is. They have knowledge about life and people that those who grew up in the West hills of this Valley or idyllic Marin County don't have.

They understand that, in Wallace Stegner's ironic language, this one nation can be divisible with limited liberty and flawed justice for many. If those who come from less affluent backgrounds are not heard, the rest of us may not understand the reality of this time and place.

Jesuit education came out of a spirituality of engagement and should foster a pedagogy of engagement in which students and faculty learn not only about the communities of poor, but from them. All of us should feel the voices of the poor, and do something about what we hear.

We also need to find ways to learn from those on campus who know the realities of poverty first hand. One of the best ways to do this is by increasing the number of community-based learning courses, particularly those linked to the Eastside Project. Community-based learning, at its best, moves students toward the Ignatian vision of responsible engagement in both the civic life of the community and living compassionate lives.

Growing up Digital in a Borderless World

Finally, our students also have grown up digital in a borderless world. Students around the world, but primarily in the developed world, learn a new literacy with digital technology, and also learn to communicate globally. A top official at one of China's state banks has his secretary prepare a summary of world news from the Internet and Reuters but he also asks his son who is an expert at the Internet for news. 8

In addition to creating the new global economy, the Internet makes it possible for young people to share music easily through Napster, for people around the world to buy and sell personal possessions through eBay, for Germans to illegally buy "Mein Kampf," for us to buy airline tickets on the Net without ever making a phone call or exchanging paper.

Globalization and technology have dimensions richer and deeper than markets and borders. Countries and regions within countries each have their culture with their own values, language, gestures, rituals, art, and symbols. Achieving inter-cultural understanding and respect must be a dimension of globalization, lest our understanding of the world become isolationistic or jaded.

Digital technology is beginning to change the way people learn, especially the young. In three short years since Robert Bellah said television and education were the principal agents of socialization, John Seely Brown, the chief scientist at Xerox, proposed a third agency, namely, the Web with its digital technology as transforming the way its users think and learn. 9

Brown, whose research provides the basis for much of my reflections (without implying he would agree with everything here) says we need to look beyond our obsession with information and the personal acquisition of knowledge to include social networks to which digital technology contributes. Social networking, at its best, is using technology for "learning to be" in community. 10

What are some of the qualities of the digital learner? What is the new literacy being developed in our students, and how should it change the way we teach and mentor students? Obviously, we can't answer these questions in depth, but consider this example.

Think for a moment about the changes in doing research from just a few years ago. Browsing the card catalog and stacks of Orradre Library has shifted to the new kind of browsing on the Internet. In one case, the solitary researcher walks up and down rows of bound texts, opening books and journals one by one, looking up footnotes and exploring periodical indices for additional articles in journals.

Contrast that with a student at her desk using search engines to race through worlds of information at the speed of light, quickly moving by links from one set of resources to another, pulling up photos, graphics and charts, downloading pertinent material, following the path of curiosity from one field to another, entering a chat room to test out ideas on line, consulting experts far away from campus, and trying out ideas with fellow students over a list serve.

No wonder they call it "surfing the Net" since it involves navigating through oceans of material until you catch the right wave. When she hits an obstacle, rather than puzzle it through or look at some manual, she will likely find another path around it or email someone for clues to a better path. What is happening here?

Digital literacy more than ever enables students to move from being passive learners to being interactive learners. Instead of reading books or merely listening to a lecture, digital learners become consumers and producers of knowledge simultaneously. This engaged way of learning moves beyond text and image to negotiating a vast sea of information. The drive to discover impels the search, and requires the ability to judge information sources quickly to find what one is looking for and then to use that knowledge well and, if we do our jobs, for the common good.

Just as with written and image literacy, in digital literacy, students must develop not just the ability to manipulate hardware and software but to exercise judgment about the content. Without the power to discern the validity and accuracy of information and without the ability to discern ethical questions, knowledge is flawed in fact and in its use. Digital literacy without critical discernment is a recipe for disaster.

Is this new literacy a solitary process, limited to the interplay between the individual and the screen? If so, that makes the university obsolete. But, in this new literacy, "understandings are socially constructed and shared," Brown argues. The very social character of digital literacy points to communities of inquiry. In interactive learning, we serve as mentors in a community of scholars that constitutes a field, whether sociology or theology, literature or law. We move from the periphery to the center as we gradually learn the art of practice from others. For example, it takes immersion in a community to move from "learning about" physics to "learning to be" a physicist, from learning about works of art to becoming an artist.

Admittedly, the Web is changing the way we work, learn, and live in community; but rather than technology fragmenting social relationships, it has the potential to enhance communication and community. In universities, for example, it becomes a path for students to "learn to be" in communities -- both physical and virtual, ranging from the communities within the university to the global community.

In discussing these ideas at Santa Clara, Brown saw compassion, along with communication and community, as another enhancement to human sociability. He picked up this idea from our vision of wanting to excel in educating women and men for competence, conscience and compassion. I interpret Brown's use of compassion as having a passion to engage other people with empathy.

