We don’t need no liberal education

May 20, 2006

Guest Post by Morbo

Some students at [tag]Patrick Henry College[/tag], a far-right institution of higher education founded by home-schooling advocate [tag]Michael Farris[/tag], are learning a hard lesson: Farris is a whack job whose first priority is instilling blind allegiance to fundamentalist dogma, not creating an intellectual environment.

The students’ disillusionment is shared by five professors at the rigidly fundamentalist school, located in Purcellville, Va., who don’t plan to be back next year. They say the school doesn’t respect free inquiry. As a local newspaper, Leesburg Today, reported:

Four of the resignations…came shortly after Culberson and Noe [two of the resigning profs] wrote an article in the student newspaper titled “The Role of General Revelation in Education,” arguing that sources of knowledge outside the Bible are needed for Christians to live complete lives. Shortly after the article was published, the school’s chaplain sent out a campus-wide e-mail, with President Michael Farris’ backing, criticizing the professors’ point of view and arguing that scripture is the guiding principle for all of life, leaving nothing unaddressed.

I feel sorry for the kids attending Patrick Henry. They are missing out on so much. They will never understand that one of the great things about a university education is that it can be an opportunity to expand your horizons by testing yourself and your assumptions about the world.

That’s the ideal, anyway. I’ll concede that many students don’t see it this way. To many, a college degree is merely a passport to a well-paying job. I understand the need for it to be that, but there’s no reason why the experience of higher education can’t be a whole lot more at the same time.

I grew up in an area that was mostly white, Christian and conservative. The university I attended was just 50 miles from my hometown but might as well have been on another continent. It was my first opportunity to meet people from other countries, cultures and religions. Sure, there was plenty of book learning, but the time I spent there was also an opportunity for me to reexamine some of my assumptions about the world. Maybe the things I believed weren’t so rock solid. I was only 18, after all. What did I know of the world?

My beliefs were challenged. Those I could not defend I discarded. I did emerge changed — better, I’m sure. Interactions with fellow students, instruction by gifted professors and even encountering serious literature and poetry forced me to think differently about the world around me. A good college education should teach a young person not what to think but how to think.

You don’t get that at Patrick Henry. Questioning authority is the last thing students there are encouraged to do. Farris has a book with all of the answers in it. You don’t challenge that.

I’m glad some professors and students are on to the game. Here’s hoping they end up at institutions that have not lost sight of the real purpose of higher education.

Now for the really scary part: Consider the Patrick Henry students who don’t question authority, the ones who are more than happy to remain in a rigid and authoritarian atmosphere, the ones who actually revel in it. What happens to them?

The story provides a sobering answer:

Among the thousands of colleges and universities across the country, Patrick Henry, during various semesters, has sent more interns to the White House than any other. The school doesn’t stray from its present-day vision to spawn Christian conservatives who will work in government and politics.

Farris is a whack job whose first priority is instilling blind allegiance to fundamentalist dogma, not creating an intellectual environment.

Morbo, check out my comment about your “Da Vinci Code” post. I wrote my comment before reading this post.

  • This reminds me of my undergrad class in Modern Chinese history, and how the communists believed you can find all the answers to questions in Mao’s Red Book, and nothing else.
    Same mentality, different side of the political spectrum

  • ” I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.” – – – Patrick Henry.

    This one statement alone—from that famous Henry speech which concludes with the words “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”—is enough to expose the convoluting evil spewed upon the nation by the enriched, hateful xenophobia of fundamentalism. There is only one practical way to counter their putrid message—and that is to turn it directly back upon them.

    Fundamentalism will recognize nothing but fundamentalism; anything else is deemed unacceptable. So—suppose people were to overtly reject not only fundamentalism, but also counter those who promote it; those who accept it; those who turn a blind eye to it? It’s no longer enough to protest the message of fundamentalism—it’s time to shout it down…throw a countermessage back in its face. The Left—and anyone else who’s against this Neo-Xeno rubbish, can return the “favors” in the likeness of their “giving” by fundamentalists, by denying them the benefits of partaking in society. Don’t wait on them in restaurants (they’re the stingiest creatures on the planet when it comes to tipping the wait-staff). Don’t rent housing to them (they’ve this bizarre idea that a residential structure can be used for commercial purposes). Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Right on down the line…and use the same defense they’ve used the past several years: That the individual and/or group denying goods and services have an inherent right to his/her/their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of expression and belief.

