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Thursday, October 2. 2014

Higher Ed without a soul


From The Closing of the American Mind Revisited:



 Every Catholic university has its own story. But the basic dynamic tends to be the same. For all their good intentions, most Catholic administrators are hopelessly confused and inconsistent when it comes to the goals of education. Just talk to a Catholic dean or college president. They do not want non-Catholic students to be “uncomfortable,” and they want everyone to feel “included.” Then, not a minute or two later, the conversation shifts, and the very same proponents of inclusion will insist that we need to challenge our students with critical thought and diverse perspectives. Hello! You can’t have it both ways—making students comfortable and challenging them.


Posted by The Barrister in Education, Our Essays at 13:28 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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Critical thought and diverse perspective are just mindless elite approved buzz words. Nothing about making a better person or Christian or Catholic. Nothing about expanding the mind through rigorous immersion in the Weztern canon.
#1 Phil g on 2014-10-02 14:07 (Reply)
Surely you realize by now that most "Catholic" universities are almost as "Catholic" as Pelosi or Kerry or any of the Kennedys or "Cardinal" Dolan or...
#2 Mark Matis on 2014-10-02 14:52 (Reply)
Catholic universities need to be Catholic or close down. They should insist that all faculty, staff and students be believing, practicing Catholics and should insist on regular attendance at Mass.

It would help clarify matters if local Bishops demanded that schools like BC, ND and Georgetown stop advertising themselves as Catholic. In fact, a few fraudulent advertising lawsuits would be in order.

PS. I am a lapsed Catholic with no interest in returning to the Church, but I value honesty. The dishonest behavior of almost all the Catholic schools in the US is reprehensible, but the indifference of the Bishops to that dishonesty is inexcusable.
#3 bob sykes on 2014-10-02 16:12 (Reply)
They want children to be challenged to believe that Jesus wants them to be liberal.

Some of them are decent enough people who might die for The Church. But they haven't got the courage to live for her.
#4 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2014-10-02 22:12 (Reply)
A Jesuit once reminded me, "it is our sole purpose -- to keep the schools open. To guarantee that classical education survives in every community--sometimes, in order to do that we have to go with the political flow. But to offend, to be closed down means that we are not able to guarantee that at least some education is made available." We should never forget that all Jesuit Universities were shuttered for a very long time in almost every country, because they failed "to assure that the school continues in spite of the current political flow." That's a hard pill to swallow, especially when you have to watch the finest minds leave the classroom and return to parish duties because they cannot abide the politics of keeping the school open--some have done just that.
#5 faculty wife on 2014-10-03 00:04 (Reply)

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