[chajin]

When I began teaching, most of the English faculty members, including the chair who hired me, had earned their doctorates in the late 1970s. They were oleaginous liberals, naturally, but they were also ladies and gentlemen of actual education and considerable high literacy. They took it for granted that the purpose of a literature program was to bring to life in students the Intuition of Form or Imagination about which George Santayana writes in his Sense of Beauty.

I obtained my DMA in 1977. I was a McGovern liberal at the time, but my attitude towards music was similar to the attitude towards literature described here--and still is, that classical music in general (including the classical music of India, Japan, and the Mideast), along with the best of popular music, is capable of presenting the deep thoughts of humanity, and that this is something desirable. (This is also the attitude of people as diverse as Hermann Hesse and Mark Steyn, among others.) Reagan, along with growing up politically, took me from the dark side, though that lost me my first wife, who is still an unrepentent leftist in her elder years.

Luckily for me, I am still able to fly under the radar, in large part because my teaching at present is limited to online introductory courses to students in nursing programs, and enlisted mililtary. I still have to attend the annual online reeducation camps concerning wokeness, but I am able to smile, nod, and move along. I won't be teaching much longer, but whatever infiltration I can accomplish, I will continue to do.

[PerConPat]

Professor Bertonneau’s observations are precise, and his logic is inescapable.

[choctaw man]

I retired from ‘higher ed’ teaching in 2017...’higher ed’ is a sewer of liberal propaganda; conservatives keep their mouths shut in hopes of getting tenured in order to do what they love: teach their subject matter to students (not propaganda)...that said, happy to be away from that mess...

[con-surf-ative]

Sad but accurate commentary. It has become impossible to engage in a discussion, much less an argument with the products of this vacuous system. There is no common premise from which to discuss. Even reason itself is rejected as a valid mode of persuasion or argumentation. We are all ultimately led to the same place as Professor Bertonneau— we just give up.

[Albion Wilde]

“The contemporary university forms nothing...it deforms: It stunts, connives, deprives, confuses, and misleads; it rallies neurosis, corrupts language, lifts incompetence into rank, scorns merit, and pats envy on the back, all the while enriching itself by charging extortionate fees for its systematic malpractice.”

[Widget Jr]

I am going back to school in the Seattle Colleges system and this is true. Students catch on to it, too.

[aspasia]

This moral certitude poisonously inveigles everything that novice college instructors undertake.

And you thought going to church was no fun . . .

[tbw2]

Use the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) college rankings on free speech to determine the least liberal schools in your area to send your kids to.