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Education and Truth in Advertising

Education and Truth in Advertising

Last updated on: January 30, 2021 at 11:16 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Education and Truth in Advertising 2021-01-30T23:16:02-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Christian colleges should stop living by marketing lies.

I learned the ugliness at a very young age.

The problem is not difference of perspective, but lies.

If you are hanging out with faculty at a Christian college as a youngling and you hear them mocking the beliefs of the parents and boasting about how they exist to change those beliefs in the students, then you are witnessing a fraud, even if you disagree with the perspective offered. Colleges are not, after all, churches. Anyone who goes to Harvard Divinity School, knows what they are getting. They are bravely straight up in all their advertising. One knows what one is getting. This can be an excellent choice, even for someone who disagrees with the perspective.

On the other hand, if some college or university is “selling” one thing to parents and functionally hiding dominant campus culture, underplaying the dominant faculty voices on campus, that is something else: a grift. PT Barnum did not say “there is a sucker born every minute,” because he actually liked his marks. He did not despise them, he just wanted their money.

The Christian college Barnum also likes the marks, pities them, is there to redeem them from their benighted ideas. This professor is personally glad that he has escaped his childhood home where The New Yorker never appeared on the coffee table. . .still feels a cultural fraud for missing that splendid opportunity. . .and is still working out his disappointment on the students. There is hope, however, for the marks, the professor knows. They can develop the right culture shibboleths, but first they must borrow tens of thousands of dollars. Get them signed and then surprise them.

Sadly, too few would borrow lifetime debt to get the actual teaching perspective of such schools for most of them to stay in business.

The Barnum offers the student redemption by confessing the sins of the fathers. None of this can be said on the tour, on the website. There all the talk will soothe the mark, the parent and prospective student. After all, if the mark does not sign up for backbreaking loans, the professors will be out of work.

This is the Barnum school that features the professor, usually aging, who fits the “profile” of the parents and students being highlighted on “the tour” or the video of the campus, while carefully not mentioning the more influential professor, whose views represent a majority of the total faculty, who hates the views of the older professor. This is the Barnum school whose religious services trend one way on alumni weekend and another when the faculty senate is in charge. Some famous alum, often dead, gets mentioned in the recruiting meeting while the working profs churn away attacking the worldview of the famous alum. Many, if not most, of the working profs are embarrassed by the famous alum while the parents are off signing loans to go the school.

There are few Barnums that can match the grift of a Christian college professor who despises the folks, or at least their beliefs, (for what they think are good reasons) letting the marketing department bubble the despised out of their cash. Better still, they are paid by usury: you get to go into debt to have your values attacked secretly! Once you have heard the administration of a place talk about “Aunt Tillie” coming and doing things so “Aunt Tillie” keeps the bequest coming, then you know the fraud.*

They despise you, are glad they have outgrown you, and are happy if you borrow money to be told so.

Of course, when you complain, and you will complain given the lies, they will tell you that you are “anti-intellectual” or “close minded.” They will ask about your last vote. They will do anything but admit they conned you with marketing to get you to come.

And if we are wise, we still pause and think about it for, after all, following Christ is hard. Maybe, probably, we have gotten many things wrong. Education should challenge us, force us to examine all our beliefs, and not just propagandize us. Global Christians, those with the values of most of the world’s believers, know that State U in America does not think we even rise to the level of being wrong. We get that this is so. Americans also are already subsidizing state universities with our tax dollars, so we know what we are getting there or easily could know. They tell us the truth.

Christian colleges?

Many do not. I would never go to a fundamentalist, narrow, sectarian, jingoistic Bible college.The good news is that those schools are always very clear that they are fundamentalist, narrow, sectarian, jingoistic. Like Harvard Divinity School, if you go there you (mostly) get what they say you are getting.

The lies are the problem. After all, if the Christian college said: nobody in our sociology department can stand the theology of any pastor of any church you ever attended, even though we are the denominational school, then that would be honest. If they said that only a minority on the faculty were likely to support the economic, cultural, or philosophical ideas you believe, then when you signed the usurious agreement, you would know what you were getting into lifelong debt to get. A Christian college professor can, after all, be “brave” for decades defying the administration hapless and unwilling to back up their marketing with reality. They pitch one thing and offer something else paid for by loans and the gifts of people long dead who rejected the very same ideas in their own generation, but who cannot now defend themselves. There may be nobody in the psychology department who thinks you have a soul, but if marketing does not tell you before you come, then by the time you notice, you may not care or be too debt loaded to be able to transfer.

You would be a minority, of course, at State U, if you had the values of the average Ethiopian Orthodox Christian. However, if you went to State U, or could find some fundie school that would take you, then at least you would know the truth about what you were getting. There would be no lies, no”official policy” that is dead in the average classroom. The Barnum school has professors who gain status by flouting the official rules, pretending bravery, at the Barnum Christain college. You would also save money at State U. (Avoid the fundie school. It is honest about being terrible at everything.)

There are, naturally, good liberal arts colleges that tell the truth about what they are doing. You can find those places, but not if you look only at marketing. See how the most prominent professors are on social media. Look up their books. Ask questions. Google the student government and newspaper. Read the social media of present students on the professors. If there is a disconnect between reality and marketing, do not invest in lies.

I would never wish to go to a narrow place. God grant an education that challenges everything, but God forbid that we pretend one thing while being another.

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