School's Out.... (of its mind)

I'm listening to a podcast of the Dennis Prager radio program, and he took Chris Dodd to task for something he said at the Democrat debate the other night.

Dodd said the most important issue in America is education, because it is the answer to all the other problems "we face as a people."

Sounds perfectly logical. Until you consider the facts, of course.

Prager points out that studies show that higher education does not improve morals. People who are more highly educated are not more likely to be good people. Indeed, he presents many examples that indicate quite the opposite.

In Nazi Germany, the most highly educated were the most likely to support Nazism. Professors, lawyers, doctors and other educated professionals were, in fact, over-represented among supporters.

In America "intellectuals" were the most ardent supporters of Stalin and Communism. Today, those who support dictators like Chavez and Castro are almost exclusively the same demographic: college professors...and, all too often, college students.

There's a question being begged here, however. If you believe that Castro, Chavez, Communism and their ilk are better, and more highly educated people agree with you, you will likely consider education to produce people whose values are better. The problem is, there is almost no doubt that the very reason that you believe what leads you to that conclusion, is that you are highly educated yourself.

What comes first? The indoctrinating education or the value judgment that Communism is better?

I submit that secular education, bereft as it is of any moral content, creates people who are far more likely to be bad people than otherwise. Modern education presents several dangers:

1) the potential to induce intellectual pride without wisdom
2) the likelihood that teachers are ideologically biased
3) that much power and leadership will be invested in its graduates

Modern education "un-teaches" common sense. Professors and students believe things that are demonstrably false, and do not believe things that exist before their eyes. The lens they look through is more important, and more powerful than what they actually see.

The current "University" with all its abstract, dangerous, unworkable, ineffective-on-the-ground but emotionally satisfying policies and principles, is one of the most dangerous enemies of freedom and justice and the "American Way" on the planet.

And we allow them unrestricted access to the malleable minds of our young. This is a very real and present danger! Worse, more children than ever are attending college today...when the distorting untruths taught there are most extreme in history.

And as a result, the most common truck-driver will have a more reality based, sensible assessment of the world in almost every case than a well-indoctrinated college graduate. Almost any waitress can define 'justice' more accurately than any Social Science graduate.

As Prager says, current education is good at one thing. If you need a biologist, education in biology will produce one. If you need a doctor, medical school will produce one. If you need a lawyer, law school will produce one.

But if you need a moral person and a good American, almost no public school in America is capable of producing such a creature. When we take morality out of education, both as a subject, and as a virtue, we get what we got: "educated" people who don't know right from wrong, who can't distinguish between sin and sainthood. Who, in fact do not believe that Good or Evil exist at all, but that is is just a matter of perspective...and that whatever one "feels" is a valid and true as that which another "feels".

(Unless, of course, what another "feels" is that "feeling" is inferior to "thinking", and that there is a positive and ultimate Good, than morality is required for living. That is the one "perspective" that is not tolerated.)

He also said one of my favorite lines of all times. Responding to the idiotic statements of some radical, intellectually vacant animal rights activists, he said: "Only people who have been to college could say something that stupid!"

I'm still laughing, sadly, at the accuracy of that statement.

The Gunslinger

Full Disclosure: I am an American college graduate.