Educating Ignorance

Here’s an extended excerpt from another excellent post at AmericanThinker.com:

The radicalization of colleges did not happen overnight. What we have now is a product of past indifference and disinclination to do anything to reverse the spread of Leftist trends. John Howard’s new book, America’s Best Colleges! Really?, lays out his analysis of how the traditional purpose of education has been eradicated and replaced by radical ideologies of the Left. Howard outlines a brief history of how our Founders desired our public education system to reinforce religion and morality in order for our self-reliant experiment to survive and thrive. In contrast, he points out how the Left has imbedded its teachings in America’s educational system and perverted the Founders’ original intent in order to undermine the country’s foundation.

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Howard contends that morality is “the essential and irreplaceable foundation in a free society.” He then documents how everyone from Edmund Burke, President John Adams, President James Madison, and President John Quincy Adams, all declared political liberty can’t exist without morality. Howard believes that the “acculturation of the young for life in Christendom is carried on by religion, by the families, by educational institutions, by literature, and other cultural influences.” They then have to constantly be reinforced by the culture around them.

Revolutionaries inevitably begin with an assault on religion. The Wall Street Journal reported on July 5, 2002, that three quarters of all college seniors believe in moral relativity. An October 2012 Pew Research poll showed, “One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.” Because anti-American radicals have succeeded in undermining religion, standards of civil behavior have deteriorated, and our free society isn’t so free anymore.

Read the entire article…