You know, something was nagging at me, some sense of dj vu reading about the Patrick Henry stepford wife school. And then it came to me, the old Soviet Union’s Party Schools (and definitely not the good kind of “party”). Compare and contrast:
Subjects included philosophical and social science topics: the scientific-technical revolution, economics, the theory of proletarian internationalism, communist morality, and socialist democracy.
The curriculum for the first two years follows a Christian Classical modelbasically, Western Civ from a Biblical perspective. Students read Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Locke, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Beckett. They also study Euclidean geometry and biology; the school uses a standard science textbook, but the professor, Jennifer Gruenke, who also has a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, tells students that the earth was created in a week.
The Higher Party School and the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow were staffed with instructors attached to the CPSU Central Committee departments … These schools trained officials to enter the party elite at the all-union level.
Of the schools sixty-one graduates through the class of 2004, two have jobs in the White House; six are on the staffs of conservative members of Congress; eight are in federal agencies; and one helps Senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, and his wife, Karen, homeschool their six children. Two are at the F.B.I., and another worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority, in Iraq. Last year, the college began offering a major in strategic intelligence; the students learn the history of covert operations and take internships that allow them to graduate with a security clearance.
Willingness to participate in party courses at the lowest level could indicate an aspiration to join the party or ensure advancement from candidate status to that of full member. Once in the party, participation in training courses demonstrated a desire to enter into full-time, salaried party work. Indeed, such coursework was a prerequisite for this kind of a career. Party training also created an in-group consciousness among those who attended courses.
Mr Farris, a constitutional lawyer and political activist, established the college with a very clear aim: “To prepare Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless Biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding.” “If we are going to have our values reflected in our culture, we’ve got to train our kids in those values and train them for leadership,” Mr Farris said. “And so this is a very concerted effort to train top leaders.”
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