Careful Not to Get Too Much Education...Or You Could Turn Liberal

[Q]

Published on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Careful Not to Get Too Much Education...Or You Could Turn Liberal

by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to a conversation I overheard at a Starbucks in Nashville last winter. It was a cold and rainy night as I worked away at my laptop, but the comforting aroma of cappuccino kept me going. My comfort was interrupted, however, by two young men who sat down in upholstered chairs near my table. One was talking, the other listening, in what appeared to be an informal college orientation.

"The only trouble with David Lipscomb (a conservative Christian college nearby) is that old man Lipscomb apparently didn't like football. So we don't have a football team, but we have a great faculty."

"But you do have to be careful about one thing," he said more quietly, coming closer and speaking in hushed tones, "My professor-I have this great professor-told me that you have to be careful not to get too much education, because you could lose your foundation, your core values."

The neophyte nodded solemnly, his eyebrows raised with worry.

"If you get a bachelors," the seasoned student reassured, "you'll probably be okay. But my professor said that when you get a master's, and definitely if you go beyond that, you can lose your values. He said that college students have to be watchful because if you get too much education, you could turn LIBERAL. He's seen it happen to a lot of good Christians."

Both young men looked around again to make sure no-one was listening (unfortunately my hearing is excellent, even when I wish it weren't), and shuddered visibly. They shook their heads at the terrifying fate that could befall them.

Continues: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1228-32.htm

[Solly Mack]

1. I've heard this expressed many times

The current state of America is proof positive this sentiment has been around a long, long time.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. OMG

I will never set foot in another church.

I was raised Catholic but have lapsed. The pedophile priest scandal convinced me to stay away permanently from Catholicism.

But now if this is really the attitude of our religious leaders, I will NEVER go to church again. This just disgusts me.

[m0nkeyneck]

4. pedophile priests are atheists

[bloom]

16. so what - anyone who does anything bad is an atheist?

is that it?

That is pretty insulting to atheists.

[m0nkeyneck]

18. lol.. i'm an atheist

[bloom]

20. that's nice

there are enough freeper types around that I don't assume people are being sarcastic.

some people use <sarcasm> tags to make that clear.

[qs04]

41. Obviously. You spelled the word correctly.

Okay okay, so I've run across one atheist who mispelled the word.

/tongue-in-cheek

[renaissanceguy]

5. Well, it makes sense.

When you want to brainwash people and control them, they can't have minds of their own. That would go against the "big plan."

http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues.14741250

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. True

But I have to credit the great education I received in CATHOLIC schools.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. Well, it's not the attitude of

most Lutherans or Episcopalians or Unitarians or United Methodists, or even of most Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox.

[Bandit]

3. The first ones they come after are the intellectuals

Ignorance is Bliss.

[jandrok]

6. Damn. I knew I shouldn't have eaten that apple.........

[bobbobbins]

7. i dunno, that seems kinda loony to me...

who the hell would actually say that? Even the nuttiest of the nutty wouldn't advise against education. This story seems bogus to me.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Did you click on the link and check it out?

Nothing from these fundies surprises me anymore.

[bloom]

17. Maybe you haven't been around very many nutty people

good for you.

[4_TN_TITANS]

21. It's in the manual.....

I've forgotten the location of the verse (I'm so far removed from my days as a preacher) but the Bible itself warns of the danger of too much education. I believe it was in Paul's writings. Obviously, the more educated you become the harder it is to swallow religion. Especially now that we know so much physical science about the universe.

[annabanana]

27. never DID like Paul much................n/t

[StoryTeller]

28. Not hardly!

Paul never bashed education. In fact, he was the first-century equivalent to a PhD from some ivy-league school. He studied under Gamaliel, who was one of the most respected and learned Jewish scholars/teachers of the time. His writings are so intellectual that people even now have a hard time understanding what he meant, and even back then, Peter wrote in his second letter that Paul is hard to understand. But on several occasions Paul urges various people, including women and young people, to learn, to study, to go beyond simple concepts and master more difficult concepts. (Quite a radical thing to suggest at that point in time.) The guy was not anti-education.

