Now....why is this article flawed? Well, first of all, is this a Christian webzine? I couldn't figure it out. They don't seem to say anything about religion in their title statement. Perhaps the article contributor is writing from a Christian point of view? I don't know. If this is a Christian article, then certainly, I respect the view that pornography should not be taught in Christian schools. However, they are talking about non-Christian schools. Non-Christian schools should not be judged by Christian standards. They should be judged by non-religious standards.

First of all, the question of whether pornography is inherently good or bad, is a moral question. This is a question that universities have no business answering. Universities are not supposed to be guardians of the moral soul of its students. They're supposed to impart knowledge and be bastions of learning. Teaching pornography does not go against this principle.

Next point. Karla Dial's evidence, as I mentioned before, about pornography having similar effects on people as cocaine is really very weak. She states that her source is unpublished, thus nullifying any value that it has. And it's her only argument! She's left with nothing.

Another point. Pornography is rampant in college life, whether inside the classroom or not. Just because it's not taught in the classroom doesn't mean that people aren't looking at it. Trust me, I know. Students get a lot more exposure (haha) to porn outside the classroom than inside. So...whether a professor presents pornography in the classroom is basically, irrelevant.

Except for the fact that it is relevant. The sex industry (including porn, escort services, strip clubs, hookers, etc) in America produces something like $10 billion annually. That's more than the amount of money paid for live music and sports events combined. How can you deny that the sex industry has had a huge effect on western society? You can't, really. It would be remiss of the professors to say otherwise.

I've stated a few reasons why I think that Karla Dial's argument is flawed. I'm not necessarily saying that porn is virtue and goodness. But I don't think that it should be dismissed summarily as a topic of discussion, particularly given Dial's reasoning.

I'm not entirely sure that Boundless wants to be known as a "Christian" webzine outright b/c I think they want to give readers a chance to decide for themselves whether the material is any "good" (although sometimes, their articles dn't mention much about God, just stuff that any other webzine would deal w ethics/morals/how to save money)... you know, often ppl just stay away from anything "christian"...

but you're right there is no mention about anything "God" related in a disclaimer at all. The only vague mention in the "about" section is "Godly mentors"

They're actually produced by Focus on the Family. Hrm, you may have heard of them when it comes with politics dealing w the family, and legal issues in court...

me, yet again.

May I ask who you people are? You like to criticize me by name--which is fine--but if you're going to do it, at least you should give others the same opportunity to do so with you. You can also post comments directly to the editor at the Boundless.org site rather than taking shots in the dark.

Boundless is a Christian Webzine, and, as the second commentor pointed out, published by Focus on the Family. If you don't think non-Christian schools should be judged by Christian standards, that's fine--but there was a hefty section of the article that was cut for space in which higher education officials (not myself) made the argument that there is no academic merit in these porn classes. They also had a rather big problem with the fact that they're supported by taxpayers' dollars.

Once upon a time, college was a place people went to get a higher education so they could become useful, contributing members of society. I agree with you that porn makes up a huge part of the economy and that most college students are getting more exposure to it outside the classroom than in--another part of the article that wound up on the editing room floor--and that deserves to be mentioned in whatever classes it has relevance: psychology, business, economics, etc.

But if you can explain to me what relevance, what academic merit, what higher purpose having a class in which students not only analyze porn but learn to produce it serves, I'll be greatly surprised. If they want to turn out a new generation of pornographers, that's one thing--but as you pointed out, isn't that something most people don't need to go to class to do?

Karla Dial

Dear Ms. Dial,

First of all, I apologize if I offended you. I meant no disrespect to you.

Who are us people? Well, I'm Calvin. This website is not part of any organization, it's basically just me shooting off my mouth about various things. Private, non-affiliated with anything, just me. Readership of my mouth shooting off amounts to probably less than half a dozen of my good friends.

I criticized you by name, yes, but only because you offered the opportunity for me to do so by publishing your work on the webzine. I did not, nor do I intend to. If others feel the need to comment on my opinion, then they are welcome to, and I'll post up the comments.

Perhaps if you had included the portions of your argument about taxpayers footing the bill, and lack of academic merit, I would have found it more convincing. You didn't. I couldn't read it.

Porn is a part of our society. You admit that much, do you not? That in itself makes it worth studying. Crime is quite an immoral thing, wouldn't you say? Yet criminology is an accepted discipline in many schools. The examples that you cited in regards to porn in the classroom don't seem incongruous to the fact that it is being studied because it is a part of our society. Porn movies are being studied because they're just like any other genre of movie. Well, aren't they? Pornographic literature is being studied because of its effect on society. What's wrong with that? As for the woman who assigned creating porn as a final project, well, I can't explain that one either. But it's her class. She must have some reason for doing it. I remain non-committed on that one until I hear her explanation.

