Courtesy of the New Yorker
In a recent article by Calvin University Professor Jonathan P. Hill in The Chronicle of Higher Education [
"Parsing Santorum's Statistic on God and College: Looks as if It's
Wrong"] examines the recent data by social scientists who have examined
religious commitment and higher education in recent years. Hill
observes that the data "mostly contradicts the picture that Santorum
paints." Hill further notes that "Studies using comparable data from
recent cohorts of young people (for example, the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth 1997, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health, and the National Study of Youth and Religion) have found
virtually no overall differences on most measures of identity, practice,
and belief between those who head off to college and those who do not.
The one exception to this is the consistent finding that college
graduates attend religious services more frequently than those who do
not graduate from college."
Aside from them the data that
shows Santorum's claims are not supported by real world evidence, his
criticisms raise more fundamental questions that need to be asked. What
is the purpose of higher education? Should universities prepare young
men and women for careers, or should it give them the tools that enable
them to think for themselves? Should colleges be servants of the
status-quo? Should a higher education expose young men and women to
ideas that challenge their world views?
C.P. Snow was not
the first intellectual to bemoan the emergence of "Two Cultures"- the
chasm between those who studied the humanities and those who pursued
studies in science and engineering. The notorious curmudgeon and former
president of Boston University, John Silber, consistently criticized the
value of "shop" degrees and urged undergraduates to pursue a broad
liberal arts education. Silber further observed that college curricula
were being "dumbed-down." He once remarked that the high school
education that mother received in Texas in the early part of the
twentieth century was more rigorous than the undergraduate curriculum at
Boston University during his tenure as president of that university.
The U.S. Department of Education reports that between 1989 and 1999,
the number of students enrolled in degree-granting post secondary
institutions increased by 9 percent. During the next ten ears, from
1999-2009, enrollment increased 38 percent from 14.8 million to 20.4
million. Over and above enrollment in accredited 2-year colleges, 4-year
colleges, and universities, an additional 472,000 students attended
non-degree-granting, Title IV eligible post secondary institutions in
fall 2008.
Over and above the data Professor Hill cites
that shows little evidence of indoctrination, there is evidence that
suggests that today's college students, despite their increased numbers,
are not as broadly or as well-educated as their predecessors, including in the critical in the area of citizenship education. In a 2005 report by the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 14,000 freshman and seniors at fifty
colleges and universities were administered 60 multiple-choice
questions which were intended to measure their knowledge of American
history and government, world affairs, and the market economy. The first
of its major findings was that "America's colleges and universities
fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions."
The report noted a trivial difference between college seniors and their
freshman counterparts regarding knowledge of America's heritage.
"Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshman, and,
at many schools, seniors know less than freshman about America's
history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. Overall, college
seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2
percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale."
Hence, not surprisingly, Santorum may have misdiagnosed the malady. It's not that college students are being indoctrinated; to the contrary, the evidence suggests that they are not learning enough, and that they are unable to defend their own ideas and beliefs with the kind of knowledge and logic that a liberal arts education implies.
The
Marxist philosopher and social critic, Herbert Marcuse warned that "An
economic system that encourages its young men and women to tailor their
educations to the needs of the marketplace, irrespective of their hopes
and ambitions, is an economic system that should be roundly condemned. A
nation that discourages the study of art, music and the Humanities is a
nation that will inevitably find itself populated by unthinking dolts
and automatons."
Santorum's fears about indoctrination
are nonsensical. Colleges and universities are not indoctrinating young
men and women. Rather, it appears that, because a number of colleges and
universities today have less rigorous and less comprehensive courses of
study, they are failing in their core mission of educate our youth. If
this trend is not reversed, the seeds of the GOP's anti-intellectualism
will continue to fall on fertile ground among those who fear change in
all of its manifestations and those who stubbornly cling to the chains that
bind them.
The real danger is that Santorum's criticism
of education at all levels, if it were to be translated into public
policy, would have a chilling effect upon the intellectual curiosity of
young people and their willingness to explore the world of ideas.
Marcuse's warning then will become self-fulfilling prophecy.
