[Ramona_A_Stone]

whether a teacher is intellectual or caring is not what the issue is about. it’s about the fact that liberal bias runs rampant on the majority of college campuses, and a good portion of students are getting a biased education.

I agree that 'intellect and compassion' are not cogent to the crux of this particular issue because that crux is your perception, definition and qualifications of the concept of bias, still it seems remarkably true that teachers can so often be characterized by this pair of factors made a trinity by the statistical observation that they are also so often liberal.

It cannot be said that college professors are never 'plucked out of the air' because many are; the average university is an oligarchical and fairly self governing body and can certainly preferentially matriculate its staff, so the presence of this trinity of characteristics is certainly not absolute. Nonetheless this Democratic label fairly glares from these stats, which you yourself provided.

I would never argue that the majority of campuses in this country--and in fact, the world at large--are liberal environments. I would not argue that the placement of intent lies anywhere but squarely upon the faculties. I will also grant you that the form this liberalism takes is most often of a demeanor that could be called antiestablishment, and can even verge on pure personal spite for power and authority.

The spoor of this species is also quite obvious, I'd wager it's a good bet that a high percentage were themselves in fraternities during or very near the disillusioned zeitgeist of Kent State and Vietnam.

These, it would seem, are more subtle factors; eccentricities and generalities we can also add to the syllogism of "most teachers": most are intellectual, compassionate and liberal most often, and may have tendencies or agendas toward engendering social revolutions and political restructure much of the time. lol. Given.

...at least that certainly stands as a highly acceptable description of all the 'good teachers' I've known and been influenced by.

"Influence. I'll have to examine my own word before I go on to examine your words of bias and indoctrination, which may be names for the same effect.

I'd define the best infuential qualities to belong to the teachers I've known who have not only tolerated, but embraced, invigorated, nurtured, celebrated and even sanctified the individual idiosyncrasies of their student bodies--and have considered it all the more fortunate for this body when it is the more diverse.

Any good teacher knows that higher learning is not spoonfed to the uninvested, and that the best investment is to engage the student as much as possible in participatory dialogue as pitted against as many views as possible--it's only then that a student takes responsibility for his own critical thinking while maintaining his individuality, a formula too integral to the very fabric of sanity to be undervalued.

Now, frankly, to call this method of teaching bias is fine... perfectly acceptable...

...Until we're offered Patrick Henry College as some supposed example, in contrast, of an unbiased institution! PHC has every conceivable right to be exactly what it is in my opinion, but one cannot possible argue that it's unbiased while maintaining a straight face.

So when I come to your conclusion that all these listed colleges have a liberal bias--and we'd have to agree that PHC has it's own kind of bias --it seems we can only proceed by asking what are the things each is biased against?

I doubt if it's as clear cut as we might like to make it. Liberal colleges have courses on Evolution and Christianity and I doubt that PHC can entirely avoid the subject of Evolution in its curriculum just because it can be construed as contrary to Christianity. But we don't have to be screenwriters to visualize a significant difference in debating Christianity or Evolution among a group composed exclusively of young Republican WASPS with political aspirations (yes, I am picturing a room full of multiples of Micheal J. Fox as Alex, from Family Ties) and those same debates occuring in a group of mixed races, gays and straights, Christians and atheists, Democrats and Republicans... even if it is under the auspices of a liberal professor.

These are exactly the kind of environments one finds in "liberal colleges," and again it's clear that they can be defined as more inclusive.

This is all well and good. I'm not being critical of the existence PHC at all. I am critical of it from a personal standpoint, this is not I college in which I would like to matricualte personally. But there it is. Some people who want to go there can, and in the long run, so they have good ol' buddy ties--or at least have created a small demand for their students to get foot-in-the-door quasi-political government appointments or what-not--so what? Not terribly significant in the scheme of things. And certainly not the biggest fish in the pond, there are supergiant "conservative" universities in the sky of education that dwarf PHC. My own medium-sized hometown is host to a number of fairly prestigious Christian academies, not the least of which is Oral Roberts University. If you want to get crazy conservative, you can go all out and pick a military school, you'll even get to wear a uniform.

It would be hysterical to find an embodiment of some great evil conspiritorial trend of the right in PHC, but I don't think anyone does. It's just noted that some of its intent is a bias toward exclusivity, just as some of the intent of the more common liberal college is bias toward inclusion.

You are arguing for the right of an exclusive college to exist, and no one is arguing against them because there are and always have been exclusive schools.

At bottom, it's all a question of supply and demand, as long as you can afford the education you desire I don't feel the need to stop anyone.

Do you?

The "favoritism" shown the students of PHC by those in certain circles of power, as insinuated by the original article, is another matter--yet still a question of supply and demand.

What troubles some of us, I think, lol, is that the demand in those circles of official power should be what it is: the internal demand for a certain kind of predetermined religious morality in the halls of our government, the infrastructure of which is supposed to be philosophically as void as possible of the possibility of exerting that kind of influence outward.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to even call it a "part of a disturbing trend" because no doubt mechanisms like it have probably been in place all along. But it's certainly not crazy to merely raise an eyebrow to it under this present administration which so clearly has its own religious agenda.

The greater question is why anyone would be disturbed by religious influences since they are supposed to be inherently "good"--but many people have cast a wary eye on the historical record of this supposition--not the least of which were our founding fathers, themselves religious men, who came to this continent to escape the religious oppression and corruption that was inherent in a government that had no mechanisms for the separation of Church and State. I see no need to start rethinking the value of that observation. There's plenty of evidence where it leads.