Attacks on education

It's becoming clearer. The Republicans want to eliminate education, so that the masses are reduced to uneducated serfs laboring for their lords, and these serfs die off or starve if they get sick.

In Louisiana, the flagship state university is preparing bankruptcy plans. Thanks, Gov Bobby Jindal!

LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn't soon take a turn for the better.

Louisiana's flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on finding a state budget solution, according to F. King Alexander, president and chancellor of LSU.

"We don't say that to scare people," he said. "Basically, it is how we are going to survive." 

In Kansas, school districts are closing early this year due to lack of funds. Thanks, Gov Sam Brownback!

Six school districts in Kansas will close early this year, following budget cuts signed in March by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.....

Brownback has championed tax and spending cuts since he was elected in 2010. The governor's school funding reform this spring came less than a year after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that some of the state's spending cuts to education were unconstitutional.

You may not like Hillary or the Democrats, craven bunch that they are, but at least they support the concept of public education.

The cult of ignorance

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov

There's a joke that facts have a well-known liberal bias.  That's because so much of conservative politics is so anti-intellectual.  Global warming is a scam, invented by grasping scientists to pad their research accounts.  Women who have abortions will get breast cancer.  Children of gay couples fail to thrive. Medical researchers are hiding cancer cures to make more money with treatment.  There are all false claims that aren't as far from the mainstream as we would like.  The Tea Party in particular, but hte REpublican party overall, is deeply suspicious of intellectuals.

And it's costing us.

The fundamental reason that countries in places like East Asia present such a significant challenge to the U.S. politically and economically is not because they have a lot of people or big militaries, or seem to be willing to grow their economic and political might without concern for issues like damage to the environment (China). The problem is that these countries have core cultural values that are more akin to a cult of intelligence and education than a cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. In Japan, for example, teachers are held in high esteem and normally viewed as among the most important members of a community. I have never run across the type of suspicion and even disdain for the work of teachers that occurs in the U.S. Teachers in Japan typically are paid significantly more than their peers in the U.S. The profession of teaching is one that is seen as being of central value in Japanese society and those who choose that profession are well compensated in terms of salary, pension, and respect for their knowledge and their efforts on behalf of children. 

.... in general Japanese value education, value the work of intellectuals, and see a well-educated public with a basic common knowledge in areas of scientific fact, math, history, literature, etc. as being an essential foundation to a successful democracy. 

Americans need to recognize that if the cult of ignorance continues, it will become increasingly difficult to compete politically and economically with countries that highly value intelligence and learning. Nowhere is this more problematic in the U.S. than among a growing number of elected officials who are products of that cult of ignorance and who, thus, are not equipped to compete with their international peers. Why is this a problem of national security? Because a population and its leadership need to have the knowledge and intellectual skills necessary to analyze world affairs in an intelligent and sophisticated way and to elect intelligent, capable representatives. The problem is not really with our educational system; it is with our educational culture. Americans need to remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to Charles Yancey on January 6, 1816: "if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be."

Republican hit list: public education

April Fool's day seems an appropriate time to note some particiular foolishness. The GOP is also attacking public education.

Apparently, it's another target for the upcoming election, as presidential hopefuls criticize public schools as "propaganda machines."

Our Man Newt says it's all the fault of people like me:

America is headed toward becoming a godless society unless voters take a stand against President Obama and liberal-minded college professors and like-minded media pushing his agenda.

Granted,some of this is kow-towing to the Christianist fringe in advance of caucuses and primaries--you know, those who home-school to keep their children free of ideas and inquiry. Education is also how people advance, and become more liberal. Wipe out open education, and you only learn what you want. That's a dangerous place to be, because innovation and modernization and growth don't tend to happen in an intellectual comfort zone.

It astonishes me that people vote for these loons.

Do we need Republican scientists?

