Posted on 02/29/2012 5:59:23 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As high school seniors throughout America will be receiving acceptance letters to colleges within the next month, it would be nice for parents to meditate on what they are getting for the $20–$50,000 they will pay each year.
The United States is no better than any other country, and in many areas worse than many. On the world stage, America is an imperialist country, and domestically it mistreats its minorities and neglects its poor, while discriminating against non-whites.
There is no better and no worse in literature and the arts. The reason universities in the past taught Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Bach rather than, let us say, Guatemalan poets, Sri Lankan musicians, and Native American storytellers was “Eurocentrism.”
God is at best a non-issue, and at worst, a foolish and dangerous belief.
Christianity is largely a history of inquisitions, crusades, oppression, and anti-intellectualism. Islam, on the other hand, is “a religion of peace.” Therefore, criticism of Christianity is enlightened, while criticism of Islam is Islamophobia.
Israel is a racist state, morally no different from apartheid South Africa.
Big government is the only humane way to govern a country.
The South votes Republican because it is still racist and the Republican party caters to racists.
Mothers and fathers are interchangeable. Claims that married mothers and fathers are the parental ideal and bring unique things to a child are heterosexist and homophobic.
Whites can be racist; non-whites cannot be (because whites have power and the powerless cannot be racist).
The great world and societal battles are not between good and evil, but between rich and poor and the powerful and the powerless.
Patriotism is usually a euphemism for chauvinism.
War is ignoble. Pacifism is noble.
Human beings are animals. They differ from “other animals” primarily in having better brains.
We live in a patriarchal society, which is injurious to women.
Women are victims of men.
Blacks are victims of whites.
Latinos are victims of Anglos.
Muslims are victims of non-Muslims
Gays are victims of straights.
Big corporations are bad. Big unions are good.
There is no objective meaning to a text. Every text only means what the reader perceives it to mean.
The American Founders were sexist, racist slaveholders whose primary concern was preserving their wealthy status.
The Constitution says what progressives think it should say.
The American dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima was an act of racism and a war crime.
The wealthy have stacked the capitalist system to maintain their power and economic benefits.
The wealthy Western nations became wealthy by exploiting Third World nations through colonialism and imperialism.
Defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is as immoral as defining marriage as the union of a white and a white.
Some conclusions:
If this list is accurate — and that may be confirmed by visiting a college bookstore and seeing what books are assigned by any given instructor — most American parents and/or their child are going into debt in order to support an institution that for four years, during the most impressionable years of a person’s life, instills values that are the opposite of those of their parents.
And that is intentional.
As Woodrow Wilson, progressive president of Princeton University before becoming president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.”
In 1996, in his commencement address to the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College, the then president of the college, James O. Freedman, cited the Wilson quote favorably. And in 2002, in another commencement address, Freedman said that “the purpose of a college education is to question your father’s values.”
For Wilson, Freedman, and countless other university presidents, the purpose of a college education is to question (actually, reject) one’s father’s values, not to seek truth. Fathers represented traditional American values. The university is there to undermine them.
Still want to get into years of debt?
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist
If you tell the truth about these things you must be destroyed by the moderate Mitt-ercups.
Well, that college "education" is the only avenue for the Womyn's/Queer/Racism Studies professor-to-be. Who else can ensure a future supply of pedagogues in these vital disciplines?
If I want my degree, in order to pursue this career choice - I am forced (extortion) to take, and pass these classes. I fail to see how any of these classes contribute to my ability to design, built, test or manufacture electronic circuits or enable me to design software to run on the hardware I have built.
What they do accomplish, is to funnel a substantial amount of my hard earned dollars into a course of study that could not possibly begin to support itself, based upon it's own merits.
Most of these classes are easy 'A''s. Nothing has changed since I got my EE degree years(many) ago.
Not all colleges. I have a son at Colorado Christian University. Unabashedly Christian and home of the Western Conservative Union. Speakers in the past year have included Sarah Palin and Josh McDowell. A wonderful institution if any of you have children approaching college age. Oh, and excellent academics as well.
Michael Medved had a very interesting guest on his show who wanted to do away with our current system of education and diplomas, and go to a centrally run set of qualifications tests.
If you want to become an Electrical Engineer you would go and take the test. If you passed you would be deemed qualified and given credentials. Whether you learned the material at Harvard, Slippery Rock, Community College, from books or the internet or wherever would be irrelevant. All that is necessary is that you demonstrate mastery of it.
Of course the blood of everyone in academia starts to run cold upon hearing talk like this.
The only reason I am annoyed at Dennis about this topic is because he, himself, is a college graduate. The reality of today’s world is that because high schools no longer do their job, employers won’t even hire you unless you have a college degree; and even then, the college graduates can still not spell or write coherently.
I think the key is to get your kid into a college like Grove City, Hillsdale or one of the many good Christian colleges and to monitor what your kid is taking. If YOU are paying for it, you have the right to know what you are paying for. Any kid who gives his parent a hard time can start paying his own way.
