Don’t Give Up Your Education to a Puppy Monkey Baby School

The worst commercial ever may have been the Super Bowl commercial where Mountain Dew decided we wanted to see a “puppy monkey baby.”

I like puppies . . .everybody likes puppies. I don’t like monkeys particularly, but there are plenty of people who think everything is funnier with chimps. I love babies and with the exception of Planned Parenthood and their hatred of  brown babies, most people do. I certainly agree with my Church that all babies are beautiful. Sadly, Mountain Dew proved that mashing three things lots of people like together is simply  . . . disturbing.

Monsters are made by putting things together that do not belong together, ask Dr. Frankenstein.

The problem with too many Christian schools (college and secondary) is that they have become puppy-monkey-baby. They have forced incompatible things together and made monsters.

You cannot have an administration controlled school and a traditional college education.

C.S. Lewis was a “problem professor.” He wrote books for kids. He spoke out for Christianity in ways that were socially unacceptable. His administration may not have liked everything CS Lewis did or said, and they could keep him from rewards, but they could not fire him.

Too many Christian colleges are incompatible with a liberal arts education because donor sensitive administrators will back away from controversy. Worse, they might become enamored with educational fads!

You cannot have a faculty controlled school and respond appropriately to changes in the culture.

However they vote, professors are very conservative about their jobs. They want to do what has been done in the way it was done long past when it is obvious that it can no longer be done! In a school where professors take over, too often the big idea is: fewer classes taught and more pay. This is not compatible with success.

The answer is simple to describe, but hard to achieve. There must be a leadership team accountable to professors and teachers, but able to act creatively. This can only happen when there is a clear vision that comes from the bottom up (and is not imposed from the top down).

Trying to have a liberal arts education controlled only by administrators or only by faculty creates a puppy monkey baby.

You cannot be orthodox and have departments that are heterodox.

If you are a parent and want to know what is happening at the school, go to the Sociology or Psychology Department. Talk about gender in Sociology and the soul in Psychology. Ask the Sociology professors if sex is tied to gender. Ask the Psychology Department if people have souls.

A school should be a family with a shared vision. The minute that vision is imposed, a statement of faith, it fails. Administration cannot impose orthodoxy on departments without becoming tyrannical and corrupt. Yet too many schools end up with a majority of faculty that no longer believe the vision of the school and feel hostile to donors and alum.

When alum must use administration to “control” professors, they have lost. When professors no longer agree with the vision of the donors and the alum, they have become Judas. They are stealing someone’s dream for their own personal profit. A school should be a family based on a shared vision and when this ceases to be true, the school is dead or becomes ugly: a puppy monkey baby.

You cannot have high standards and “cash cow” programs.

There is something to be said for ministering to students who could not earn a true liberal arts education. Since college has become credentialing for a job, there is a place for sort-of-colleges that give that credential. You cannot marry quality to that mission, however, without creating a puppy monkey baby. Imagine a fine school with an excellent campus that “uses” online students to pay for an awesome education for the on campus students with an administrator who thinks “farmers” don’t need a rigorous education.

You cannot love God and mammon.

The ultimate monster, the puppy monkey baby, is the school that views students as “data points” to advance the “vision.” Education, as CS Lewis notes in his prophetic That Hideous Strength, is never “for profit.” The process of education is discipleship and it cannot be done for money. Credentials can be sold for money: nothing wrong with that.

Education is one thing. Forcing other good things into education ruins both: for profit, for evangelism, for anything other education means a monkey puppy baby, a Frankenstein’s monster.

Let’s avoid it.