More on Secularism and Universities
Just a brief note addition to Kevin’s post: the free article from May’s Touchstone magazine is Terence O. Moore’s feature, “Not Harvard Bound.”
A key quote:
There’s a discussion of Moore’s article at Touchstone’s reader discussion site, Treaders.
HT: Mere Comments
A key quote:
The elite schools no longer command the reverence and deference of red-state America. The parents and students of “flyover country” are starting to put their money where their morals are or where they believe truth is.
There’s a discussion of Moore’s article at Touchstone’s reader discussion site, Treaders.
HT: Mere Comments
Comments
#1 2006-07-26 06:34 (Reply)
It’s not only red-State Americans that are increasingly skeptical regarding self-proclaimed “elite” universities graduates. I’ve lived my entire adult working life in two very blue States, and absolutely consider an undergraduate job applicant from an ivy league university to have a “strike” against them from the get-go. And although I wouldn’t attribute the entire problem to the secular dogmas regularly pushed on students attending those institutions, I absolutely believe there to be a relation between their hostility towards including a traditional focus on moral and ethical instruction, and the poor work ethic and attitudes I’ve observed in their graduates behavior.
In contrast, I’ve recently had the honor of working with a large number of graduates from Calvin College, MI, and have been impressed by their professionalism, composure, character, and conduct without exception. Perhaps I have merely been lucky, but I doubt it. So having observed, in my own opinion, such a marked superiority of this small colleges graduates over their peers from supposedly “elite” Universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Columbia, naturally I wondered at the possible reasons.
The obvious distinction also turns out to provide the most generally applicable explanation as well. Calvin College (and other institutions like it), in keeping with it’s express mission, takes great care to convey traditional Christian virtues to its students. The secular “elite” University graduates possessing these virtues are an exceptional minority... from the majority? Contempt.
These virtues (Christian, but not exclusively so), when sincerely held and applied within the context of a secular work environment, have a dramatic effect on performance. Put simply, Character matters. A well educated yet crass and obnoxious sleezebag, is a crass and obnoxious sleezebag first and foremost. And I believe few reasonable people would want their children to fit that description.