Why Schools are Relentlessly Liberal from Grade School to Graduate School

[mcvey]

I posted this in response to a young Freeper's thoughts about being a student and so I thought I would put this response up to a more general discussion.

I hope this will give Freepers some greater understanding of how all levels of education became liberal and why it would be almost impossible to change it back. [I am leaving home schooling out, but once beyond home schooling both public and private schools and colleges work the same way.]Some of you may be students and some of you may be parents, but until people are brave enough and know what to look for, this is what you will get.

As a professor in the Humanities, and a reasonably well-known one, I have watched this system work for years in my specialty all across the nation. I have worked to keep my young conservative students from being ambushed and destroyed and this is what I have told them:

When you are a student in Education or anything else that is not numbers based, you might have one professor who is not a far-left true believer. That means if you speak up in class, you can, I am not making this up, be denied your teaching certificate on grounds that you are not for "social justice" or you do not have the right attitude. You may check the different states' certification criteria if you would like, many of them have this right in them.

So most conservative would-be teachers or conservative social scientists, English, Political Science, History and other such majors will not make it to graduate school--and you MUST have a graduate degree to stay in these professions (Trust Me!) But let us say you are clever enough to keep your head down and your mouth shut.

You now make it to graduate school. In graduate school, you will be expected to write papers that will have themes and coloration appropriate to a "progressive viewpoint." You will need at least a "B" average to graduate with a Master's and better than that to go on. So you have three choices: lie and survive, get caught and get tossed or do things so innocuous or so complicated that people will not be able to figure out what you are actually doing. In my case, I became an expert in quantification--none of my professors really understood hard maths, so I slipped by.

Ok, so you make it up to the Ph.D. or Ed.D. level. You now must keep the game up for a very long time, because dissertations are not written overnight. At this level, you will have beers with your professors and they will bloviate infinitely about America as racist, sexist, imperialist and so on. I suggest not drinking as fast as those around you do--loose lips really do sink ships as more than one conservative in academe has found out the hard way.

You get your Ph.D. by writing on, as I did, a subject so obscure that no one had the slightest idea what the party line on it was. Again, any hint of unprogressive ideation at this stage will send your dissertation back for a rewrite. If you cannot camouflage what you just said, that rewrite will never be good enough. [Don't try to sue, I have seen a University send three very expensive attorneys just to contest a young candidate's right to file a law suit.] [Remember--Universities support Academic Freedom!]

But let's say you get your Ph.D. and manage to fake well enough to land a real job at a real college or university. Now you can teach would-be teachers. And so you can and if, by gosh, you actually do allow academic freedom in your classroom, even encourage it, you will hold that job seven years or less.

You see, you have five years and a few odd months to publish enough to get tenure. If your articles are not "progressive," they will not get published since they do not represent the latest developments in your field. So your tenure committee will recommend that you be dropped. Or the dean or the provost or the president will. The Board of your school will never see your dossier because it will never make it that far. Your students may think you are great and your graduates may get jobs and the community may think you are wonderful (there is a service component to getting tenure), but you, my friend, will get one year to find a new job and a lot of people who will not look at you as you walk through the halls. You can also bomb out because your department chairs writes that you do not support "social justice" in your classroom or you might get canned because, in your service dossier, you reveal that you helped a conservative group--such as the boy or girl scouts.

At every stage of this process, the large majority of remaining conservatives get shaken out. So, as a result, all of education from K-12 through the tenure chase is dominated by liberal left, usually far left, thought.

And that what gets taught.

And as long as publications remain the "coin of the realm" your professoriate will never change because conservatives will not get published. But since only once in a while will a conservative actually be able to be clever long enough to slip through all the filters, this inconveniences only a few people--and of course is steady poison in the blood of free people everywhere.

McVey

[Termite_Commander]

Sigh. Sounds like a fun road I'll be taking, then.

Good post.

[Maelstrom]

Thank you

[jigsaw]

Very interesting.   Thanks.

[Snapping Turtle]

Powerful post. Thanks. Maybe we can make an impact using student academic freedom.

[JLS]

The reasons I see for the left bias in particularly government schools is:

1. People who are less interested in economic gain and who are risk averse tend toward government jobs including schools.

2. Some college departments are captured by leftists who will only hire leftists. [Of course there are some departments, a much smaller number captured by "conservatives" who will only hire conservatives.]

3. The federal government subsidy to leftist groups and causes. [Merely stopping this subsidy would greatly balance things out as there are a finite number of Soroses out there.]

4. The tendency for women to lean toward the left and the empirical fact that elementary education is womans work.

As an economist I really think the economic explannation is a huge part of this. Most people who appreciate the market want to benefit from it rather than work for less in an academic job. That leads to a hiring pool that is more left/anti-market/anti-freedom than the country in general. Hiring biases then probably make the hires more leftist and then the system reenforces itself over time moving the academic world further and further left.