So we have talked already about how educated people increasingly do not identify with the Republicans. We've also talked about how the Republicans cherry-pick fringe science. Not surprisingly, only about 6% of active scientists identify as Republican (but 32% are independent). Daniel Sarewitz in Slate writes

Yet, partisan politics aside, why should it matter that there are so few Republican scientists? After all, it's the scientific facts that matter, and facts aren't blue or red…..Republicans appear to be alienated from a mainstream scientific community that by and large doesn't share their political beliefs. The climate debacle is only the most conspicuous example of these debilitating tendencies, which play out in issues as diverse as nuclear waste disposal, protection of endangered species, and regulation of pharmaceuticals. …A democratic society needs Republican scientists.

Why is this the case? The Economist responds

I can think of three testable hypotheses they might look into. The first is that scientists are hostile towards Republicans, which scares young Republicans away from careers in science. The second is that Republicans are hostile towards science, and don't want to go into careers in science. The third is that young people who go into the sciences tend to end up becoming Democrats, due to factors inherent in the practice of science or to peer-group identification with other scientists.

Well, you could always ask….

I've been a scientist for more than half my life. When you think of the stereotype of the academic loony left and excessive political correctness of universities, that's generally not found in the sciences. Scientists are often quite conservative by comparison. I've know many who are devout readers of the Wall Street Journal. These folks almost certainly identified as Republican in the past: the old-style Republicans, fiscally very conservative and socially more or less libertarian.

But that's before the Republicans started denying science. The Culture Wars I think dismayed a lot of scientists. I suspect a large fraction of those who identify as Independent feel driven out of the current Republican party, which is a friend of the fringe, and actively antagonistic to facts and educational accomplishment. Moreover, part of the ethos of science is to be persuaded by facts. The Republican ethos now is the equivalent of putting its fingers in its ears and singing "La La La I can't hear you!" when presented with facts for example about climate change. The scientists didn't leave the REpublican party. The Republican party changed.

Insofar as the Republicans won't believe scientists, because scientists aren't Republican, yes, there's a problem. But the deeper problem is that the Republicans have politicized science and assume that scientists cannot be trusted if they are not REpublican. I don't know how you reconnect the Republicans with the values of knowledge, evidence and education. Looking at the crap coming out of DC, I despair that you can.

The dangers of a University education

Following up on our previous discussion about the anti-education attitude of the current republican party, we can't overstate how much of this opposition is religiously derived.

College in our society is a time when young people are exposed to new ideas and concepts, in a sufficiently structured environment that they have a safety net.

The LA TImes reports

[F]or many students, college is a time to develop spiritually in ways that can endure after they've finished school, a new long-term study has found.
...
Astin said young people often enter college knowing only what they were brought up to believe. They may never have been faced with opposing views. College is a safe haven in which they can explore their spirituality and challenge it.
...
The study found that many students struggled with their religious beliefs and became less certain of them during their college years.

It also found that many young people eschewed the rituals of organized religion but embraced what the researchers defined as the cornerstones of spirituality: asking the big, existential questions; working to improve one's community; and showing empathy toward other people.

"These spiritual qualities are critical and vital to many things a student does in college and after," Astin said.

The researchers also found that students who were more spiritual typically performed better academically, had stronger leadership skills, were more amiable and were generally more satisfied with college.

Students engaged with the liberal arts were more likely to become spiritual; those in math and science fields were less likely. Partying and overexposure to television and video games tended to inhibit spiritual growth. Community service and taking time to reflect — as well as class assignments that encouraged those endeavors — encouraged spirituality.

Does this sound like a good thing to you? It's what an education is supposed to offer: exposure to new ideas, challenges to your worldview, and an enriched life as a result. (The failure of most mainstream faith groups to connect with those "spiritual but not religious" students is a different issue.)

But of course, not everyone thinks that's a good thing. Albert Mohler, arch-conservative of the Southern Baptists, cautions parents of Christian students against letting their children go to college.

