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

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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

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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

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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