Education As Catering To Desires
By DONALD DeMARCO
G.K. Chesterton had the enviable knack of sizing up a situation and responding to it with accuracy, brevity, and wit. Concerning the problems concerning education in his time, which continue to plague us today, he said, “Without education, we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.” G.K., needless to say, is not contradicting himself. He is simply drawing attention to the fact that there is a wide gulf between the truly educated person and those who fancy themselves as educated.
St. John Paul II, whose writing was direct and devoid of irony, believed that the real danger to the future is utilitarianism which reduces the human person to a bundle of desires to be satisfied. We now see abundant evidence that his fear was entirely justified. The disinterested search for truth is being replaced, in many instances, by catering to people’s desires. Academia often functions these days as a hotel rather than as an institution of learning.
Rebecca Todd Peters, who is a professor and a Presbyterian minister, has written a book bearing the title, Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice (2018). The title gives the content away, for Peters is radically pro-abortion. The book is hardly progressive, especially for the aborted child. Nor is it Christian since it is in violation of the Commandment that prohibits killing. Furthermore, it is not an argument but a form of catering since it is a shameless appeal to women who agree with her.
Most significant, however, is the assumption that all women are trustworthy. In the same year, Fiorella Nash wrote a book that is the perfect antithesis of Peter’s. It is entitled The Abolition of Woman and is unabashedly pro-life. Apparently, Nash, as any woman who is pro-life, is not to be trusted. Perhaps, as the title suggests, a woman who is pro-life is not really a woman.
More realistically, many women who have had abortions have come to experience deep regret. They look back on their abortion and recall that they did not trust themselves but trusted the loud voices that conveyed the message that abortion was something progressive. Silent No More and other groups such as Victims of Choice and Exploited By Abortion consist of women who testify that they regret their abortions. They are women, but in retrospect, realized that they made a decision they would like to take back. They are urging other women not to trust anyone who advises having an abortion.
In addition, is it not “sexist” to imply that men, simply because they are not women, should not be trusted? “Trust Women” leaves reason in shambles and discredits the testimony of countless women. It is surely not educational, but a flagrant capitulation to the voices of a select group of women.
Amelia Bonow and Emily Nokes teamed to produce Shout Your Abortion (2018). Reason, of course, does not require the raising of one’s voice. Reflecting on my many yesterdays of teaching, I can honestly say that I have never shouted any of my lectures. If I had, I would have been dismissed or sent to a psychiatric institution. Shouting may be appropriate in selling used cars on TV, but it is not a tool of education.
Pro-abortion advocate Florynce Kennedy, author of The Life of a Black Feminist Radical, created a media splash when she stated: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” If a man could get pregnant, however, he would be a woman. Furthermore, killing could never become a sacrament because marriage is already a sacrament and, as a sacrament, it would proscribe abortion. Confession is a sacrament; abortion is a confessable sin. The assumption behind Kennedy’s statement (in a speech dated May 15, 1971) is that women are oppressed by men, a notion that surely lacks universality.
A growing number of children prefer to be a different sex. And the “educated people” support their illusion and set aside the truth. Writing for the American Journal of Pediatrics, Leena Nahata warns parents that identifying a neonate as boy or girl could later traumatized the child. One might think that going to school and not knowing whether you are a boy or a girl would more likely be traumatic.
Aristotle, honored for his intelligence and objectivity, once stated: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” There is far too much accepting thought uncritically in today’s world. A desire is immediate and private. We search for truth which is universal. It is easier to misuse an educational platform to cater to people’s desires than it is to inspire them to make the effort to search for the truth. Therefore, the exploitation of others is less demanding that teaching the truth.
Yet there can be no real education unless it is based on truth. We want to know how things are rather than how I would prefer them to be. In his encyclical Ex Corde Ecclesiae (from the heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II strongly advised the present age to proclaim “the meaning of truth, that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.”
As Catholics, we have access to a tradition that values an education that honors truth and is open to all avenues of knowledge. Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Veritatis Splendor, to cite but two reference points, are reliable guides in developing a realistic education based on what is rather than what people prefer.
- + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus, St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is the author of 41 books, available on amazon.com. His latest two books are Let Us Not Despair and The Road to a Better World. He and his wife Mary have five children and thirteen grandchildren.)