In a weekend devoted to sending Presbyterian College’s leading policy-makers and advisers “back to school,” PC turned to one of film’s most famous “teachers” – actor, author, economist, and television star Ben Stein.

The keynote speaker at PC’s inaugural Leadership College – which brought the college’s board of trustees and various advisory boards to campus for meetings and seminars – Stein applied generous helpings of wit and wisdom in his lessons about moral education in the United States.

Currently the host of VH-1’s “America’s Most Smartest Model,” Stein is, perhaps, best known for his role as the boring teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”and as the host of Comedy Central’s Emmy Award-winning game show, “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”

There was nothing boring about his lessons Friday night, though, as he entranced 300 guests in the Mabry-Smith-Yonce Center with his longtime love of country and a newfound love of PC. In his second appearance on campus since speaking last spring during the college’s Arnold Symposium, Stein shared his reasons for returning.

In love with PC

“I fell in love,” he said. “(PC) was just perfect. It was like a little oasis of beauty and charm – tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Those of you who are old enough to remember the movie, ‘Lost Horizon’ – it was like finding Shangri-La. … Every single person I’ve met here at Presbyterian has made me feel as if I belong – as if I’m part of the family.”

Stein was equally enthusiastic about his country.

“It’s America that makes it possible for all of us,” he said. “It’s America that is the author of all of our success. Any one of us could have been born in China two centuries ago or Paraguay a hundred years ago and we’d be nothing. It’s America that makes it all possible. So, be thankful you’re in America – whether you’re in the Taco Bell in Clinton or the White House. No matter where you are in America – you’re golden.”

Stein, who grew in Maryland, said he grew up interested in the Civil War and often visited the South to tour battlefield sites. Racial integration was unheard of in those days, he said.

“It was unknown when I was a child,” he said. “It wasn’t just rare – it did not exist. Now it’s standard practice and I see more of it in the South than anywhere else.”

The progress made in the South has been “breathtaking,” Stein said, and forged with the sacrifices of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and the blood of four girls murdered by a bomb planted in a Birmingham church.

South gets little credit

“Just in my lifetime, the progress has just been incredible,” he said. “Martin Luther King Jr. said very famously that we would never be a first class nation with second-class citizens. We’ve stopped that horrible practice and we don’t have any second-class citizens anymore. Anyone who wants to work and get educated and do his best or her best will not be a second-class citizen for very long. That’s an astonishing amount of progress.”

But the region gets no credit for this progress, Stein said, especially from the media.

“Instead, (the South) is mocked and belittled,” he said. “It’s extremely unfair the way the media treats the South. I think the South deserves astonishing credit for the progress it’s made. The media has a vested interest in making things seem dismal and awful. The media has a vested interest in making sure you think there’s a crisis. If you don’t think there’s a crisis, why would you buy the newspaper? Why would you bother watching the news show? Why would you a magazine? But the real story of America is the astonishing prosperity.”

Since 1929, Stein said, the growth in per capita income adjusted for inflation has increased six times. The average home is two and a half times larger than the average home build in the 1950s. Real income is three times what it was in the 1950s, he added.

Still, Stein pointed to some real problems in the United States – included figures that a small percentage of people own most of the country’s assets.

“In 2005, the top 200,000 earners, as a group, earned more than the bottom 200 million – quite a difference. We’re at a very, very big risk of a new plutocracy in this country that’s going to rule the country by virtue of its incredible wealth.

“It’s a big problem. We have big problems with Medicare. We have big problems with Social Security. We have big problems with terror in many forms. We have a big problem with lack of community. That is the number one problem in this country.”

Basis of a ‘moral education’

Stein again quoted King, who said that the United States has, through its technology and prosperity, created a “neighborhood but not a brotherhood.” Most people in the country, Stein said, do not care about their neighbors. But not people in the South, he said.

He also added that while he received an excellent formal education – he did not receive much of a moral education.

“Nobody taught me how to act or behave in a moral way,” he said. “It just wasn’t done. My parents tried to do it but to some extent they were drowned out by the culture. They were drowned out by what my friends and classmates did. They were drowned out by what movies told me I should do or what t.v. shows and rock music told me I should do. And I didn’t really, for most of my life, have what I would call a moral education.”

That changed, he said, when he entered a 12-step program  in the late 1980s in an effort to free himself from an addition to a prescription medication.

“It changed my life,” Stein said. “It was an amazing thing. I’m not going to say I was in the gutter or that I pulled myself out of the gutter by going to a 12-step program; I was living a very highly functional life. But I got a moral education. … It changed me as a human being, inside and out.”

Through the program and through is wife, Alex – a “living, breathing saint” – Stein said he learned about his true worth as a human being.

“In a nutshell, the basis of a moral education, based on what I’ve learned in the program and what I’ve learned from my wife is that I’m not that important,” he said. “I’m one of eight billion people in the world and what happens to me is not that important. I’m here and only worthy as a child of God to learn and to help others. That’s my sole importance. My importance lies in what I have done for others and what I will do for others.”

Getting and spending – the moral lessons of Hollywood and popular culture, he said – are a waste of time. Being grateful, on the other hand, brings joy and happiness.

Speaking to PC students, Stein said an education also should include lessons in work ethic.

“Hard work is its own reward that confers a dignity that is otherwise unavailable,” he said. “You are hard-wired as human beings – your DNA and soul are encoded with the happiness that comes from hard work. It doesn’t come from your parents giving you things. It doesn’t come from getting high. It doesn’t come from psychotherapy. It comes from hard work and that’s an incredible, unbelievable, fantastic joy. If you are able to teach this here, you are really teaching something.”

The ‘real stars’ in military

Stein said he knows of at least one place where this education is taught – the U.S. Military. Though he counts Barbara Streisand, Martin Sheen, and Nick Nolte as neighbors, Stein called the men and women of the military the country’s real stars.

In recent visits to Washington, D.C., Stein said he has met with wounded Iraq War veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center – amputees eager to return to their units.

“What can you say about such incredible people?” he said. “What can we say about the gift of these people who have been given to us? One of the really great things that I noticed about PC when I came here the first time was when I was in the classroom that I spoke to after lunch. There was a guy who had gone there who was a military officer and he was back from Iraq. His classmates treated him with extreme respect. Not just respect but extreme respect. I was very touched at that.”

Nothing has touched him more, though, than visits to Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery – where the freshest graves have been dug.

“When I’m there I always look over the river and I see the flags flying over the State Department, flags flying over the White House,” he said. “You can see the top of the Capitol Dome – the greatest building in the world because it reflects the divine idea of government by the consent of the governed. And I see the top of the Washington Monument and I think to myself, those wonderful emblems of democracy and freedom and liberty are over there because these guys and gals are buried over here.”

Stein said he hopes PC will join the military as a place that teaches young people the lessons of gratitude, freedom, hard work, and sacrifice.

“If you can teach that other people’s sacrifices are important, you’re doing incredibly important work,” he said. “If you can teach that that’s the priority that decent human beings should have in a free society then you’re doing God’s work.”

posted by hmilam@presby.edu