Why I Love Antioch

A Reflective History

Steven J. Trierweiler, Ph.D.
Antioch New England Graduate School Commencement Address
Presented in Keene, New Hampshire May 1, 1993

Commencement

From “commence” from Latin com-for cum, together: & initiare, to begin, frominitium, a beginning. I'd like you to consider your presence here today; as participating in an event that punctuates time-past and time-future in your life; an event that brings together the tentative certainty we experience in reflecting on our pasts and the hopeful uncertainty that we experience in considering the future as we begin to live it.

“...Antioch, has taught me much and contributed to my voice immensely; it has taught me about the inner-me...and it has taught me that I cannot simply lean on an institution, or some other higher authority that might offer me privilege, for ultimately my success lies within...” — Steven J. Trierweiler, PhD

The Corridor of Time

Imagine your life as a corridor through time stretching out behind and before you. Time is like walking a corridor...one can look forward or in reverse...your particular time corridor, your life, is unique...it is contained: you can't see everything that goes on in the world...yet what you do see is structured by information in society and in the physical world, that stays the same as you walk past it, and by the speed at which things develop and change. In order to grasp what this Antioch education means, it is important to look back down the corridor of time to see where you have been and where this education fits into your life. People come here for a variety of reasons; history can sometimes reveal hidden truths about those reasons.

Part of Your Sense of Time Involves Your Own Personal Time

Think about all the things that have defined you in your life, things that describe you to yourself, to your loved ones, and to others-- and think of how those things change with different people you may be talking to, such as your parents, who have known your throughout your life; or a teacher, who may have only known you as a student and now a graduate; or a stranger, who may have only known you as an educated person.

As our society becomes more and more complex and richly textured with people of all different types and background, it is becoming obvious that many these defining parts of the self, tied inextricably to one's roots, often are ignored in education, creating, for many, a sense of alienation and disempowerment. Have any of you felt this?...at some time in your life? I would not be surprised because often ANE students have not felt comfortable with traditional educational institutions.

What then is the realization of who you are? Of whom you might be? What sort of world would you need for you to be all of who you might be? Of course there are no easy answers to such questions: even if we were able to use our imaginations freely to fashion our own world it would take considerable effort and reflection, and no doubt we would make many mistakes before we could satisfy ourselves. But hold the possibility in your mind for a moment...

Now Part of Your Time Here Involved Antioch New England's Institutional Time

What exactly is this place Antioch New England: where has it come from? After all, you decided to join this organization; that's why you're here. How has it related to your goal? To your inner sense of possibility?

Like you, ANE has a history that precedes your time here and that history is related to what you have experienced, perhaps in ways you haven't considered. A look at history suggests that Antioch was an institution for modern multicultural times at its very beginning in the 1850's.

Horace Mann was Antioch's first president, after a failed bid for the Massachusetts governorship. He was a prime mover in the establishment of public education, in which Massachusetts had been in the vanguard among states. He was a skilled member of the Massachusetts legislature and as Massachusetts Secretary of Education he brought much innovation and improvement in the quality of educational systems. In 1853, when he became Antioch College's first president, it was clear that the college was a good fit for him...from the beginning the intent was to create an institution where value-based education was a central concern. The notion was to develop the whole personality, not just the intellect...and central to this endeavor was the wish to develop social consciousness and competence. The college, under Mann's leadership, was among the first to offer co-education to women and later to minorities, to develop coop education in the 20's under Arthur Morgan as a way of bringing experience in the real world into the educational process. And in recent times Antioch was among the first to recognize that education did not need to end with adolescence, and that success as a high school student should not be the only doorway to the highest level of education in our society. Hence Antioch New England, starting in Putney, Vermont in the late sixties. Hence your presence here today; and ANE's continuing efforts to give opportunities to adults who might not find a satisfactory educational tool in a traditional institution. Now, where did all this come from? Let's look further down the corridor of time--Antioch, itself, came from somewhere.