This notion of empathetic living is for us in Jesuit education the critical living out of the promotion of social justice. But, as we know, compassion without intellectual rigor can easily become meaningless activism or empty rhetoric. Thus, compassionate living must be inseparable from intellectual and scholarly competence.

Although we are in the very early stages of its development, we can see that digital technology is engaging our students, some more than others. While digital literacy is a reality for most of our students, some have been excluded from this world. Households with incomes of $75,000 or more are 20 times more likely to have Internet access than lower income families. Studies confirm that people with lower incomes, people of color, particularly African-Americans and Latinos, and women are less likely to have a computer or access to the Internet than white men.

Even among households with annual incomes under $15,000, white European Americans are 3 times as likely to have Internet access as African-Americans. 11

Once again, differences of culture, class and gender are fault lines between the have's and the have not's. The digital revolution raises important issues of public policy and economic planning and new issues of social justice. Our students must learn that growing up digital can be borderless or can have borders built in around class, race, gender, and education. And that there are informed, ethical choices to be made.

Digital technology will become an ever more important means for learning in the community that is the university. We need this community of scholars to appreciate and pass on our history, values, and unifying symbols. We need personal interaction to learn from great teaching scholars and learn to be like them. We need more than a chat room to share the depth of meaning displayed in Jerry Sullivan's mural of Santa Clara Valley.

Digital technology does not give us automatic access to important qualities like learning to be persons of integrity and compassion, knowing right from wrong, appreciating history, art and truth, and loving God and neighbor and self. But, digital literacy, together with verbal and image literacy, engages the community of scholars in new and creative paths to knowledge, truth and wisdom -- and, even more, learning how all of us should live together in this world.

Conclusion

Let me end where we began, with Jerry Sullivan's mural of The Valley: Now and Then. One culture has succeeded another and now several cultures co-exist in this valley. At its best, Jesuit education has appreciated the richness of cultures, from the indigenous to the elaborate. The question for us is how well does Santa Clara educate students to respect these local cultures, critique them where they need it, and contribute to their humane development?

We realize that our culture reflects the consumerism, globalization and individualism that can threaten a vital common culture. Our teaching and research must take those factors into account, not defensively, but by engaging them in critical dialogue.

Jesuit education insists that a concern for justice must temper consumerism, that the respect for truth in all of its variety challenges global homogenization, and that individuals need to believe in genuine values beyond themselves.

Education for competence is not enough: conscience and compassion are equally required so that we can all live together. Can we take the lead in helping students to appreciate the many cultures and faiths in our Valley, nation and world? Can we influence a global market economy to address the injustice of class divisions in this Valley and beyond it?

Our students often know more about this culture than we do, especially those who are skilled in digital literacy. Yet that competence needs to be honed by what we can teach them — namely, interpersonal skills and critical judgment, and "learning to be in community" to use John Seely Brown's language.

Together, can we discover how digital technology can help make our world more humane and just? For that paramount question of the new century, Santa Clara is in the right time and the right place.

Thank you.

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1. Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, (Oxford University Press, New York, 1973-1997).

2. John W. O'Malley, The First Jesuits, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993), p. 209.

3. Robert Bellah, AAR, (San Francisco, 1997).

4. Michael X. Delli Carpini, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Disengaged Generation: Evidence and Potential Solutions, (Keynote Address at the President's Leadership Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, June 26, 2000).

5. Wallace Stegner, One Nation, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945), p. 3.

6. Alisdair McIntyre, National Task Force on Scholarship and the Public Humanities, (American Council of Learned Societies, Federation of State Humanities Councils, ALS, 1990).

Cornel West in his brilliant book, Race Matters, signals for us the ideal:
In these... times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and the pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power... .We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation B and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately... [E]ach of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.

Running counter to Cornel West's ideal are some facts that should move us to action: the growing disparity of both wealth and income between, for example, citizens in East San Jose and Saratoga, between East Palo Alto and Los Altos. This disparity means some will not have their just and fair place in our community. And, as a society, we remain divided by race and ethnicity, and by cultural and economic backgrounds. I fear that the future consequences of the growing gap between poor and wealthy, and the division over ethnic or cultural differences will be social dysfunction and unrest. Educating our young is the best way, perhaps the only way, to change all of this. Balancing the common good in such a diverse society must be an educational aim and will become a quality of life issue for our community.

7. "Research Brief," Public Policy Institute of California. 17 (February 1999), p. 1-3.

8. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, (New York: Anchor Books, 2000) p. 396.

9. John Seely Brown, Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn, Change Magazine, (March/April 2000), pp. 11-20.

10. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information, (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), Chapter 5, pp. 117-146.

11. U.S. Department of Commerce released Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, (3rd Annual Federal Survey statistically showing who is using the digital tools of today, Revised November 1999).