Thursday, December 30, 2004

What's Education About, Again?

Poor repressed conservative students. Forced to read the Quran. Having liberal teachers "suggest" that homosexuality might have to do with our biological makeup. Might. Ha.

You know what one of the books we used in one of my women's history courses was? The Bible. Did I start screaming and crying that I was being indoctrinated by conservative professors?

No. I didn't. Why? Cause I was in school to learn stuff. Stuff that I would never have been exposed to outside of college life. Are colleges liberal leaning? That is, do most colleges preach inclusiveness and tell people that hating other people based on their beliefs is bad?

Sure they do.

You run into problems when you get people whose beliefs say that I have to die because I don't believe what they do. If I can tolerate people who think I'm going to hell, why can't they tolerate me?

Oh, that's right:

Because their strength of belief isn't quite so strong as they'd hoped.

If you've got faith: REALLY got faith, learning about what other people think isn't going to be dangerous to you and yours. In fact, it might help you get along better with others. And isn't that the whole point of reaching outside your comfort zone anyway?

2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

I've been struggling with explaining this double standard for a while now. You put it most clearly. Thanks. 

Posted by jp

Anonymous said...

Just the fact that they see as 'offensive' to their Christian beliefs speaks volumes. If I do recall my childhood readings of the Qur'an, as well as my religious studies class in St. Martens Prep in the UK (where we sang christian hymns each morning), christianity as a faith is respected, and the christian/judeaic prophets are revered. My uncle is named Mohsin (for Moses), and my cousin is named Essa (for Jesus).

So this is offensive to Christianity, how, exactly? 

Posted by Adnan Yazdani