Posted on 03/29/2016 12:58:21 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know.
Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's "Judge Judy," is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal. But it is little mystery why so many college students are illiterate, innumerate and resistant to understanding. Let's look at it.
Student activists at Brown University complained of emotional stress and poor grades after they spent months of protesting for various causes. They blamed the university for insisting that they complete their coursework. One of the objects of their protest was an op-ed in The Brown Daily Herald, the university newspaper, that was deemed racist because it defended the celebration of Columbus Day. Brown University's faculty recently took care of that and renamed Columbus Day "Indigenous People's Day."
Professor Salvador Vidal-Ortiz of American University told his students that capitalism dehumanizes brown people and black people. If his students had one iota of brains, they might ask him why it is that brown and black people all over the world are seeking to flee to countries toward the capitalist end of the economic spectrum rather than the communist end. Campus Reform reports that Vidal-Ortiz, during the Q&A of a book talk at the University of Virginia, said he tells his students that though he is light-skinned, he refuses to be called white. "I will not be labeled as something that I know is violent," he said.
College administrators are short on guts and backbone. But there is a glimmer of hope every now and then. Young Americans for Liberty at Rutgers University invited Breitbart News' technology editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a homosexual, to give a lecture. Yiannopoulos describes his lecture tour as "The Most Dangerous Faggot Tour." His lecture was titled "How the Progressive Left Is Destroying American Education." There were about 400 students who attended his lecture, plus there were protesters who smeared themselves with fake blood.
Despite student opposition, Rutgers University President Robert Barchi called on his university to stand up for free speech, saying, "That freedom is fundamental to our university, our society, and our nation." That was also Yiannopoulos' message, namely: "The purpose of university is to interrogate new ideas, discover ourselves, meet new people and explore the world. What it ought to be is a free space without trigger warnings. In my view, anyone who asks for a trigger warning should be expelled. What they've demonstrated is that they are incapable of being exposed to new ideas."
Then there is Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, who bravely told his students, "This is not a day care. It's a university."
Stanford University's board of trustees is to be congratulated for not caving in to the diversity crowd in its selection of highly distinguished scientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne as university president. Students furiously denounced the choice because Tessier-Lavigne is a white man. The student-run Stanford Political Journal wrote: "We believe the Search Committee intended to select the best possible candidate, and, of course, white men should not have automatically been precluded from the search. However ... it would have been fitting for Stanford to select a president that deviates from the traditional white, straight, male mode."
The University of Missouri System's board of curators is also to be congratulated for firing professor Melissa Click, who was videotaped intimidating a student reporter during demonstrations that led to the cowardly resignations of the system's president, Timothy M. Wolfe, and chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin. Her firing was not a result of administrator and faculty decency. Private donations had plummeted, and Missouri lawmakers were proposing an $8 million cut in the system's budget. That proves what I have always held: Nothing opens the closed minds of administrators better than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut.
I’ve taught in various universities for the past 27 years. Students are now ‘clients’ meaning that if you have a checkbook or promise of one, you’re in...and after attending 5 or 6 years students feel entitled to a degree (regardless, of course, of the quality of their ‘work’).
College today is about what my junior high work was like in the 50s/60s, except we had consequences for poor work back then: you didn’t pass!
I can’t offer a comment on this article until I know where Dr. Williams stands on the subject of Donald Trump.
(/s)
Check out the Chancellor of Oxford and Oriel College (Oxford) replies to such foolosiness there.
Would that Harvard and Yale actually had adult leadership.
...and he is brilliant...
“College today is about what my junior high work was like in the 50s/60s”
Pritty dom close, mon!!
The professional students who stay in school for years and then become professors etc, are some of the most ignorant, no-nothing, do nothing individuals I’ve ever met.
I wonder if they know when the War of 1812 was fought? Or do they think Apollo 13 was where Tom Hanks saved the other astronauts? Can they write in cursive? What was the result of the sinking of the ship Lusitania? Can they run a household budget without being overdrawn or using credit card debt? I’d love to write the poll questions.
There is always journalism school for the dumbasses.
I totally agree! Their work effort is by and large abysmal. How some get into college is beyond me. But colleges, especially community colleges will take anything that is breathing and not assumed room temperature.
Having worked in a college library the last twenty years I run across research papers left behind or in some cases left in Word files and have watched the continued and rapid decline in the quality of work these students are presenting to their instructors. It is something to behold!
That is yuge!!!!!!!!!!!
Illiterate can be fixed. Stupid is permanent.......................
I was doing algebra and trig in Jr. high. Now days its ‘college’ level material.........................
The net result of everyone going to college these days is that college standards have been lowered to be what "everyone" can handle. This means that colleges are now teaching things that are supposed to be taught in junior high. I took a look at my nephew's (college freshman) math assignment one day, it looked like something you or I would have done in seventh or eighth grade.
Will someone please tell me whether Dr. Williams is dead to me? Oh, I’m so conflicted!!!
Well said.
That COLLEGES now have courses in remedial math and English .. because the students they admit need these courses ... is beyond depressing.
When my husband lived in Detroit in the ‘50s, they did not allow advancement from grad to grade unless the student passes his coursework. As a consequence, he had fellow students in Jr. High who were 18 and drove beer trucks after school.
My husband was smart, but slight of build in the 7th grade, and sometimes “picked one” by some of the toughies in school. One of the Polish beer truck drivers in my husband’s neighborhood exchanged bodyguard duties for my husband’s help in passing math.
Worked well! LOL.
It is, indeed.
Libtards control education and they adapt a disintegrated mode of thought on purpose to keep the masses ignorant and dependent on government. The disintegrated mode of thought in education consists of expansion and splintering of the curriculum, and the subjects are disconnected and unrelated to each other. This is accompanied by the increasing anti-conceptual movement in most subject areas toward perceptual-level concrete bound learning.
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