'I can think of not more conformist message in liberal societies than the idea that students should learn to think for themsleves. What must be said is that most students in our society do not have minds well trained enough to think - period. A central pedagogical task is to tell students that they do not yet have minds worth making up. Thus training is so important, because training involves the formation of the self through submission to authority that will, if done well, provide people with the virtues necessary to be able to make reasoned judgement.
I cannot think of a more conformist and suicidal message in modernity than that we should encourage students to make up their own minds. This is simply to ensure that they will be good conformist consumers in a capitalist economy by assuming now that ideas are but another produce that you get to choose on the basis of your arbitary likes and dislikes. To encourage students to think for themselves is therefore a sure way to avoid any meaningful disagreement. That is the reason that I tell my students that my first object is to help them think just like me.'
Stanley Hauerwas, 'How We Lay Bricks and Make Disciples' in Bretherton & Rook (Eds.), Living Out Loud, p.43.
