Friday, February 5, 2016

Because education is all about learning

Or at least censorship and brainwashing.  I have no problem letting any number of people come to a campus to speak.  I probably wouldn't agree with anyone on everything.  There would be some people I disagree with entirely.  And some might make me so mad I have to hold my breath to avoid screaming out at them.  And yet, I want them to be there.  To challenge me.  To make me think.  To force me to reexamine what I believe and think I know and see if I am right, or if I have missed something.

That's because I was educated in the 1980s by liberal and secular public institutions.  It didn't even dawn on us that a person would be banned or we would be banned from hearing them because of the content of what they believed.  That was fascism 101.  That's what the dictatorships of the 20th Century did.  That's what liberals were fighting against.  Not just being open for any subjects traditionally debated, but being completely open to any and all expressions and ideas.  No matter how offensive. 

But today, we are seeing a soft censorship.  We aren't having Big Brother crash into our living rooms and offices and schools, we are demanding he enter.  We want him.  We want ideas that bother us to be banned. And we want protected from anything that might challenge our notion that we are awesome, we are right, the universe spins around us, and the only facts that matter are the ones that affirm our awesome rightness.  And our institutions of higher learning - and I use that description lightly - are feeding into it with gusto.  Why?  Because I think our education system has moved to the same level as our media: no longer education, but propaganda.

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