In Ecclesiastes, the writer states that pursuing knowledge and wisdom is ultimately meaningless. However, that shouldn't be taken to mean that the Bible teaches that too much education is bad. It simply means that the writer himself had come to feel that knowledge couldn't provide the meaning and fulfillment he was looking for in his life.

I can't think of any other statements in the Bible right off-hand that could be taken as a polemic against education. But I have found that a lot of well-meaning Christians are deeply suspicious of highly educated people. Or secular universities. Maybe because those people/places actually expect students to think and to back up those thoughts with good reasoning and facts?

[newyawker99]

31. Hi StoryTeller!!

welcome to DU!! :toast:

[StoryTeller]

34. Thank you!

Such a cheery welcome made me smile. :D

[ktowntennesseedem]

30. The manual also warns against having too much money.

Easier for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle that a wealthy man to enter heaven... and that's Jesus speaking, not Paul.

Even so, the point is not so much that education or wealth is dangerous, but what you do with it. If education or wealth, or anything else, takes the place of one's faith, it has become a false-god and is detrimental to one's faith. If, however, one views education, wealth, etc., as gifts from God, and uses them for self-betterment and the benefit of others, there is nothing wrong with that; in fact the manual says that what we're supposed to do!

(Of course, this may just be the educated liberal heretic in me talking!)

[qs04]

42. Is this what you're refering to?

1 Timothy 6:20&21
Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.


The KJV uses 'science' instead of 'knowledge.'

[MountainLaurel]

33. You must not get out much

This country has an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide -- part of it was deliberate efforts on the parts of the industries that ran large portions of this country. Coal companies that paid for schools systems would put large amounts of money into athletic teams, but would hire unqualified relatives and cronies as teachers. The purpose was to give the poor workers they were fucking over a diversion and something to rally around so that they wouldn't think much about just how abused they were. Meanwhile, they couldn't actually educate students because then they wouldn't have the subsequent two or three generations to work in the mines or the mills once the older people started dying of black lung, emphysema, or were crippled with back pain.

[Piperay]

35. You should check this out

if you think the story is 'bogus' because the CONservatives are worried

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1098962

[coloradodem2005]

10. Too late.

For me I was starting to go this way when I was about half way to my Bachelor's. Of course I was somewhat there to begin with.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Maple]

12. I've also heard this expressed

many times, by teachers and students.

Just enough education to get a good paying job, something 'practical' but nothing that makes you think or ponder, or 'escape your programming'.

Devil tempting you, ya know.

[jandrok]

22. The idea that education is dangerous....

Has been around for quite a while. The trend seems to be accellerating, though, especially amongst students at universities. I thought that this was an interesting article from CNN. A group of students has sued to prevent themselves from being exposed to new ideas.

Big sign of trouble, IMHO.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/12/28/academic.freedom.ap/index.html

[Sporadicus]

13. God Forbid We Should Expose Our Children to Liberal Perfessers

They might go into the workplace & create the world's largest economy or sumpin'. Next thing ya know, furriners will be beatin' down the doors tryin' to git into our colleges :eyes:

[undergroundpanther]

14. When will people

realize religion is a ancient racket built on a feel good delusion to soothe the pain of the human condition, to assuage very real primal fears and to manage("control") people and make them submit to injustice? Religion has a purpose but that purpose has been used as a tool for money and power by corrupt liar authoritarians.
A good open growing,deep,education is only an enemy to you if you are a LIAR from the beginning, LYING to people and children under the guise of"values","tradition" or "blaming the "will of god in a book",for your power grubbing, misery making,want of ignorance.. to control humanity for some nefarious agenda..That the control freak calls the will of god which is his own desire to dominate the hearts minds and wealth of this world projected into a book,into the unknown.

