Have you taken the time to learn what courses your children actually took this year? Ask a college parent about their teen’s general field of study and “major” and you will usually get an accurate answer. But press them on the nitty-gritty of each course — the angle, the professor, and the specific subject matter the kiddies are absorbing — and even the most vigilant parents will usually draw a blank.
As a wake up call for mom and dads, The Young Americas Foundation (YAF) recently released its “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the most absurd college courses offered across the United States. Are you aware of what your child spent your hard-earned money on this past semester?
The folks at YAF, an education advocacy group, used U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of the Top 50 schools across the country to begin their analysis. Sifting through the catalogues of these top-rated institutions, YAF discovered just what courses they've been offering our nation’s students. What they found should give all parents pause.
Georgetown University tops the ridiculous list. Among other winners, the private Catholic University offered a course last semester entitled “The Bible and Horror.” According to the course description, the Bible “can be a scary book” that “often reads more like horror than religious literature.” It goes on to ask the question, “What might religion and horror (or the monstrous) have in common?” I can hardly wait to hear the answer to that one. Problem is, some poor parent has to pay big dollars to hear it. Now I can understand one being confused, mystified, or inspired by the Bible, but horrified? What is so horrific, besides maybe 1 and 2 Maccabees and certain descriptions of satan and gehenna? Next spring, perhaps Georgetown will offer as a follow-up course “The Scary Pope.”
Meanwhile, Harvard offered “Feminist Biblical Interpretation.” Students were promised that they would come away from this course with a deeper understanding of the “significance of feminist hermeneutics for contemporary theological reflection and education for ministry.” Well, did they?
Now why is it that at our most elite institutions of higher learning one can only study the Bible in relation to some agenda or bias? Considering its longevity and the impact it has had on human history, doesn't the Good Book merit examination on its face, free of any “novel” angles?
And just in case one is not getting a sufficient infusion of sex and sexual reference from the media, certain universities were offering a bit more — most of it, well, different.
Cornell University, for example, offered the course “Bodies Politic: Queer Theory and Literature of the Body.” It asked the eternal question: “How do concepts of perversion and degeneration haunt the idea of the social body?” Any student able to understand the question should instantly be awarded a passing grade.
I am amused by the suggestion that one needs to search out traces of perversion and degeneration in our society. Give me a just a fraction of a Cornell tuition and I’ll point you to the Howard Stern Show, MTV and any sitcom on the Fox network.
Though not part of the YAF report, a course just offered at the University of Michigan grabbed a lot of headlines last fall. According to reports, “How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation” was the school’s newest and brightest academic offering.
Now one could argue the legitimacy of a course focusing on homosexuality from a sociological perspective. But this was no social science study. This was a how-to course, a recruitment seminar — and the students themselves were the case study. U of M’s Fall 2000 catalogue admitted as much, stating that the course “will examine the general topic of the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay identity. The course itself will constitute an experiment in the very process of initiation that it hopes to understand.”
The catalogue failed to describe just who would be doing the initiating. But imagine a parent’s reaction when they discover that Jr. earned an A in this class. Perhaps the Cornell University professor wondering about “perversion and degeneration” should pay a visit to the University of Michigan. This course would seem to fit the bill.
The Culture of Death also made an appearance this past academic year. “Sex and Death” at Carnegie Mellon University asked “whether we need to liberate death now that we have figured sex out.” Mystifying! When I called Carnegie Mellon for a more complete explanation of the course, I was put on hold and ultimately disconnected.
At UCLA, students studied “Death, Suicide, and Trauma.” Sounds like a medical course until you read the fine print, which promised to expose students to a dizzying array of death-related topics including: the “definition and taxonomy of death; new permissiveness and taboos related to death; romanticization of death; role of the individual in his own demise; modes of death; development of ideas of death through life; partial death and mega death; lethally psychological autopsy; and death of institutions and cultures.” UCLA offered no comparable study of life in their '00-'01 curriculum.
What all these examples indicate is just how far American Universities have drifted from the basic tenets of education. Universities should challenge students with studies that will serve them in the future, not drown them in trendy propaganda and political agendas. After perusing a few of these college catalogues, one can only conclude that social and political conversion is the desired aim of these courses of study.
Students are not academic guinea pigs, and they should not be treated as such. When tenured professors use their students to test their sexual theories, or hope to create apostles for their dissident ideas, they insult the intelligence of their charges and offend their employers: the parents.
As the Vatican has said time and again, the primary educators of children are their parents. So it is the parents’ responsibility to exercise oversight and bring an end to these radical academic assaults on the young. Until parents begin pulling kids out of these institutions, or raising a ruckus internally, this sort of course study will become increasingly common.
The reassuring thing is, these cockeyed courses can be avoided. By securing a copy of the University’s catalogue next fall, parents can ensure that they are not supporting this nonsense. And don’t think that the trash courses are restricted to the examples above. There is plenty more where that came from. Just ask your kids.
