Universidad Francisco Marroquín Guatemala III. The University Facing the Crisis

How can a university face the challenge of the universal crisis of reason? We are convinced that it can do so only through serene and rigorous academic work in an environment of absolute intellectual freedom.

In most contemporary societies, the young are under pressure to become involved in collective movements of one kind or another. For this very reason it is important that they have the opportunity to discover the why and wherefore of their involvement. Youth is combative, youth is enthusiastic. However, few things can be more harmful for a social conglomerate than the alliance of belligerent enthusiasm with ignorance.

If due to their nature young people are enthusiastic and idealistic, it is the job of those who once were young to guide them so that their enthusiasm may be beneficial rather than harmful to themselves and to society at large.

The endeavor to attain self-perfection is the only task which is under the effective control of each individual, and which necessarily benefits others. It is also the end toward which education, at any level, can contribute. Education that seeks to contribute to the search for human perfection must be an education that guarantees the free analysis and discussion of diverse ideas and values. It must be an education in which learning is fundamentally a process of self-discovery rather than the mechanical absorption of ideas or principles. In short, it must be a process that strengthens and guides the natural inclinations of men and women in their attempt to understand themselves and their surrounding world. Poor education -that is the process that does not allow the free exercise of the rational capacity of those that are to be educated- is worse than the absence of systematic education. Common sense left to itself has a better and deeper reach than common sense which has been deformed by poor educational institutions, something we see confirmed in all aspects of life.

Higher education has always fought against prejudice and ignorance and has subjected popular myths to rigorous rational analysis. Its function has been fundamentally of an intellectual nature. We believe that higher education cannot have any other function in our time. What is more, we believe it is urgent that it have this function.

Contemporary tendencies to weigh down universities with moral and political responsibilities reveal the crisis of our time. And those tendencies, besides being erroneous in principle (as will be pointed out below), jeopardize the work of the Academy, for they can easily transform classrooms, from laboratories in search of truth into soap boxes for one or another political faction. The moral responsibility of universities does not go beyond cultivating the love for the search for truth and for academic freedom.