I have an anecdote for you today, as some of you may recall, I work at a college, as well as attend classes (online mostly now) to get ready for certification in ASL Interpreting.

Which is a whole ‘nother story in of itself, but not my focus today.

I currently work in the writing center, as many colleges have one, as a student tutor.

The job can be boring when people just want grammar checks and assignments to be signed off, but every so often I get a real zinger that reminds me why I love my job–or hate it, depending how you look at it.

Just such an occasion happened last week for me during finals. A student was doing an assignment on the topic of banned books.

He titled it “the war on books.”

Banned books are an interest of mine, so I was eager to read his paper.

Until…

Turns out the student had haphazardly researched what the leftist news cites had to say about parents’ objections to the many LGBTQ+ and political agenda books that are being presented to students.

Also the objections against Harry Potter and other books that include topics religious people don’t like.

I was surprised to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on the list. Usually conservative, the group this student was rather biasedly targeting in his paper, don’t object to that book. I was skeptical that it was them. Mostly it’s the liberals who don’t like Huck Finn or Uncle Tom’s Cabin, other famous books that include some touchy race words and aspects of life, just because they are realistic about it.

Some people don’t understand the value of historically accuracy when teaching kids about race issues.

I asked my student about why he targeted only conservatives, and his basic answer was it was what the articles mentioned.

Not sruspi, they were form liberal owned papers.

Which is bad journalism, because all political parties object to certain books, not just conservatives, they’re just trying to make it seem like it’s a political party issue, but it’s a issue parents of all backgrounds have.

I’m not supposed to lecture students, so I had to be careful how I worded my objections, I causally pointed out that the paper had a clear bias ad that it’s not considered responsible writing in college to target people groups.

“We target ideas not people,” I explianed.

(This is true, whatever side you’re on you’re supposed to keep it professional in college classes.)

I learned this myself, and I think it’s helped me as a blogger to not try to call out specific people, though I do complain about the left, on a blog it’s okay to do that, it’s not considered professional formal writing and people expect you to be biased in a blog. I do refrain from slinging insults though.

The student took this point pretty well from me, so I dared to, after going over some of his professor’s feedback also, broach the subject of his argument itself.

I asked him “is your position that parents should not be deciding what their children read.”

“Yes.” he said.

I had a silent moment of disbelief.

But I didn’t show it.

Instead I said that it was good to make his solution clear then, so I asked him “then who should decide it?”

I kid you not, he went quiet for at least 1.5 seconds, then he said “I didn’t really think of that.”

I did not say “I could tell from you paper that you didn’t think about it.”

I just thought it.

I patiently explained that if you say one person should not decide something, your implicit argument is that someone else should. In this case it would be the school (or perhaps the child themselves, but we were talking about 5th graders, so that was doubtful).

This student didn’t know it, but I have a pet peeve with college courses about the vial stories they make students read, and many students I speak to agree with me that the stories are awful and they don’t enjoy them. Some of them are borderline pornographic, and I told my English professor they made me uncomfortalbe to read.

I think college students should sign some kind of waver saying they’re okay with explicit content, or else be allowed to read a story with a senl theme, but less graphic depictions.

So I’m with parents about objecting to books I would never read myself being shown to kids not even old enough to drive yet.

The student agreed with my point, and said he hadn’t thought about it that much and he’d have to fix that later. And that he’d fix the biased part.

Since he seemed openminded, I decided to risk one more point, once we’d gone over some more technical stuff, and our session was nearly over.

I mentioned that I’d had one of his classmates with this paper subject in earlier in the semester, and we’d talked about it too. And I had asked them if parents should never be able to decide what their kids read, and their answer was kind of noncommittal.

For context, one of the books mentioned in the article was one that showed sex positions between two gay men–and it would be horrifying if it was between a man and owman also, being shown to kids under 18, the legal age of consent, there is no reason to be showing a book like this, and it wasn’t even to teach sex education, that I understood.

The article openly admitted this book was objected to because of that, but insisted that the parents were at fault.

I wonder what they would have said if the teacher had shown the kids a R-rated movie instead.

I decided to give the student an illustration.

“For example,” I said. “Would you object to a child whose parents were atheists being forced to read a religious text in school?”

[The funny thing about this is that’s not even as overt, because plenty of atheists can acknowledge the lessons of religious texts are beneficial, as long as the content is not too explicit. And not all religious texts are about God only, plenty are about people and have useful life lessons.But on principle the parents can object to it if they want.]

The student immediately said “Yes.” Just like I thought he would.

