It used to be considered conventional wisdom, to learn from one’s elders. But one other important piece of wisdom is to know which elders to listen to. After all, there are a lot of people out there, some of whom are entitled, delusional and plain ol' nasty.
A young man shared his mildly infuriating and somewhat hilarious experience with a boomer who tried to talk him out of a Yale scholarship because of the risk of “indoctrination.” We reached out to the young man via private message and will update the article when he gets back to us.
Getting into an Ivy-league school with a scholarship is generally a pretty good thing
Image credits: Reliance Trends - Official (not the actual photo)
But one boomer was dead-set on convincing a young man not to go
Image credits: Teona Swift (not the actual photo)
Image source: 0dysseus123
Hearing other viewpoints is not “indoctrination”
It’s not hard to notice that a lot of the folks claiming that higher education “indoctrinates” people have little to no experience with it. It also reveals a somewhat surprising lack of knowledge about the entire field. In any university, you will be exposed to the biases and preferences of your professors, that is just a part of life. More often than not, this is the result of older folks being unable to follow the times and deciding that it’s all a symptom of some grand conspiracy. Fortunately, for every grouchy boomer, there is a nice, appreciative person.
However, this doesn’t mean that a person will suddenly and magically start entirely agreeing with someone. Indeed, being pressured into a belief system is one of the surefire quickest ways to make it seem unatractive. For example, the vast majority of us have at least gone through highschool. Ask yourself, did you immediately assume the beliefs of your educators? It’s almost a sort of self-tell, to believe that exposure to some other viewpoint will make a person believe it immediately.
Similarly, it’s unclear if this woman understands that there are other, quite reputable institutions that are explicitly conservative. This perhaps doesn’t apply to this young man, who will, presumably, be going to Yale. However, describing the entire concept of higher education as a means of indoctrination is just silly.
This simplistic view has unfortunately infiltrated some school boards
Unfortunately, even legislators have taken some of these concepts to heart. The solution, for some reason, isn't a more “balanced” curriculum, but to swing the pendulum in the other direction. For example, in North Carolina, the board of the university of the same name explicitly stated that they would be hiring “Republican” professors.
Regardless of where you stand politically, it should perhaps fill you with alarm that school boards might start to consider one’s political preferences while hiring. After all, if a UNC professor now has to be a Republican, what’s to stop other schools from hiring, for example, exclusively Democrats. Ultimately, turning this into a “battle” will just end up alienating the good educators out there.
Once a specialist's political party affiliations become more important than their abilities, you might end up with important research now being conducted by people who are perhaps not up to the task. Ultimately, a person’s political beliefs are often shaped at university, if they attend, but not necessarily by professors.
Often enough, most folks will have a strong enough political identity based on their experiences in their family and community. If this particular shopper believes that being exposed to one viewpoint is indoctrination, wait until she hears about Thanksgiving dinner.
Readers were quick to tell him to disregard everything she said to him