Even as most professors see themselves as stewards of the teaching profession and fellow learners with their students, others see their role in very different terms — as agents of ideological indoctrination....A professor who acts as such an agent of indoctrination abuses the stewardship of teaching and the professorial calling, but this abuse is more widespread and dangerous than many students and their parents understand.

For Christian parents and students, this should be a matter of deep concern and active awareness. The secularization of most educational institutions is an accomplished fact. Indeed, many college and university campuses are deeply antagonistic to Christian truth claims and the beliefs held by millions of students and their families. Furthermore, the leftist bent of most faculty is well-documented, especially in elite institutions and within the liberal arts faculties. ….

Bollocks. There are lots of mainstream Christians on the faculty, lots of Jews and other faiths too. Though few are fundamentalist Evangelicals, I agree.

[A] significant number of professors are happy to have parents spend 18 years raising children, only to drop them off on the campus and head back home. These professors are confident that the four or so years of the college experience will be ample time to separate students from the beliefs, convictions, moral commitments, and faith of their parents.

Even after expressing these truly breathtaking agendas, these professors go on to claim that they do not seek to indoctrinate their students into their own beliefs and worldviews, but no one can believe them now.

Also bollocks. The only goal is to teach them to think for themselves. If that's a threat, if that's a challenge to their morals, then how strong are they? If they depend on ignorance for survival?

I once met a woman at a science conference who taught biology at a small Christian college in the midwest. She knew they would never give her tenure--she wasn't of their denomination, but since she was married to an Episcopal priest, they couldn't exactly reject her as a non-believer. She told me that many of the students arrived there with rigid views that brooked no alternatives and it was a very frustrating task to teach them, even to teach them science.

College education should challenge rigid beliefs. Exposure to the world around us should be mind-expanding. What Mohler sees as a threat is what I see as my job. It's the student's job to put what they learn into their world view (and according to the LA Times, they are… but not necessarily in the way their parents want.)

When a student "gets it", the amazing coolness that is cell biology, they fairly dance with excitement. Oh, oh, oh! How they wrap that into their world view is up to them. But students who come in rigid denial (of evolution, for example) would be denying a fundamental aspect of science. It's just not compatible with an education: it's pure cognitive dissonance.

Of course at a big Research-I university, such students are unlikely to study science. Probably their parents adhere to Mr Mohler's exhortations, and they don't apply to the sort of places I have taught.

What a waste.

What is my role as a professor? It's best described in this poem, by Christopher Logue about Guillaume Apollinaire:

Come to the edge, he said.
They said, we are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them.
And they flew.

And that, my friends, is what I do.

Are today's Republicans actually stupid?

The conservative side often complains that universities are liberal places. And they are, but part of that has to be that universities are places that celebrate knowledge and discovery, and increasingly, the conservative movement and the Republicans oppose these things.

This may be why most conservatives on university faculties are of a libertarian, rather than typical Republican bent. The old style Republicans--socially libertarian, fiscally conservative, responsible supporters of free market policies-- they are independents, now, as the Republican Party has embraced social conservatism--at the cost of intelligence.

Now in the majority, Republicans want to hold hearings on the "global warming conspiracy". Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who will seek the Energy and Commerce Committee chairmanship maintains that we do not have to worry about climate change because God promised in the Bible not to destroy the world again after Noah’s flood.Their electoral base "doesn't believe" in evolution. They characterize homosexuality as somehow unnatural, or a pathology. They have a regrettable tendency to believer birther conspiracies and complain that Obama is a Muslim. They consider scientific findings to be politically manipulated by self-serving liars.

Given all this, I think it is not surprising that the GOP has a brain drain, especially among the young.

[T]he picture that emerges is alarming. In good universities across the nation, students flee the Republican Party. And the better the universities, it seems, the more drastic the trend. …
Today’s top students are motivated less by enthusiasm for Democrats and much more by revulsion from Republicans. It’s not the students who have changed so much. It’s the Republicans….