It seems to me that porn should not be avoided as an area of study. You have not produced any academic reasons to convince me otherwise.

Calvin

Hi, Calvin.

I'm not offended by your comments at all--so please forgive me if my tone indicated otherwise. I actually enjoy a good lively debate every now and then; and since this is the first published criticism I've gotten in a while, this is actually kind of fun for me. (Not that I recommend you making a habit of it or anything.) :)

Just for the record, the parts of the article that didn't make it to the site were my editors' decisions; I'm kind of a word-hog, so I'm always advocating that everything I turn out be published, though I sometimes lose to the limitations of space, as in this instance.

I agree with you that porn is a viable subject for study in some contexts. But I remain committed to the belief that there is a way to do it that doesn't delve into the prurience of the genre. You mention that we study criminology in class, and we do; yet we don't recommend that students go out and allow themselves to be mugged so they can experience what it's like to be victimized, or commit crimes so they can understand the way criminals think. As one of my sources at Penn State said (I forget if this made it into the article or not): "There are classes that talk about LSD, but you won't get any of it in them."

Some of the people who teach courses like this--non-academic subjects that won't really help students survive in the real world in any practical way--are people teaching their dissertations, according to Glenn Rickets of the National Association of Scholars. Some of them come from kind of a fringe element; they take an interest in some bizarre thing rooted mostly in their point of view, so they write a dissertation on it and then use that as the basis for a course so they can get paid to keep taking an interest in it or continue their research. I'm not sure what Constance Penley's reason for teaching students how to produce porn might be, since she wouldn't return my phone calls, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd think it might be something along those lines. There are feminists who consider porn liberating; others consider it patently denigrating to women. I guess that's an issue they'll have to duke out amongst themselves.

Not sure of your age or level of education, but if you want something that's purely my opinion--I'd say that's a danger people run when they stay in college too long. It's kind of an incubator for immature adults at times. You don't have to have your weird ideas challenged by reality too much in that environment, so it's easier to believe you can bend the world around your own way of thinking.

But, as I said, that's just my opinion. I respect your right to disagree with me on any of the above, and I appreciate your courteous honesty.

Hope your six friends get a kick out of this one. :)

Karla Dial

We seem to be coming to a middle ground. I take your points about why professors might teach the production of porn. Who, by the way, is Constance Penley? You did not mention her in the article. The only instance of actually producing porn in the classroom that you cited was of Hope Weissman. I wish that I had had a chance to read your argument in its entirety.

I don't advocate producing porn in the classroom. But if a professor feels that it is a worthwhile exercise, then I will not condemn her motives out of hand. I will consider her innocent until proven guilty, as it were. Since no explanation was forthcoming, guilt was not proven. =)

I am a 21 year old, currently in my last semester of university, completing a double major in computing science and history. You talk about "non-academic subjects that won't really help students survive in the real world in any practical way", well, it is my firm belief that there are many academic subjects that won't help students survive in the real world (of course my point of view is sort of skewed, since I have never been in the real world). To me, university is not a place to go if you're looking for survival in the real world. To get that, you should go to a trade school or a specific program for some profession. University is a place of learning, where knowledge of all kinds is sought after. As to your belief that college is an incubator for immature adults....I don't know. Maybe you're right. But I've spent the past four years in university, and have yet to meet a single one of these people.

Calvin

Questions for Karla Dial from my curious mind:

1. How did you happen upon Cal's site?
2. Do you check back often?
3. Were you writing from a general Christian point of view (in the article), or your own?

B.P.

Hi, guys.

Let's see ... where to start.

Yes, the article was written from a Christian perspective. That's why I used sources like Bill Johnson of the American Decency Association. I also had a really great guy named Bill Devlin in the rough draft--he's the president of the Urban Family Council in Philadelphia, the one who told me about the Sex Faire in Happy Valley, and all in all, one of the most radical human beings I have ever met. I wish you'd all gotten the chance to read the article in its entirety, too. I was really underwhelmed with the editing job it got--guess that's obvious from my previous comments. It's kind of hard to entirely separate the issue of whether I was writing from a general Christian standpoint or my own, since I am a Christian and much of the work I do is for an advocacy magazine. Maybe the best SHORT explanation I can give you is that I'm a professional journalist, and I try to maintain that level of professionalism in all my work--get both sides of the story whenever possible (which happens most of the time, but not all the time), etc. If you want a more detailed answer about the ethics of Christian journalism and how it differs from secular journalism's balancing of subjectivities--well, that'll take a lot longer and probably be more information than you really cared to have. I just spent two weeks in New York discussing that very thing. I've also worked for secular news organizations, if that means anything to you.