    That, right there, would have an extremely good chance of holding up in court—all the way up to the Supremes….

  • PU seems to be a breeding ground for a generation of rightwing fundy zampolits.

    The collective human knowledge has expanded the some 1200 years the bible’s been in existence. How can scriptures be the end all of knowledge?

    I don’t agree with the religious views of the Amish or Mennonites, but I respect them because they live the way they want to live and stick to their own rules unlike these clowns.

    If the “intellects” at PU firmly believe that the bible is the entire scope of human knowledge then the students and followers of PU should do the following because it would be hypocritical to use the tools of modern convenience yet ignore the understanding of the ideas and laws behind them:
    1) Abandon cars
    2) Throw out all electronics
    3) Learn to weave their own clothes and forgo man made fibres as they are from satan’s loom
    4) Stop using paper money
    5) Don’t buy bioengineered food (including most modern fruits and vges such as broccoli and apricots as they weren’t in the bible)
    5) Stop using toilet paper (I hear sand is a perfectly acceptable substitute.)

    In other words, live life as the same as someone 1200 years ago. Make the Mennonites look like spacemen compared to these loons.

  • PHC has posted a response to media reports on the departure of the five faculty members. Here are some of the highlights.

    The College is, likewise, committed to a critical reading and study of the classics, not as articles of intellectual faith or undue devotion, but as important works needed to help students understand the cycles and currents of culture and history.[…]
    …[S]tudents at PHC are, …, asked to critically view the great concepts, literature, and art of western civilization, and digest these subjects as they would all scholarly works, with a healthy dose of caution and diligence, weighing everything against the absolute truth found only in Scripture

    When it comes to the liberal arts the students are expected have a critical mind, but, so far as the scriptures goes, it is the absolute truth and not to be questioned. In summary, the purpose of studying the liberal arts at PHC is so that students know their enemy.

    The statement goes on to say that,

    Yet in both their comments and actions of recent weeks, the departing faculty seem to display their resistance to this central operating premise. They have made misleading accusations that appear to be intended to embarass (ed. While I make my share of typing mistakes, it’s probably not a good idea to misspell the word embarrass when you are defending your lofty commitment to education. By doing so you are doing the work of those that are trying to embarrass you.) and discredit the College leadership, whose vision and passion for the classical liberal arts made the College possible.

    Remember the operating premise is to teach the students why the liberal art got it wrong. While typically we interpret passion for a subject to mean strong positive feelings toward it, in this context should be interpreted as strong negative feelings, as in I hate you with a passion.

    Here is the kicker,

    At any point, the departing faculty could have taken up their dispute with the College Board of Trustees and sought biblical mediation and reconciliation; all chose not to, preferring to vent their grievances in the press and by drawing students in their classrooms into the fray.

    Let’s review,

    Four of the resignations…came shortly after Culberson and Noe [two of the resigning profs] wrote an article in the student newspaper titled “The Role of General Revelation in Education,” arguing that sources of knowledge outside the Bible are needed for Christians to live complete lives.

    You have faculty that believe that source of information outside the bible are needed for “Christians to live complete lives”. This is in conflict with the administration view, but not to worry the adminstration thinks that the whole problem can be resolved. How? Why through biblical remediation and reconciliation. If religion ever fades from the face of the earth where will find such entertaining buffoons as these fundies.

    There is one point in this response which I agree with. The students knew, or at least should have known, what they were getting into when the matriculated.

    One question, why does Virginia attract all the loony college founders? You have, in addition to PHC, Fallwell’s Liberty and Robertson’s Regents. At least you don’t have Bob Jones.

  • ” I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.” – – – Patrick Henry.

    One can only wonder what Patrick Henry would think of the university that bears his name.

  • Most of these kids go onto internships and jobs in government and politics. . . because no private employer would hire them.

