Boy, I just got cussed out yesterday off list from a professor at a western university for being a “Glenn Beck type” because my last short Random Thought was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Her message was not what you would call collegial. I mean it was smoking. Knowing she sure doesn’t know me, I just replied, hoping my calm came through, telling her that I am confused. I asked her to enlighten me about what is so “destructive of academe” about advocating beyond mere window dressing and lip service that classroom teaching is as important as research and publication? That is so “dangerous” when I take the stand to testify why an education should be more than mere professional credentialing? Where is my “conservative wing” politics in saying that an education should be more than white collar vocational training? How am I among the “narrow minded” when I assert that an education should be more than merely a job engine, that helping someone learn how to live is as important as helping her or him learn how to make a living? How am I “pushing an ideology” when I firmly believe that part of an education should help develop a therapeutic civility that would act as a vaccine against toxic incivility? Where is the “religious right” in my educational philosophy that part of an education must also help promote a genuine, sincere, and habitual inner dignity and moral strength that displays itself in kindness, respect, trustworthiness, honesty, caring, and just plain decency?

       Am I objective? No. But, then, who honestly is?

     Do I have an agenda? Yes. But, then, who honestly doesn’t?

     I am not a one-dimensional, either-or guy. I call myself– I pride myself in being–a helping, multi-dimensional “wholeness teacher.” I am concerned with touching a student’s heart as well as her or his mind, of inspiring her or his spirit as well as sharpening her or his intellect, of helping her or him acquire people skills as well as the information and skills in her or his discipline, of helping her or him acquire critical feeling skills as well as critical thinking skills, of helping her or him see how noble, sacred, valuable, worthy, and important she or he and all others are, of helping her or him become an honorable person rather than merely a test-taking, grade-getting, accumulating high GPA honors student.

       I am an ardent advocate of conscious, purposeful, and pervasive character education. I don’t think when it comes to the classroom we can be what I call “character atheists.” And, when we interact with students, there is no such thing as practicing what I call “value neutrality.” It’s pretty simple. There isn’t a so-called “objective” bone in anyone’s body. No one is an untouched island. Everything we do or say, everything we feel and think, sends out messages that reveal those beliefs and values that underpin, shape, color, and drive our attitudes, emotions, thoughts, and actions. At the same time, those beliefs and values act as a filter on what we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. One way or another, by hook or by crook, we shape our values, we have impact on others, and so we shape lives no less than others influenced and continue to influence the course and shape of our lives. What we don’t advocate, we inadvertently–or overtly–dismiss and put down. When we don’t’ promote positive values beyond merely a paragraph on plagiarism in our syllabi because we take an “it’s not my job” or “I’m not comfortable doing that” or “what will they think” or “I’m not a priest or parent or counselor” stand, when we don’t consciously feel we have a responsibility to actively help influence ethical perspectives and shape the behavior that stems from them, we are in danger of graduating–as we have recently seen all around us–destructive moral dropouts. If that be Glenn Beck-ish, so be it.

Louis