Lessons of the Menin Gate - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Lessons of the Menin Gate

Though the official start of fall is still three weeks away, this week marks a change of seasons for college students nevertheless. The days are getting shorter and cooler; lecture halls are refilling; leaves are changing from bright green to red, orange, and yellow; and, most important, the release of the Pumpkin Spice Latte is upon us. Most colleges and universities mark this transition through the opening convocation. I had the privilege yesterday to hear Dr. Matt Stanard, a professor of history at Berry College, deliver an address on the lessons we can learn from the Menin Gate. Stanard recounted his visit to the Menin Gate last fall while conducting research in Brussels.

On the eastern edge of town in Ypres is the hulking Menin Gate Memorial. It lists the names of nearly 55,000 British Commonwealth soldiers who died at Ypres and whose bodies were never identified or found … 90,000 dead, at one city on the Western Front. If you average that number out over this coming academic year, it’s equivalent to the entire Berry undergraduate body—you guys, all your classmates, all our wonderful students—being wiped out in its entirety every six days, again and again, without pause, for the next eight months.

Sadly, these were just the names of the British Commonwealth soldiers that perished during this battle, and did not include the tens of thousands of Germans who were killed. What did all this death and carnage accomplish? Stanard said, “In short, zero, nothing, rien. The front lines at Ypres basically did not move.” Ypres reminds us, too, that the study of history, government, philosophy, religion, and other such disciplines sometimes does not offer a solution, an answer, or grant practical or “life-ready” skills. Stanard offered us three clear reasons why we should take the time to study the humanities, despite their lacking “practical value.”

First, studying human cultures, the human past, the human condition, it gives you perspective. It seems we face so many monstrous problems today that just won’t go away. Terrorism, unemployment, racism, crises in the Middle East, global warming, Sarah Palin. A second reason: Study teaches us—we don’t know much, the history of World War I being one example. … The more you study, the more you realize, it’s astonishing how much we don’t know or don’t understand. A third reason to study the human experience is because by doing so, it really drives home the fact that we only do this once. Those thousands of British, German, and French soldiers who fell at Ypres were just like you and me … and we know what happened to them.

What Dr. Stanard offered was a perspective that is nowhere to be found in many colleges and universities today. He reminded us to be diligent in our studies, to gain a deeper knowledge and perspective of the world, and that we are granted one life. Ultimately, Stanard is calling us to gain a better understanding of ourselves, others in this world, and the vast complexity not only of the universe but also of the human soul.

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