Arrival in Leuven!

We took the bus to Leuven and arrived midday. Our first stop was Leuven University, one of the most reputable universities of Belgium. We were received by Koen Brosens who gave us a lecture on the history and educational system of Leuven. It is one of the oldest universities in the Low Countries (and the world), being established in 1425. The only two universities established before this was Bologna, established in 1088, in Italy, and Oxford University, established 1167, in England. At first, the purpose of the university was to transmit accepted wisdom or knowledge known to man, so the university did not concentrate on teaching students how to critically think. It was not until around 1518 when the university started to teach students how to think critically about what they learn in class. The university has many well-known alumni such as Pope Adrian VI, who was the tutor of Charles V, and Erasmus, the one who introduced the concept of critical analysis to the school. Erasmus also established the Collegium Trilingue, where the classes were taught in three languages: Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. (I was impressed by this, because none of those languages are really spoken nowadays, and to think that classes were taught in those languages is difficult for me to wrap my head around.) Other famous alumni include Lipsius, a classical scholar and political theorists; Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy and empirical research; and Mercator, who is known for his Mercator projector map. In 1835, the university was reestablished and named as the Catholic University of Leuven, and the languages the classes were taught in were French or Latin. It was interesting for me to hear that even though the university is Catholic, none of the principles were applied to university policies. For example, Koen Brosens isn’t married and his son isn’t baptized. So I wondered what the whole point is of having the university name have the word ‘Catholic’ in it, when it doesn’t really apply to the university. Another thing that really impressed me is the difference between the application system between Belgium and the US. In Belgium, as long as a person has a high school diploma, you can go to Leuven University. However, because there is no screening of students in an application process, the fail rate (or drop-out rate) is 60 to 70%. The mentality is that because it’s cheap to pay for university, there’s no harm in trying to study at the university level because you don’t know what’s going to happen. In order to study at Berkeley, on the other hand, one needs to obtain high grades in high school, do a ton of after school activities to become a well-rounded person, and apply. The admissions office will determine who is well suited to step on their campus, so the drop-out rate at Berkeley is only 10%.

Figure 1: The town hall meant to be a shrine for the saints, but now symbolizes the liberties given to the people of the city.

After the lecture, Professor Patrick Pasteure gave us a tour of the city. The center of the city is shaped like a star because all the main streets stretch out from the center to point to the main cities surrounding Leuven, such as Brussels and Antwerp. The city hall was meant to be a shrine to house all the saints, but now it’s just a symbolic building to represent the liberties given to the people of the city. We also visited the Catholic Church right across the city hall and Pope College, a student dormitory. Afterwards, we saw the building where many women chose to stay in isolation and live their lives according to religion.

Figure 2: The architecture of the entrance to the library. The clock tower is somewhat visible in this photo.

After the tour, we visited the University Library with Luc Rombouts. He mentioned how the library was burned down during WWII, but American institutions donated money for the rebuilding of the library. There was also this interesting sculpture of a beetle being skewered by a needle. It was meant to represent the 19^th century practice of collecting scientific knowledge, which needed the killing of animals and insects. He also mentioned how the needle being used to skewer the insect was a sewing needle, which gave the sculpture an interesting, humorous side to it. The Virgin Mary is placed at the center of the library with an Allied helmet and a sword. The library clock used American stars as its digits instead of the normal figures of a clock. The clock tower is exactly 48 meters high because the US had 48 states at the time the library was built. The animals along the roof of the library represent different countries. Lastly, we climbed up the clock tower were Mr. Rombouts played different songs on the bells, which included one of my favorite Disney songs, “Beauty and the Beast.”