Under Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, Republicans championed science and knowledge. But over the past 30 years, national Republicans have formed an intensifying alliance with religious conservatives more skeptical of science and knowledge. I don’t know whether discarding evolution goes against common sense; but I’m pretty sure it goes against most Ivy League-educated senses.

To advance this alliance, national Republicans have derided elite universities as dangerous and hostile places….

In the age of Fox News and the Tea Party, the cultural war has heated up, and the anti-academic and anti-science rhetoric has intensified. …

The culture war that Republicans have waged has paid off. They have stoked up resentment against the educated "elites" and worn their anti-intellectualism as a badge of pride. And increasingly, they rely for votes on an uneducated, resentful class -- the left-behind class, the ones displaced by the modern global high-tech economy. With this current strategy, it is actually to their advantage to maintain a large part of the population as ignorant, ill educated, and aggrieved.

I think the Republicans are divided between the cynical manipulators, who politicize inquiry, mis-state facts, and use the media to enforce the idea of disagreement where none occurs, and the proudly ignorant, who willingly state that they don't "believe" in evolution or global warming, and who glare balefully at those who do.

While other countries rush ahead with investments in the future, developing science and technology and investing in education, the current Republican party wants to take the country back--into the 1950s, or beyond. I don't believe that ALL of them are that stupid. But those who aren't, are willing to sell out for short term gains and power. And that is truly frightening.

Meanwhile, the stupidification of America is well under way.

Hooding

It's graduation season, and the campus is filled with the happy faces of relieved undergraduates. There are also joyous faces who are a little bit older: the doctoral students who are "being hooded".

The PhD is the senior doctorate in US academe, the highest degree given. Other doctorates are considered "professional degrees": think MD, or JD. The recipients, while very accomplished, are more likely to pursue a profession at a high level of expertise. The Doctor of Philosophy is a research degree, with its traditional purpose academic. In my field of science, a PhD takes 5-8 years, rarely less, sometimes more.

Research students don't live on the academic clock, they live on the timing of the laboratory. One finishes when one finishes, which is seldom in graduation season. I did not "walk" the graduation ceremony when I finished my doctorate. In my 17 years as a professor, I have graduated a number of PhD's under my supervision, and none of them has walked either. Graduation seems more about the undergrads, the timing was bad, and our celebration has occurred at the thesis defense. But this year it was different.

As you know, academic regalia is mediaeval in origin, with a nod towards the ecclesiastical. It is a bit like wearing a sweltering tent, but it is impossible not to feel stately while wearing it.

In the US, Doctors' robes used to be basic black , but many universities now have the option of distinct colors. Regardless of the color of the robe, however, you can always identify the degree of the wearer by the length of the academic hood (4ft long for all doctors) , the width of the velvet around the neck (widest for doctors) and the colors. The velvet color around the neck specifies the degree: dark blue for PhD (regardless of field), dark green for MD, light blue for Ed. D (Education); pink for DMus (Doctor of Music), for example. Inset into the back are satin chevrons with colors of the university: blue and gold for the University of California, green and gold for the University of Oregon, and even plaid for Carnegie, etc. A few universities break with this system but most follow it.

In some universities, the transition of the young student to the community of scholars is achieved by having the advisor meet the student in a formal ceremony in full regalia. The student, wearing her doctoral robes, carries the doctoral hood over her arm and presents it to her dissertation advisor, who unfolds it and drapes it over her head: "hooding".

My current university takes this very seriously, and two of my students are nearly finished. This entitled them to walk in this year's PhD hooding ceremony, where each new PhD was met and hooded by their advisor. So I enveloped myself in The Tent that is my own regalia, choked by my long hood and with my tassselled tam set at a rakish angle, and processed into the auditorium with my fellow faculty, where we waited to walk up and meet our students in order. Although the University rules sternly advised PLEASE DO NOT HUG OR KISS YOUR STUDENT DURING THE CEREMONY, I couldn't resist giving them each a hug after I looped the heavy blue velvet around their necks.

