Are college students being brainwashed by liberal academics?
Some politicians believe the situation is so severe that they are
introducing bills to protect students who are conservatives from
vindictive professors who stifle any form of dissent.
Republican-sponsored legislation is moving forward in several
states to create an "academic bill of rights" for
college campuses, which will also promote intellectual diversity
among the faculty. Here's my question: Why, oh, why do we need to
legislate common sense when there's a much cheaper and quicker
answer to this problem?
The editor of the superb college guide "Choosing the Right
College," John Zmirak, said he thinks student activism and
parental vigilance are more important than legislation, which
must be monitored and then enforced. A Queens native, Mr. Zmirak
was just such an activist as a conservative Yale undergraduate
when he became involved with the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, which issues the guide. This nonprofit, nonpartisan
organization was founded more than 50 years ago, and yet when I
went to college I didn't know it existed. Its first president was
William F. Buckley Jr. According to its mission statement, posted
atwww.isi.org, the group "was established in 1953 to convey
to successive generations of college youth an appreciation for
the values and institutions that sustain a free and virtuous
society."
Any concerned parent with a college-age child needs to get this
annual college guide, which gives the inside scoop on the
nation's top-rated schools. Mr. Zmirak said a staff of young
journalists was sent to 134 top colleges to provide not only the
essential facts about the institutions but to render balanced
judgments of the colleges' core curricula, values, and social and
academic resources.
The guide gives the lowdown on local academic giants like
Columbia University, NYU, Cooper Union, as well as upstate New
York's Cornell University and Colgate. Mr. Zmirak said that even
though Columbia has a reputation for radical liberalism, it and
its sister, Barnard College, still offer a core curriculum that
teaches the ideas of the West. Columbia students still must read
the great books of literature. By contrast, Mr. Zmirak said,
"in the '70's, Harvard destroyed the core curriculum."
In his guide we learn that Harvard was "remade ... as the
model of the modern research university-afflicted by
specialization, premature professionalism, and political
correctness. Indeed, it was Harvard's abandonment of broad-based
liberal education that set the trend followed by almost every
major university in the country."
Armed with this guide and the resulting idea of what to expect at
given colleges, parents can either prepare their children to
weather an intellectual environment that may be hostile to their
family values or simply select a college that enriches these
principles.
Every time I watch a program about the antics of college students
on spring break in Florida or Cancun, I can't help but think how
far removed that drunken debauchery is from the days of Annette
and Frankie and their "Beach Blanket Bingo." Co-eds now
tear off their wet T-shirts for the leering cameras of strangers
and some revelers don't survive their beer-drinking contests.
Spring break used to be a much-needed respite from the rigors of
intense study, but has anyone been paying attention to what's
being taught in the hallowed halls of celebrated learning? Yale
no longer has a core curriculum, but it does offer courses in
mambo dancing, gay fiction, and suburbia. It still offers
difficult courses such as calculus of functions of one variable,
but guess which one your freshman will pick?
How about Princeton University, which still has the infamous
Peter Singer as one of its professors of bioethics? The guide
quotes what Mr. Singer wrote in his book "Practical
Ethics": "Killing a disabled infant is not morally
equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at
all." I have a hard time respecting any institution that
allows a person like Mr. Singer to influence young minds.
In addition to editing the college guide, which I heartily
endorse for all parents (go towww.collegeguide.org), Mr. Zmirak
has written a most delightful book, "A Bad Catholic's Guide
to Good Living." There are so many of us, it'll probably be
a best seller.
But when it comes to the education of our young, he's dead
serious and recognizes the importance of getting back to the
basics of teaching responsibly. Colleges are charging
$25,000-$40,000 a year, but because high schools are failing to
teach the basics they are no better than remedial summer schools.
Americans who care about education in a free society, Mr. Zmirak
said, need to support colleges, which make real demands of and
dispense core knowledge to their freshmen.
If parents don't do their homework, they shouldn't be surprised
if their offspring are brainwashed.