College Students Warned Against Courses That Subvert Family Values
by Jeff Johnson
October 23, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The author of a guide called All American Colleges: Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006) says many of today's colleges and universities undermine what Christian parents are trying to teach their children.John Zmirak says he wrote All American Colleges, in part, to encourage students and parents to seek a traditional liberal arts education rather than specializing in many newer academic fields like "Women's Studies." He believes typical programs in this discipline and others like it are often characterized by vehement opposition to traditional beliefs and faith-based pro-family values.
Many times in such courses, "the norm of heterosexuality, of sacramental marriage, of parents raising children in an integral family -- that is held up as purely an institution of oppression," the college guide author notes. And what students are taught, he observes, is that "it's your duty as a scholar and an activist to help subvert the patriarchal family and to help subvert any religious traditions that reinforce the patriarchal family."
Students coming from Christian backgrounds who take such faith-and-values subversive courses -- courses that often "have the imprimatur and all the implied authority of the university" -- may find themselves spiritually devastated by the experience, Zmirak points out. Many of them end up "coming out of it having had their most fundamental beliefs shaken up or destroyed based on a really shallow, recently invented, and not very self-critical academic discipline that probably doesn't even deserve to exist," he contends.
Zmirak's website, CollegeGuide.org, identifies the colleges he believes provide students with the most well-rounded education. Included on his list of 50 recommended schools are the University of Chicago, Princeton University, the Citadel, Wheaton College, Samford University, Hillsdale College, and others.
The website also suggests some courses college students can take at colleges and universities that did not make his "Top 50" list. These are courses in which, Zmirak suggests, students at these schools would be well advised to enroll, the better to prepare themselves for life after college.
Jeff Johnson, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
