- The campus is immaculate, everyone is clean-cut and
cheerful. But just what are they teaching at Patrick Henry College? And
why do so many students end up working for George Bush?
-
- It is worth making clear from the outset that Patrick
Henry College in rural Virginia is not your average American university.
At Patrick Henry, the students - about 75 per cent of whom have been taught
at home rather than in schools - are required to sign a statement of faith
before they arrive, confirming (among other things) that they have a literal
belief in the teachings of the Bible. At Patrick Henry, students must obey
a curfew. They must wear their hair neatly and dress "modestly".
-
- Students must also obey a rule stating that if they wish
to hold hands with a member of the opposite sex, they must do so while
walking: standing while holding hands is not permitted. And at Patrick
Henry, students must sign an honour pledge that bans them from drinking
alcohol unless under parental supervision.
-
- Yet these things alone do not make the college special.
There are, after all, a number of Christian establishments across the United
States that enforce such a strict fundamentalist code for their students.
-
- No, what makes Patrick Henry unique is the increasingly
close - critics say alarmingly close - links this recently established,
right-wing Christian college has with the Bush administration and the Republican
establishment as a whole. This spring, of the almost 100 interns working
in the White House, seven are from Patrick Henry. Another intern works
for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, while another works for President
George Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove. Yet another works for
the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Over the past four years,
22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry
interns. Janet Ashcroft, the wife of Bush's Bible-thumping Attorney General,
is one of the college's trustees.
-
- And this is no coincidence. Rather, it is the very point.
Students at Patrick Henry are on a mission to change the world: indeed,
to lead the world. When, after four years or so of study, they leave their
neatly-kept campus with its close-mown lawns, they do so with a drive and
commitment to reshape their new environments according to the fundamentalist,
right-wing vision of their college.
-
- Critics say that Patrick Henry's system cannot help but
produce narrow-minded students with extremist views, but the college's
openly stated aim is to train young men and women "who will lead our
nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values".
-
- Nancy Keenan, of the liberal campaign group People for
the American Way, says: "The number of interns [from Patrick Henry]
going into the White House scares me to death. People have a right to choose
[where their children are educated], but we are concerned that they are
not exposed to the kind of diversity this country has. They are training
people with a very limited ideological and political view. If these young
people are going into positions of power, they have to govern with all
people in mind, not just a limited number."
-
- It is also worth making clear that the staff and students
at Patrick Henry College are extraordinarily pleasant. The campus itself
lies in the small town of Purcellville, about 90 minutes' drive west of
Washington DC, amid rolling hills and anonymous commuter communities. The
campus is small - there are currently only 240 students, all of them white
- and dominated by one large building that houses the classrooms, library
and cafeteria where the students and staff take their meals. On one wall
is a copy of a famous painting of the revolutionary war hero after which
the college is named, 10 years before he made the "Give me liberty
or give me death" speech for which he is best known. Students are
required to attend "chapel" every morning.
-
- The college was established in 2000 by Michael Farris,
who runs the Home School Legal Defence Association, itself set up in 1983
to promote the values of Christian home-schooling as an alternative to
what he and others considered the increasingly secular and irreligious
culture taking hold in America's public schools. Farris - a lawyer who,
with his wife, home-schooled their 10 children - is a protÈgÈ
of Tim LaHaye, well known in the American Christian community as a veteran
conservative evangelical author and preacher.
-
- The association has since grown in numbers and influence.
It now has 81,000 families, each paying dues of $100. Last year, when George
Bush signed legislation banning so-called "partial-birth abortion",
Farris was one of five Christian conservatives invited to witness the act
in the Oval Office. The college gets so much money from right-wing Christian
donors that it operates without debt and yet charges just $15,000 (£8,300)
a year for tuition - about $10,000 less than comparable institutions.
-
- Farris, who is also the president of Patrick Henry, was
unavailable for an interview when we visited his establishment, but he
has told The New York Times: "We are not home-schooling our kids just
so they can read. The most common thing I hear is parents telling me that
they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids
in the system, some may get through to the major leagues."
-
- The man entrusted with the education of Patrick Henry's
students is Paul Bonicelli, a former staffer on the House of Representatives
international relations committee and now the college's dean of academic
affairs. He, too, is terribly pleasant. "I am just sorry that the
most important thing we do did not get mentioned," he says, referring
to an article in an American newspaper that focused on the strict behaviour
code. "And that is to provide a very good liberal arts education."
