Quick Note: Jehovah's Witness "How-To Kit" -- Keep 'em Home and Keep 'em Stupid

Tony Morris

Tony Morris is a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses Governing Body.  Last month, he hosted a segment on the JW on-line television network condemning higher education.  

Some quotes:

"All too often, our young people have met with spiritual disaster, especially after leaving home and living on a university campus...Young people, ask yourself: Why am I considering additional education?  Is it because I'm pursuing a specific skill or trade to support my service to Jehovah?  Or have I been pressured by the system into believing that higher education will somehow make me a more respected person or lead me to a better life?" 

How about choosing to pursue higher education because it can make me a person who can think, a person more able to understand and appreciate the world in which I live, a person more able to engage in the modern world, a person less prone to prejudice, a person who may eventually find the cure for cancer, or who may someday paint the 21st Century's Mona Lisa, maybe even the person who will bring the world's governments together in a true peace?  Or maybe simply a person less likely to make asinine statements like those Mr. Morris spouts?   

And what is wrong with education leading to "a better life?"  Listening to Mr. Morris, it sounds like he's telling parents that the best future to which their children should ever aspire is landing a minimum wage job at McDonald's.  

"If we are in continued association with those who do not believe the same, it can erode our thinking and convictions." 

That's the sort of thinking that brings us intolerant groups like the Westboro Baptists...and a lot of far-right Republicans.

"I have long said, the better the university, the greater the danger.  The most intelligent and eloquent professors will be trying to reshape the thinking of your child, and their influence can be tremendous.  One mom, I recall, asked me to try and help her son who was attending a prestigious-name university in Rhode Island.  After visiting him, I later had to inform her that her son now believed in evolution.  She refused to believe it until he finally told her himself.  How sad."

How much twisted thinking did it take to get to the point where Mr. Morris thinks we honor the Creator by refusing to use our God-given intelligence?  Or does Mr. Morris really believe that when God created man in his image, He made us whole and complete...and stupid? 

Now that's sad.