The other alternative is to wait to go to college until you are no longer so easily brainwashed. I started college young, but I have a very strong will so I wasn’t convinced of the garbage. I didn’t finish until I was an adult and by then I was safe.
I think it’s more like this over in the UK and Europe.
About half of the US-based technical workers in our work group, did not even attend a four-year university.
They attended technical schools.
No leftwing brainwashing at all.
I have a different view. While I am against the Leftist/Progressive/Socialist brainwashing that occurs in universities today, I don’t consider a person to have a university education if they only take the courses needed to become an engineer, nurse, architect, accountant, or __________, etc.
The whole point of obtaining a university degree is to expose oneself to literature, history, and the arts. It is what makes a person well rounded. I have met many a business major who was so pathetically ignorant of just basics like Aesop or Plato.
As for myself, I am glad that I was exposed to art and literature that I would not have chosen on my own.
Prager explains perfectly what Santorum was trying to say, and what Obama tries to hide.
There is no other reason Obama wants everyone to go to college. It does not prepare for most jobs.
RE: I think the key is to get your kid into a college like Grove City, Hillsdale or one of the many good Christian colleges and to monitor what your kid is taking.
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NOTE TO CONSERVATIVE PARENTS OUT THERE WHOSE KIDS ARE OF COLLEGE AGE...
I just read one of the reviews for Grove City College, and I can tell you, I have been to their campus and spoken to their professors. This college is TOP NOTCHED and VALUE FOR MONEY.
And note to who don’t want their kids to pay too much in tuition and end up unemployed....
Their TUITION PLUS BOARD AND LODGING Is just a little over $20,000 a year. And last year, in a very bad economy -— 95% of their college graduates found jobs within 3 to 4 months of graduation.
SEE A REVIEW HERE ( which I heartily agree with ):
Pros:Great Academics in a Safe, Moral, Friendly Environment.
Cons:Bucolic Surroundings and not much racial diversity.
The Bottom Line: A great fit for the intelligent Christian who is serious with his faith and wants to attend what is arguably the best Christian Liberal Arts College in the country.
I did not enter college early because of an accident I encountered that effectively lost me two years. However, I worked hard in high school and obtain a very high GPA and good SAT and ACT scores. Hence, I was close to 20 when I graduated from High School.
When I was looking for a college to enroll, me and my family, together with friends at our church wrote down several criteria for what we believe to be, our vision of the ideal college.
A college that......... (not necessarily in this order)
1) Has extremely high academic levels. Not in the PR that all colleges seem to put out in their brochures, but as measured by
a) Student body that is highly selective
b) Faculty that is distinguished, challenging, committed, and TEACHING
c) A grading system that does not reflect grade inflation
d) Respect given by employers of serious note.
e) Quality of visiting lecturers
2) Commitment to a pro-evangelical, pro-Christian, pro-western civilization, pro-free enterprise, worldview where a serious major could study free of the straight-jacket of Darwinian and relativistic ideology (A number of allegedly evangelical colleges fell off the list at this point).
We wanted to see this demonstrated IN DEED as well as PR. We wanted a school that, while pro-evangelical, would also have a broader student body - including conservative Catholics and Protestant “Mainliners”
3) Financial integrity, as measured by........
a) Equity in dealing with tuition charges by avoiding ‘cross subsidies’. We preferred not to patronize a college, if we could help it, that charges some people more in order to charge others less - especially when distributing financial aid (read discounts as in car dealers) according gov’t guidelines (Federal Fin. Aid Forms).
b) Avoiding compromise of the college’s mission and management through entanglements in Federal Regulation. due to accepting taxpayer’s involuntary support
c) Making sure that students come, stay, and leave with a purpose, proactively monitored by a REAL career and guidance office
Our ‘short list’ included 7 or 8 schools. It included among others — Wheaton College, Biola University, Pepperdine University, Baylor University and believe it or not, even Notre Dame.
We found all of these schools to be very good but set our eyes on Grove City College.
GROVE CITY’s tuition plus board and lodging for a year is just $17,500 ( not a typo ). Plus — IN ORDER TO BE INDEPENDENT FROM GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE AND ALL ITS STUPID REGULATIONS, IT *REFUSES* ALL FEDERAL AID. Hence, students who enroll should not be getting FAFSA AID from Washington DC. I admire this self-sufficiency.
The school is not far from Pittsburgh, PA ( about an hour drive ) and the town (Grove City ) is small ( population -— 8,000 ).
We went to their orientation and came away very impressed. The campus is 150 acres with a mix of Gothic ( think Harry Potter ) and modern architecture ( the school is 150 years old ). We were greeted at the auditorium by their jazz orchestra. The president of the school spoke and explained the VALUES of the school and we went on a tour that lasted 3 hours.
That was in 2003. I am now a college graduate working as a Project Manager for a huge energy company. Let me tell you what I discovered about this school :
1) A freshman class with a class SAT average of 1310 (without dropping out anyone as the Ivy’s do), where one of every six freshman was first or second in their high school class.
2) A faculty that teaches and advises in person ( over 90% have Ph.D’s ).
