Returning to sense and sensibility in college education

A young woman I know who is a freshman in college took a sociology class in “Women’s Studies” last semester and will be taking a class in “Religion and Witchcraft” during the spring term. My impression used to be that the freshman year of upper education was the year to get the requirements out of the way: language, math, and science.

Unless, that is, the history of women (not all women, mind you, but the ones who broke away from stodgy morality to champion the virtues of autonomy over one’s body and domination over men) and the dark side of spirituality now qualify as “basic requirements.” In any case, I am glad I’m not footing the bill for this indoctrination.

Quite apart from the dubious content of the courses in question, my philosophical objection to the young woman’s plan is that one could just as easily order a book on Amazon.com about witches for $3, plus shipping and handling, rather than fork out $40,000 a year to be handed a syllabus cooked up by an untenured young prof with an ax to grind.

I came across this in Scripture:

“Then David gave Solomon his son the plan of the vestibule of the temple, and of its houses, its treasuries, its upper rooms, and its inner chambers, and of the room for the mercy seat; and the plan of all that he had in mind for the courts of the house of the LORD …” (1 Chronicles 28:11-12).

It got me to thinking that what the world needs is people who can actually do something or make something. If the young woman above wants a good job, and not just sheepskin, three-and-a-half years from now, she had best start thinking about a way to learn a skill that somebody else will want enough to pay her for. I, for one, if I can imagine being a prospective employer, would not have much use for a 22-year-old who is knowledgeable of the inner life of Betty Friedan.

I hope our country gets back to a sensible raison d’être for college education, because the things some schools are teaching now, and the price they are charging to teach it, have made me very unpopular with certain children when I tell them they’ve been sucked into a scam.