And I will remind them that the title "Doctor" comes from the Latin docere, which means: to teach.

Gaudeamus igitur!

Update
All done.

Why study religion (2)

As we discussed in my previous post, there is a lot of discussion abut the proper place of religious studies in secular education. Writing in the online magazine Inside Higher Education, one writer takes on

.....the latest permutation of a long-standing trend: namely, an increasing desire to take an exclusively sociological or historical approach to Christianity, rather than what I would call, at the risk of being misunderstood, a "theological" one. By that I emphatically do not mean an approach that attempts to inculcate belief in God, loyalty to Christ, or membership in any Christian institution. I simply mean a grappling with the texts and concepts of influential Christian thinkers of the past two millennia, in the same way that we would deal with philosophical or literary texts from any cultural or religion tradition.

I think that's an excellent point he makes; the same way that we would deal with philosophical or literary texts from any cultural or religion tradition. At some level, we are treating Christian texts as too "special" in the academy.

....From a broader perspective, though, this trend toward sociological or historical approaches seems to me to point toward the fundamental anxiety that attends the teaching of Christianity in any secular setting. We are perfectly able to imagine courses on Buddhist philosophy or rabbinic Judaism — both of which involve what we would call "theological" argument and commentary on authoritative texts — without worrying that this would represent some kind of toehold for religious indoctrination. This remains the case even though there always tend to be at least a handful of college students who will wind up identifying as Buddhist in some sense, including practicing.

The teaching of "religions" generally, then, doesn’t seem problematic. Yet Christianity is somehow different. It’s too close to us all. ....Thus it is understandable that having a professor teaching Christian theology seems to be problematic in a way that teaching Buddhist philosophy or Talmudic exegesis is not.

I wonder what the basis of this is? I suspect part of it is a push back from the conservative wing, which very vocally brings their beliefs into the classroom and shuts down inquiry. Part of it is a hyper-active political correctness, where we give excess consideration to the possibility that someone might be offended so we eliminate the conversation.

....It is very difficult to see how a historically rigorous and broad-based approach to teaching Christian intellectual history could fail to meet academic muster or violate our country’s well-established commitment to the separation of church and state, even in a public university. It is in fact very difficult for me to see how any kind of proselytizing could take place in a secular academic environment at all. ....

Well, I think that's not quite right. There are certainly cases of proselytizing of opinion by faculty and by students--not just religious views, but political ones. It works both ways, conservative and liberal. I am frequently shocked to find out how seriously some of my students take my least utterance---and I teach science. Teaching a religious subject requires a combination of fearlessness and sensitivity.

In the end, though, it’s not my business what my students do with the knowledge and skills I give them, least of all when it comes to their own spiritual lives or lack thereof. What is my business is giving them the tools they need to take stock of the cultural inheritance that has, for better or worse, been forced on us all, in different ways and to varying degrees, and to open the door for them to consciously and creatively reappropriate elements of that inheritance if they choose or else articulate their reasons for rejecting it entirely.

I think this writer points out many of the issues that are important. It's also part of why I have no problem with a "great books" curriculum, as long as it's not limited to the "great books".

In many respects I wish I could go back to school. When I was in college, I didn't have much time outside of my degree requirements to explore things that I now find fascinating. I think education is wasted on the young. Unfortunately they are the only ones with the time to do it.

Why study religion? (1)

There's a great piece in the new Newsweek about the intellectual justification behind the study of religion. It begins with a tale of curricular reform at Harvard:

Louis Menand, the Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic and English professor, together with a small group of colleagues tasked with revising Harvard's core curriculum, made the case that undergraduate students should be required to take at least one course in a category called Reason and Faith. These would explore big issues in religion: intelligent design, debates within and around Islam, and a history of American faith, for example. Steven Pinker, the evolutionary psychologist, led the case against a religion requirement. He argued that the primary goal of a Harvard education is the pursuit of truth through rational inquiry, and that religion has no place in that.

