The Critical Error of the University

We would never just send a bunch of college freshmen into a chemistry lab and tell them to find their own way among the chemicals. That would result in a disaster.

But that is precisely the university's position when it comes to matters of conscience and morality and what is truly the good life. The university doesn't want to help them in the most important areas of their lives.

We foolishly encourage experimentation when there are clearly some paths that are wiser than others and have been proven to help foster the truly good life. But we do not teach these things to our students. And this has disastrous consequences.

We load them up with all sorts of knowledge and information and give them no moral compass to help them steward these things well. We arm them with dangerous weapons and do not bother to teach them wisdom.

And so their lives explode, just as if they were given free reign in the chemistry lab.

This is the critical error of the university over the course of the twentieth century.

-Dallas Willard