Back on December 3 of last year I wrote a little bit about Patrick Henry College, which is a non-denominational Christian college and de facto training ground for conservative pols and staff workers. The New Yorker has an article which goes into much more detail than did the one I'd read back then. This paragraph should tell you something:
Of the school’s sixty-one graduates through the class of 2004, two have jobs in the White House; six are on the staffs of conservative members of Congress; eight are in federal agencies; and one helps Senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, and his wife, Karen, homeschool their six children. Two are at the F.B.I., and another worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority, in Iraq. Last year, the college began offering a major in strategic intelligence; the students learn the history of covert operations and take internships that allow them to graduate with a security clearance.
Well, that doesn't sound too bad, does it? Kids go to college, get jobs in Washington, what's the harm? But then there's this about the curriculum:
Still, when students enroll at Patrick Henry, they sign a ten-part statement of faith, agreeing that, among other things, Hell is a place where "all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity." The curriculum for the first two years follows a "Christian Classical" model -— basically, Western Civ from a Biblical perspective. Students read Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Locke, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Beckett. They also study Euclidean geometry and biology; the school uses a standard science textbook, but the professor, Jennifer Gruenke, who also has a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, tells students that the earth was created in a week.
I kinda wonder what these kids are gonna be like when they get out into the real world and discover that, unlike the people they've been hanging out with for four years, there's a lot of diversity of opinion floating around. 'Course, if they go to work on a Republican Congressional staff or at Heritage, AEI or one of the others, maybe they won't have to encounter any of that. Pity.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 21, 2005 03:58 PM