Yeonmi Park escaped from North Korea in 2007 at the age of 13 with her mother. She was sold by human traffickers in China, rescued by missionaries, crossed the Gobi Desert, and lived in South Korea before arriving in America, where she finished her schooling at Columbia University. Park is now 27, and she opened up recently in an interview with Fox News over the sad state of indoctrination she experienced.
She wasn’t just talking about North Korea, where she learned math via word problems about killing Americans.
Park was shocked to learn that American higher education is not teaching students how to think, but what to think. And students are falling for it.
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said in the interview. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”
For example, during orientation at Columbia University, she responded affirmatively to a question about having read Jane Austen. “I said, ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” said Park.
But she was criticized by a staff member. “Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you,” Park recalls being told.
She said every one of her classes was “infected” with anti-American propaganda at Columbia, as well as gender identity-related “preferred pronouns” requirements that played havoc with her English, a language she learned as an adult.
“It was chaos,” she said. “It felt like the regression in civilization.”
“Even North Korea is not this nuts. North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”
Park eventually stopped engaging in arguments with professors and students and says she “learned how to just shut up” in order to get good grades.
Sometimes you need the perspective of an outsider in order to see what should be obvious to all Americans who place their hopes and dreams in higher education. In many cases, the nation’s elite universities – not just Columbia – are failing in their mission to train future leaders in critical thinking.
And Christian parents should rightfully be concerned about the anti-Christian bias their children are being exposed to at those universities. The Bible directs us to employ critical thinking in all that we hear. Proverbs 14:15 says: “The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says: “But test everything; hold fast what is good.”
Park’s warning about her experience with higher education should concern all Americans.
“The people here are just dying to give their rights and power to the government,” she said. “That is what scares me the most.”
“This is what is happening in America. People see things but they’ve just completely lost the ability to think critically.”
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Screenshot from FoxNews
