Sending Kids to College is Like Throwing Them to the Wolves

Today there's an article in the WSJ titled "Conservatism and the University Curriculum." The fact that college campuses are dominated by liberals and teach solely through this lens should be of paramount importance to Americans. It is no small matter.

When I was in school (at Boston University in the late eighties) I took a course at the School of Education which required aspiring teachers to choose a topic and teach the class. I recall one student in particular who, when it was his turn to teach a social science topic, gave absolutely no indication of where he stood on the matter. He was superbly neutral -- which I knew would make him an excellent teacher. That's what teaching is about: making students think. (And, in some cases, making them wonder what their teacher thinks.) Such is the hallmark of a true education.

Alas, these days are gone. Today's universities are as corrupt as the mainstream media. Sending your 18-year-old to college now is like throwing them to the wolves: They will be eaten alive by liberals in power. "The political science departments at elite private universities offer undergraduates a variety of courses on a range of topics. But one topic the undergraduates at these institutions -- and at the vast majority of other universities and colleges -- are unlikely to find covered is conservatism," writes Peter Berkowitz.

I would also add this: It isn't just in the political science departments that liberalism reigns. It may not be as overt in other schools on campus, but it is always there -- subtle and insidious. As a result, conservative-minded students are routinely marginalized, feeling like outcasts. This is a travesty, for while powerful liberals like to think they speak for the masses, while they like to believe their way is the only way-- the right way -- to think, the reality is that most Americans (unless they hail from New York or CA) are conservative-minded. Which means that at least half of all college students today are guided away from their parents' tutelage and toward a new worldview. For some it will stick; for others it won't. Certainly parental influence is much greater than the influence of four years away from home.

Still, "without an introduction to the conservative tradition in America and the conservative dimensions of modern political philosophy, political science students are condemned to a substantially incomplete and seriously unbalanced knowledge of their subject." Indeed, most students are condemned to a seriously unbalanced education.

Going to college ain't what it used to be. We have a lot of work to do to prepare our children for this reality.