RDB: Newman "Universities"

My immediate response to Newman's discourse was skepticism mixed with disdain. This is borne out of my dislike for men of the cloth meddling in the world of education, as faith and knowledge rarely go easily hand in hand. I feared my own preconceptions confirmed upon reading the line "But education is a higher word;...and commonly spoken of in connexion with religion..." (310). His further distinction between education and instruction didn't sit well with me at all, but I believe that can be attributed to changing times and technology. The fact is, there cannot be education in this day and age without instruction. How can one find a book in a library without being told how the complicated Dewey decimal system works? How can they do research online when they cannot operate a computer? To glorify education while at the same time disdaining instruction is to worship an ivory tower while disdaining the ground upon which it rests, it's elitism and folly. The fact that he later goes on to contradict himself by stating "Such a union and concert of the intellectual powers...is necessarily a matter of training" (311) makes it even more contradictory. Training is instruction. While each individual has their own unique method of storing knowledge, one cannot truly learn if one has never been taught how to, so again I state, there is no education without instruction.
Now, when it comes to Newman's assertation that learning is best facilitated by a university setting, his comparison of a lawyer teaching law to a law professor teaching law, I find myself in total agreement. Nowhere on earth that I know of is there an atmosphere of learning and growth such as there is on a university campus. And I wholeheartedly agree with his belief that a student benefits from being in the vicinity of many different schools of learning, whether or not he partakes of them himself. Being at a university has taught me that there are indeed advantages, even joys, to be had from learning things you don't and or won't ever really need to know. There is a fullness of character, and a greater joy in the world and its interactions, that is opened up by knowledge, any knowledge, irregardless of whether it serves a direct end.
This is not to say that I totally agree with Newman's arguments for Universities not being pressured to produce research for the common good. A public university is supported by taxes levied on every man and woman within the range of its supporting government, whether or not said man or woman has ever attended or will ever attend the university for their own ends. Because of this, it is a moral imperative that the university fulfill some sort of role in the community as a whole. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is a beautiful concept, but in practice it would be senseless and impractical, what is the point in knowing something if you do nothing with that knowledge? It is not imperative that knowledge serve some other purpose, that is true, but that does not mean that it shouldn't, that it is not morally justifiable that it be asked to do so. What greater end can knowledge aspire to than the betterment of man (speaking in terms of man's knowledge that is, if dogs had a university it would only be fair they strive towards the betterment of dogkind)? To disdain a university using its considerable resources, up to and including the vast sums of knowledge concentrated within its halls, to directly better mankind in any way it can is arrogance and elitism in the extreme.
A college student and a high school drop out eat the same bread, share the same fears. To say that the former is justified in disregarding the latter simply because of a difference in vocation is folly in the extreme. Aside from even that is the foolishness of begrudging a seat of learning to do research, and to use that research for real-world applicational ends. The cure to a disease, a new mathematical theory, an insight into the human mind, these are all pieces of priceless knowledge in and of themselves, but they most certainly are not devalued by being applied, rather than recorded and shelved for others to read and shelve again. To use knowledge is to share knowledge, just the same as teaching it, Newman quibbles over a difference in teaching method, nothing more.