Our Educators Have a Dangerous Contempt for Authority

In September 1981, Timothy Foote wrote an article in Esquire magazine titled “The Trouble With Harvard.” Mr. Foote had graduated from Harvard in 1952 and apparently was shocked by the changes in that university.

He wrote, “Many students drift through Harvard with a nagging sense of failure and anxiety. ‘There is so much freedom here,’ says Kiyo Morimoto, ‘that studies become extracurricular. And you can’t get through if your studies are extracurricular.’ … You didn’t have to go to class because nobody took attendance. And you could get unlimited extensions on papers during the term ….

“Morimoto is worried about Harvard’s objections to using authority, all up and down the line: It’s not insisting that students get papers in on time, not insisting on formal meetings between students and advisers, students and tutors, even between students and faculty. ‘Harvard is deeply ambiguous about authority,’ he says, ‘about being firm and clear and unambiguous.’ Today all authority is seen as negative” (emphasis mine throughout).

This means these educators are filled with pride or have very little humility. They reject what other authorities—past and present—could teach them unless it fits into their selfish agenda. The students are taught to follow in their footsteps. Most universities follow Harvard’s example.

Imagine, educators who are not humble and teachable! That is not true education. That is not how you search for truth. It is intellectual tyranny. And it leaves the educators vulnerable to deadly deception.

Harvard students, Foote continued, “are turned loose in a system practically without discipline, or order, or viable requirements, or supervision, or even advice.”

Harvard was at the forefront of change during the sexual revolution in the 1960s. Foote quoted one professor as saying, “On any given night, the odds are against finding anyone in his or her own bed.”

“Few people seem to disagree,” Foote continued. “By the standards of the age, there’s nothing wrong in that either.” But the “standards of the age” are in the gutter. Only 50 years ago these standards would have caused America to blush.

Harvard was founded by a church. The founders would be appalled if they saw all of the sexual depravity today.

American colleges and universities actually encourage our young people to indulge in some of the most repugnant immorality in the history of man! We lead the world in sexual immorality! America has gone from the moral leader of the world to the immoral leader of the world! But we still blather about how righteous our nation is!

Our forefathers warned us that such behavior would wreck our republic. But educators today consider themselves superior to our outstanding founders and leaders of the past. They view that authority as negative, which is the pinnacle of ignorance. They close their minds to so much tried and tested truth.

Chinese leaders today have said the family is the strength of any nation. They reached that conclusion by observing human behavior—not from the Bible, though it certainly agrees with the Bible. But our educational system is too proud to listen and learn. Nobody can tell American educators how to educate—not even God!

The sexual immorality allowed at our colleges has everything to do with the collapse of strong marriages and families—and of our nation! History proves that truth from the beginning to the end, but not to our so-called educators.

It all falls into the category of academic freedom, which is really the most despicable kind of slavery. If you want proof, request our free book The Missing Dimension in Sex.

Foote concluded, “In a society more preoccupied with the labels on the suitcase than with what’s inside, Harvard is still the best label in town.”

It sure is a nice-looking label. But is true education in the label—or in what’s inside?

Our educators are being warned by other authorities, but they are too high and mighty to heed!

A Law of History

Syndicated columnist George Will wrote this in his Dec. 23, 2001, column: “Two hundred twenty-five Christmases ago, history was being made around here. And recently Lynne Cheney … came here to advocate teaching history more extensively and more wisely than we currently do.”

Mr. Will continued, “Cheney recalled a 1999 survey of college seniors at 55 elite colleges, from Princeton to Stanford, which revealed that only 22 percent knew that the words ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ are from the Gettysburg Address. Forty percent could not place the Civil War in the second half of the 19th century. … Twenty-five percent thought the pilgrims signed the Magna Carta on the Mayflower. … To the question of who commanded American forces at Yorktown, the most frequent answer was Ulysses S. Grant.

“Such questions should not be difficult for high school seniors. But at the time of the survey, none of the 55 colleges and universities required a course in American history. And students could graduate from 78 percent of them without taking any history course.”

