Posted on 05/16/2007 8:07:54 AM PDT by HoosierGirl25
The war in Iraq was a regular hot topic in English class when I was in school. But why -- when it had no relevance to writing analyses’, breaking down prose, or fine-tuning style? When I heard about an unapologetic independent film production that uncovered illegitimate classroom agendas at public universities, I knew my school (Indiana University) was part of a larger problem.
“I’ve been learning in geography class that gender is socially constructed,” said a student from the University of Tennessee in the revealing documentary. “Indoctrinate U” exposes the liberally biased agenda of professors and administrators whose practices are like the Wizard of Oz -- behind a curtain no one has dared to lift until now.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
It’s hard to keep politics out of an English class. Whether its the politics of Victorian England when reading Dickens or Depression Era America when reading Steinbeck or Faulkner.
I feel your pain, HoosierGirl. I am an alumnus of IU myself. Can’t tell you how much liberal indoctrination takes place in “Multiculturalism in Education” class in the School of Education...
Your statement demonstrates how well the Left has succeeded in brainwashing Americans into believing that everything is determined by issues of what is known in academe as the “Big 3” (race, class, gender).
It is not.
Try reading “The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature” to see how literature used to be taught and can still be taught, free of the Big 3.
Also, read VDH’s “Who Killed Homer” and Alan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind.” If anyone’s interested, I also have a long list of high school and college text books for English classes written before WWII that teach English from a more traditional, classical approach (that is, they teach the student how to appreciate English and American literature, rather than merely disparage it and use it as evidence of the inherent oppressiveness of Western culture).
Politics can be mentioned when teaching English and literature, but it need not be (and should not be, in my opinion) the soul of the matter, which it currently is.
Just the word “gender” is part of their totalitarian newspeak. So is “orientation”; this implies it is immutable, versus “preference”; if you want to torque off a sophist-academe, use those words in lieu of the new and improved. Not one in a thousand understand what’s happening overall.
Or Melville’s Moby Dick without talking about white whales...
ooh, my new tagline!!
I’m taking an online college english class this summer.
My instructor’s bio looks like he’s a Ward Churchill wannabe. I know I’m going to have to dust off my old copy of Abby Hoffman’s Steal this book to use it as a source. In my previous english class we had to write a paper on an evironmental issue, and the teacher was very upset no one took global warming. I chose algae based bio oil as a topics, and ended up with an A. You have to sneak common sense in under the radar.
I took a censorship class this spring, it was very interesting, but necessarily involved politics to a certain extent. About halfway through the semester the professor asked why we didn’t debate more in the class and wanted to know if the problem was we all agreed with him too much. It was kind of refreshing to hear a professor want debate instead of being the unquestioned dispenser of knowledge.
Moby Dick is loaded with all sorts of comments on everything from race to religion to Manifest Destiny.
Wassomatta U
I got my B.A. in 97 and they weren't reading any of those classics by then. It was pretty much just a blur of Maya Angelou and various other multi-culti 20th century feminists and socialists. I had to take African-American Lit and Women's Lit (and all the women's lit selections were written by the chicks in my prof's grad class.) Even my American Lit class... I remember thinking that if I had to read 'The Yellow Wallpaper' one more time, I'd go nuts too.
Could you give me your list? Pretty please.....I’m “training” my niece....who’s 16, and will be spending a few weeks this summer with us.....she’s a voracious reader and good writer....and she needs better academic challenges.
I took a biology class last summer. Actually, “Biology and the Environment”. Yes, it was a gimme class.
Anyhow the teacher gave extra credit if we went to go see “An Inconvenient Truth”. I just took the hit.
I got my MA from a small state school and we read a good dose of the classics while getting the expected grounding in the most common contemporary critical schools (Feminist, Marxist, Freudian, Post-Structuralist).
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is an unabashed ripoff of Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman’.
Show me any college literature class who teaches Dickens, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Bronte, or Melville and I will show you a conservative college.
I don’t know what your age is, so let me give you some perspective so you will see where I am coming from.
An 18 year old college freshman this fall was born in 1989.
They were born 27 years after William Faulkner died and 21 years after John Steinbeck died.
If you attended college in 1962, you would have been a freshman when Faulkner died, and Steinbeck would have died well after college for you. And, if you were born in 1944, then Twain would have been dead for 34 years before you were born.
So Faulkner is to College students today what Twain was to students in the 60’s.
But the argument isn’t just who is or is not appropriate, but rather how they teach the authors.
Too many “teachers” don’t want to teach classic works (including Faulkner and Steinbeck) because they cause students to think, and thinking leads to interpretation.
These teachers want to fill their students heads with an interpretation of culture, race or religion and then force their students to read things that reinforce that interpretation.
That is what is happening now days on way too many college campuses. While parents may worry about binge drinking and sexual excess, they miss the point that what goes on in the classes is in many cases much more vile and immoral than what goes on at the Frat party on friday night.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.