Parents

We like to report from time to time on goings-on at different colleges. After all, this is part of what you pay for. 

The current news that caught our eye is from Stanford. Stanford students will be voting soon on whether to reinstate a two-quarter Western Civilization course requirement covering the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world. It would seem like a no-brainer right? You might even have thought that such a course would be already required at one of our country’s most elite institutions.

Maybe you didn’t know that instead of such a course, Stanford offers “Food Talks: The Language of Food” and “The Science of Mythbusters.” Current Cost of Attendance: $67,000 per year.

However, it’s not clear if the effort will prevail. An opinion piece in The Stanford Daily quotes a student, Mara Chin Loy, saying that the initiative “actively participates in my dehumanization and the dehumanization of my communities…We don’t need to learn about Western civilization and its ideals, because we have spent every moment of our lives resisting and fighting to live and love ourselves, so that we can transcend Western values.”

As we’ve mentioned before, don’t assume your teenagers will be taught the same subjects that you were or that you want them to be taught. The best resource we know of for help in this area is whatwilltheylearn.com by ACTA. (Stanford rates a C, by the way.)

We will provide updates as the story develops.