Getting Schooled

By David Warren. But first a note from Robert Royal: The always entertaining David Warren makes a crucial point today: the best education is when we educate ourselves. By coincidence - but we know there are no coincidences under God's Providence - a reader wrote in yesterday, while making a very generous donation: " I'm delighted to receive an essay from The Catholic Thing each morning. Education is an essential route to advancing the work of the church." Readers may not appreciate how much writing or editing TCT is an education for us as well, in addition to our interactions with all of you. Look. We've got a great "Thing" going here. Let's keep it going. You know how. Now for today's column... One of the most encouraging aspects of contemporary life is the sudden drop in university enrolments. This is unambiguously an improvement in human affairs, at least in the United States. The steep decline - "very large and very discouraging," according to Mr. Bill DeBaun, senior director of the National College Attainment Network - reverses all signs of recovery from the Batflu ("COVID") infestation, in which students were actually shut out of residences, and deprived of "services" for which they had paid. Speaking on behalf of the higher education bureaucracy, Mr. DeBaun cited various other bureaucratic setbacks, such as the progressive withdrawal of various racial diversity schemes; and it is true that "minorities" are, proportionately, among those most absenting themselves. But the "trend" is apparent among all classes of freshmen registering, and I can hope it will also be found among more senior students. I read recently that the number of post-graduates in American universities is - simply as a proportion of population - approaching 100 times what it was only a century ago. Apart from my glee, I have no way of checking these statistical dazzlements, but from general observation I would guess that this is approximately true. This means that along with the counter-revolutionary government that Americans elected in November, the New Year will bring yet another thrilling novelty. Of course, we must expect more Antifa and Intifada demonstrations in the Ivy League, together with a fresh round of rioting and protests against the triumphant "Far Right." But this will have the effect of accelerating the student disappearances. I had been waiting for it, perhaps impatiently, for some time. That the professoriate is, overwhelmingly, made up of donors to the Democrat party (as much as 100 percent among the most elite institutions) has been true and increasing for some time. I have watched while university teachers and administrators became a closed camp of what we used to call "commies and perverts." I had thought it inevitable that while all kinds of university courses except technical training - and much of that now - became less advantageous to applicants, the financial pressures they exerted would grow. The House hearings last year of leading college governors (for instance Harvard, UPenn, MIT) became a theatre of the absurd. Anyone who watched would have been marvelously enlightened by the lying. Yet it would seem that the rise of leftist fanaticism has generally peaked, and we may look forward to descent on many fronts, together with much more resistance to climbing, for at least the coming year. The implications of this development are broad. The abandonment of "Woke Marxism" is proving contagious in the near term, and perhaps will continue. In my view, which may be somewhat controversial, the implications for Christianity and specifically for the Roman Church may not be permanent, but are nevertheless quite exciting. For they are international, as well as continental. Not only in the States, but in Europe and even in Syria and Iran, it has suddenly become more acceptable to be a Christian. There is plenty of room for further advances, and certainly the reconquistas who once reclaimed Spain and Hungary for the Church, though not y...