'Elite' Colleges Not Always Best for Young Christians, Says Home School Advocate
by Allie Martin
August 29, 2005
(AgapePress) - A leader in the home-schooling movement is calling on Christian parents to help their children find colleges that are academically excellent -- and faithfully Christian. Michael Farris is a constitutional attorney; founder, chairman, and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association; and president of Patrick Henry College in Virginia. As the father of ten home-schooled children, Farris has a personal interest in ensuring that his children's education furthers the principles and values instilled in them at home.
In his new book -- The Joshua Generation -- Farris examines the philosophical shift made by "elite" universities during the past century. He says Christian parents must thoroughly examine any university or college before their child attends. Parents, he says, need to know what they are dealing with. "We cannot assume that our kids are going to go off to college and that it will be either a positive experience spiritually or a neutral experience," he shares.
According to Farris, there has been a dramatic philosophical shift at most of the nation's elite colleges, many of which were once solidly Christian schools. He offers Princeton as one example.
"When [John] Witherspoon taught James Madison at the College of New Jersey -- now Princeton -- it was a fine Christian institution that really imbedded important principles of liberty and Christianity into James Madison," Farris explains. "But today a noted ethics professor at Princeton believes that children should be euthanized if they are 'undesirable' -- and just a variety of really wild things ... are believed and taught by many at these top schools."
Ideas, says Farris, have consequences -- and he offers another example. "Perhaps the best way to get a picture of how pervasive the problem is, is to look at the man who is elected to be the secretary general of the American Association of University Professors," the attorney says. "He was chosen to that position because of his defense of a vile sexual conference at a university in New York where he was the head of the university at the time." According to Farris, the names of the sessions at that conference are not suitable for print.
Farris contends that professors at many secular elite colleges twist the truth, the Constitution, and history to support their own agendas and beliefs.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
