Wisdom in universities

I met with an Oxford Professor of Character Virtue recently, who turned out to have done a PhD in Hope. We spoke about his work developing programmes for 18-19 year olds at Oxford University in character development, building on his research of what does this effectively. Things like "virtue literacy", expanding moral vocabulary, considering hope, exploring gratitude - and how that's different in different contexts and cultures around the world, and then the most interesting one - friendship. We spoke about the crisis of friendship - of building relationships where people are deeply invested in each other's journey and learning. We finished by speaking about moral imagination and the exercises using imagination to build a deep connection with oneself, ecology and future generations and ancestors.

He offered: "imagine if all undergraduates started their 3 year undergraduate degree with a collective exercise in moral imagination. Rather than a fresher's week, or induction into 'how things are done around here', what if there was the chance to deeply imagine your path and purpose and reason for being at Oxford. That really stuck with me. I was so sad about the state of affairs at the world's best universities when I studied at Cambridge. It was devoid of that deeper thinking and wisdom and consideration that I had been expecting. It felt like there were echoes of where that might have, maybe, once been(?), but overall I'm not sure - all I found was a lot of very male dominated academia, posturing in gowns, and competitive ambition towards achieving the highest grades. There were moment of deep learning - and my Natural Sciences degree was like a Hogwarts degree in the atomic, molecular, cellular and ecological world - and in there I found what is sacred - but you had to dig for it yourself, and seek it out - it was not encouraged or scaffolded.

I feel breathless when I imagine what the world could look like if we designed and structured university education to support the flourishing, integration, connection and building of wisdom, of the next generation. Anyone who is involved in such work, please keep me in mind - I would love to be in the loop and develop work in this area.