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To: Joe Republc
I became a convert to Catholicism while I was a Harvard undergraduate, so anything is possible. Harvard certainly had other ideas about how they wanted to shape their students, even back then. At that time, their basic position, as announced to us en masse by the Dean of Freshman, was: "Question everything, doubt everything, believe nothing." But I took a wonderful medieval history course with Henry Osborn Taylor, and a core humanities course called "Ideas of Good and Evil in Western Literature" that included some great biblical and classical philosophical readings. Both courses included ideas that proved useful to my religious development. The latter course even taught me (involuntarily) that such philosophes as Descartes and Hegel twisted and trivialized the great foundations laid by Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas.

Maybe it's possible to shield your kids from every decadent influence in our society, coming from Hollywood as well as from their teachers, but it may be better to try to prepare them to think and choose for themselves. Whichever way you choose to raise them, shielding them from or preparing them for dangers, the kids will ultimately have to make their own choices, in a world full of very scuzzy influences on every side. You can't protect them beyond the age of eighteen, or in many cases earlier than that.
15 posted on 11/21/2002 10:08:07 AM PST by Cicero
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To: Cicero
One reason why people send their kids to elite schools is because there they meet other bright and interesting kids. Do you make many friends? Has this been helpful in your career?
16 posted on 11/21/2002 10:18:49 AM PST by RobbyS
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