M
meeshy
Guest
Take a look at this excellent blog by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (of t.v. fame), regarding the sexual antics and lack of knowledge abounding on today’s college campuses–something for all Catholic parents to consider, especially the closing paragraphs:
The Corruption of the American Campus
Beware of sending your kids–especially daughters–to college, where drinking and ‘hooking up’ has replaced education.
beliefnet.com/story/214/story_21464_1.html
A few highlights from the blog:
"Not that the universities are succeeding in educating students anyway. I run a small office of employees and regularly interview candidates right out of college. A great many with degrees cannot spell , have scant knowledge of punctuation and grammar, and are utterly ignorant of history and world affairs. At UC Berkeley, freshmen who took a national test focusing on history and general knowledge scored, on average, 60 percent. Seniors, incredibly, averaged only 55 percent, earning the storied university a negative learning rank (Oakland Tribune). Fifteen other universities, including Johns Hopkins, also earned negative learning ranks. It’s incredible to contemplate that students may actually become more stupid, rather than more smart, after four years of college. Another study by the National Association of Scholars found that today’s college students are barely more knowledgeable than high school students were 50 years ago.
When I was the rabbi at Oxford University for 11 years, I often marveled at the university’s failure to instill a sense of intellectual curiosity in its students. True, there were the elite American students on special scholarships like the Rhodes, Fulbright, and Marshall who were sponges for information. But few other students cared about even reading a newspaper.
A USA Today study showed that more than 50 percent of college students at four-year institutions do not understand arguments of newspaper editorials, are unable to compare credit-card offers of different interest rates and fees, and cannot interpret a table of exercise and blood pressure.
For most young people today, going to university is less about getting an education than acquiring freedom and the ability to experiment. Breaking free of parental supervision, they spend four years drinking, partying, and ‘hooking up.’
At Oxford, the university provided a good education in the arts and the sciences. But in personal matters, most students regressed. They drank themselves to oblivion and bounced from relationship to relationship, acquiring emotional scars in the process. None of this augured well for their later ability to enter into and thrive in a long-term, intimate relationships. Is it any wonder then, that the most educated generation of all time also has the highest divorce rate, when there is a direct correlation between amount of time spent at university and the number of casual sexual encounters that are had?
I now believe that parents should be looking at single-sex and religiously inclined alternatives to the mainstream universities for their sons and daughters–places that truly are about maturing, being educated, and being prepared for the mastery of both the professional and personal sectors.
I attended rabbinical college. There were no women. We were there to study, not socialize. When people ask me today how young rabbis have so much information, I tell them it has less to do with any kind of genius and more to do with the absence of socializing with the opposite sex. True, we may not have had as much entertainment. But then, universities are supposed to be more about libraries and classrooms than nightclubs and bars."
Peace,
Meeshy
The Corruption of the American Campus
Beware of sending your kids–especially daughters–to college, where drinking and ‘hooking up’ has replaced education.
beliefnet.com/story/214/story_21464_1.html
A few highlights from the blog:
"Not that the universities are succeeding in educating students anyway. I run a small office of employees and regularly interview candidates right out of college. A great many with degrees cannot spell , have scant knowledge of punctuation and grammar, and are utterly ignorant of history and world affairs. At UC Berkeley, freshmen who took a national test focusing on history and general knowledge scored, on average, 60 percent. Seniors, incredibly, averaged only 55 percent, earning the storied university a negative learning rank (Oakland Tribune). Fifteen other universities, including Johns Hopkins, also earned negative learning ranks. It’s incredible to contemplate that students may actually become more stupid, rather than more smart, after four years of college. Another study by the National Association of Scholars found that today’s college students are barely more knowledgeable than high school students were 50 years ago.
When I was the rabbi at Oxford University for 11 years, I often marveled at the university’s failure to instill a sense of intellectual curiosity in its students. True, there were the elite American students on special scholarships like the Rhodes, Fulbright, and Marshall who were sponges for information. But few other students cared about even reading a newspaper.
A USA Today study showed that more than 50 percent of college students at four-year institutions do not understand arguments of newspaper editorials, are unable to compare credit-card offers of different interest rates and fees, and cannot interpret a table of exercise and blood pressure.
For most young people today, going to university is less about getting an education than acquiring freedom and the ability to experiment. Breaking free of parental supervision, they spend four years drinking, partying, and ‘hooking up.’
At Oxford, the university provided a good education in the arts and the sciences. But in personal matters, most students regressed. They drank themselves to oblivion and bounced from relationship to relationship, acquiring emotional scars in the process. None of this augured well for their later ability to enter into and thrive in a long-term, intimate relationships. Is it any wonder then, that the most educated generation of all time also has the highest divorce rate, when there is a direct correlation between amount of time spent at university and the number of casual sexual encounters that are had?
I now believe that parents should be looking at single-sex and religiously inclined alternatives to the mainstream universities for their sons and daughters–places that truly are about maturing, being educated, and being prepared for the mastery of both the professional and personal sectors.
I attended rabbinical college. There were no women. We were there to study, not socialize. When people ask me today how young rabbis have so much information, I tell them it has less to do with any kind of genius and more to do with the absence of socializing with the opposite sex. True, we may not have had as much entertainment. But then, universities are supposed to be more about libraries and classrooms than nightclubs and bars."
Peace,
Meeshy