Culture
Clips - April
19, 2006
Tools for
School
It’s hardly worth asking anymore
whether political indoctrination is a problem in higher education.
The problem has been demonstrated and re-demonstrated ad nauseam
over the last couple of decades, so serious observers are left
with two main lines of inquiry: First, how can we reliably differentiate
pernicious indoctrination from legitimate academic discourse?
And second, what can we do to combat the indoctrination?
The first of these questions is taken
up in a short new book published by the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based civil-liberties group.
In FIRE’s Guide to First-Year
Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus, attorneys Harvey
A. Silverglate and Jordan Lorence make a case for “the indispensable
right to private conscience,” defined as “the right to arrive
at one’s private beliefs, without being coerced into an artificial
unity by those who wield power over us.” They deliver a brisk,
intellectually invigorating treatment of a controversial subject
that has long been clouded by a lack of clear thinking.
Making a solid case against thought
reform in academia can be a tricky thing to do. After all, a good
liberal-arts education is supposed to expose students to
radical new ideas, to challenge their preconceptions, and to make
them re-examine their most deeply held beliefs. This is how horizons
are broadened and minds are expanded. In a very important sense,
your thoughts should be reformed after you complete a program
of rigorous academic studies. So when conservatives complain about
“indoctrination” at the hands of campus radicals, they can easily
create the impression that they are just a bunch of crybabies
whose fragile worldviews can’t handle a collision with their critics…
But Silverglate and Lorence skillfully
avoid the obvious pitfalls of their subject. To pin down a type
of indoctrination that is both common on campus and heartily condemnable,
they focus on the key element of coercion. This feature presents
itself, they argue, when professors and administrators go beyond
mere advocacy and use their academic or administrative power to
force their views on students by threatening punishment for ideological
nonconformity.
Anthony Dick
National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/dick200604180713.asp
--
Testing our Faith
The Standard of London, in a fit
of perversity, has asked key public figures in England whether
they believe Jesus literally rose from the dead. This produced
answers that ranged from lyrical to disgusting to hilarious.
A couple of well-known prelates dodged
the question, for instance, and the press office at 10 Downing
St. informed the paper that Prime Minister Tony Blair, a serial
avower of his faith, would not answer such questions.
Such is the challenge of faith in
a roiled world. Easter is the most extraordinary of religious
holidays because it dares believers to step up and embrace the
impossible: the declaration that Jesus of Nazareth died, was buried
and rose on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
This proclamation admits of no middle
ground. You can't argue, as have some theologians and Gnostics,
that Jesus died "metaphorically" or that his death merely
served to liberate his spirit from the coarse confines of the
material world…
Such a stark challenge has a delicious
way of pinning Modernity to the wall. If there is a defining characteristic
to the age, it is petulant hubris. We believe in miracle diets,
but not miracles; politicians declare their faith in the perfectibility
of government, but not the perfection of the Almighty.
Tony Snow
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/tonysnow/
2006/04/14/193706.html
--
The Gospel of Unbelief
It happens twice a year, at Christmas
and Easter.
The newsweeklies sometimes carry
cover stories. The newspapers print items calling the reason for
these seasons into question.
This Easter is no exception, but
the intensity level seems to have increased.
This year's first attack came from
St. Paul, Minnesota, where local officials decided to ban the
Easter Bunny from City Hall. They said it might offend some non-Christians,
as if the Easter Bunny has anything to do with Easter's real significance.
Apparently it escaped the notice of the city council that the
Easter Bunny might offend Christians, because, like Santa Claus,
it is a counterfeit. If they want to be consistent, perhaps the
council should change the name of the city from St. Paul to, say,
Paul Bunyan.
Cal Thomas
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/calthomas/
2006/04/11/193242.html
--
Lazy Days
The sins I see in the everyday life
of the typical college student are not great ones. ... Enabled
by institutions, students repeatedly take the path of least resistance,
imagining they are making creative compromises with duty that
express their unique talents.
So they choose self-indulgence instead of self-denial, and self-esteem
instead of self-questioning. ... Students often postpone required
readings and assigned preparations, making it hard for them to
understand their classes the next day.
Gradually, lectures and discussions
that were once interesting start to seem boring and irrelevant,
and the temptation to skip classes becomes greater and greater,
especially when the classes are in the morning. ... Slothful students
regard themselves as full of potential, and so they make a bargain:
'I will be lazy now, but I will work hard later.' Like St. Augustine,
students say to themselves, 'Let me be chaste, but not yet.'?"
Thomas H. Benton in "The 7 Deadly
Sins of Students" April 14 in the Chronicle of Higher Education
http://www.washtimes.com/culture/20060417-101338-7310r_page2.htm
