Posted on 08/24/2010 4:22:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last week we headed south to launch our daughter on the next phase of her life: college. It was wonderful to see her eyes twinkling with excitement and expectant hope for the future. We have confidence in her strength of character and strong sense of vales, and know she chose her college for all the right reasons. But we still worked hard to prepare her for the reality that, on most college campuses, the prevailing orthodoxy seeks to challenge and even opposes both Christian values and conservative principles.
Let me give you a few examples of what your son or daughter might encounter.
A recent survey at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. found that in the last election 92% of faculty donations were to Democratic candidates. The professors’ leftwards leanings influenced the courses available to students—it’s easier to find courses on gay films, minority cultures, and feminist theory than on the classics of Western Civilization. Even in southern Virginia, 82% of Virginia Tech professors supported Democratic candidates. And at Texas’ Southern Methodist University, home to the Bush Presidential Library, liberal student organizations outnumber conservative groups by five to one. Such odds are common across the country.
Colleges typically send summer reading lists to incoming freshman, encouraging them to read books considered foundational to their education. The 2010 summer reading lists were dominated by selections from the liberal thought police: the top two categories were "multiculturalism, immigration and racism" and "environmentalism, animal rights and food." The report from the National Association of Scholars said the selected books foreshadow what students can expect to encounter in class: attitudes that are “anti-Western, anti-business, multicultural, environmentalist and alienated.”
And then there are the freshman orientation programs that require everything from gay role-playing to graphic “safe sex” discussions. At Yale University, peer “health” educators advise students on where to get free condoms (Yale gave out over 14,000 free condoms in 2009) and how to use condoms and dental dams during oral sex—and that all happens even before the school’s annual “Sex Week” begins.
How to Save Your Family and College-Bound Kids
It’s crucial to take the time to understand the college landscape. Three great resources for insight on course offerings, dorm environment, and the intangibles of the college experience from a more conservative perspective are CampusReform.Org and CollegeGuide.org and the website of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. (Isi.org)
Evaluate the students as much as the courses. Peers can easily reinforce or break down what you have taught your child. A wise college selection process includes considering how easy it will be to find like-minded friends. Our daughter, for instance, spent a lot of time exploring campus ministries before making her final selection of a college with several strong Christian student organizations. She even made it a priority to participate in some of their meetings as part of her campus visits. Such investigation is important for more than just the friendships your child will make. A 2009 Harris poll shows that among recently married couples, the top three “offline” ways they met were through work, friends, or college.
Finally, stay connected to your child. Help your son or daughter locate a strong church that has a vibrant college program. Attend services with them each time you visit. It’s also vital to pray for them like you never have before, and let them know that you are. Make it a point to talk at least once a week so you can share their excitement and challenges in real time, and detect early if there are signs of trouble.
And don’t forget to write. Yes, old-fashioned hand-written letters that are filed with encouragement, reaffirmations of the truths you taught them when they were young, and clear declarations of your unending love. When you take the initiative to speak form your heart on a consistent basis, they will be better prepared to fend off attacks and cling to what they know to be true.
Some more down-to-earth advice: have your kid live at home and attend a community college for the first two years. Get an Associate’s and transfer to a four-year college. At the undergraduate level, community colleges are as good as universities, from what I’ve seen. And cheaper. And your daughter, living at home, won’t end up passed out at a dorm party where the boys are glancing around to see if anyone is watching what happens next.
Unless it’s Hillsdale college.
There are a lot of good, conservative Christian colleges and universities. Why subject your child to liberal brainwashing?
>Some more down-to-earth advice: have your kid live at home and attend a community college for the first two years. Get an Associate’s and transfer to a four-year college. At the undergraduate level, community colleges are as good as universities, from what I’ve seen. And cheaper. And your daughter, living at home, won’t end up passed out at a dorm party where the boys are glancing around to see if anyone is watching what happens next.
This is reasonable advice. While I would dispute that a community college would have as good instructors as a real university (at least CV wise), they often have people more dedicated to actual teaching. You will also get much smaller class sizes and thus more individual attention.
This doesn’t even mention how much money you’ll save. Community Colleges are worlds cheaper than even a public University. A rough estimate here in Colorado came to about $4k per year for the community college vs. $12k for a state university (just fees and tuition).
If anyone has the author’s email, maybe they should send her this:
It was posted on freepers last week by one of our peeps.
Also remember that lecturers at a university are focused on grad students, not undergrads. A lot of the undergrad 100 and 200 level courses aren’t even taught by professors. They’re taught by grad students. I know, I did it.
Huh? Virtually, all freshman/sophomore basic required courses are taught by grad assistants in mega-auditoriums. Hardy a venue for Socratic instructor/student interaction...
>Also remember that lecturers at a university are focused on grad students, not undergrads. A lot of the undergrad 100 and 200 level courses aren’t even taught by professors. They’re taught by grad students. I know, I did it.