    And once the Rethug Movement has run its course (i.e. this November), those right-wing govt and politics (nut) jobs will be scarce. Then these kids will really get a rude awakening. My fear is that anyone drawn to and who likes this environment and steeps in it for four years, and then cannot get gainful employment, seems a strong candidate for McVeigh-hood.

    Like Morbo, going from a small homogenous midwestern town to a 26,000 person major univeristy was a huge evolutionary experience for me. It surely made me more open-minded and tolerant, all of which I consider positive developments (though I suspect some on the right flank would not.) It is something I think everyone should experience.

  • I share, with what appear to be many on this list, the experience of going, at age 17, from a tiny cow town (literally) in central coastal California, and three years in a Franciscan seminary, to universities in San Francisco (USF and, after the Jesuits kicked me out, SF State) — eight blessed years in the Haight-Ashbury district, shredding official Roman Catholic theology and small-town prejudices along the way, and discussing literally the world of thought while drinking enormous quantities of beer, with free pickles, at Tommy’s Joynt or in scores of H-A apartments. No TV, very little money (often flat broke), a small but tight group of some the best minds I’ve ever known.

    I can’t imagine what those who “complete” at a place like Patrick Henry must be like. Do they ever, later on, feel cheated of that wonderful time in their lives? Do they ever travel? read interesting or challenging books? learn dirty/funny songs, listen to all of Mozart’s symphonies or play early polyphony in a recorder group? play guitar in a band, work in a left-wing political campaign, dance in a gay bar or an all-black bar? Are they all small-time Orrin Hatches (my idea of earthly hell would be having to converse for even a minute with him)? Will they be listening to this afternoon’s opera on CBC (Verdi’s Falstaff)? Have they even tried ethnic food? God, I feel sorry for the sorry, uneducated, inexperienced bastards — well, I don’t actually, as long they wish a lake of hell fire, and plagues of locusts and toads, for people like me. Students at places like Patrick Henry just don’t know what they’re missing. “None so blind….”

  • Wow, what a bunch of dick heads. Assuming someone hasn’t traveled, listened to classical music, or eaten ethinic foods simply because they are conservative and Christian is as small minded as the people you stereotype. It’s nice to see that being narrow minded isn’t just a Republican thing.

    I can’t believe I found this place after looking up “military wedge.”

    I said, “dick heads.” Huh-Huh. Huh

  • Wow… I’m trying to imagine following 12 years of home schooling with 4 years at Patrick Henry, and then landing in the White House… People reaching their mid-20s before having daily contact with non-Christians in environments that aren’t based on rigid controls.

    Some folks have done well with that, but some just end up delaying their adolescence, and some tough but necessary lessons, until their 20s (or later).

  • I was raised in Germany living among Wermacht veterans. Actually viewed the battlefields we studied in history class.
    I almost cried at Verdun. That would have been embarrassing as hell.

  • From the AP:

    A federal judge who outlawed the teaching of “intelligent design” in science class told graduates at Dickinson College that the nation’s founders saw religion as the result of personal inquiry, not church doctrine.

    U.S. District Judge John E. Jones gave the commencement address Sunday to 500 graduates at Dickinson College, his alma mater.[…]
    Jones credited his liberal arts education at Dickinson, more than his law school years, for preparing him for what he calls his “Dover moment.”

    “It was my liberal arts education … that provided me with the best ability to handle the rather monumental task of deciding the Dover case,” he said.

  • “Four of the resignations…came shortly after … [two of the resigning profs] wrote an article in the student newspaper titled “The Role of [Marxism-Leninism] in Education,” arguing that sources of knowledge outside the [works of Marx and Lenin] are needed for [Communists] to live complete lives. Shortly after the article was published, the school’s [political comissar] sent out a campus-wide e-mail, with [General Secretary Stalin’s] backing, criticizing the professors’ point of view and arguing that [Marxism-Leninism] is the guiding principle for all of life, leaving nothing unaddressed.”

    Yup, matches up precisely. Welcome to the new totalitarianism.

  • I’m a Christian, but by no means a conservative one. I do know some folks who hold this view that the Bible is the source of all truth and knowledge. To them I ask, “Where does it have a good recipe for meatloaf?”

    • Comments are closed.