"The Idea of a University": Education as Moral Training John Henry Newman is a Catholic who had a different goal in life for other people, including himself. As a pronounced Catholic, Newman had reservations about these changes and wanted to defend the value of learning for its own sake. His point of view for a prefect university was that everybody learns the same subjects. In his book "The Idea of a University" talks about the attempts to define in Liberal Arts education. The believes that he had raised a lot of questions in the society. Many people agree and disagreed with his point of views. John believed that education should be moral training rathe