But impressively, he also said “I get it, because that’s the same thing.”

He might have been bad at doing research for his paper, but he wasn’t stupid.

I agreed that it’s basically the same thing if religious parents don’t want their child taught stuff that goes against their religion.

And as a Christian, of course I would prefer everyone to learn about the Bible, but I wouldn’t force a Muslim child to read it against their parent’s will. Because I want the same rights to protect my child as they do, and if an exception can be made for me, it can be made for anyone, that’s the danger of hypocrisy.

As Portia piontes out in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”, once you make an exception for one person, no matter how much you like them, it’s a problem because it becomes a precedent for less scrupulous people to use as a loophole to get out of their punishments.

So why did I share this story?

Other than I thought it was funny, I also thought it was a good example.

I’ve been in college for 5 years (because a certificate program takes a long time) and I’ve noticed how the courses are trying to chip away at students’ integrity.

I know one class that make its student defend the idea that eating someone is okay if the person agree to it, and was drugged so as not to feel it.

I hope that shocked you and not that you’ve already had to study that case in your class.

I almost got physically sick when I went over that assignment.

But I learned something very important, and kind of diablocial, about psychology.

If you make someone argue for something, even if they hate it, it forces their mind to become a bit more open to it, just by dint of practice.

It’s like drinking alcohol, at first it’s really bitter, but then you get used to it, and your tastebuds go numb.

Now if it’s a harmless subject, that’s fine.

But what if it’s a subject the person really object to morally at first, but by practicing arguing for it, they become more amenable to it.

You might say “They probably didn’t really object that much then.”

But that is not true.

That is exactly how brainwashing works, you make someone accept part of something that is not true, and then you build off of it, till they don’t even realize you changed their mind.

The real art of counseling is to help people realize that they really think, deep down under the lies they tell themselves.

The art of brainwashing it to make people believe that they really agree with what you think, deep down, despite their misgivings initially.

Also the art of gaslighting works that way. Though in both cases, you may not actually believe what you want them to believe.

Some amount of manipulation goes into all forms of teaching, but a responsib;e teachers knows where to draw the line, just like a responsible parent knows that tricking your kids into eating more greens is very different than tricking them into a career choice they didn’t want. One of these things will not do lasting damage, and the other will.

And convincing someone to do what  you want willingly, instead of jamming it down their throat, like my mom used to do with food I didn’t want to eat, is a very different skill.

However, if you force feed someone poison it will still be poison, and it’s still harmful.

I think the college classes are a mix of both. They force students to read about topics no one should ever be forced to read about.

Then they have them argue about it, till the students are willing to look at it more laxly.

Some professors hate this curriculum as much as the students do, but are required to teach it. Their silent protest is making the assignments as short and worth as little points as they can.

Others love it, because they’ve drunk the Kool Aid that says this is somehow becoming more progressive.

To go back to my student with the book banning, it’s really not so surprising the poor chump didn’t question his position till I pointed it out. After all, he’s being taught the exact same way by his professors, and it doesn’t occur to him to question it, because in his highschool days, he just had to do whatever the teachers said.

This is how I think public school teachers kids to be blind followers. Don’t object to anything or you fail the class.

At least in college our paper can criticize the material if you’re creative about it, so some vent for these feelings is allowed.

The thing I’ve noticed that’s key to brainwashing, is to make sure no one ever asks why you think this issue is so important.

As soon as I asked my student who he thought should be making the decision for what kids read, he hesitated. Because maybe deep down, he know that saying it should be the school and not the parents is a very problematic thing to say, without some parameters. Once I pointed out how he’d object to one situation but not the other, he began to see that he had a double standard, or better yet, the articles he read did.

Not every student can even admit this, some are very stubborn about not thinking out their position. I’ve had a few end our session as soon as they could because they didn’t like what I was saying.

I admit I’m not perfect as a tutor, but I do hold up students with views like mine to the same standards. I’ve told them plenty of times to be more careful about how they write their argument.

Even more so because I know professors with leftist leanings, like some I had, will tear their paper apart if they give any opening to do so by sloppy arguing, and they need to be better than the other students, not worse, at being unbiased.

What your college doesn’t tell you about these issues, like boko banning, or pride, or equality, is that the very first thing you need to ask before you teach anything about this, is why you think it matters.

See, the assumption that equality is the most important value of life permeates our culture, and most people don’t actually question if it’s valid.

As long as they don’t, the argument is always going to be on uneven footing, because you’re automatically forced to concede points to the other side.

And suggesting that there are higher goals than equality gets you a weird look, like that’s crazy, because it is so assumed.

