This week, Professor Gad Saad gave Breitbart News his advice for parents sending their students to progressive universities.
As a part of an exclusive wide-ranging conversation with Breitbart News, Professor Gad Saad of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, explained how parents should approach sending their children to progressive colleges and universities in the age of safe spaces and postmodernism.
Saad explained that the objective of a university education is to train a student’s mind to think critically. If certain hijacked disciplines are avoided, Saad argues, a student can receive a strong education that accomplishes this objective.
“When I go to a gym, what is my objective? Well, it’s to get into shape, to improve my cardiovascular abilities, to get more muscle tone. So different endeavors have different ultimate objectives. So what is the objective of university? Well, it’s certainly to acquire a knowledge base in some field,” Saad began.
“More, generally, [the objective of a university education] it is how to think, how to develop the neuronal circuitry to engage in critical thinking, how do you build arguments?” he continued. “How do you try to convince someone of your position? So there are, sort of, two general objectives to a university education: it’s being a well-rounded person, developing an expertise in a field, but more broadly, learning how to think.”
Saad argues that parents shouldn’t be consumed with the major that their child selects. Instead, Saad argues, students and their parents should focus on picking a major that will give them the tools to become strong critical thinkers.
“Don’t worry about going into this field or that field because the market says that this field is hot or not or has better job prospects,” Saad said. “Just make sure that you pursue something that you are passionate about and that honestly trains you to be a well-rounded, good thinker. Now, you can achieve that through learning about Shakespeare and you can achieve that by doing microeconomics, very different things. But at least you are in the pursuit of knowledge and of a cerebral life.”
Saad cautioned against certain disciplines that have been hijacked by postmodern epistemological schemes that place more value in the truth-seeking process on anecdotal personal stories about identity or experience than statistical or scientific reality.
“When they come to you — your kids — and say, ‘I’d like to study critical race theory and intersectionality and bullshit 101 whiteness.’ Then you say, ‘Yeah, well you are going to pay the $60,000 because I am not going to pay the money that I have amassed through my hard work for you to be polluted learning about nihilistic academic fields that are intellectual terrorism,'” Saad said.
“Just do something that trains your mind how to think, don’t do activism,” Saad finished.
Stay tuned for more coverage from Breitbart News’ conversation with Gad Saad as the week progresses.