Mann was a religious scholar; he taught philosophy and theology at the college. Also remember that Yellow Springs is in the midwest, a place where many religious groups went to find quiet freedom. While the college is now an open, secular environment--many say a cultural oasis in the midwest--one can see the signs of quiet midwestern religiosity (perhaps better--midwestern philosophy) there--as I noticed on several of my visits at Antioch conferences--and on some of the determined faces of the loyal faculty and alumni. If we look at the name itself, “Antioch”, we find a name of considerable historical and biblical significance. Antioch, now Antakya (1970 pop. 66,400), is a city of about 67,000 in S. Turkey, on the Orontes (Asi) River, near the Mediterranean Sea, at foot of Mount Silipius (like Keene?). 0Ancient Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman Empire. It was a commercial and intellectual center, by the 4th century was as large as 200,000.

What gets interesting about examining Antioch the city is one readily finds a spirit of mystery and amazing possibility has lived there (like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which focused on the city of Alexandretta just up the road from Antioch). Antioch the city had a major role in early Christianity--The great missionaries Peter & Paul preached there. Followers of Christ first call themselves “Christians” there, after having severed themselves from the synagogue twenty years after the death of Christ. The city became a center of learning and played a major role in the theological controversies of the early Christian church. (See Acts 11.26;13.1 and Christianity in encyc.). There was even a “Great Chalice of Antioch” found there, that some believe to actually be the Holy Grail. (Indiana Jones....) Most important for our concerns, it was a “mixed community” where tensions in the new religion, between conservative Jerusalem Christianity and an intellectual Hellenistic variety, were played out...The debate involved issues of reform versus radical change... who was in and who was out, who was worthy and who was unworthy...In this controversy, in a monumental move in the history of western civilization, Paul, and his followers opened the door for Gentiles to become Christians. One can only imagine that those who named Antioch, in Yellow Springs, had this city in mind when they worked on their new college (They valued education and clearly had something they wanted to share--image of Horace Mann getting a phone call: Horace what could you do with a college devoted to developing social consciousness and the intellect and that would make education available to all sorts of people not served elsewhere (at the time co-education important)).

Relationship with Society

Now all this hopeful institution building, be it historical or modern, goes on in relationship to a society that was, and is, more or less ready for it. (As Antioch staff know well--sometimes everyone is ready for change and innovation, sometimes not). Society has a self-serving ideological quality in which we all participate:..it is often easier for us to cling to what came before--that which we can better grasp by its passing--than to something we do not yet know. But this tendency to linger on what we better understand can also thwart elements of society that are hidden, usually because there is no clear, legitimized voice for expressing them. (The easiest way to understand what I mean here is to reflect on the times you have had a hidden opinion about something that you never quite bring out to others and they never quite bring out of you.) Our relationship to this societal conservatism, is one of adjustment and compromise, and the experience of surprise and joy in the event that, for some reason, things seem to fit us in some comfortable way, and something basic to our nature finds an affirmative voice in the presence of others. It is an experience that happens all too infrequently...

Today, as a society, we ask difficult questions for difficult times...How do we, as educated people, relate to others that are different from us at the same time we rise to, and participate in, the freedoms that are available to us? Likewise, how does an institution, like Antioch New England, express its values, change with new voices, and relate to society without becoming overly traditional; or, conversely, ahistorical, divorced from tradition, and anchorless? What if our ways of living are discovered to be harmful to others? ... What if we find that the institutions available to us are not exactly as we wish them to be? What if, even with education and legitimation by society, things still do not seem compatible with our personal sense of justice and value? These are impossible questions! I don't think the solutions will lie in a renewed sixties radicalism nor in an eighties turning inward...rather I see only one solution to these problems, and it is the Antioch solution of old:..to adopt a position of openness and preparedness for change unlike that experienced by previous generations...and, in so doing, to recognize that such change will necessarily involve the successful integration of old and new forms of relating--an integration that is historically informed and sensitive to the needs, aspirations, and efforts of all who make a legitimate attempt to find their voice. This sort of openness is the Antioch metaphor and as graduates and friends of Antioch New England Graduate School and Antioch University, we all need to be sensitive to the great and small ways it can be implemented in our lives. Most importantly, we must avoid closing down, resting on our laurels, assuming that we have some privilege simply because of who we are, or because of what we have achieved.