In the end, Menand & Co. backed down, and the matter never made it to a vote. ....To decline to grapple head-on with the role of religion in a liberal-arts education, even as debates over faith and reason rage on blogs, and as publishers churn out books defending and attacking religious belief, is at best timid and at worst self-defeating.

.... This separation of "faith" from "reason" occurred in the early part of the 19th century, when the American university evolved into a secular place. Even now, in an era when a presidential candidate cannot get elected without a convincing "faith narrative," the scholars who study belief continue to reside in the Divinity School, and when the subject of religion comes up, the scholars on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences sniff at its seriousness.

But I think the Newsweek author is a little unfair, because religion hasn't been eliminated from the academy entire. At the same time we have an article in Inside HIgher Education talking about sociologists studying religion:

As a new study has found, there has been a significant increase over the last 25 or so years not only in the quantity of work done by sociologists on religion, but also in how religion is treated in those studies. No longer is it assumed to be only a reflection of some other socioeconomic trend, but increasingly it is treated as the factor that may be central to understanding a given group of people.....

a dominant belief in sociology for much of the mid-20th century was that as societies became more and more advanced, the role of religion would decline. Gross said that he sees much of the renewed interest in religious issues coming from the failure of that theory. "Lots of sociologists have started to explain why societies that were very advanced weren't as secular as previous scholars thought they would become," he said.

Although there is some concern about the motive behind funding

One reason sociology as a field long dismissed religion was because of an assumption that it was studied by those who wanted to advance a faith, not scholarship.

The history of religion is also being studied. What's missing in these however is studying religion itself, rather than its effect in social movements. (We'll talk more about that next time.)

I will completely agree that the subject of religion is certainly one appropriate for intellectual study. Indeed, I would argue that it is too important to be left solely to religious practitioners rather than active scholars. It is absolutely possible, and indeed, I think essential, to critically examine the contributions of any major cultural influence on society and history, and that includes a full awareness of its texts. It is also possible to examine the underpinnings of different faiths without disrespect or proselytizing-- or adhering to them. Of course adherence should not be sufficient to disqualify a scholar, either...as long as they maintain appropriate scholarly objectivity and discipline.

How can we turn out students with an "education" that does not give them tools to understand the background of some of our major global issues? Imagine trying to make foreign policy without an understanding of at least some Islamic history, or the Jewish identity with the land of Israel, or the conflicts between Orthodox and Catholic in the Balkans, Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland, Hindu and Sikh in India. Imagine trying to navigate our own political conflicts between fundamentalist Biblical literalists and secularists, without understanding any of the history of those using religious motivations as justification? Indeed, the naked conflict between fundamentalist belief and more nuanced modernism is at the root of the political battle I most care about, marriage equality.

There is a difference between studying religion and theology with the goal of becoming a minister, and studying religion and theology for its undeniably important place in our world. So, while I would have a problem giving a student a state stipend to get his M.Div with the goal of ordination (the state should not support any religion ), I would ahve no problem with giving a student a state stipend to get his MA or PhD in religion (academic, rather than theological degrees for the study, rather than practice). That's not supporting religion, but supporting a valid intellectual inquiry.

That we seem unable as a society to tell the difference between studying a subject dispassionately, and being a partison or advocate, is yet another example of the intellectual failure on both sides of this debate. Regardless of whether one is a believer or not, you cannot deny the role that belief plays in the lives of millions of people. To dismiss study of a particular area because of disdain for that area is as anti-intellectual as denial of evolution.

Isn't it remarkable that the profoundly religious and profoundly anti-religious end up in the same place on this one.

I think this helps explain why I, a non-believer, hang out on religious sites. Religion as a cultural influence is too important to be left only to the religious. As long as religion deeply affects my life, whether or not I am a practitioner, I have an intellectual reponsbility to engage the religious.

Is there a religious right to ignorance?

