Posted on 12/29/2004 1:04:31 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons" has focused unwanted attention—unwanted at least by college officials—on the sexual antics of American college students. The behavior is scandalous, but an even greater scandal is what students are being taught.
This mis-education is the subject of a new book by former BreakPoint editor James Nelson Black. In Freefall of the American University, Black describes how “colleges and universities are corrupting the minds and morals of the next generation.”
That’s quite an indictment, but Freefall will leave any open-minded reader realizing that the evidence supports it. As Black puts it, “the university is not a safe place to send your child.” He isn’t referring to their physical safety, although with all the drugs, drinking, and promiscuity on many campuses, those concerns are real.
Rather, what Freefall describes is the systematic effort on the part of what have been called “tenured radicals” to re-educate our kids. Instead of teaching them the kinds of things you expect them to learn in college, the curricula at most schools undermine the Western moral and intellectual tradition.
This contempt for the traditions—the ones that made the university possible in the first place—is as plain as the type in a course catalog. The University of Pennsylvania teaches, for example, “A Feminist Critique of Christianity,” but certainly not a “Christian Critique of Feminism.” Columbia teaches “Sorcery and Magic,” and Bucknell offers “Witchcraft and Politics.”
Then there are the many courses on various kinds of sexuality—not biology courses, mind you, but courses like Swarthmore’s “Lesbian Novels since World War II.”
All the schools I’ve mentioned are highly selective and, not coincidentally, expensive. A parent struggling to pay tuition may wonder what a course in “Sorcery and Magic” will do for their child’s future. These are reasonable doubts: Our best schools are graduating heavily indebted students who don’t know basic history as well as high school students in the 1950s did.
This “intellectual crippling” is exceeded only by what Black calls the “moral crippling” of our kids. Many universities actively subvert the moral underpinnings of our civilization. They substitute environmental awareness, acceptance of all “lifestyles,” and similar politically correct nostrums for traditional ideas about right and wrong, and they turn a blind eye to substance abuse and promiscuity.
Fortunately, as Black tells us, Christian parents don’t have to settle for expensive and subversive mediocrity. The key lies in doing some homework and becoming informed consumers.
Instead of choosing schools on the basis of where they are ranked in the U.S. News & World Report survey, Christian parents ought to look to alternative sources of information, like National Review’s or the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s guides. These alternative sources provide not just “safer,” but better alternatives: schools that provide a real education, both in and out of the classroom.
It’s important to remember that, at least in terms of earning potential, it’s going to college that makes the biggest difference. Where your children go will not make as much difference to their wallets, however, as it will to their minds and souls, which is why avoiding the freefall Black describes ought to be your top priority when choosing a college.
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
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Imagine a graduate with, say, master's in witchcraft and magic. Flying a broom to a job interview and then leaving that broom with the receptionist. More traditionalist types could be flying a goat or a hog, but leaving domesticated animals with the receptionist would naturally turn noisy and messy, which is not the way to produce a proper impression.
In St. Louis, Lindenwood College has made a name for itself by a major overhaul in the past decade. The new president fired about 70% of the teaching staff, hired new staff, and informed everyone that they were going to work a *full time job* for a fulltime salary.
In addition, the dorms are strictly separated for men and women, and there's no overnight shacking up allowed, from what I've heard.
These expensive "ivy league" dens of vipers will continue to prosper as long as American parents *pay the tuition.*
I saw Wolfe interviewed on this book....I think he has an appropriate last name. He seemed quite delighted in using graphic descriptions of what he "learned" in the process of writing this trash.
Well, it seems he was right.
I am convinced that for the vast majority a community colege, trade school, or equivalent is an excellent path to a college degree. You can readily tranfer credits to a state school to get the "name", it is much cheaper, and (in the case of trade school) you actually learn something that you can make money at......
I tend to think that only Ivy school name recognition is truly important.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a course in the history of magic / witchcraft in the West, depending on how it was taught.
Is this by The Chuck Colson who leads by moral example very very well?
Except students have to be careful - many vocational / trade school courses *don't* transfer to four-year colleges. Every state college now has to have a list of the courses that *do* transfer from every community college in that state, however.
