What's Wrong with Modern Colleges?

As someone who just graduated from a public university last month, this is a question I’ve been pondering for a long time.

I’ve taken multiple classes throughout my four years where I was shocked at the inappropriate topics that professors talked about and the crude literature and articles they chose for students to read.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I had signed up for a religion class to complete one of my general education requirements. I didn’t think that I would have to be worried about inappropriate content being taught in a religion course. However, on the first day, as the professor was reviewing the syllabus, I was disgusted to realize that one of the books on the list, a graphic novel, was pornographic. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked up the plot of the book online. It was immoral, disturbing, and had no relevant subject matter to the class. Thankfully, I was able to transfer courses at the last minute.

At the time, I had thought the incident was a fluke, that I wouldn’t have to deal with anything like that again. I was wrong.

Shortly after that semester, during my junior year, I registered for a required English course. I had looked at the description beforehand and it was pretty standard – analyzing literature and discussing it in class.

The first few days of the course were promising. However, things went downhill fast.

We usually had to read a work of theory for homework by scholarly authors who analyzed literature and themes found in popular works. I quickly began to realize that a good majority of the articles my professor chose often talked about very sexual topics. I didn’t understand why he wanted us to read these articles and I was irritated that every reading had to revolve around graphic sex. I never would have taken the class if that had been listed in the course description.

The biggest blow came, however, when we were assigned a comic book to read later on. I skimmed through it a little beforehand out of curiosity, thinking the plot looked intriguing. I saw one pornographic scene and quickly shut it. Hoping it wouldn’t happen again, I put the book away and didn’t look at it until it was time to read it for class. When that time finally came, I realized as I continued to read the book that the inappropriate scene wasn’t the only one by far. A good amount of the novel was filled with some of the most grotesque, sexual images. 

At this point, it was too late to switch out of the class. I skipped past the inappropriate illustrations in the book and wrote a bad review at the end of the course, since at the university I went to, students were always able to write reviews for their professors at the end of each semester. I relayed to the department that the literature we had read in the course had made me and other students uncomfortable and that it went against my values.

In retrospect, I have to wonder what in the world is going on in the school system that things like this are considered okay now? I understand that not everyone has the same beliefs as me and that’s fine. But in general, most people are uncomfortable by such graphic topics being discussed in a university course as if they were casual conversation.

I want to clarify that I’m not someone who’s easily offended by literature that references sex. There are many classic novels that have sexual subtext. The kinds of books we were reading in my classes were vulgar and extreme.

Although I’m glad that I have a degree, and I don’t think Catholics should not enroll in college if they want one, I do think it’s useful for Christian students to be cautious of the courses they register for. Creative writing classes tend to have a good amount of content like this. It’s depressing – literature should be beautiful and thoughtful. Nowadays, professors don’t discuss novels that uplift people anymore; instead, pornographic books are taught, the students being indoctrinated to think that they are “empowering.”

College is technically for education; in the twenty-first century, it’s really about shoving agendas down our throats.