May the world reject the will of the authoritarian domination game that is killing us,and set each other free and lose their 'need' for this obedience to 'authorities'..The bible sets no one but the leaders free at the followers expense.Actions speak so much louder than words if you can let yourself read between the lines.

[Solly Mack]

26. Beams

Yes! Yes! Yes!

[madinmaryland]

15. Aren't most people who have MBA's conservative

republicans?

[bloom]

19. That particular degree is no doubt a safe one

for holding on to ones capitalist, hierarchical belief system.

Engineering and accounting degrees don't necessarily upset the balance either - esp. if you avoid very many liberal art, critical thinking types of classes.


I turned on Cspan earlier and there was a show about learning how to be an effective lobbyist. The person was talking about "thinking inside the box" (as opposed to creatively). One of the people in the room wanted help in convincing people that social security should be privatized....

From the article:

"Even as a Christian raised in the evangelical tradition, this shocked me. I suppose it shouldn't have; the Southern Baptist Convention recently considered a proposal to urge all parents to pull their children out of public schools to prevent their exposure to "non-biblical ideas" which, as it happens, run rampant in fields like medicine, physics, archeology, literature, philosophy, history, astronomy, psychology, theology-in short, everything."

Well not quite everything...

[ProfessorGAC]

29. Not ALL!

I have one, and i'm no conservative. Actually, i think the MBA mentality, and those in the economics field, are VERY often libertarian. They actually believe in social darwinism, regulation free business environment and all that. I don't actually think most of them are social conservatives. I think it's more a "leave me alone to make MY money" mentality.
The Professor

[ashmanonar]

23. heh

a poli sci class must be a death sentence, cuz damn...i turned WAY liberal after this past semester...(i was more independent beforehand)

[atommom]

24. This kind of logic just makes me want to scream. The conservatives

have always been suspicious of "liberal professors", and they are getting a lot more vocal in their complaints. It seems that many academic fields are more attractive to liberals, or (horrors!) might make a person more liberal as he/she studies them, because of the mind-broadening effects of learning. I've seen a lot of hostility towards higher ed here in Kansas, and the conservatives are definitely getting bolder now.

I personally don't see how an educated person could maintain a philosophy based on anger, fear, blind faith, and resistance to critical thinking. Though some have obviously managed that... :eyes:

[ktowntennesseedem]

25. I actually agree with them!

Education can make you a liberal! Where I disagree with them is in their assessment that becoming liberal is a bad thing. Personally I think it is a wonderful thing, and becoming more educated and more liberal is a very worthwhile endeavor.

I hope that in ten or twenty years, I can look at where I am today and consider myself to be a uneducated, narrow-minded conservative back in 2004!

[ailsagirl]

32. "He thinks too much: such men are dangerous"

Shakespeare ("Julius Caesar")

[Piperay]

36. What a horrible fate

becoming LIBERAL :eyes: I know when I entered college I was a moderate repug, when I came out I was a progressive Democrat. :shrug: I'm glad that I changed though, cause now everything makes sense and as a repug things never really did. :think:

[NightTrain]

38. If I had never been exposed to ideas that clashed with what used to be...

...my core values, I'd still be an ignorant right-winger living in a hermetically sealed environment of intolerance and hate. Thank Christ I was exposed to those other ideas!

[AngryWhiteLiberal]

39. "Free your mind, and your ass will follow"...so sayeth Saint G. Clinton

Is it any wonder that "original sin" was caused by eating from the "apple of knowledge"?

Being close-minded and being fundamentally religious are synonomous.

JB

[proudbluestater]

40. Tuition costs are up 26% in just four years. Not to worry, soon

there won't be many liberals left at all, except a few rich ones.

[Fleshdancer]

43. Reality TV reverses the effect of an evil liberal maker education

Just watch the Bachelor and wife swap. Problem solved!

[RadicalMom]

44. My brother was involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses for a while,...

And he told us that they were strongly against any education past high school. Thought it would affect their commitment, or some such. I think we can figure out the rest of that idea.