College and university staff sometimes lies to parents in order to push a certain social agenda.
The mother of a Stanford University student is dismayed to learn that her child is living in a “gender neutral” dorm, which means co-ed within the room (i.e. sleeping in the same room as members of the opposite sex).
To make matters worse, university administration not only neglected to inform parents of this possibility in the residential hall info given to parents, but later lied and said it was only going on in four dorms when it was really going on in other dorms, including the dorm this woman’s daughter lives in.
This mom has met with the university’s president but has not found a resolution to this problem. Learn what she did find out (to her dismay) by reading her story.
How could she have avoided this problem? She did thoroughly investigate the university’s residential policies ahead of time, but could not have known that they were misrepresented. Perhaps the only way to really avoid this type of problem would be to avoid secular colleges and find a committed Christian university instead.
Next up,
Colleges and universities are more than willing to take your money in order to prepare your child for a career in which he probably won’t be able to find a job.
Homeschoolers and college have been an item for quite some time. As soon as the first crop of homeschooled kids burst on the scene in the 1980s, astounding bystanders with their intelligence, diligence and social skills (!), homeschooling parents gained the confidence to expect their children to go to college without a public high school transcript.
And go to college they did, many doing so well that colleges began to (and still do) seek out homeschooled kids. One of ours went to college and graduated with honors, so I guess we’re part of that trend.
But I think homeschooling parents should be aware that it’s not just a matter of sending your child to college and watching him or her thrive. College has changed. There are things going on at colleges and universities today that we parents never would have dreamed could happen. Knowledge of these things is necessary before you and your child make the college decision.
I’ve got three examples of why you must be extremely knowledgeable about colleges:
College and university staff sometimes lies to parents in order to push a certain social agenda.
Colleges and universities are more than happy to take your money in order to prepare your child for a career in which your child probably won’t be able to find employment.
Many college administrators believe that stopping alcohol and drug abuse is the responsibility of the student, not the college.
First off, colleges sometimes lie to parents.
One of the things homeschooled kids miss out on is being criticized by teachers for their personal beliefs.
I don’t think it’s bad to miss out on such experiences, but it does get me thinking about how to prepare (or whether it’s possible to prepare) our college-bound homeschooled offspring for that kind of situation, which is becoming increasingly common.
Not that it never happened in the past, of course. I recall being graded down in Biology 100 back at the good old U of I for refusing to accept the theory of evolution as a valid one. And as recently as last fall, my teenage daughter took some flak from her community college professor (in a graphic arts class, no less) for commenting that she liked Sarah Palin.
But it appears that the teachers are becoming more vehement and profane:
Jonathan Lopez, who is working on his associate of arts degree at Los Angeles City College, quoted a dictionary definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and cited several Bible verses during a public speaking class in late November, his suit says. His professor, John Matteson, interrupted, called Lopez a “fascist bastard” and refused to let him finish his address, according to the suit.
Nice, huh? We don’t have to worry about Jonathan, who has since sued the college district with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund. But what about our kids? John Matteson isn’t the only idiot professor out there. Can we prepare our kids for this kind of attack, and if so, how?
I think we should warn them that this happens, and discuss ways they can deal with it. In the case of my daughter, we discussed the inappropriateness of her teacher’s remarks (which I won’t go into here), especially since her dad and I were paying $400 for graphic design instruction, not misguided knee-jerk political philosophy. We also talked about what she wished she would have said, and what she’ll do when (not if) it happens again. We talked about knowing what you believe and why you believe it. And I told her I was proud of her for politely standing up for herself when verbally attacked by an authority figure.
Did I leave anything out? What else can we do?
Back when I was fairly new to homeschooling, a California family whose homeschooled son was accepted to Harvard made it big in the news (see links for their books below). Homeschooling was pretty much unknown at that time, so the idea that a child who did not attend school could get into a university, much less Harvard, created quite a stir.
Since that time, some homeschooling parents made it their goal to raise children who could gain acceptance into the best colleges, and they’ve done quite a job of achieving that goal. Many homeschooled kids have since graduated from college with honors, including one of mine.
But that wasn’t the reason we homeschooled him. His academic achievements were spurred by his own motivation. Our goal was to raise Christian kids who had a good basic education, could think for themselves, and who had developed the ability to teach themselves whatever they might need to know.
There’s nothing wrong with homeschooling children so that they can get into Harvard, but I hope it’s not the only reason a parent chooses to homeschool, because a degree from Harvard doesn’t guarantee learning as much as it does “a good student,” as college professor Joseph Epstein describes here:
I have come to distrust the type I think of as “the good student”–that is, the student who sails through school and is easily admitted into the top colleges and professional schools. The good student is the kid who works hard in high school, piles up lots of activities, and scores high on his SATs, and for his efforts gets into one of the 20 or so schools in the country that ring the gong of success. While there he gets a preponderance of A’s. This allows him to move on to the next good, or even slightly better, graduate, business, or professional school, where he will get more A’s still, and move onward and ever upward. His perfect résumé in hand, he runs only one risk–that of catching cold from the draft created by all the doors opening for him wherever he goes, as he piles up scads of money, honors, and finally ends up being offered a job at a high level of government. He has, in a sense Spike Lee never intended, done the right thing.
What’s wrong with this? Am I describing anything worse than effort and virtue richly rewarded? I believe I am. My sense of the good student is that, while in class, he really has only one pertinent question, which is, What does this guy, his professor at the moment, want? Whatever it is–a good dose of liberalism, libertarianism, feminism, conservatism–he gives it to him, in exchange for another A to slip into his backpack alongside all the others on his long trudge to the Harvard, Yale, Stanford law or business schools, and thence into the empyrean.
Just what the world needs…another Yes Man (or Woman), someone who goes with the party line in order to gain approval. In his essay, Epstein points out that there are some students who are willing to stick with their beliefs, no matter what belief system their professor professes. His own son is one of them. But they know they may be punished at grade time.
Epstein also suggests that those who do not attend high-brow colleges and universities like Harvard have a better chance of real success in the world:
Universities are of course the last bastion of snobbery in America. The problem is that the snobbery works. Nor is this snobbery likely to be seriously eroded in our lifetime. No parent whose child has the choice of going to Princeton or Arizona State is likely to advise the kid to become a Sun Devil. Go to one of the supposedly better schools and your chances for success in the great world increase, flat-out, no doubt about it. To have been accepted at one of the top schools means that a child has done what he was told, followed instructions, kept his eye on the prize, played the game, and won. But does it mean much more?
Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan were two of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century. Truman didn’t go to college at all, and Reagan, one strains to remember, went to Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois. Each was his own man, each, in his different way, without the least trace of conformity or hostage to received opinion or conventional wisdom. Schooling, even what passes for the best schooling, would, one feels, have made either man less himself and thereby probably worse.
Epstein taught at Northwestern University for over thirty years, so he’s had some time to develop this theory. What do you think?
Just stumbled onto this thread over at Lucianne.com. The comments are quite interesting.
Two of my favorites:
A BA in sociology (Where you study poor people for four years then become one.)
Senior year is a waste of time. Like Newt Gingrich pointed out, it’s just a government subsidized social dating program.
What do you think?
(Note: comment threads at L.com disappear after 48 hours, so don’t wait too long to check this out.)
