Posted on 04/19/2019 4:31:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many people, years after they graduate from high school and college, have nightmares about taking exams for a course for which they have done none of the reading and are totally unprepared. They wake up full of anxiety and relax only when they realize they left school years ago.
But increasingly, it seems like none of us ever get out of school, as the rules and restrictions that have proliferated on college and university campuses over the last two or three decades ooze out and spread to the wider society. We find ourselves dealing, exams aside, with the campusfication of American life.
For those of us whose experience goes back far enough, this once seemed quite desirable. Campuses in the 1950s and 1960s were the most open and tolerant parts of American society. Just about any ideas could be advanced and defended. Racial and ethnic discrimination was frowned upon and dismantled. Unequal treatment of women largely disappeared in the 1970s.
But that was then, and this is now. Coat-and-tie dress codes are long gone, but campuses have become the least free and the most restrictive zones of American life -- and the most monopartisan. Conservatives, a minority in faculties half a century ago, are largely nonexistent in faculties now, and liberals fond of tolerance have been replaced by "progressives" determined to propagate their ideas and suppress others.
A majority of colleges and universities, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has enacted speech codes, restrictions that seem to metastasize in the night. The idea has been implanted that speech that is found offensive by anyone, especially anyone who claims victim-group status, amounts to violence -- an idea contradicted by both logic and experience. Offenders are punished by an ever-metastasizing corps of administrators, who now nationally outnumber college and university teachers.
I used to imagine that the effects of restrictive campuses would wear off when graduates encountered the real world. Instead, the post-campus world has come to embrace the idea suppression of the campuses. FIRE's success in overturning campus speech codes has been outmatched by the mudslide of restrictions promoted by corporate HR departments, as their Nurse Ratcheds eagerly pursue violators, and even more by the giant media companies through which so much of the communication of ideas passes. Even though Congress shielded Google, Facebook and Twitter from legal consequences for the ideas they transmit, they are actively in the business of idea suppression.
Anyone who regularly visits blogs like instapundit.com often encounters news that some conservative writer has been blocked, some conservative blog's content has been rendered inaccessible, some conservative website has been downgraded in search ratings.
Sometimes this may happen by mistake, as social media firm executives claim. But it's obvious that very often it is the result of actions and decisions by recent graduates of left-dominated campuses determined to prevent the communication of ideas they consider politically incorrect. Why should free speech be valued by these youngsters? It wasn't at school.
The social media firms may reply that they need smart people and thus hire high-test-score people from selective colleges and universities. But their employees are not the only smart people in America, and there is no law that requires all social media firms to have all their facilities in the San Francisco Bay area, the most monopartisan metro area in the United States.
The fact is that Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and whoever is running Twitter these days have allowed their firms to become the unelected censors of America and much of the world. The increasing criticism and hostility they've encountered should not surprise them given we live in a nation where most people still believe in free speech, even if many who run campuses don't.
Speech bans are not the only bad idea that has spread from campuses to poison the larger society. College and university admissions departments' surreptitious use of racial quotas and preferences has been matched by corporate HR departments. The campus kangaroo courts encouraged by the Obama Education Department's "guidance" have their equivalents in post-campus life.
Currently, Harvard's alleged anti-Asian quotas are being challenged in court. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has ditched the Obama "guidance" and, after thorough investigation, advanced regulations to protect the interests of both accusers and those accused.
Those are encouraging signs that the host society can fight back against the infections festering in its campus wing. It needs to fight back against the campusfication suppression of free speech as well.
On the money. The left is trying to export the College re-education camp(us) culture onto our daily lives.
You only need to look at the TV characters, plots, programming and news ... or look at magazines , films and the people associated with that business to see how sophomoric American popular culture is.
The humor is at the level of 12 year old boys, the ‘drama’ is laughably infantile, PC has reduced everything and every one to a mindless sameness and a predicable tedium about sex, gender and race. It’s all so boring you could cry
The schools have tried to 'cure' bullying at the lower grade levels; only to see it burst forth with renewed vigor at the college level.