My Experience

This is the joy and responsibility of education...and, to the extent I can live it, it is my story, and perhaps one reason I have always felt comfortable around Antioch. I grew up in a working class family in Michigan, I knew little of education except for what I learned via public institutions. Throughout my career I have experienced an uncertainty in leadership and an uncertainty about belonging among the educated... But, at the same time, what I always found in education was like magic...Ideas became opportunities, doorways to magnificent realities-- somehow that part of me that was a student, dormant in my home, came alive...and I was surprised to find a sense of belonging in the learning process itself. But there has been tension and cost: as I worked toward my doctorate at the U of Illinois, I found I loved intellectual life and psychology, but felt out of place in the elitist, overachieving environment of graduate education...I could not see myself taking power, the very idea seemed counter to my sense of who I was. But then via Colby Smith, David Singer and Roger Peterson, and a complex set of circumstances I discovered ANE, or ANE discovered me...Here was a place that seemed different carrying the right mix of the traditional and the innovative to give me the opportunity to work on my concerns about becoming influential in this society, when such was so alien to my roots. I continue this work today...the doubts are still there but, now I realize there is purpose in society directly relevant to me, often hidden in the history of our institutions, but available to all, if you learn how to look...This looking involves both an inward searching and an honest examination of one's relationship to institution...Antioch, has taught me much and contributed to my voice immensely; it has taught me about the inner-me...and it has taught me that I cannot simply lean on an institution, or some other higher authority that might offer me privilege, for ultimately my success lies within: in the inner battles and joys of being free, educated, responsible and open to the realities of my world...I hope as you reflect you can say that it has done something of the same for you.

Antioch New England is and will continue to be devoted to openness and innovation because that is its tradition and its symbol, and what has been good about it through the years and stretching back in recent and distant history. Lets get back to the question of how might it be if Antioch New England, or any institution in your future, were to completely open to you...what might it be like? Antioch is a way-station where the idea of whole development, the idea of empowerment in education is at least alive and has a tradition--not just lip-service. It might not have been a perfect place for you. But if ANE does it for a few, then at least there is an opportunity to continue the experiment, and from my own experience I can say that many have experimented here and succeeded in changing in ways I will never forget: in developing strong clear professional voices well connected to a strong sense of self, as well as in obtaining a degree that marks their corridor walk into the future with distinction. Openness and equality are achievements that we must continue to strive for...they are not achieved separate from the continuing social debate about what is right and good...and there will always be a tension between individuals and institutions as each struggles to express its history.

Time, the Future & Empowerment

Now is the time for joy in your success...I hope you'll try to remember that joy emerges from tension and effort. Let the story of Antioch New England, that you have commenced with as you've walked down time's corridor over the past few years, be a symbol of this tension that you take with you...It is a tale of opening to possibility, managing the tension as new intermingles with old, of taking the risk that something won't work, but trying--as opposed to rocking back on the weary security of the past, or naive pretensions that quietly exclude so much of life. It is a tale of radical change, radical hope, and radical openness to possibility...and a tradition of success in sharing knowledge with the many--education being the only true means to empowerment. To me Antioch New England is a groove, a sweet spot, a cool place walking the narrow corridor between what I am and what I might be, what it is and what it might become...I'll not forget what it has given me, and it will forever be a guide for my work. I wish you well and thank you for this opportunity to speak...I'll be expecting to hear Antioch's voice growing stronger and stronger in the years to come--society needs you and anxiously awaits your vision.

Thank you.