Blissfully Uneducated(VICTOR DAVIS HANSON)

american.com ^ | July/August 2007 Issue | Victor Davis Hanson

[FreedomPoster]

I see Stetson University come up, similarly.

[fso301]

bump

[the anti-liberal]

"They are also, however, major leftist indoctrination camps."

Thanks for pointing that out - I hadn't really read beyond the quote I used. It's telling that this is the closest I came to finding any search returns, in terms of a list of colleges having 'moral character,' on alltheweb.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

I have read most of VDH’s books. He makes classical history come alive.
I fear that many Americans have been educated into the “relativism” propaganda, along with diversity and multiculturalism, which denies the primacy of Western Civilization. Radical Islam is not seen as a threat by many leftist Democrats. This is why. They see Christians as more of a threat than radical Muslims. It is ok for Muslims to deny relativism, but not Christians.
America, coming from the British tradition has a strong martial spirit, much as the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Patton said it well, that Americans love to win and hate to lose. The Romans just did not give up. Their empire expanded until it bumped up against the strong Persian empire and Germanic tribes that could not be subdued. Rome’s martial spirit declined when its people lost their will to win. This appears to be happening to our country. God help us.

[DuncanWaring]

...it would be a very good idea to establish a list of higher education institutions whose core curricula reflect the value and content that Hansen describes as worthwhile.

Here's a possibility.

[miele man]

I see that Berea College in Kentucky is on the listing of “Colleges of Character”. Berea has a very distinctive character but does also teach from a very liberal bias as well. Each alumni magazine I see only emphasizes this bias.

[norton]

"A glut of draft-dodging PHD’s who majored in the social sciences — those who were pumping gas near the end of the war, and afterward — were able to infiltrate our education system, and our government. Don’t forget that our government (federal and state) has created a myriad of social programs since 1970."

It's the Jody Factor...
'..ain't no sense in going home - Jody got your girl...".
And, a head start on being your next boss.

[the anti-liberal]

OK, so it appears the list I found isn’t any good. Thanks for pointing it out. Yetidog’s idea is a good one though. Personally, I’d like to see a ranking of colleges and universities by left, right, liberal, conservative bias with percentages and all of that. That would be really neat.

[norton]

What really frosts me today is that all these “studies” that people can major in today would have been soft electives if they’d even existed in the Sixties.

[litehaus]

"I study mathematics..."

Funny when you consider what folks in your field contribute and how little those who enjoy the fruits thereof know of those subjects......Simple one, sports fans in a stadium who could never design/build the same but think those guys on the field are the be all/end all of things. Yeh, I know, unabashedly in favor of "brains."

[Mogollon]

I study mathematics and engineering. Unfortunately for the liberals, it is nearly impossible to make relativist such coursework as Linear Algebra, Data Structures, and Algorithms.

Give them time. We once thought that the weather couldn't be politicized too, but now we have the anthropogenic Global Warming myth.

[Banjoguy]

Thanks George from Georgia...did you attend Ga. Tech?

[Christian4Bush]

vdh bump

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

No I have two degrees from UGA. GO DAWGS. My Son is a Tech grad.

[LexBaird]

But if there are no prisms—no absolutes, no eternals, no truths, no ages past—then the present will appear only as nonsense.

Of course. It is the vital first step to the point when all one needs to know is "we have always been at war with Eastasia." The State said so.

[RexBeach]

My college has nearly 100 different student organizations. When I was a student that number was probably less than 20. Now we have a black student union, a Jewish student union, Asian student union, etc.

This dadgummed celerbation of diversity has reduced my beautiful little college from an institution devoted to the search for truth, into a rock-ribbed, multicultural hell hole where everything is relative.

Recently I asked our provost(the chief academic officer of the college) what was the most popular major. Answer: International business; 2) Psychology. I asked him where history fit in. His answer: “It barely registers.” My response: “So, we are educating students who have positively no sense of the past for their nation or the world.” No answer.

How do we alter this downward spiral into relativism?

[khnyny]

Here’s a pretty conservative school (it is Catholic):

Franciscan University of Steubenville (located in Ohio near Pittsburgh, PA)

http://www.franciscan.edu/Home2/Content/main.aspx

[the anti-liberal]

"Give them time."

Too late:

(Tony Snow) Save us from the 'new-new math'

[nonsporting]

The theme of all such therapeutic curricula is relativism. There are no eternal truths, only passing assertions that gain credence through power and authority.

There is also the issue of "style" over "substance."

My wife teaches literature and writing courses in our homeschool group. A recent graduate of hers received an "outstanding" (6) evalution on the written part of the SAT. Her mother called to thank my wife for my wife's "part" in this outcome.

Let me tell you the rest of the story. My wife only awarded this student a "C" in the course. The student was lucky to get this grade. My daughter who is a national merit finalist and an exceptionally gifted writer (she, only a freshman, was asked to tutor in an honors writing lab at her college). Here's the kicker: she only received a (4) on the written portion of the SAT.

I discussed how this could be with my wife. She informed me that SAT evaluators don't actually read the essays in their entirety, but rather examine them for length, structure and style (confidence). She said they separate them based on length and then do other/subsequent evaluation within each group. It doesn't matter what ideas are presented, but only if the author has energy and expresses a confident point of view. In contrast, my daughters essays are strategic creations: thesis, developement, restatement/conclusion. It should be pointed out that my daughter only wrote on every other line of the notebook, since this is how she had been trained, leaving room for the evaluator(s) to make corrections and notes. Consequently, her essay was only potentially half as long as others might have been. Superficially her essay was "deficient" in length and "unclear" (subtle: you've got to read it in its entirety).

I told my wife that she really needed to "teach to the test" next time! There's "good writing" and there's "lengthy written overconfident verbage" for the SAT written portion. Style and form win out over substance.

[miele man]

Your list may or not be any good; I didn’t check the other schools on the list, just Berea and that was because I grew up there and went to the school for a while. In the last twenty years, it has become increasingly liberal like many schools. Reading their alumni magazine become, for me, an exercise in anger management.

I think your idea is an excellent one.