If it's and Ivay league school your child is eyeing, send the brat to a community college and pocket the extra $50K a year. He'll get a better education and you won't have to drink Old Milwaukee for the next 4 years.
true enough, in CT the community college degree (associates degree) is fully transferable to any State college. Much, much cheaper and I bet the students are there to learn as opposed to party. Of course it is for each to decide but for a kid with some ambition and goals it seems the way to go.
yea, but Martin Luther is an apostate and a heretic.
It is absolutely hilarious that people pretend that all this is new on campuses. Where have the conservatives been hiding the last 40 years?
I went to college in the mid to late 70's. Everything described in the article was true at the small mid-western liberal arts college that I attended.
And when I visited friends at the large state schools, it was worse.
I agree. It's a part of our history - from the hermetic practitioners to Appalachian folk magic, it's a worthy and much-overlooked area of research. It may not be a relevent course for many majors, but I can think of majors where it could be beneficial. Medieval and Renaissance culture and literature, for instance; and cultural anthropology.
In addition, the dorms are strictly separated for men and women, and there's no overnight shacking up allowed, from what I've heard.
______________
LOL.
so the kids are having sex in the daytime, or else, the guys have their cake and eat it, too. Have sex with the girlfriend but not have to spend the night cuddling, so they can get back to their rooms, party with the guys and watch sports center in peace and quiet.
For all I know, maybe the women like it better that way, too.
I seriously doubt that dorm rules have any significant impact on, uhhh, student relations.
College is what you make of it. Even if you go to one of the eeeeevvviiiilll ultra-liberal schools, you choose a large percentage of your classes.
It's kind of foolish to think that college students, who are adults after all, need to be protected from bad influences on campus. If a kid wants to party, have lots of sex and worship Ba'al, it really doesn't matter what school they go to.
Big deal. That might work the first year, but if this school is like any other, most students move into off-campus housing after their first year.
Well, Chuck missed a lot in his search of University of Pennsylvania course offerings, but there's no surprise in that. Along with the course he mentioned are courses in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and a whole slew of courses on Christianity. The University also has a bunch of Christian clubs, etc., just like every other University in the US.
Sure, you can find wierd and oddball courses on the course list of any big school. But...calling just those courses out for attention is a big logical error.
It is entirely possible to get a good education at that school, or at any other school he mentioned. It's also possible to get a poor education at those or any other schools, including the very best Bible Colleges.
Colson uses single examples of course offerings to condemn an entire school. He must have copied this information from some web site, instead of doing his own research.
Oh, well.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with teaching a course in "American Muscle Cars of the 1960s" as a Humanities credit either, but would you be willing to pay the tuition for your kid to take it?
Sure, a sorcery course could have historical value, but I'd give 10 to 1 odds that it's either a course in the occult or a "historical" course about how Christianity's main value has been as a source of witchburners.
Yes, it is the Chuck Colson who has spent the last 30 years selflessly devoting himself to the cause of Christ.
Please feel free to justify why one crime, one for which someone paid their debt to society with prison time, should invalidate 30 years of ministry. I mean, come on, what's three decades of saving people from Hell and standing up for American liberty next to screwing with an FBI file? Heck, we should track him down the next time he's giving some prisoner's kid a Christmas present and make him wear a scarlet letter.
As a man who attended college recently, I can tell you that the waves of students coming right out of High School into college are fully capable of being indoctrinated. They don't have a clue. Of course, I probably didn't at that age either. Luckily, the USAF was not interested in having me decide Christianity is evil ofr that I'm a latetn homosexual: They just wanted to get planes in the air.
Yes, and I'm sure courses like the ones he brings up were offered since the founding days of our finest Universities. I can just see Isaac Newton taking a sorcery course now...
Courses like that are almost uniformly electives, so I don't really see the issue. No one is forced to take them.
Never mind, sorry about the friendly fire.
