Not Harvard Bound

Charter school principal Terrence O. Moore finds that there are plenty of "bright, moral, faithful, energetic, and hard-working young people" in America, but that they might not be planning to attend an Ivy League school.

They are increasingly choosing more traditional (i.e., not P.C.) colleges, not as "safety schools," but as their first choice over more prestigious and better-known universities.  The elite schools no longer command the reverence and deference of red-state America.  The parents and students of "flyover country" are starting to put their money where their morals are or where they believe truth is.

To read all of Not Harvard Bound, click here.  Then, please join the discussion by clicking on the comments link below.

Comments

[Judy Warner]

My daughter attends Hillsdale College in Michigan. We wouldn't have dreamed of sending her to a "regular" college. We visited a college we mistakenly thought was Christian, and when we were shown coed dorms we left. (There were other reasons, too.)

We then looked at a Christian college that we had high hopes for, since it is fairly close to home. This college was surprised that we asked to sit in on some classes. The classes were dull, with no indication that this was a Christian college. I asked the admissions officer what difference being a Christian college made in the academics and she said, bouncily, that they use the same textbooks that secular colleges use, since the students have to go out into the real world. The only thing I could get out of her about the character of the college was that the students volunteered a lot and went on many mission trips.

In contrast, we were highly impressed with Hillsdale. After visiting some classes we thought that although Hillsdale is not a Christian college, it is suffused with a sense of preserving our civilization, in which Christianity has played such a large role -- a connection the college is eager to make in the required courses and others. My daughter has finished her sophomore year there and likes it very much. It is quite difficult -- students who transfer to other colleges find the work much easier than at Hillsdale (including a branch of the University of Michigan). She likes the moral seriousness of the institution and of many of the professors. She likes that almost all of the students go to church and often talk about their views on religion. She likes that she doesn't have to worry about drugs and drinking; there may be some, but they are not obvious. Neither is sexual activity.

Needless to say, my husband and I are thrilled.

I would be happy to email privately anyone who wants more information.

[Alyssa]

Oh, such mixed feelings about this article when I first read it, when we discussed it in our Treaders group, and now again here. I will start by saying these are not easy decisions to make, and they are not ones to be taken lightly.

As someone who formerly worked in campus ministry for 6 years at a secular university, and as one who's brand-spanking new faith was rooted and formed by the very same campus ministry when I headed off to college, I have to say, I'm glad some Christians are not abandoning non-Christian acadamies all together.

Yes, it is difficult to maintain one's faith in such "den's of decadence" and I have walked alongside many a Christian college student as they made some less than godly decisions which caused them much pain in the end. And I have seen several walk away from the faith. Vigen Guroian has an outstanding, but sad article at CT (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/002/13.44.html) on colleges' abandonment of in loco parentis.

Now as a parent of very young children who are in a not-so-great public school system, and am learning new meanings of the word "protective", I am sympathetic to parents and even teenagers concerns.

I am thrilled to hear there are Promises out there. And I am glad to hear that there are students who are looking to do more than build their resume with their choice of the prestigious school and money-making course of study. Thankfully, I have met quite a few like Promise in my days doing campus ministry. And I was glad they were there in our nation's capital to be a light in the darkness. To be counter-cultural. To engage the university and their non-believing friends with the Gospel. And to be trained for the rest of their lives in the world.

Does that mean that I'm "against" the Promises of the highly-esteemed Red States attending the less elite, but more morally and spiritually sound institutions of higher education? Absolutely not. I just see the need for the good news to be preached in all places, including the academy--and especially during those most, and likely last of the formative years in a young persons' life. If Promise (who according to the author, has all the right answers) won't go, who will?

[Echo]

"They had no reservations about declaring certain men evil."

SOPHOCLES, OEDIPUS THE KING
----
OEDIPUS: "And I pray solemnly that the slayer, whoever he be, whether his hidden guilt is lonely or has partners, may he wear his unblest life out evilly, as he is evil."

[Todd Mitchell]

I'm stumped on where to send my kids to college. I'm home-schooling them with a classical education right now. Do I send them to learn piety from the pagans, or impiety from contemporary Christians?

Here are some thoughts in story form:

http://withtearsoppressed.blogspot.com/2006/04/classical-yarn.html

[tarwater]

"Do I send them to learn piety from the pagans, or impiety from contemporary Christians?"

Todd:

You should give serious consideration to Thomas Aquinas College. I think you will love it.

Here is a link to their founding document:

http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/about/bluebook/index.htm

Regards

[Beth]

"Do I send them to learn piety from the pagans, or impiety from contemporary Christians?"

Does it have to be either/or? Are all Christian colleges peddling impiety?

I teach at a small conservative Christian liberal arts college. We are not, of course, perfect (too many of us are human, I'm afraid), but we try to maintain a focus on teaching from a Christian perspective, so that our students leave understanding what it means to "think Christianly" in the world and, we hope, to act on that Christian thinking.

I do see a problem with the argument that well-grounded Christian youth should automatically be equipped to attend secular universities. Some are, of course, and God bless them. However, it is not the case that even a spiritually well-grounded 18-year-old will have the *knowledge* necessary to take courses from secularists and learn well. He may know the creation-evolution arguments, perhaps, but will he also know all the social science arguments he needs in order to refute what he will be taught in required psychology classes? Will he also know how to confront the lit teachers' marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, etc., literary criticism? Will he ever learn to appreciate the Christian perspective on subjects which he is only taught from a secular perspective?

I see my colleagues here who are pursuing PhDs do at least twice the work of their classmates -- they learn what their PC teachers demand of them, then they do the extensive research necessary to refute the many wrong-headed arguments the class teaches. They can't just say "the Bible says" and earn a hearing; they have to do the hard work of finding *all* the arguments and presenting them well. It's great, if tedious, but how many 18-year-olds are equipped to do that, no matter how well they may understand their faith?

To those who have the knowledge and drive and desire to do this, I say go for it. But I do not see those abilities and attitudes in most of the young people I teach here, even the strong Christians. One of our goals is to help them see how important thinking from a Christian perspective is, how it should affect everything they do, how different it really is from what they will encounter in the world - and help them to care about this! Too often even the most Scripturally grounded are actually quite worldly in their daily choices. Sending them to a secular university will not help them to mend those choices.

I do agree with others that alternatives to college should be sought for many young people. Not all people's strengths are academic and we should affirm other strengths and make it possible to live with honor without some arbitrary piece of paper.

But for those whose bent is academic, I hate to see the option of the Christian college tossed out because many that call themselves Christian are either glorified Sunday Schools (not academically strong) or not actually Christian (secular in perspective with a weekly chapel thrown in). We may not be many, but we are here. Do plenty of research and don't assume a good education requires a secular university.