He adds: "I think the most important thing is our academic excellence,
[and that we] combine it with a serious statement about our faith and values."
-
- Before being hired by Patrick Henry, all members of the
teaching faculty, too, have to sign a pledge stating that they share a
generally literalist belief in the Bible. Oddly, only staff teaching biology
and theology have to hold a literal view specifically of the six-day creation
story. And what is Bonicelli's own view? He smiles. "I am basically
persuaded by the young Earth. I believe in six literal days, but I remain
open to someone persuading me otherwise."
-
- Internships or apprenticeships, which all students are
required to do in their final year, form a major part of their courses.
Many spend time working for Republican members of the House or Senate,
or in the White House. Only one student has interned for a Democrat. "Most
students' values don't link up with [those of] the Democrats," Bonicelli
says.
-
- "Values" are something the students here seem
to think about an awful lot - values and focus. Indeed, it must be rare
to find a group of students so apparently focused as those at Patrick Henry.
(Perhaps they are mindful that the admissions document they sign warns
that "Satan exists as a personal, malevolent being who acts as tempter
and accuser".)
-
- "It's a very focused campus," confirms Marian
Braaksma, 21, a charming, third-year creative and professional writing
student, who was home-schooled by her parents in Arizona until the age
of 18. "We know why we are here and we want to learn everything we
can here. The professors give us a great opportunity to learn. We do work
awfully hard; more than most colleges."
-
- But what about student life? What about having fun, what
about those usual student experiences that one might struggle to enjoy
while obeying the rule about hand-holding and walking? What about those
aspects of student life that I, frankly, felt a little too embarrassed
to ask about directly? "We do have fun, but it is not the sort of
student life of a normal college," insists Braaksma. "There are
no heavy parties, we have a curfew. But there are sports and games. It
is a very musical college. We have a drama team. We also have a debate
team that does very well. Mr Farris has said the debate team is our college
sports team. Often we will stay up to welcome them back if they have been
away debating against another college."
-
- On a tour of the campus, we bumped into a bright young
man called Jordan Estrada, from Pennsylvania. Estrada, 18, carried a book
entitled Systematic Theology. He had played the part of Creon in Sophocles'
Greek tragedy Antigone when it was performed recently by the drama team.
He said he was interested in science fiction and wanted to be a writer.
-
- Why had he wanted to study at Patrick Henry? "A
lot of what they teach in public schools is not based in reality. I am
a believer in creation," he says. Did that belief lead to a conflict
with his pursuit of science? "None whatsoever. I have discussed this
and spoken to many scientists and I found that there is no contradiction."
-
- A little further on we stopped to speak to Leeann Walker
from San Diego, a 20-year-old due to be among the college's first students
to graduate next month. Unlike most of the students, Walker had not been
homeschooled, but she had nothing but praise for her friends who had. "I
have found them to be some of the most responsible, most hardworking people
I have ever met," she says.
-
- Walker says she feels the college has prepared her for
the real world, and that she is looking to work for one of the many conservative
think tanks in Washington. "The mindset of most students is of denial
of reality. They want to stay in their own, self-centred world for as long
as possible."
-
- It was at this point, walking past the single-sex dormitories
and the campaign posters of suited students running for college office,
towards the main building with its classrooms of attentive students, that
one was struck with a sense of being on a film set. One could not help
but recall the 1998 film Pleasantville, in which two teenagers are transported
back to their parents' 1950s town of bland, unquestioning niceness.
-
- The staff and students at Patrick Henry may laugh at
this - if, that is, they have seen the film. The MTV and VH1 pop-culture
channels are blocked from campus televisions, because their contents are
considered inappropriate. The students' computers are set up with a program
called Covenant Eyes, which monitors the websites they visit.
-
- For all the warm welcomes, for all the smiles, for all
the openness, there is something a little unsettling about Patrick Henry
and the cultish devotion of its students. This is, after all, an establishment
that claims to challenge its students to think for themselves, and yet
establishes a fixed, rigid framework - both culturally and intellectually
- in which they are to operate.
-
- But, to its critics, what is perhaps most striking about
this small, influential college with its self-confidence and focus, and
its links with America's neoconservative political elite, is its utter
transparency. Patrick Henry College is an institution devoted to spreading
its word, spreading its view of the world, and helping to place its students
in positions of authority and influence. And it does so in plain view.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=513495
|