Yeah, but on the other hand there is the issue of temporary instructors (adjunct instructors) which are used for the majority of low level classes. Both public universities and CCs use adjuncts, but the universities offer more money to their adjuncts, so in theory will be able to command the better ones (sometimes the pay is almost double).
It is almost assured that a freshman or sophomore at a state university will not be seeing any tenured professors teach. They will see adjuncts. Thus the quality of the adjunct is very important.
>Huh? Virtually, all freshman/sophomore basic required courses are taught by grad assistants in mega-auditoriums. Hardy a venue for Socratic instructor/student interaction...
No, most of them are taught by adjuncts, not grad students. It is pretty assured that a big university wouldn’t trust that big a class to a grad student, especially when adjuncts are plenty cheap and disposable.
The preponderance of adjunct instructors in education isn’t all that well known, but if you look at the staff listings for universities and colleges, they carry most of the teaching load (because tenured positions are now so utterly pampered).
I'm looking at Belmont University in Nashville for my son. Great Christian school and its student-teacher ratio is less than 20:1. Not cheap but seems worth it. He wants to major in music so we can't do the community college route.
Well, my advice is still to get the Associate’s at the CC level. Those 100-200 level classes are the most generic bunkem imaginable anyway. I’ve taken classes at community college level and two different universities, and have taught at one. At that low level, there is really no difference. It’s a canned curriculum, the educational equivalent of a TV dinner. Why pay more? Keep your kid at home and give them another two years with you before you send them off into the Belly of the Beast.
The problem folks is the INSTITUTIONAL LIBERAL MOMENTUM. You can't get away from it, even if your kids live at home. "Freshmen orientation" (now PC worded to be "first year experience") involves not only a "common reading" (always decidedly anti-capitalist, PC, ubertolerant) but they are trying to force PARENTS to participate in this too so that they can preempt the arguments the kids will hear at home.
"Diversity," a literal mania on campuses, includes "mandates" that departments hire 60% of new faculty as women, 30% as blacks or hispanics, blah, blah. "Diversity mandates" in curriculum require that you teach from "diverse backgrounds," so that even a U.S. history class becomes a "global" class. There is no "western civ" any more.
Without seeing it from the inside, average Americans who may have gone to college 20 or 30 years ago have no clue how relentless and insidious the BUREAUCRACY of leftism is on campus. Want a speaker on campus? Try getting a conservative. You MAY get one of 15, but only with a "panel" that will include three or four leftists, and only with a ton of protestors. EVERY SINGLE INTER-UNIVERSITY AGENDA ITEM is designed to be "eco-friendly," "diverse," "globalist," and so on.
I beg to differ. When I was at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, (a decent enough sized university) those low-level classes were indeed taught by grad students. In huge auditoriums. Maybe you get adjuncts for the 300-400 levels, but the 100-200? Grad students.
Yep. I actually advise young people to go into the Navy instead, if they’re interested in electronics, or mechanics, or don’t know WHAT they’re into... try the Navy. That’s what I did, and it’s probably why I wasn’t a complete sucker when I finally started college at 26. And it helped pay for it.
Alas, the Naval Academy and West Point are looking remarkably like any other schools today.
Most of today’s colleges take your money and immediately break your child’s ties to you and your values. The colleges promote free sex and drunkenness. (yes they do)
They force the child to declare belief in the religion of liberalism.
I have one at Grove City College, all classes taught by Profs (Engineering major). I have a high school Junior this year, looking at Art/Literature majors, just starting to look at options for her.
I’ve been a University faculty member for 32 years now and I see things posted I can both agree with and disagree with. The general ed requirements at most universities don’t deliver that much value. If you can free up time and money by bringing in credit I’d recommend doing so. I think AP in high school has the best value. They are good teachers and the classes have bright kids in them.
Community colleges are places to be careful. You can get a good education there (after all the textbooks and syllabi are not much different) but if the courses you are taking are prerequisites for a university course, you need to be sure it really is equivalent. No school is in the business of flunking people and you may find that even an A there is not delivering the same volume of material that the university does. Look at copies of the final exams for the transferred courses at the University you are going into and see if it is the same course you had.
The final thing to consider is what it might take to get a good recommendation. The diploma shouldn’t be the only goal. In my field of chemistry, doing an undergraduate research project with a faculty member is a key feature of placing yourself well after graduation. If you go the CC route, try to get a research experience arrangement at the university on day one (maybe even look into it before you start). The NSF has REU (research experiences for undergraduates) programs at lots of universities where students spend the summer getting paid (not a huge amount, but better than nothing) to do research.
Get a high school diploma,
Go military or trade apprentice, earn some money, acquire discipline, maturity, and education benefits,
Go to college if so inclined, which can include two years of the right CC,
Keep learning.
This nation hardly needs college-educated buffoons, and the economy will increasingly reveal that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.