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The quality of relativistic education

The quality of relativistic education

Last updated on: August 8, 2008 at 9:07 am by Gene Veith

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The quality of relativistic education 2008-08-08T09:07:41-04:00 Gene Veith

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Picking up on my own comment to yesterday’s “Agenda of some professor’s” post. . . .

Let us set aside the way some university professors deliberately and maliciously try to destroy their students’ faith, at a time when those students are eager to have their faith destroyed so that they can participate in the rank debauchery that characterizes most university campuses.

What kind of EDUCATION can students get where their professors teach them that Western civilization is worthless, that reason is invalid, that knowledge is unnecessary, that students can construct their own reality, and that there is no such thing as truth?

I guarantee that the level of discourse, the intellectual sophistication, and the mental development students receive at my Patrick Henry College–with its great books, courses in logic and rhetoric, and substantive programs–is far better than that students will receive at the postmodernist universities.

Yes, students who study engineering or some of the other technical fields can learn them at the big elite universities. And it is possible for grounded, self-disciplined, eager-to-learn students to pick good courses and professors from the vast smorgasbord or to educate themselves in the academic atmosphere. And other students may not learn anything, but they can learn how to do things, which may be all that is required in many professions today. But it is possible for students in some programs to come out worse educated than they came in, with the knowledge they came in with destroyed.

Doesn’t it concern parents, alumni, and taxpayers that it is the universities, ironically, that have become the centers of anti-intellectualism, opposition to knowledge, and narcissistic ignorance?

What is the educational value of institutions like that?

I suspect that most parents, not to mention their children, care nothing about the content or quality of the education they are receiving. Elite universities carry prestige, and that is all they care about. Ordinary universities can give tickets to a job, so that is all that matters. Many parents and students do not care about anything else, including the harm these places can do to young people’s faith and morals.

I think we need Christian institutions of higher education not just to protect young people but to keep learning alive. The church and specifically the monasteries kept learning alive through the barbarian vandalism of the Dark Ages, and I fear that we are back in that state. We need Christian universities, not to just colleges, to teach also the engineers, scientists, and technical fields, since those too, I think, are in danger in our relativistic intellectual climate. That’s why I wish the best for Baylor and other such ventures. But, in the meantime, support alternatives such as Patrick Henry College.

OK, maybe I am overstating the case. But don’t I have a point?

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