Seems in Quebec, they have a new law to teach comparative religion in the classroom. Predictably, Christianist loons protested. From Canada's National Post:

Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois dismissed a bid by parents in Drummondville, Que., who said the course on ethics and religious culture introduced across the province last year was undermining their efforts to instill Christian faith in their children.

"In light of all the evidence presented, the court does not see how the ... course limits the plaintiff's freedom of conscience and of religion for the children when it provides an overall presentation of various religions without obliging the children to adhere to them," Judge Dubois wrote.....

As of last year, parents no longer had the right to choose between courses in Catholic, Protestant or moral instruction. The new curriculum covers a broad range of world religions, with particular emphasis on Quebec's religious heritage -- Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and aboriginal spirituality. It is taught from Grade 1 through Grade 11.

The course's scope was too broad for the parents in the Drummondville case, who cannot be named because their two minor children are involved. During the trial, the children's mother testified that she did not see why her 7-year-old son needs to learn about Islam when he is still forming his own Catholic spirituality. "It's very confusing," she said.....

Sébastien Lebel-Grenier, a law professor at Université de Sherbrooke, said he is not surprised that the new course survived a challenge under the Charter of Rights.

"What parents were demanding was the right to ignorance, the right to protect their children from being exposed to the existence of other religions," he said. "This right to ignorance is certainly not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of religion does not protect the right not to know what is going on in our universe."

Move-in Day: moving out, moving on.

Last weekend, BP's ex was dropping something off at our house and looked plaintively at BP. "Our baby is leaving," he said, disbelievingly. BP nodded. They both looked slightly shellshocked.

Today is move-in day, and the Boy (all 6 ft of him) and his parents will drive to the campus and move him into his college dorm room, with a roommate he's never met. He's the youngest child, so this is not only a transition for him, but for his parents, and thus for me, the step-parent. I don't think the Boy sees it in quite the same way as we do; he's going to school not far from home, and I am sure we'll see him for laundry and meals on weekends. I suspect he views it more like an extended camp than "moving away from home". He's not terribly academic by nature, not uncommon in young men his age, though I hope that like most students, he'll grow into it.

But regardless, this is a huge change for us. No longer will we have a teenager to keep track of on a Saturday night or to wake up on a Monday morning in time for school. No more lunches to make, or trips to the high school to drop off a form. The house will stay tidier and we won't be tripping over soccer cleats in the garage (no parent lets cleats into the house more than once. ....yech!) Our life will change quite a lot, without the Boy as a central focus.

One of the nice things about his new school is that they have a formal Convocation to welcome the new students to campus. This is an old academic tradition, sadly uncommon now, that functions as a starting bookend, to be concluded with Commencement in four or five years. (Some schools call the ceremony Matriculation.) I was a bit surprised to find out that the Boy's large state school maintains this tradition. Tomorrow morning, the marching band will rouse the freshman and lead them from their dorms to the arena, where they will be formally welcomed by the faculty and administration to the university community.

I know that BP, Ex, and I will be tearful in the stands. the Boy will be mortified if he sees us. But of course, who we see isn't only the tall, handsome young man looking confidently to his sunny future, but the small boy chasing a soccer ball, the chubby pre-teen longing for his growth spurt to begin, the lanky high school student taking his first girlfriend to a dance. The nestling has fledged, leaving us behind, and we will have to crane our necks to see him soar.

Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus.....
Vivat academia!
Vivant professores!
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivant membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.

translation

Ye old College tribe

It's May first, which among other things is College Decision Day. As you know, it's been a long road for us. But it's official now, it looks like we are going to be an Aztec family!

You know, working in higher education makes school loyalty a very difficult business, and I have a variety of logo clothing items to prove it. There's my undergraduate university, and my graduate university, plus the various institutions where I have worked as postdoc and professor. BP has different loyalties from her family and her own alma mater. Now there's a new addition, The Boy's new university. So I have relationships with lots of schools.

