Sunday, March 25, 2012

(WR) Religion and College

Candidate Rick Santorum recently went on record as being against college (or at least against government encouraging it), for fear it will brainwash students into becoming thoughtful liberals, as many of their professors are. This is hogwash. College students are adults who do not brainwash easily -- it would take more than a light rinse -- and most professors are not in the brainwashing business in any case. While it is true that a majority of university professors are political liberals in their personal lives, this is mostly an artifact of being the sort of people who choose interesting and challenging professions that are not very remunerative; it has little or nothing to do with discrimination against those with other perspectives, as some have charged.

But thankfully there are at least some cases where what people learn in college -- not dogmas from their profs, but things like thinking critically, questioning assumptions, discovering the richness and complexity of the world -- opens them up to new and liberatory perspectives. Here is one such story by Frank Bruni in today's Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/bruni-a-catholic-classmate-rethinks-his-religion.html?ref=opinion

1 comment:

Brian Fitzpatrick said...

This almost seems to be too good to be true.