Post ReferenceMorley,
In your last paragraph which Buffalo quotes, you appear to hold an idea of
single cause for something like
liberal mentality/thinking.
If so, it’s an inaccurate idea. As some of my links for you demonstrated,
“liberal” in terms of I
thinking has multiple causes, not a single cause. So while it can be accurately observed that “college makes students more liberal,” it’s not the, THE single factor in what assists or
causes individuals to be
open to new ideas, new ways of approaching issues, new solutions to problems, etc.The fact that university experiences in secular universities
tend to open the thinking of students to new ideas is, in itself, evidence that
education has a liberalizing effect. That is not to conclude that 100% of those who are exposed to these liberalizing effects become “liberals” as that singular term is used.
The time, place, circumstances, personal mental capability, parental encouragement to be independent, and many other factors are influential on how individuals act or react in a particular situation.
Is your only issue that you think Buffalo
has not produced studies? If so, it’s a trivial argument in the larger context of what has been stated in this thread with regard to the liberalizing effect of exposure to education.
Conversely, we could establish that people from cradle up who are prevented access to information and intellectual analysis
tend to replicate their childhood indoctrination that excludes access to information and accumulated knowledge.
For example, Amish children are reared in an environment that prevents them from having access to
education. They are taught
what to believe and they are insulated from the world. That does not mean they never see a car. But if they are taught only that
cars are evil, they tend to believe that
cars are evil.
Nevertheless, some thoughtful Amish children grown up, develop cracks in blind acceptance of Amish dogma, and move on. Some leave the religious group entirely. Some (though few) attend a university and become engineers or doctors. Granted, that may not happen to a large percentage of Amish. But, it does happen, and education (access to information) does tend, TEND to liberalize them.
I’m not citing a “study” here, because I’m not spending the time to do the research. But the conclusion that
education tends to liberalize in the context of a secular university can hardly be refuted. I specify “secular university” to distinguish it from someplace which is funded by and adheres to religion and religious people of the same persuasion.
Liberty Baptist University, for example, is dedicated to doctrine over discovery. It does not have a nationally accredited department of science because it generally opposes recent discoveries in science. Hence, as a PRIVATE CHRISTIAN
school, it can require of its students conduct and beliefs which are not so required by a university such as Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana. It lacks a school of medicine. Only in 2010 did Liberty Baptist receive accreditation in the American Bar Association. It’s a very late comer into the 20th (now 21st) Century.
Liberty Baptist would not be regarded highly as an academic school comparable with Harvard or Yale. It’s a
conservative school with emphasis on religion and worship. In fact, it “has been ranked in the Top-10 most conservative colleges in the U.S.”
SourceJAK