Posted on 09/06/2010 2:02:28 PM PDT by Rashputin
So what did I learn in the university? I’ll try to be a bit less specific than I was in Who Killed Homer? written over a decade ago.
Lies, lies, and more lies
First was the false knowledge — odd for an institution devoted to free inquiry. The university runs like a 13th-century church in which the heliocentric maverick is a mortal sinner. So too on campus the Rosenbergs never spied. Alger Hiss was a martyr. Mao killed only a few who needed killing (see Anita Dunn on that one).
Che was not a murderous thug, but a hair-in-the-wind carefree motorcyclist. Minorities supposedly died proportionally higher in Vietnam — as they supposedly do now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women are underrepresented as both undergraduates and as humanities graduate students. Anyone with an accented name obviously had picked grapes or was denied voting rights. Adlai Stevenson was an American saint, even more so than George McGovern. Only the unhinged even discussed doubts about global warming. Don’t question any of the above; it was all gospel — as we see now in D.C., from Keynes to Gorism to Cordoba as the beacon of Islamic tolerance during the Inquisition. (Doubt any of that, and that laid-back elbow-patched joking prof who told the class “Call me Bill,” in a flash, Gollum like, turned into a snarling jackal, screaming, “I am Doctor Jones, with important publications on climate change and a doctorate from Berkeley! How dare you question me!”)
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
Okay - what do we do about it?
Put better people on the university system governance boards. We can force that as a campaign issue, for the public colleges & universities, at least.
There is no peaceful path to reclaim our country.
Start over just like there aren't true universities in this country, because there aren't. There are leftist indoctrination centers dedicated to brainwashing those who pay to be taught and to paying themselves very good salaries for doing the brainwashing.
State community colleges seem more than adequate to handle the job of actual education if left to the states, and if that proves insufficient, go back to apprenticeships for real world work rather than theoretical musings. Each State may need to keep one university so college sports don't collapse, but just call them sports universities and stop the BS about those graduating being well rounded. In my experience well rounded athletes are the exception, not the rule.
I may revise that a bit since it's off the top of my head but it's a start. Regards
“Okay - what do we do about it?”
....a start would be to make senior faculty teach more classes....they don’t want to, so a kind of ‘shadow faculty’ has developed of GTA’s and part timers...this is part of the reason college costs so much.
...senior faculty likes to hide out from the class room doing ‘research’ of questionable value...example: over 2400 papers have been given on Virginia Wolfe.
I, unfortunately, think that you’re correct.
As for the article, our teachers in engineering weren’t of the described types: in the end, then as now, the damned thing we designed had to work! Besides, some of mine were working engineers with a side job, which was a very good thing.
In the work environment, you can’t fake the math or the skills, and it doesn’t matter at all how you feel. The device has to work to spec: end of story.
Great article, long and enjoyable read.
Defund defund defund...........
Would this be the commie recently appointed by Hussein to the Ninth Circus?
And drop sociology as a degree! LOL
But you have excellent ideas. I wish we could get them implemented.
ML/NJ
1. Quit b*tchin’ and put our money where our mouths are. If you want less liberalism in the classrooms, overpower the universities’ liberal donors. If they won’t listen to your words, they’ll listen to your checks.
2. Get more conservative professors. If you have what it takes to be a professor, don’t shun the field because of all the liberals. Don’t let them intimidate you. The field—our nation’s education and future—NEEDS you.
VDH is spot-on in his characterization of (most) academics.
My favorite:
“When it hit 110 and the air conditioning went out in our building, profs sighed and damned “them” who couldn’t even keep us cool. (None had been on a roof at 120 or wondered how a compressor ran at all — or how a guy could spend four hours up there in Sahara-like conditions with all sorts of sockets and wrenches before his skull melted.”
If I had my druthers, I’d demand that every piece of global warming legislation have as a clause (preferably one buried by some legislative troll deep on page 763 or so) that none of the provisions of the bill could take effect until an initial provision was fulfilled - and that initial provision would be that no energy could be used for air conditioning any public building, including buildings in public universities.
That would be last we’d hear about concerns over global warming.
Agreed.
But what about the indoctrination programs? Sociology, History, English, Cross Cultural Studies, etc., are pumping out ideologues. That’s the real problem. The university has abnegated their scared responsibility: the pursuit of truth. Mostly, I suspect, because they believe the truth has been found and now it is more about activism and enforcing PC codes. In that sense, their truth as socialist dogma has become a religion with its own articles of faith. Hanson nailed it that they are cowards: there is no debate — white male lynchings, conservative lynchings, Christian lynchings, etc. — but no debate. The university has to go back to it’s first principles or mission statement.
(But that too may prove very difficult if some professors will not a admit to the possibility of Truth, out of their relativism and love for all things Post Modernism.)
This was a good article until he veered off and started talking about politicians and federal judges. /s
Colleges and universities are also supposed to pass on the canon of our civilization.
Try finding them doing that today!
>>>Okay - what do we do about it?
When Bill Ayers (yeah, the unrepentant murderer) is an acclaimed educational curriculum expert you have the tip of the iceberg.
Leftists control the US educations system from preschool programs all the way to university postgraduate programs.
Fix that by taking over school boards and state legislatures and filling them with conservatives, changing curriculum, and eliminate the US department of education.
At the college and university level if you are a graduate of one these institutions volunteer to serve on any governing or advisory body. If you are a heavy enough hitter in your community or state that means the Board of Regents, Board of Visitors, or whatever body the college or university president reports to. The primary responsibility of colleges/universities is to pass the canon of our civilization to the next generation. That's what “getting an education means” as opposed to “job training”. (Yes you can do both!) Currently nontechnical curricula consists primarily of the personal interests pseudo-intellectual sociopaths instead of being a real academic discipline. That needs to be pointed out time and time again. If college and university presidents can't see that or don't have the courage or the authority to act. These governing boards do!
As a minimum tell the alumni association where they can stick it when the ask for money and tell them why!
Even better get a large group of alumni to do that and do so publicly! If a state school put pressure on the state legislators force them to publicly defend idiocy if necessary!
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