When will we finally wakeup and realize that timeouts do NOT work and at some point again take the rod to the little brats asses?
The country needs to re-think Education.
I would argue that it is difficult (not impossible) to find actual education at any level in our society today. We need to re-invent schools, teachers, and pedogogy in general. Separation of School and State would be a good idea.
I’d like to see a lot more vocational-style learning and a lot less Liberal Arts style learning. My undergrad desgree is in History and I say that people who work with their hands and make an actual difference in the real world are generally far superior to “intellectuals” who come from Ivy League or wannabe schools. Those people know nothing and no one should pay them any attention.
I thought I was the only one! That was a common dream/nightmare. A close second was me in a gathering where I was the keynote speaker and I was sitting there in my underwear, trying to figure out where to find some pants.
Proper behavior cannot be legislated. The whole PC thing is junk since we have an MSM spewing vomit into peoples’ homes...I mean, people who don’t know or care enough to supervise what their kids view and hear.
I think whole generations by-now, had the TV for their babysitter.
Hollywood, the mass media, and the top of the IT companies in Silicon Valley:
What besides PC and censorship do those entities have in common..?
Well, I’ll tell you:
The group that established and then dominated the USSR left, came here, and is doing the same thing to US.
How many times have you said to yourself, “Wow, it’s like America is becoming some type of new USSR..!”
Don’t simply stop with that exclamation, when you see the HOW of the problem, because the man handling the how of a problem ends up working for the man who understand the WHY of the problem. And there is a reason explaining WHY we are becoming like a new USSR.
History happens because PEOPLE make it happen; the scorpion is stinging the frog because THAT IS WHAT HE DOES.
People in Singapore and NK would disagree. Of course it requires draconian measure to ensure everyone toes the line. But it can be done and don’t think for a minute the Left isn’t considering such measures.
“...I say that people who work with their hands... are generally far superior to “intellectuals” who come from Ivy League or wannabe schools. Those people know nothing and no one should pay them any attention.”
Absolutely correct…however, our government is made up of these people. That is the downfall of this nation.
Well-I’m a person who turned off the radio and the TV in 1978
My house if full of books
Bump!!!!
I still have those nightmares, in which I find myself taking a final exam in a class that I did not know I was enrolled in and therefore had never attended. And the last college class I actually took was in the early 90s.
I had one of these experiences in real life a few years ago. I was dressed very nice in a wool skirt and jacket, on a day where I was going to brief some very high level government officials. Before the briefing, our group went to a food court, where I made the mistake of ordering something with barbecue sauce. I picked up the bbq sauce tub and it leapt out of my fingers and splatted on my skirt. I could not get the sauce off, and when it dried, it made a huge shiny dark stain. So there I was, giving a speech to Very Important People, trying to hide that stain and smelling like eau de bbq sauce.
After that, those stress dreams are not quite so bad.
As someone has already mentioned, the USSR planted moles in our colleges and universities, in the entertainment industry and in media several decades ago (in the 1950s, I think). The goal was to influence, to keep pushing the ideas of totalitarianism and intolerance, to turn people against the notion that human life is sacred. Like a bacterial growth curve, the effects of this influence activity were not visible even as a lot of activity was going on. We have reached an inflection point now, where the number of people indoctrinated into totalitarian beliefs have reached a critical mass and their effects on society are quite apparent. The question of whether we can stop the linear growth of totalitarianism at this time and preserve freedom is very much up in the air.
Not just TV. I heard a rumor a while back that publishing houses now have editors who specialize in weeding out material that might trigger readers.
If you were wondering why books suck now , too.
Speaking of books, see my reply above on the publishing industry.
Might be another reason why more and more authors are self-publishing...
Their meals are prepared, there’s plenty of heat & hot water, the grounds are manicured, only have to show up a few hours per week, everyone around you is all young and rosy (except the profs, most of whom are preaching utopianism) there’s music, dancing, parties, etc.
Then they leave college and wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t comport with their distorted view. Waaah!
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