Mac-Coleman

28 March 2013 -

I read yesterday that an instructor at Florida Atlantic University recently held a despicable exercise in his class, ostensibly to teach the complexities of the 1^st Amendment’s guarantee of our freedom of speech.  The students were instructed to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, put it on the floor, and then stomp on it (It bothers me to even describe it).  A Latter-day Saint student refused to do so, citing religious reasons, and the school is in an uproar about it.  So are many of the media’s nattering pundits on both sides of the travesty’s surface issues.  The facile, albeit accurate, conservative tack is to say that this is just another example of academia’s disdain for and hostility toward Christianity.  A predictable liberal response was voiced by Fox contributor Juan Williams when he said that the exercise was “to promote critical thinking and draw attention to the sensitivity surrounding symbols in religion and politics. The best colleges encourage their students to question authority and challenge institutions – be it government, in business or in matters of religious faith. That is the best way to teach young people to avoid politically correct thinking.” 

I would approach the deeper, constitutional issue in the following manner.  Let me get this straight, Mr. Williams.  You imply that this University in Florida is one of the best colleges and that one of its class exercises is to encourage students, including Christian students, to deliberately commit public sacrilege in order to “question authority and challenge institutions...”’ as a “best way to teach young people to avoid politically correct thinking.”  Best way?  What does a twenty-year-old student learn from such a vile act?  Well, he certainly does not learn respect for others’ cherished beliefs, a necessary element for the peaceful exercise of the 1^st Amendment in a diverse society.  She certainly does not learn how to question analytically and then to express a reasoned, constrained argument against “politically correct thinking,” which is a necessary skill in order to use the 1^st Amendment to find common ground among beliefs and practices and to help a diverse society be stable and peaceful.  Just as important, the student will not get close to understanding the sustaining relationship between the exercise of freedom of speech in a civil society and the exercise of old-fashioned, but now vanishing societal virtues such as propriety, respect, constraint, politeness, or reverence, just to name a few.  In other words, the twenty-year-olds in this class are being bludgeoned into displaying the opposite of what are the 1^st Amendment’s true strengths and importance in a free society.  And, the instructor is doing this just to impress on young minds how sensitive some people can be about cherished beliefs?  And to think that parents pay for their kids to assault freedoms and their concomitant responsibilities in this manner.