I do believe in equal rights, but I don’t share the definition of rights that many people do, and I don’t like to argue on their turf until we’ve established what we really think.

Often my view surprises them because it’s not taught in school.

Which is my point, school doesn’t teach this stuff.

Chesterton said that a boy is only sent to school when it is too late to teach him anything. [Orthodoxy, chapter 9]

The angle in schools is very narrow. It doesn’t teach you all sides of an issue, or even the underlying assumptions of the side it is teaching.

The point is to teach yo uto spit out the same rhetoric they use, and not think any deeper, or any longer, about it than absolutely necessary.

And you wonder why the internet is such an echo champ of inane chatter and trolling.

I wish I could tell you the Left is the only offender, but I’ve seen just as much of it on the Right, only the Right tends to at least hold up the idea of unbiased thinking more than the left does, but often only in name, not practice. And often their approach to issues is just as surface level. Just because I happen to agree with their side more doesn’t mean I don’t see the flaws in their approach.

I was talking to my sisters and a friend about this earlier this week, and telling them that as much as we like to appeal to rationality for our side, we forget that people do not usually want to be rational.

They believe things because they are comfortable believing them, and because it’s what everyone else says, and most people don’t go against the flow. If our view was popular, they’d take it, but it’s not.

In fact on of my favorite tests of faith is to ask if your faith makes you comfortable.

Mine doesn’t. Some things about it are comforting, but many are challenging and unpleasant, but I’m firmly convinced of their validity despite that. Which shows I do not believe it just to suit my own fancy.

Granted, I may be ore afraid to stop believing it than I am to accept the unpleasant things, but that also shows genuine faith.

What is not genuine is when the only fear you have is to consider a different perspective that makes you uneasy period. Not because it’s one that would shake your entire world. People can be just as stubborn about not trusting new companies as they are about new religions, but either might be better than what they currently use, they’ll never know if they can help it.

What college does not tell you is that sometimes it’s in losing those beliefs that make us comfortable that we find what’s really right for us.

Stores stopped carrying a coffee brand I liked, which bothered me for months as I had to use a cheaper, much less tasty variety.

But this dissatisfaction led me to try a new kind of organic coffee that tasted even better than the brand I first lost.

The point is, someone losing one good thing, and being dissatisfied with the available replacements, leads you to find a better thing in the end.

Ideas can be the same. Humans are terrible at knowing what’s best for us, and the wisest of us keep that in mind all our lives and are flexible, the foolish of us try to make everyone else agree with our definition of what’s best at all times.

And I think any religion that doesn’t challenge your idea of what’s best isn’t really a religion, it’s your preference that you put a religious face on. And Christains do this just as much as other religions.

But the bible at least is clear that it’s not the purest form of our religion to do this, that the best way is to be teachable.

Now, even so, even an idiot who’s right by sheer accident is better than a genius who’s wrong by deliberately pursuing the wrong thing.

So I still think it’s better to be a stupid Christian than a smart atheist, because intelligence is not everything, and anyone who thinks it is is already missing a big chunk of their heart.

Our intelligence, as we call it, is so very small compared to the complexities of the universe, that to feel proud of it is kind of ludicrous. The smartest person in the world can’t explain the real mysteries of life any easier than a stupid person can. Sometimes they have more trouble because they think they can.

Our intelligence, as we call it, is so very small compared to the complexities of the universe, that to feel proud of it is kind of ludicrous. The smartest person in the world can’t explain the real mysteries of life any easier than a stupid person can. Sometimes they have more trouble because they think they can.

Even so, I feel compelled to still get involved in these debates.

It seems small, but the Bible does say, “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” [2 Corinthians 10:5]

Which is why I write about it also.

I think it’s about time to wrap this post up (and I’m still recovering from a head cold anyway, starting to feel sleepy), and I think that’s a good closing thought.

I might write more about this in the future, but I think my overall takeaway is that you can’t let school be your only education.

You have to dig deeper, school plays to the bare minimum, unfortunately, to the lowest common denominator, and that’s encouraged by a lot of educators now, because no one should ever be made to feel inferior. Even if realistically, some people are not as smart or skilled as others.

Most people who hate learning, hate it because school does it the wrong way, and would enjoy it if they tried a different approach.

I believe in learning and self improvement if you can improve. And in growing.

So yeah, that’s it for today on what your college doesn’t teach you, though some professors, bless ‘em, do try, and I love them for it, but it’s just not enough without the student trying too.

Until next time, stay honest, –Natasha.