Universities under Conditions of Duress: Question and Answer Session

Abstract

ALAN RYAN: Because the Protestant God is the one that said every man was to be his own priest, was to read the Bible for himself, and was to make his own way to salvation. Out of that comes the whole Lockean story about toleration, and the idea that unless you question your own favorite ideas and inclinations, you are not being entirely serious. Self-criticism. The failure to really understand this is, if I may say so, the one drawback of what is otherwise the immense pleasure to be had from teaching in the United States. All the kids are taught at the age of about seven to distinguish between facts and opinions. So they write essays in which they painfully copy out whatever it is they are copying out, and you say, Where is the criticism of what you've read? Oh, you want my opinion. You don't want their opin-