There’s a great passage in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about "The Church of Reason" — how there are really two universities… the physical plant where paychecks are signed, books are sold, tuition is paid, etc… and the actually learning that goes on… the learning can happen anywhere, but the point is that the physical bricks and mortar of the university make it a convenient place for the real university — the one of the mind (for me, the soul) — to reside. What you realize in reading it is how fragile and rare and vitally important that second university is… and how many people don’t understand the difference between the two.
The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It’s a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.
In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there’s a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process.
But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.
I think at Beacon school, we have the second university. I’m not sure that "reason" is the right word, and neither was Pirsig. But the construct is the right one. Call it Church of Learning or whatever, but I think we’ve got it. And I think it’s rare and powerful and fragile as all hell… so I’ll do what I need to do to nurture it.
Schools like Beacon, where true, constructivist learning is valued and where it happens, need to always stay vigilant so we don’t lose that second university. When it disappears, it can take a long time before its obvious. The school can look the same for a long time, but sooner or later, people realize that real learning — the kind that cannot be easily measured on a test, often times, as disappeared. There are schools all over NYC that were once places of true learning that were regulated or tested or atrophied into mediocrity.
This is why school culture is so vital. Any local government could build the first school. Any government can test the first school. But to create the second school takes much, much more.