Education and Values

Hard work, opportunity, common sense, and respect for others are the fundamental values that any society needs to progress and grow in a positive manner for all.

The Persian poet Rumi once wrote “no mirror ever became iron again, no bread ever became wheat again, and no ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse”.

Rumi’s words apply to today’s world as social values appear to be deteriorating to the point where many are devolving.

Recent events bear witness that leads me to conclude that our students are not maturing and are indeed devolving to their worst selves.

Part of this is due to the deterioration of many education systems where common sense is losing to political correctness and ideological orientation.

During the past fifty years or so, ideologues of the left and the right have invaded universities in the United States and Canada and indoctrinated students in some faculties to the point at which common sense has been replaced by a system of values that that questions traditional Judeo-Christian values and turns any justifiable criticism of minorities into phobia.

As historian Niall Ferguson has written, “Trigger warnings. Safe spaces. Preferred pronouns. Checked privileges. Microaggressions. Antiracism. All these terms are routinely deployed on campuses throughout the English-speaking world as part of a sustained campaign to impose ideological conformity in the name of diversity. As a result, it often feels as if there is less free speech and free thought in the American university today than in almost any other institution in the U.S.”

The fact that college faculties and administrations skew almost completely left in terms of their politics has had a devastating effect on the pursuit of free inquiry. Publicized incidents in which conservatives or even liberals who question some elements of the new leftist orthodoxy are disinvited are common.

Slogans, denial, and criticism are the result of decades of ideological infiltration of our centers of higher learning.

These are manifest today by the protests in major elite universities in Canada and the United States resulting from the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7^th. I use this date because the anti-Israeli protests began well before Israel’s response to these attacks and its military action in Gaza but on the day the Hamas terrorist raids took place. This is the result of institutes of higher learning being focused on teaching students whatto think rather than how to think.

According to Allister Heath in his Telegraph column, “We live in the freest, wealthiest, healthiest, fairest, and technologically advanced politics in history and yet millions of young people are being taught to hate the West, to despise the liberties that make their lifestyles possible”.

The proof?

The current protests by students at the best and most expensive universities.

Students protesting or their affluent parents are paying upwards of $80,000 per year for their education. They are the elite of society, and future politicians, financiers, business executives, and members of the judiciary. Leaders of society being nurtured with these lies.

There they are, chanting pro-Hamas, pro Houthi,and pro-Iran slogans, calling for sharia law to be implemented, for global intifada, all while intimidating and attacking students and faculty who don’t agree with their so-called values, and disrupting the lives and livelihood of tens of thousands.

Where are the university authorities?

At Columbia and Harvard, MIT, University of Southern California, Stanford, they have been hiding behind their fear of appearing Islamophobic in front of their students. Ironically, they have no fear of appearing antisemitic.

In a televised interview, a New York University NYU student with nose ring was asked why she is participating in the Pro-Palestine protest. 

Her response was “I really don’t know, I’m pretty sure it’s about Israel.”

She then turns to a friend and askes “Do you know why we are protesting”? To which her friend says,“I wish I was more educated”.

This is what one now seems to get for $80,000 per year of education.

Why?

Because for the past fifty years the education system has focused on political correctness rather than values. The system has stopped any pretense of teaching critical thinking and has focused on teaching students in the West that our system is evil. It has forgotten the main elements of being woke – empathy, justice, and common sense – and introduced elements of deep hatred for those who don’t agree with their world view.

The support that many of today’s most privileged students are giving to autocratic and oppressive causes is amazing.

Gays for a Palestine that kills its gays.

Women for an Iran and Palestine that murder their own, often simply for showing their hair.

Democracy and respect for the rights of others are buried under slogans of adulation for rogue states and terrorist organizations.

We live in a time when our values are being diminished by an education system that seems to promote ignorance and fosters a herd mentality rather than teach critical thinking and individual judgment.

Is there any remedy?

Only a complete overhaul of the university system and its approach to teaching fundamental human values and underscoring the need for students to stop following the herd and think for themselves.

Only a definition of the common values that unite us and that reflect our common vision.

But how can this be achieved when leaders like U.S. President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau refuse to come out and strongly criticize these excesses on the part of the students and the system that has produced them; when leaders appear complicit rather than take direct and forceful action against universities and their leadership that sustains and supports these viewpoints.

Corporations will have to re-evaluate how they hire graduates from elite universities that allow students to display such a rampant disregard for common sense and decency. Some major corporations are already following this route.

Students and faculty members who advocate overthrowing their government and who express support for autocratic regimes and terrorist organizations must know that the consequences of their actions will follow them throughout their lives. In the short term, they must be expelled and those who violate their visa requirements must be deported.

An excellent example of quick action against those who advocate hatred is what occurred at Google. Recently, a group of Google employees staged a sit in and promoted hatred. Google did not fool around. It fired these employees for going against company policy and issued a stern warning that this is the consequence for going against company values and rules of conduct.

Governments at all levels must immediately revokeall funding and tax benefits from colleges and universities that condone the antisemitism and pro-terrorist occupation of their premises and administrations that refuse to take immediate action.

Students and faculty participants who are in the country on visas should be arrested, processed, and deported for violating their visa commitments.

Many politicians accuse universities of being woke.

Yet woke stands for someone who is conscious of the issues related to justice and people’s rights. These rights of the individual have nothing to do with the spread of intolerance that motivates many of today’s leftists.

Leftist radicalism has moved real “wokism” to the center and has replaced it with a radical ideology that portends great danger for the future of the West as its adherent achieve positions of political and social power.

And that could ultimately destroy our society as we know it.