I found Calvin's site the other day when I did a Google search on my own name. It sounds awfully narcisstic, I know, but it's something I do from time to time to keep my clip file current and see who all has picked up my stories. Sometimes they get published in other places without people asking permission; sometimes they list me alongside really interesting people like George Will. I saw this new thing, and it was like, "Hey, man, wait a minute ..." I'll keep checking back as often as you guys would like me to.

Sorry, Cal--Constance Penley is a film studies professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara. They have a porn festival there every so often, and she's had porn actors come in to address the class, a few other similar outrageous things. Now there's a career aspiration for you--porn actress. Snuff film producer. There's my conservative bias poking out again. I forgot she wasn't in the final article; guess I should really go back and look at the thing again, but it was so painful to look at it on the Web, knowing what wasn't there, that I just can't always bring myself to do that. :)

When I spoke of college as an incubator for immature adults, I wasn't speaking so much of undergrad work. I think a good liberal arts education is one of the best things you can get--exposure to all kinds of subjects and viewpoints, getting a sense of who YOU are as a person if you didn't have one before ... I think that's awesome. I was mostly referring to people who get their undergrad work done, then get their master's, then get their doctorate and go straight into teaching at the college level without spending any time whatsoever out there in the world. That, in my opinion, is a little inbred. Nothing wrong with getting a master's or a doctorate, but I think there's something to be said for taking a break from the world of academia every now and then. The professors I got the most from in college had some practical experience to bring to the classroom that made the theories come alive; the dullest ones were the other kind. Have you found that to be the case?

Just so you know I'm not roundly bashing higher education, let me tell you a little about my background. I grew up in a small town of about 36,000 people and went to college at a state university with one of the most embarrassing football teams in the NCAA and a reputation as a humongous party school. I didn't party. I'd had kind of a sheltered upbringing, a very conservative family, so I danced a little, studied a lot, and drank not at all. I was what you would call book smart up until the time I graduated from college, because there wasn't a whole lot of "street" to learn where I grew up, and I didn't have much of a life! So in the six years since I graduated, I've been busy getting those street smarts and life education. There's a world of difference between the two. I wish I'd had a little more of those going into college, because I think I would have gotten more out of the experience. That's where I'm coming from with some of those "incubator" comments.

Computer science and history, huh? Sounds like a good combination to me. I hope the football team at your school gives you more to be proud of than mine did. They STILL suck.

Karla Dial

Hi all!

As Calvin's longtime friend and devoted Christian, I feel compelled to post a response to this interesting dialogue. Too bad I can't think of anything intelligent to write. Such is the curse of business students. If it don't make money, it don't matter. Or so they tell us, anyways. In this case, it does make money, so it does matter.

As with most things in life, balance is key. I would definitely not support Bill Johnson in his cause simply because eradicating pornography in classrooms would not solve anything. The only thing I see it doing is giving Christians a bad reputation. (although that it's pretty much as bad as it can get) I think it's more important to examine how it is taught in classrooms and whether it's positively correlated with the inappropriate acts that are done on campus.

Anyways, that's just my two cents. By the way, Karla, I sympathize. I'm doing a minor in Communications, and I'm taking a publishing course. Seems to me the author always gets the short end of the stick.

Zeke

Hi, Zeke.

I don't think there's anything unintelligent about your comments. There are a lot of different kinds of Christians out there in the world (and some of them do give us all a bad name). I'm sure you've heard the phrase about someone being "so heaven-minded that he's no earthly good"? I've known some people like that. There are others who are so secular you'd never know they were Christians at all, and that may be the greater tragedy ... Personally, I think it will take Christians with some street smarts and a good understanding of how the system works to change whatever needs to be changed in our culture--people who know how to balance prayer with actual work instead of leaning too far toward one side or the other. Fortunately, I've known a few of those, too. :)

You know, I just want to say to you and Calvin that I'm really impressed with your ability to read critically. You'd be amazed how many people see something in print and either accept it at face value or completely dismiss it because it doesn't line up with their personal viewpoint, but never really take the time to think about it at all. You guys don't seem to be like that, and I think that's pretty cool.

Karla Dial

Why thank you Karla. And thank you for sharing your thoughts with us; I've enjoyed this dialogue. It's not too often that we get a real live journalist contributing to our discussions. =)

Calvin