Pepperdine University President Jim Gash recently embraced a somewhat unorthodox position about the mission of higher education, writing that schools should, indeed, “teach students what to think.”
In a piece published Sunday at National Review, Gash responded to the oft repeated idea that universities should teach students how to think, not what to think.
“At first blush, it sounds reasonable. We (the authors) have each used the phrase ourselves in the past. It often leads to applause,” Gash wrote with co-author Jeremy Tate, founder of the Classic Learning Test, an alternative to the SAT.
However, Gash said a purely neutral education leads to “men without chests,” quoting Christian author C.S. Lewis. In other words, institutions produce “graduates who are gifted thinkers but who have none of the moral training necessary to use their gifts for good.”
Gash and Tate continued:
A truly neutral education — one that scrupulously avoids teaching students what to think — would forgo many of the fundamental principles that most educators take for granted. Such an education would have no opinion on whether students should treat their classmates with dignity and respect. It would remain agnostic on whether truth exists and impartial as to whether free speech should be protected inside and outside the classroom. It would stay silent on whether a life of service is preferable to a life of dishonest gain.
This is absurd.
We all want students not just to think, but to know that their neighbors are worthy of respect. All of us want them to believe in the pursuit of truth (if not, what is the academic enterprise?). Is there an educator among us who wants to discourage the freedom of speech, or to avoid taking sides between a life of self-interest and a life of service?
So yes, we should teach students what to think.
When educators claim complete moral and ideological neutrality, the descent into chaos is inevitable — as is the penchant for some ideology being smuggled through the back door. The fruit of this process has become regrettably clear on some college campuses in recent years, and recent legal battles over DEI directives from the Department of Education have confirmed that some ideology will always be present in American classrooms. The only question is what kind of ideology?
For the two scholars, the answer is simple: “The mission of education should be to create good citizens: young men and women of wisdom and virtue who love the good, true, and beautiful.”
Read their full piece at National Review.
