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More Thoughts on the PCC Article in COHE
Mar. 21st, 2006 04:07 pmTime to follow up on yesterday's blog entry. There are several things I told the reporter which I consider important that were didn't make it into the article, presumably because he didn't want to write a philosophical editorial about the society we live in.
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phecda was correct that the blood supply to Pensacola Christian College is the textbook business for which I and other students provided cheap labor in exchange for a worthless education from the crackpot fringe. PCC is the tip of an iceberg. That iceberg is the Christian school movement across the United States. But they feed off the churches in more ways than selling them Creation Science textbooks.
They need the churches to manufacture willing subjects. PCC can't brainwash just anybody. The students have to be prepared by a lifetime of church teaching in unquestioning subservience. Remember the creepy part of the article in which the former student says "So walking out of PCC would be breaking God's will for our lives. Then I've heard them say that you might end up dying because God can't use you anymore"? That is not the official position of the college administration, but it is an form of manipulation through threat of God as a knee-breaking thug which is commonly used in the evangelical subculture. If a floorleader who comes from that subculture said it to a student, or a teacher taught it in a class or a mandatory Sunday school lesson, the administration would not correct them.
There has been some commentary from alumni on PCCboard to the effect that although it was appropriate to focus on unaccreditation and on the equivalence of human authority with godlike authority, the focus on the rules was juvenile since the students knew what they were getting into. This is a standard position of alumni who refuse to denounce or oppose the college.
But the rules are a problem too, and it's not just being juvenile. Most people have a problem with punishing someone, even if it's an act they really have done, if it's something they don't deserve to be punished for. Merely being an authority figure and making a rule has no impact on what people actually deserve-- it derives from whether the rule has some basis in need. If we don't like a rule we change it. That's why I encouraged the reporter to use the phrase "redress of grievances" from our constitution. At PCC, those who are governed have no say in their government; closed-room inquisitions and Star Chambers are the norm; little more than an accusation is sufficient to punish a student; and redress of grievances for wrongful conviction is nominal at best. How different this is from the mindset of the non-authoritarian civilization which we call "the free world" or "the modern world"-- North America and Western Europe being examples. The PCC attitude toward following has more of a place in a third-world nation ruled by strongmen.
In this mindset, we in the free world of the twenty-first century recognize that there is something deeply wrong, seriously sick, within the mind of dictators who make and enforce nonsensical rules. There is also something wrong with the groveling serfs who willingly go under their boot. It's a machine that grinds out one product: suffering.
That's why everyone I've talked to about the article who is not related to PCC has reacted in outrage to the descriptions of punishments and expulsions.
phecda was correct that the blood supply to Pensacola Christian College is the textbook business for which I and other students provided cheap labor in exchange for a worthless education from the crackpot fringe. PCC is the tip of an iceberg. That iceberg is the Christian school movement across the United States. But they feed off the churches in more ways than selling them Creation Science textbooks.They need the churches to manufacture willing subjects. PCC can't brainwash just anybody. The students have to be prepared by a lifetime of church teaching in unquestioning subservience. Remember the creepy part of the article in which the former student says "So walking out of PCC would be breaking God's will for our lives. Then I've heard them say that you might end up dying because God can't use you anymore"? That is not the official position of the college administration, but it is an form of manipulation through threat of God as a knee-breaking thug which is commonly used in the evangelical subculture. If a floorleader who comes from that subculture said it to a student, or a teacher taught it in a class or a mandatory Sunday school lesson, the administration would not correct them.
There has been some commentary from alumni on PCCboard to the effect that although it was appropriate to focus on unaccreditation and on the equivalence of human authority with godlike authority, the focus on the rules was juvenile since the students knew what they were getting into. This is a standard position of alumni who refuse to denounce or oppose the college.
But the rules are a problem too, and it's not just being juvenile. Most people have a problem with punishing someone, even if it's an act they really have done, if it's something they don't deserve to be punished for. Merely being an authority figure and making a rule has no impact on what people actually deserve-- it derives from whether the rule has some basis in need. If we don't like a rule we change it. That's why I encouraged the reporter to use the phrase "redress of grievances" from our constitution. At PCC, those who are governed have no say in their government; closed-room inquisitions and Star Chambers are the norm; little more than an accusation is sufficient to punish a student; and redress of grievances for wrongful conviction is nominal at best. How different this is from the mindset of the non-authoritarian civilization which we call "the free world" or "the modern world"-- North America and Western Europe being examples. The PCC attitude toward following has more of a place in a third-world nation ruled by strongmen.
In this mindset, we in the free world of the twenty-first century recognize that there is something deeply wrong, seriously sick, within the mind of dictators who make and enforce nonsensical rules. There is also something wrong with the groveling serfs who willingly go under their boot. It's a machine that grinds out one product: suffering.
That's why everyone I've talked to about the article who is not related to PCC has reacted in outrage to the descriptions of punishments and expulsions.
