Enough to make a teacher cry

It was the first night of the new class--Business Ethics for Mars Hill University--and the preppy, young man was anxious to share his viewpoint with everyone.
"I don't want to be here. I don't want a college degree." All this despite the fact that his employer required it AND paid for him to be there!
"Why would you not want a college education?" I asked.
"Because I might learn something and have to change my opinion about what I think and what I believe. I do not want to change my opinions."
I admit I was momentarily speechless. Isn't that the purpose of education? to grow? to learn about a world of people, places, ideas that I did not know? If I knew everything I needed, then, yes, an education would be useless. But I am finite, limited in experience, fallible. As I tell my students, I am white, male, bald, southern, WASP. How can I possibly understand black, female, Indian, etc etc.
I go on to say that if we don't stand for something, we will fall for anything. So I invite and encourage students to suspend judgment, at least for a time, listen to the voices of strangers, check your sources before you swallow what anyone says hook, line, and sinker. Verify from multiple sources the "information" and "misinformation" that floods the news waves everyday. And just because it is in a book and claims to come from "God," doesn't mean it is so. Books are only humans opinions, and everybody has one.
I always remember that young man. He happened to be an avowed ultra-right wing Republican, proud fundamentalist Christian, and very chauvanistic. His ethics were Libertarian. He could just as well have been ultra-left wing liberal, atheist, bleeding heart. The mind sets are the same---closed, arrogant, egotistical superiority.
I'm a teacher and proud of my profession. I humbly wake up everyday excited about offering alternatives to untested viewpoints and know I have been intrusted with an awesome responsibility.
It is the thirst for knowledge and responsible use of it that makes us different from the rest of the animal kingdom.