Dennis Prager and R.R. Reno discuss why elite secular colleges are failing and name three alternatives: Hillsdale College, Thomas Aquinas College, and Yeshiva University. They argue religious education beats public school, even across faiths, and recommend a gap year in Israel to challenge media narratives.
Anyway, R.R. Reno, Rusty Reno, has written a column which is up at dennisprager.com that it's so bad now that the, the impoverished education at elite colleges is such that he holds it against an applicant for a job if they went to an Ivy League college or Stanford-type college. I totally agree with you. My suspicion is if you tell me your kid is at Yale, especially Yale, it's really a cesspool. I assume that you have nothing in common with your child other than family bonds, which I hope obviously remain. But that's how bad it has become. So I'll ask you a question I don't normally ask. I'm— but I, I'm curious as to your answer. What rays of hope do you see?
Well, you ask all the hard questions.
Yeah, okay. I have a feeling I'd get a sober answer like that.
The— there are educational institutions that do a fantastic job. There aren't many of them. I mean, I'm sure many of your listeners know about Hillsdale College, a very extraordinary place, really. We've hired a number of people from there. They've been among our best. There are little Catholic colleges. Thomas Aquinas College is a great folks school. Really, I think it's top 25 liberal arts colleges ranked in the country. But there you could, if you're a, you don't even have to be a pious Catholic. You send your kids there and they'll actually learn things over the course of 4 years and do it in a moral environment that ennobles them rather than degrades them. By the way, I love—
forgive me, I just wanted to say, I could make a very powerful case for non-Catholics, for agnostics, for atheists to send their kids to Aquinas College. What does it hurt to learn about a good religion from good people who are teaching it. It's a puzzle to me. Maybe you disagree because you said it was for pious Catholics, I think, and I was thinking it's for pious agnostics.
No, I agree. I mean, it's predominant, but I feel the same way. Send your kids to Yeshiva University in New York.
That's right. At least this—
stands for something.
I tell people to send their kids to Israel instead of— for a break between high school and college, send your kid to Israel. You don't have to be Jewish. Just send them to the real world. By the way, one of the great benefits of going to Israel for 6 months even is you'll realize how much lying goes on in the mainstream media when you realize you're not in an apartheid state.
I agree. I think my son went to Israel for 9 months and it was a It was a great experience. You know, life matters there. People, people that you can't afford to live in this, you know, there's an existential threat to the state of Israel. You can't live in this dream world that woke America is being plunged into.
It is so interesting to me that, that your response was that you sent your own child there. You, you obviously committed Catholic. That's that.
My wife is Jewish though.
Right.
Well, so my kids went to— they went to, uh, all right, so you choose. I had to choose, right? So I would say my kids went to Jewish day school, K through 6. We would have gone all the way, but that's all they had in Omaha, Nebraska, where we were living. And people said, well, aren't you Catholic? I said, oh, look, I would much rather my kids— I mean, my kids are raised Jewish, but I would much rather, even if they were being raised Catholic, to go to a religious school. If you're a religious person, you is incalculably better than going to public school.
Yes, I've said that to Jews. If you have no Jewish school in the city, your kid is better off as a Jew in a committed Christian school, Protestant or Catholic. That is exactly my view. I want you to have a God-centered education. If it has a theology that you don't share, big deal. But you will get a God-centered education, and, and that is everything.
People ask my wife, why did you marry a Christian? She said it was harder to find somebody who believed in God at Yale— she was a Yale student— harder to find a person that believed in God at Yale than it was, you know, that, uh, values. That's right. And I think the same thing is true for education of your kids. This is the world we live in, the 21st century, and I think religious people sense that, and we really are uniting.
That's right. Oh, there's no question.
That's part of the mission of First Things magazine, is to speak for religious folks. We argue amongst each other. We should too. You know, we shouldn't pretend that we believe the same things, but we know that we're shoulder to shoulder against an increasingly aggressive and hostile secular world.
Exactly right. We have far more in common than divides us right now, and we obviously have a common ideological foe. Anyway, we put your article up at DennisPrager.com. I'll have you on, of course, again. I love First Things, and thanks for coming on.
Thanks. Thanks for all the work you're doing on behalf
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