More Thoughts on the PCC Article in COHE
Time to follow up on yesterday's blog entry. There are several things I told the reporter which I consider important that were didn't make it into the article, presumably because he didn't want to write a philosophical editorial about the society we live in.
was correct that the blood supply to Pensacola Christian College is the textbook business for which I and other students provided cheap labor in exchange for a worthless education from the crackpot fringe. PCC is the tip of an iceberg. That iceberg is the Christian school movement across the United States. But they feed off the churches in more ways than selling them Creation Science textbooks.
They need the churches to manufacture willing subjects. PCC can't brainwash just anybody. The students have to be prepared by a lifetime of church teaching in unquestioning subservience. Remember the creepy part of the article in which the former student says "So walking out of PCC would be breaking God's will for our lives. Then I've heard them say that you might end up dying because God can't use you anymore"? That is not the official position of the college administration, but it is an form of manipulation through threat of God as a knee-breaking thug which is commonly used in the evangelical subculture. If a floorleader who comes from that subculture said it to a student, or a teacher taught it in a class or a mandatory Sunday school lesson, the administration would not correct them.
There has been some commentary from alumni on PCCboard to the effect that although it was appropriate to focus on unaccreditation and on the equivalence of human authority with godlike authority, the focus on the rules was juvenile since the students knew what they were getting into. This is a standard position of alumni who refuse to denounce or oppose the college.
But the rules are a problem too, and it's not just being juvenile. Most people have a problem with punishing someone, even if it's an act they really have done, if it's something they don't deserve to be punished for. Merely being an authority figure and making a rule has no impact on what people actually deserve-- it derives from whether the rule has some basis in need. If we don't like a rule we change it. That's why I encouraged the reporter to use the phrase "redress of grievances" from our constitution. At PCC, those who are governed have no say in their government; closed-room inquisitions and Star Chambers are the norm; little more than an accusation is sufficient to punish a student; and redress of grievances for wrongful conviction is nominal at best. How different this is from the mindset of the non-authoritarian civilization which we call "the free world" or "the modern world"-- North America and Western Europe being examples. The PCC attitude toward following has more of a place in a third-world nation ruled by strongmen.
In this mindset, we in the free world of the twenty-first century recognize that there is something deeply wrong, seriously sick, within the mind of dictators who make and enforce nonsensical rules. There is also something wrong with the groveling serfs who willingly go under their boot. It's a machine that grinds out one product: suffering.
That's why everyone I've talked to about the article who is not related to PCC has reacted in outrage to the descriptions of punishments and expulsions.
Comments
avt-tor on Mar. 21, 2006 10:35 PM
You have my sympathy for surviving this ordeal.
phecda on Mar. 21, 2006 10:54 PM
I remember encountering Jack Chick tracts back in high school, with all the end of the world stuff from Revelations, and how the government religion was going to encourage everyone to snitch on each other, and essentially create an environment of devisiveness. It's sadly amusing to see PCC embody that force that the evangelists painted as the enemy.
To quote Walt Kelley -- "We have met the enemey and they are us."
tlatoani on Mar. 22, 2006 12:43 AM
I have nothing but contempt for PCC, but I would have come down on the side that said "lying about accreditation is fraud, but the students knew what the rules were when they signed up..."
...until your comments made me realize that, regardless of what the students think they know about the rules coming in, living under a system of arbitrary and harsh rules is going to condition many of them to unthinking obedience at a very deep level. It's brainwashing.
This is not the same objection you're raising -- it doesn't matter to me that the rules would be unpleasant to most people, provided that the students know what they're getting into and can leave at any time. College students are capable of informed consent, after all.
What matters is that they can't consent to this in an informed fashion, because they won't realize the long-term psychological damage it could cause. So it probably can't be done ethically even if the students have heard all the horror stories.
If you want an interesting analogy, try Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment.
drkelso on (None)
temujin9 on Mar. 22, 2006 9:05 PM
I have to say, the phrases "occular intercourse" and "making eye babies" made me laugh. I so sorry you had to deal with those idiots.
dionysus1999 on Mar. 22, 2006 9:37 PM
This reminds me of the climate at my workplace, frighteningly enough.
uplinktruck on Mar. 23, 2006 9:54 PM
It's interesting to read the give and take on the article from the PCC Message Board. It seems even former alumni can't agree on the level of control exerted over the students.
I admire Matt for being able to last as long as he did. It shows a There is no doubt I would have been chucked out of there before the orientations were over. Especially where the rules regarding the male-female contacts were concerned.
The comments about producing well washed minds receptive to the kind of indoctrination that kind of faith requires sound pretty close to the mark.
Matt, what did you mean "I and other students provided cheap labor in exchange for a worthless education?" What kind of labor? Was it voluntary? Did you receive any compensation for your labor when you left the school early?
matt-arnold on Mar. 23, 2006 10:30 PM
They have a work study program with which financially disadvantaged students can pay for tuition, room and board while taking a lighter class load. Signing up for it is voluntary. I personally worked in the dishroom of food service on the campus, and in the print shop that produces the A Beka Book textbooks. There I operated folding machines, perfect-binding and saddle-stich-binding assembly lines, table mounted hand-fed saddle staplers, and an industrial shredder, as well as stuffing promotional mailings into envelopes.
Work study wages that exceeded the tuition room and board were not given to the student until graduation, if they had a positive balance at that time. Students were given a small allowance from it with which to get things like mandatory haircuts or mandatory pantyhose. One of the concerns that many have with the work study program is that those who did it signed a contract agreeing that if they left school without graduating, the school could keep the money they had earned.
I also did an internship as an illustrator for A Beka Book, but it was not part of the work study program. Like anyone's internships from any school, it was uncompensated.
uplinktruck on Mar. 23, 2006 10:57 PM
That money earned thing is plain wrong, dishonest and immoral. But if you sign a contract you are bounce by its terms. It would be interesting to see what happens if someone signs that contract before the age of majority.
Real nice, PCC. Way to teach the right way to treat other people. Jesus would be so proud. Do unto others before they do unto you.
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