CAMPUS

Thinking Inside the Box: Focus the Nation Program was Indoctrination

Bucknell’s admissions literature never mentions anything about thought control. Yet, with the recent Focus the Nation teach-in, the University is doing just that – teaching us what to think, rather than how to think. Bucknell is straying from its liberal origins.

Last month’s teach-in was the University’s latest attempt to force its own opinions upon students. For over a month, Bucknell was inundated with emails, flyers, speeches, and “chalk talk” touting this nationwide event against global climate change.

Hailed as an opportunity to discuss solutions to global warming, the teach-in was nothing more than an excuse for professors and the University to impose their views on climate change upon the student body.

A true liberal arts education has always been held as the means to cultivate intellect and spread new ideas. By exposing students to numerous viewpoints and ideas, the liberal education – in the traditional sense – ensures that students become well-informed, critical thinkers.

However, instead of fostering debate and exposing students to numerous viewpoints on the issue, the University clearly laid out its position and forced it on students in an unequivocally illiberal fashion.

At Bucknell and other colleges across the country, Focus the Nation was just another opportunity to even more freely inculcate the student population. For an entire day, professors expounded on the need to “do something” about global warming. Only unrealistic solutions and moral obligations were the topics of the day.

Instead of serving as a day of lively, diverse debate, the Focus the Nation teach-in only served as another dismal reminder of the disappearance of true debate on college campuses.

If the purpose of a liberal arts institution is to “liberate” students’ minds and expose them to different ideas, then all facets of the global climate change debate should have been discussed. A presentation of various beliefs allows people to form their own opinions on the issue and truly understand the complexity of the debate. Professors only addressed the side of the debate they believed to be relevant and argued for a specific position, effectively indoctrinating Bucknell students.

A political call to action, the teach-in was a pretense, allowing professors and administrators to impose a dogma upon Bucknellians and students across the country. The purpose of a liberal arts university is not to motivate students for a particular end.

The nature or theme of the teach-in is irrelevant. Teach-ins on any subject, such as the immorality of abortion, the merits of universal health care, or the need to stay in Iraq should not be acceptable in the university environment.

Such a blatant display of issue advocacy in a so-called liberal arts university is reprehensible. The shameless political lobbying of our University and some of our professors does not belong in any institution of higher education, much less a liberal arts university. Rather, Bucknell should be fostering critical thought within its student population.

Hosting such a teach-in is contrary to the stated liberal purpose of our University. College should be about learning how to think, not what to think. Then, through the skills we have learned, we should be able to form our own opinions on issues, rather than having them impressed upon us. It is the simple fact that a university is doing all that it can to persuade students to think a certain way that is dangerous.

Supposedly bastions of free thought and diverse discourse, universities across the country – including ours – are instead becoming strongholds of close-mindedness and insular visions. Rather than encouraging the development of multiple opinions in the marketplace of ideas, Bucknell is jeopardizing its academic integrity by adhering to prescribed orthodoxies that exclude certain viewpoints and promote a particular agenda. The University has effectively forced its students to stop thinking outside of the box.

Hosting the Focus the Nation teach-in was antithetical to the declared liberal nature of Bucknell. More dangerously, it means the University has pronounced an end to the debate over climate change. Such dogmatic thinking is a threat to freedom of opinion.

Sarah Schubert is the former Editor in Chief of the Collegiate Network member publication, The Counterweight, at Bucknell University. This article was originally featured in the February 19, 2008 issue of The Counterweight.