Would the author object to preventing the performance of the V-dialogs. Or letting the local gay pride group have a gay pride parade on campus? How about a public reading of penthouse magazine. Some speech is harmful. The problem with censorship on a federal level is it is not possible to choose good sensors. For a smaller group, like a college the faculty are exactly that de-facto. However, here comes the state and the idea of ‘separation of church and state’. Something that works well from a federal level but is an abysmal failure from an education level. There can be no education with out a foundation in philosophy. The problem is in public institution the only philosophy accepted are the ones put forth by people who lie and claim they don’t have one.

Yet, I can relate to ‘schooling’ that just didn’t quite do the job – is our Catholic catechesis much better than our current failure of general liberal arts? My late wife Sharon and I had to take Bible study with Protestant Bible-belters, so little was available in the Church some thirty-five-plus years ago; our own devout pastor, our beloved Father Vita sent us to the Protestants! You can see the ‘Protestant edge’ on Scripture in the illustrious likes of converts like Mark Shea. Oddly, the Bible study among those worthy Protestant folk, who sang like the angels between study sessions, was to make us more devoted Catholics. WE understood the powerful Eucharistic truths of John 6 and 1 Corinthians 11 – so sad they did not.

So, of catechesis, Bible study and even liberal arts, I am self-educated, by and large. It is difficult having no one (for the last twenty-six years) to discuss things with – so many have NO interest in any of those subjects. My questions must be answered in my own further study – praise God for the Internet and orthodox and quality authors – but that just increases the depth of my knowledge, understanding, discernment and other fine qualities – still working on those, and wisdom, patience, etc., as real virtues in me.Went to one semester in college and found it dreadful – a Marxist ‘English language’ instructor, as if English can only be understood in collectivist terms. One instructor talked to walls instead of us in the large auditorium style classroom. Maybe a quarter of his lecture was heard. (Hey! He was ‘tenured’, which is an academic get-out-of-work card.)

My daughter, Helena, found herself re-teaching classes – informal, uncompensated tutoring – to struggling fellow students – and SHE was supposed to pay the school? Before entering her junior year, she found she preferred a job permitting her to be stay-at-home Mom, anyway.

I will say this – I applied myself in my work, in computer software systems, to end my career at a six-figure income. Can that be done now? I guess maybe not, since college grads ‘certify’ their one sheepskins by hiring other college grads, even as most jobs are not that complex, and akin to neither medical surgery nor astronomical physics.

Then again, does one need a college degree to become entrepreneurial? That may be the real wave of the future – building and re-building one’s working way to have income on his or her own terms – or, at least on no worse terms than customer satisfaction.

(I’m rambling) – Onward, Christians, to orthodox Catholic colleges, where real education still has hold. (AND, vocations are heard better . .