3) A rigorous academic curriculum that can humble the best of the best.
4) A graduating senior class of my batch that had earned enough respect from outsiders to receive more contract job offers from the Top 5 accounting firms, proportionately, than any undergraduate school in the country. I heard that 2007’s job fair had 200 companies visiting their campus.
5) Visiting lecturers that include the likes of.... Philip Johnson, Michael Medved, Armstrong, Williams Peter Marshall Michael Horowitz, Ed Meese, Gary Bauer, Michael Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Ric Santorum, Tom Ridge and Bill Frist.
6) Mandatory core courses that highlight the great ideas of the West and knowledge of the Bible ( no fluff courses like Gay and Lesbian Studies ).
7) A comprehensive fee of under $12 K, with the school making very clear that NO family was being charged to subsidize another family. Built into this price is a new HP notebook computer with a color printer that the student keeps at graduation.
8) Refusal to take federal ‘aid’, allowing the college to teach and manage itself without the compromises that come with accepting the forced ‘contributions’ of others. Thus, the school practices what it teaches in the Economics and Business Departments.
9) A Career and counseling office that models it program on Larry Burkett’s ‘Career Pathways’ seminar. The school considers it a failure to have a student go through 4 years of college work without having a clear, and reasonable, idea of what to do with his or her degree after graduation.
Students are pushed to make a firm career choice by late sophomore or early junior year, with a well planned job search ready, going into the senior year. Most college ‘career’ offices at evangelical schools are a very bad joke - not at GCC.
10) Senior students whose knowledge of Civics and America’s Founding principles outclash most Ivy League Schools.
11) Separate Men and Women Dorms ( Intervisitation allowed with strict curfew ).
12) Over 50 degrees to choose from ( their pre-med and pre-law students have close to 100% aceptance rate to med and law school ).
This school may not be for everyone, but for the top level student interested in a truly high quality, low cost education in a friendly, safe environment, it’s tough to beat.
In short, attending Grove City College was one of the best decisions I made.
I got my EE degree 25 years ago, and there were liberal art requirements. I consider most of them to have been real positive experiences. I found that I really like poetry. Intro to Drama was great date material - discount tickets to plays and other theater events. Philosophy offered a few gut courses - Philosophy of Logic and Symbolic Logic, but I had a weakness for brainiac girls. The only real throw away course was Human Sexuality, but the teacher was hot. Man she really made an impression in a tight sweater on a cool Fall day.
Hey, wait a minute, I think I’m sensing a theme here. Liberal Arts courses have a way of rounding out an engineer’s education.
I don’t usually use the term “brilliant” to describe TV personalities but Mike Rowe nails it again and again and again.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2650612/posts
An excellent idea. It has also been suggested that students be taught by people who have retired from certain professions...let engineering students be taught by retired engineers, and so forth...
I don't believe a lot of parents understand this...
-——Liberal Arts courses have a way of rounding out an engineer’s education.-——
I went to engineering school at about the same time, and held liberal arts in low regard. Considering how it was taught, it was a valid judgement.
But try real philosophy, like Aristotle and Aquinas. It’s left untried because, like EE, it’s hard. The subject matter is far more important, though, and the benefits are much greater.
Engineering already has a system of tests like this - the PE exams. Tho, WRT your example, EE graduates probably take the PE exams at a lower rate than all other engineering disciplines because the computer/electronics parts of the field aren’t addressed on the PE exams. We really need to change and update the PE exams to address the huge areas of the EE field that aren’t simply about power generation and transmission.
The state bar exams don’t care where you went to school - they shouldn’t even require that you did go to law school, but they do require that now.
the debat you mention regarding worthless classes to a particular degree has been going on for decades. College WAS to make an individual a well rounded renessance man. Now it is a mere meal ticket.
There are two things which would restore balance to the cost of higher education.
1. Reinstate dischargability of student loans in bankruptcy.
2. Have a means test for universities themselves.
so.
1. Dischargable in Bankruptcy of Student Loans: The non-dischagability of student loans has created hyper inflation in cost of higher education and an explosion of junk studies and departments.
This means universitities can sucker minds full of mush that a “women’s studies” degree has some sort of intrinsic or ecconomic value when it in fact is a worthless waste of time.
there is no reason to reason for universities to be able to say a ussr Lada is the same as a Lincoln Town car. Universities SHOULD PAY for wasting the years of students.
2. Means Test Universities: Many of the effete elite schools are so well endowed with money that they CAN never charge for tuition again and STILL make money. If a school has that much money then there is no need for Univiersity Wealfare. Professor Wackadoo’s study in harmonizing ant pharts as a parth to world peas (sic) can be funded by the edowment and not Mr. and Mrs. America’s tuition dollars.
(i would say the US universities need an enema, but Professor Wackadoo’s significant other Professor Whatacrock is doing a study on that already using a taxpayer grant endorsed by warrent buffet and signed off by obama.)
FOOTNOTE ONE: Obama is defined as executive inconpetence due to a refusal to see reality and a total lack of real world experice.
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