I don't see any harm either, but some of these courses are there to indoctrinate. Like I mentioned in the post you responded too, the sorcery course is either a how-to or a propaganda "history" course. If it's a how-to, then some would object to it as teaching mumbo-jumbo and others would see it as schooling people in the occult; both groups would be right to object. If it were a propaganda history course, it would be more hate-speech against Christianity, hardly something a state university should be engaged in. Either way, the fact that the student isn't forced doesn't make it right.
And my kids aren't getting tuition for any sorcery courses out of my wallet!
this is not one of his better works. It was outdated before it was written.
Comes off like my grandma saying "I'm down with that".
At SUNY at Buffalo, I took four courses in religion taught by a very Evangelical adjunct professor. In fact, he was the local Campus Crusade director.
They were easy classes that fascinated me, and complemented a B.S. in Chemistry.
At this same school, there certainly were very liberal, very anti-Christian courses. There are professors there who see it as their mission in life to break Christian college students of their faith. The classes taught by the adjunct professor were equal time, to borrow Rush Limbagh's term.
Colson's big mistake is that he ignores that courses like these exist too.
And all undergraduates are required to live on-campus unless they are married or living with their parents.
Oh, and the school has the largest enrollment in its history (so far) this year.
I'll tell you what. If they're my kids, and I'm paying for them to go to school, they aren't adults in my book, and I'll protect them from any bad influences I can protect them from.
If they want to party, have lots of sex, worship Ba'al, and go to hell, they can do so on their own nickel.
It certainly is. My two sisters and I have taken this path. It's dirt cheap (comparatively), and, if you're careful, all the credits will transfer. One of the smartest things I ever did.
Isn't that one of the few universities that explicitly recognizes intellectual diversity? How did
they get to that level of awareness (if you know)?
Well, that's where "caveat emptor" comes in. Those who pay the tuition *ought* to be responsible adults paying attention to where their money goes.
The point being? If students want to move off campus, that's between them & their parents. If the parents choose to not pay tuition when the student moves off campus, so what? At some point these coddled college students are going to have to live in The Real World, and TRW includes some very unsupervised living situations.
To a large extent, that makes me think that you do not have faith in your parenting.
After all, well-raised kids will make the right decisions, whether they're attending Amherst or Bob Jones.
I took a European history course (post fall of Rome to Reformation) where the prof spent a few weeks on the pre-Christian religions of Europe and how they conflicted with Christianity. (There were obviously huge chunks of Christian history in this course as well.) One interesting point made was that the common cant about "witch burnings" (being made by many feminists at the time) were just that. Another was that the Protestant countries had more witch hysteria post-Reformation; the pre-Reformation Catholics were pretty uninterested in hunting witches (many churchmen thought they were the product of peasant superstition) versus hunting heretics. We talked about many heretical movements and how their practices and beliefs later got lumped in with witchcraft.
A full-blown course on the subject - as long as it was not obnoxiously PC - would be very interesting for history, anthropology, folklore, sociology, psych, English majors.
I will say that I've never felt any problems from UB for my beliefs, either as an evangelical Christian or as a moderately conservative Republican.
I remember one English prof who is quite liberal, but he and I got along quite well - in spite of my conservative streak. He'd challenge my assumptions, as any good prof would, but in the end, if I had a reasonable basis for my argument, he'd respect it.
And with their enrollment of 1,913 students, the school represents a pretty small sample of the overall college population.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great, but I don't think it's representative of the "typical" college experience.
You are making assumptions about the nature of that course. Have you seen the syllabus? Spoken to the prof?
I am really puzzled by your statement that it must be an either/or situation (how to or propaganda), as if there is no room in the middle.
Go back and read the earlier posts. When I was only acknowledging the either/or, it was in the context of what was prbable, not what was certain. It could be a great course, but if I had to bet, I'd bet on propaganda.
My college is adding "Queer Studies" content to many of its courses.
Yeesh.
I seem to be the only one who thinks that Queer Studies has no place in a state University.
Sometimes being right is lonely. But remeber that one man plus God is an army.
"Bad company drives out good morals." It's right there in the Bible.
After all, well-raised kids will make the right decisions, whether they're attending Amherst or Bob Jones.
Let's just say I have more respect for St. Paul's insight into such issues than I do for yours. Nothing personal.
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