You're talking about change -- without changing anything, particularly the infrastructure that supports the status quo.
I'm talking about change that is fundamental -- doing something entirely differently, which is the possibility of rethinking learning with today's capabilities. Education, along with mainstream mass media, is one of those functions the technologies of today have made obsolete and redundant.
Here, we talk a lot about the increasing irrelevance and demise of the mainstream press, but close behind are the other institutions of information and communications -- the schools and universities. That's the next playing field to be leveled.
Progress and evolution is not something that happened only in the past -- and now we shouldn't change anything but accept things as they are.
Well, we agree on a lot of this. I am driving my students to go to the sources outside the MSM--I force them to use the 'net to go to alternate sources--including FR in some classes.
When I hear them talking about what some other professor has poured into them, I ALWAYS push them to double-check the data. If we can teach the kids to be interested, if we can make certain that everything they receive is not filtered, then those of us who still care about truth are going to win. No student today has to be dependent on a professor or a textbook--which is the way it should be.
We will have to disagree on what would happen to conservatives in academe if we did away, right now, with tenure. I speak from some experience on this subject. Back in 1994, I gave a scathing interview regarding Clinton to our university's PR department--they had their own TV station that broadcast across the state. I had been a regular on one of their shows for some time. I never was asked to be on that show or any other of their shows ever again. And I was one of their best known professors (at least in the School of Liberal Arts.)
Had I been an untenured professor, this would have been a difficult situation. The rumor mill (driven I am sure byy the mutants in Journalism) took over at that point and, if I had not had tenure, it could have been bad for me.
I look forward to bringing this issue up again. Thank you for a good disagreement.
McVey