[mcvey]

Yes. Students should adopt a slogan that says "students deserve academic freedom too."

You folks usually have some type of student government. What makes a difference is when you elect student leaders who will stand up for your rights.

The number of Freepers is distressingly small, but the number of conservative students is not.

Don't wall yourself off in conservative student organizations--go out and win the elections for the official student government positions and FIGHT!

McVey

[SiliconValleyGuy]

as long as publications remain the "coin of the realm" your professoriate will never change because conservatives will not get published. But since only once in a while will a conservative actually be able to be clever long enough to slip through all the filters, this inconveniences only a few people--and of course is steady poison in the blood of free people everywhere.

A well written piece, especially the above.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

You aren't David Horowitz, are you? (unserious)

[F.J. Mitchell]

Thanks for the post. That's just about the way I had it figured.

[bboop]

I agree with you. Teaching -- I love kids, love teaching --but it is rife with women and liberals, and with people who have not had jobs in the Real World. They teach theoretically, as if there were a Utopia on the horizon, 'if only ...' and you name it: if only boys could be trained to NOT kill; if only girls could run the world; if only kids would just behave; if only families were better; if only people did not insist on their students being taught NON-revisionist history, etc. The mantra, 'we need more money to do it right.'

This is a very interesting post/ column/ response, from the Professor. Keep on keeping on. The kids are always worth it.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

BTTT

[wagglebee]

BTTT!

This is an excellent post!

[mcvey]

Yes, I agree with most of your points. In my field, the National Endowment for the Humanities (and I have participated in a few of their projects from time-to-time) is mostly welfare for the Merlot class.

I have never seen a department captured by conservatives--University of Chicago economics I am guessing?

There may only a few who would bankroll the left, but, unfortunately, many form a class that really is a class in the government bureaucracy. If a class is identified by self-recognition, common economic and living circumstances, common rituals, common working vocabularies, and such, then much of the Federal Bureaucracy is probably the one true class in the US. This class certainly supports its affiliates in academe and I see few ways to get them out of their positions. Hence, academe left will prosper.

Yes, and if our female Freepers will not throw things at me, I have just finished a study that demonstrates how far left an academic discipline moves with each increase in percentage of female professors. [Getting this published may be a challenge.]

McVey

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Depressing.

Having lived through a fair amount of history myself, I had hopes of eventually pursuing advanced degrees in that subject.

Are there no enclaves of freedom where a conservative historian has a chance?

[Anti-Bubba182]

Interesting! As far as public education goes it will be very difficult to get around the consequences of this. The leftists are dug in deep.

[M203M4]

Under such circumstances, I couldn't imagine oneself being able to pass an oral doctoral candidacy exam in the humanities. I imagine that would be when 'they' would try hardest to sniff out any remaining non-leftists...

[JLS]

I have seen departments in economics captured by Texas A&M people and that is more personal connections than philosophy but they tend to be conservative too. There are also a number of departments were the Public Choice school has a good bit of influence too.

Of course the median economist is probably a good bit more toward the center than the median person in any given humanities and you did of course except out mathematically inclinde disciplines like economics. [There are also Marxist economics departments at a few places.]

I understand but could not give a specific example that the public choice school also holds sway in some political science departments.

[umgud]

Good post. Now, explain why entertainment (Hollywood, etc.) and MSM are so dominated by the left.

[JasonC]

Accurate enough, most places. In a few you can find a tiny cadre of conservative professors to study with. In the best schools, you will find a small subset of liberals who have old style "technocrat" views of their discipline, meaning they will recognize mastery of the subject matter (including, to be sure, a literature shot through with PC crap) without requiring additional litmus tests. There are disciplines in which that does not happen at all, and this old style of liberal is a dying breed, but there are some still around.

My solution is first to abolish tenure, and second to make draconian use of outright political power over the state schools in states controlled by Republicans. Fire anyone teaching leftist agitprop, hire on merit and mastery of subject matter etc. It will take a very hard push for 10 years or so, using outright political power, not slow gradual processes. The liberals will be forced to blue states and private schools.

But at that point, a seperate track for conservative academia will exist. And with it will come competition. Parents will have a choice between leftist agitprop indoctrination or a real education. For a while the top private schools will hold out as leftist bastions. Then you make tenure abolition a condition for receipt of public funds, including school loans and all NSF grants. And gradually those will fall, as older profs die out and the newer crop become half conservative. That half will win arguments and grow reputations etc.

The left would fight this tooth and nail, so it must be pushed with ideological fervor, not with any desire to be liked. But if it is, then in a single generation we can reverse the left's monopoly in academia. The left achieved its present position by naked use of institutional political power, and they deserve to be repaid in kind. They do not dominate politics anymore, and there is no reason to leave them alone in control of their sinecures.