To complicate matters further, some of of these have antagonistic sporting relations with the others. (BP and I have found ourselves on opposite sides of a sporting event once so far. I regret to say that her team won. Though I have to say, she gloated less than I would have.) My family are all stalwart supporters of one school, but I am inevitably divided, which means I end up on the outside a lot, on the periphery. Which seems to be my usual place in life.

Meantime, today, along with parents of almost 5000 other freshman, it's all about one thing: GO AZTECS!

The marketplace of ideas vs. the silence of the cloister

As the church politics swirl around this and other sites, I am not the only person who finds the parallels to academe very striking, not least in the viciousness of the battles. Of course, our modern conception of a university arose from something on the monastic model, and there's a reason our academic gowns have such similarities to clerical robes and vestments.

It's trendy to see universities as hotbeds of liberalism, and while that may be true in some faculties of the humanities, it is too facile to apply that across the community. In the sciences, law and business schools, there are a lot of quite conservative faculty and in the boards of trustees and upper administration, more than a few of Republican bent. The media stories of "attacks" on conservative students are actually very uncommon examples, and outside of a few highly politicized disciplines and issues, the ideological beliefs of the faculty are largely irrelevant to their colleagues or their careers.

Indeed, one hallmark of the university is the presence of all those ideas, and not surprisingly, a lot of squabbling. The ideal of the university as a marketplace of ideas that are forged and refined in an atmosphere of open debate is, in real life, pretty solid. We don't restrict admission or faculty recruitment to a single viewpoint. Students are generally free to challenge and the vast majority of faculty will focus on the quality of the argument rather than its content. The only absolute requirements are a respect for the facts, and a willingness to listen. That's been my experience in the many academic institutions where I have spent my career (I am a professor of science).

Indeed, it's the conservative schools that are far more likely to insist on a uniform ideological viewpoint. This has become clear to me lately as my stepson (The Boy) applies to university and to our surprise, he and several friends were interested in "Christian" schools. Now, I grew up Catholic (as has The Boy) and I know more than a few who have gone to Catholic universities, which are often the bane of the conservative hierarchy and largely support a vigorous spirit of intellectual inquiry.

But such inquiry does not exist at the colleges The Boy's friends have looked at. At least one school explicitly requires the faculty accept an evangelical view of Christianity which is a requirement they consider more important than a doctorate in the field, and further requires that the instructors incorporate "Christianity" into every class, be it philosophy or physics. This same school considers homosexuality the same as incest or pedophilia, and will expel a gay student who so much as holds hands, or states his/her desire for a romantic relationship with, a person of the same sex. It's not even having sex, simply the desire for a relationship, that will do it. (This is in their student handbook).

Students there will not meet faculty or other students who are atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, or other faiths, let alone from any liberal Christian traditions, thus eliminating well over half the population. They won't meet GLBT faculty or students either.

Why would students want to go there ? We find that the boys are largely interested because they have a better chance of playing college sports; they think the people are nice and the rules aren't really enforced (dream again, lads!). The girls, because their parents want them to be protected against liberal values (I think it is a total fear of female sexuality). Still, if their values cannot survive the give and take of an actual university, it seems to me those values are pretty weak to begin with. We remain vehemently opposed to The Boy attending a school that is so narrow in outlook and so counter to everything we are.

Meanwhile, to my mind, these are not universities, not the marketplace of ideas, but cloisters. Indeed, there is no willingness to engage other viewpoints, only a desire to bar the doors and keep them out. So we see in the battle between conservative and liberals in the churches as well. The liberals are preaching inclusion, and trying to bring even those of violently opposite viewpoints to a table together, under a common roof for discussion and yes, argument. The conservatives are vehemently opposed to this and promote a purity code that will exclude those that disagree or challenge their ideas. They impose a self-segregation to ensure they are not contaminated by The Other, and retreat into the cloister.

And just as with the university or the broader society, the separation of a class of people from the whole diminishes everyone and destroys the fabric of our culture. If there is no unifying "we" there remains only "our side" and "the other". And who cares about "them"?