The feature article this week by Dr. Tison notes how Peter Conn recently wrote that Christian colleges and universities should not be accredited because they indoctrinate rather than educate.  He said that they violate the foundational principle of higher education by not embracing the rational empiricist approach to knowledge exclusively.  Because Christian educators recognize that our embracing of the existence of God impacts every area of life, including education, Conn and others like him believe that Christians compromise the learning process by acknowledging that which cannot be proven.

Dr.Tison has done a fine job outlining the underlying problem associated with Conn’s argument.  Conn fails to recognize that all human beings start with certain assumptions that undergird their system of knowing.  In essence, everyone starts with presuppositions or faith statements.  For Conn and most of higher education, the founding assumption is that only that which can be empirically proven can be held as knowledge.  A little self-reflection on Conn’s part would result in his realization that he, too, starts with an assumption–the assumption that the empirical method can reveal all knowable truth.

I recently saw survey results that showed current support for Hillary Clinton for president in the 2016 election.  The survey noted that overall support for Clinton was 38%.  The survey broke down the support for her based on a variety of demographic categories.  The results showed that the higher the education level of the respondent, the more likely they were to support Clinton for president.  In a broader sense, Larry Sabato has found a fairly strong correlation between advanced degrees and support for the Democratic Party.  Why would this be the case?  Would it be because the only intelligent option in the American political system is Democratic?   I think we can be sure that there is more going on here.

Looking at academia today, we see one of the most left-leaning segments in American society.  Is it any wonder that graduates of those programs are influenced by that liberalism?  Recognizing the likelihood of that influence, we have to question whether academia itself is not guilty of the very indoctrination they decry in Christian institutions.  If so, what would Conn do with these graduate schools?  Should they too be denied accreditation?  I do not believe so, but I think this situation is telling for several reasons. First, Conn and others like him fail to recognize that there is no strict dichotomy between education and indoctrination.  Dr. Tison has noted in another piece that the word “education” comes from the Latin word, educatus, which means “to lead.”  Professors are providing direction in the lives of students and that is to be expected in education.  Second, all people start with certain assumptions that allow them to pursue knowledge at all.  We should not pretend that these presuppositions do not exist.  Rather we should expect them and simply require that they be laid on the table.  That way, students know what they are getting when they enter a school or a classroom.  Third, I am left with the concern that this debate has little to do with objective pursuits of knowledge and more to do with anti-religious bias.  I have no proof here, but given that academia has long understood the problem of bias, it is not a leap to suppose that an anti-religious bias is lurking behind such attacks.  How else can we explain such the duplicitous argument that Christian colleges lack objectivity when it is clear that all of academia suffers from this malady?  Finally, Americans ought to be concerned about what is happening in America’s tax-payer based institutions of higher learning.  If state schools are churning out Democrats, is there a concern about how such dollars are being used.  I don’t think professors can hide behind academic freedom when 91% of them self-identify as liberals or moderates.  Given such overwhelming statistics, the impact of graduate school is clear.  It raises the question of how anyone within the guild can use the shibboleth of objectivity against the religious with a straight face.