,
7 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ Parents naturally—and rightly—want their kids to be financially secure and respected and to have fulfilling careers. In thinking about their kids’ college educations, they tend to focus on these things. But parents need to bear other things in mind, too, especially their
2/ children’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual development. When they do that, then college choices cannot be dictated by “prestige rankings.” In advising kids, parents need to learn all they can about the climate on the campus of any college under consideration. Are students
3/ students taught—and encouraged—to think deeply, critically, and for themselves? Or has groupthink hardened into place on campus? Is there genuine viewpoint diversity—including among the professors—or does everyone tend to think alike? Are students —all students—challenged?
4/ Or has education degenerated into indoctrination? If a religiously affiliated school is under consideration, does it insulate students from views that challenge the religion's teachings or are challenges allowed to be heard and considered as part of the educational process?
5/ If it is a putatively non-sectarian institution, is it one at which secularist ideologies themselves have come to function as religious dogmas? Colleges worth attending, whether religious or "secular," will not be the equivalent of Sunday school or a Marxist re-education camp.
6/ Students will meet, and learn to appreciate (and wrestle with), the thought of, great thinkers who were believers and unbelievers, people of the left, right, center, and unclassifiable. They will engage professors who, far from all thinking alike, differ in their views on
7/ some important issues, but are united in their devotion to truth seeking and in their commitment to educating, not indoctrinating, their students--professors who are self-critical and teach students, by example as much as by precept, to be their own best critics.