What a disturbing survey! Most of the students—78 percent—didn’t have to take even one history course! But don’t expect our elite colleges to start teaching history. That subject carries an aura of authority they dislike.

How can you become educated by closing your mind to a multitude of lessons from the past—good and bad? That approach makes our teachers and students some of the most ignorant people on Earth!

The truth is, our forefathers possessed more of the foundational truths than we have today, and we are about to pay a terrifying price for our willful ignorance!

Let the college and university students beware of the poison they are being taught today!

Why is this information so shocking? Here is Mr. Will’s conclusion: “[A]s Madison [one of America’s Founding Fathers and former president] said, in words inscribed on a Princeton building, ‘a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.’”

Are we losing our freedom? The answer is a resounding yes!

Henry Steele Commager wrote an introduction to Winston Churchill’s biography of his ancestor, Marlborough. In it Mr. Commager wrote, “… Churchill’s reading of history reinforced his early education to exalt the heroic virtues. He was Roman rather than Greek, and as he admired Roman accomplishments in law, government, empire, so he rejoiced in Roman virtues of order, justice, fortitude, resoluteness, magnanimity. These were British virtues too, and, because he was the very symbol of John Bull, Churchillian. He cherished, as a law of history, the principle that a people who flout these virtues is doomed to decay and dissolution, and that a people who respect them will prosper and survive.”

Learning lessons from great leaders of the past is critical to our national well-being. If we flout those heroic virtues of history, our nations are “doomed to decay and dissolution.” But if we respect and emulate them, we “will prosper and survive.”

Our national survival is at stake! That is “a law of history.”

However, our arrogant educators refuse to even study the heroic virtues of history that helped to make us great. They consider themselves so much more intelligent and enlightened.

America and Britain are paying a dreadful price for this rebellious and inexcusable ignorance. They are going the way of ancient Rome. And in case they are unaware of that history, Rome collapsed. Numerous people warned Rome too, but the Romans were too spiritually sick and proud to heed the warning.

Many in the present U.S. political administration have utter contempt for the Constitution. Our fathers founded that document on many Bible principles. The Constitution is the foundational law of the land. What happens when you tear down your foundation? Anarchy and chaos result. Then—according to history—other powers often move in and enslave the people. That is especially true if you are the number-one superpower in the world. That adds a lot of prestige to the conqueror.

The opponents of our founding document say they want an “evolving Constitution,” which means they don’t want to be ruled by it or any other authority or law unless it reinforces their political views.

The Bible describes them as being “lawless.” They hate for any authority to enforce a law contrary to their beliefs. That means they believe only their human reasoning should rule, regardless of how ignorant and inadequate it may be. Only the worst kind of suffering will change those twisted values.

A New Government Is Coming Very Soon

Thankfully, there is a grand hope. Notice this beautiful poetry written by Isaiah from the Revised Standard Version:

“For thus says the high and lofty One

who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

‘I dwell in the high and holy place,

and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit,

to revive the spirit of the humble,

and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isaiah 57:15).

This is vigorous, imaginative poetry that will cause our spirits to soar if we have a humble spirit and are receptive to God’s view.

We dwell in the confines of time. But not God. He “inhabits eternity”! And this high and lofty Being also dwells with the man “who is of a contrite and humble spirit”—the opposite of those educators and students of our elite universities!

That omnipotent God is already reviving “the spirit of the humble” in His little remnant. Soon, God’s firstfruits are going to teach Harvard and other universities what true education is.

The God who inhabits eternity wants to teach us and dwell with us for all eternity. If we are receptive to God’s education, it will stir our imagination as nothing else ever could. Albert Einstein said he “talked to the stars.” But we can talk and live with the Creator of the stars!

Now that is true education, but it’s given only to the spirit of the humble.

Herbert W. Armstrong College, a liberal arts institution sponsored by the same organization that publishes this magazine, is fervently working to revive the spirit of the humble. We teach that the Bible is the foundation of all knowledge. We have proven for more than 50 years that this Bible education works beautifully.