Posted on 03/29/2016 12:58:21 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know.
Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's "Judge Judy," is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal. But it is little mystery why so many college students are illiterate, innumerate and resistant to understanding. Let's look at it.
Student activists at Brown University complained of emotional stress and poor grades after they spent months of protesting for various causes. They blamed the university for insisting that they complete their coursework. One of the objects of their protest was an op-ed in The Brown Daily Herald, the university newspaper, that was deemed racist because it defended the celebration of Columbus Day. Brown University's faculty recently took care of that and renamed Columbus Day "Indigenous People's Day."
Professor Salvador Vidal-Ortiz of American University told his students that capitalism dehumanizes brown people and black people. If his students had one iota of brains, they might ask him why it is that brown and black people all over the world are seeking to flee to countries toward the capitalist end of the economic spectrum rather than the communist end. Campus Reform reports that Vidal-Ortiz, during the Q&A of a book talk at the University of Virginia, said he tells his students that though he is light-skinned, he refuses to be called white. "I will not be labeled as something that I know is violent," he said.
College administrators are short on guts and backbone. But there is a glimmer of hope every now and then. Young Americans for Liberty at Rutgers University invited Breitbart News' technology editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, who is a homosexual, to give a lecture. Yiannopoulos describes his lecture tour as "The Most Dangerous Faggot Tour." His lecture was titled "How the Progressive Left Is Destroying American Education." There were about 400 students who attended his lecture, plus there were protesters who smeared themselves with fake blood.
Despite student opposition, Rutgers University President Robert Barchi called on his university to stand up for free speech, saying, "That freedom is fundamental to our university, our society, and our nation." That was also Yiannopoulos' message, namely: "The purpose of university is to interrogate new ideas, discover ourselves, meet new people and explore the world. What it ought to be is a free space without trigger warnings. In my view, anyone who asks for a trigger warning should be expelled. What they've demonstrated is that they are incapable of being exposed to new ideas."
Then there is Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, who bravely told his students, "This is not a day care. It's a university."
Stanford University's board of trustees is to be congratulated for not caving in to the diversity crowd in its selection of highly distinguished scientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne as university president. Students furiously denounced the choice because Tessier-Lavigne is a white man. The student-run Stanford Political Journal wrote: "We believe the Search Committee intended to select the best possible candidate, and, of course, white men should not have automatically been precluded from the search. However ... it would have been fitting for Stanford to select a president that deviates from the traditional white, straight, male mode."
The University of Missouri System's board of curators is also to be congratulated for firing professor Melissa Click, who was videotaped intimidating a student reporter during demonstrations that led to the cowardly resignations of the system's president, Timothy M. Wolfe, and chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin. Her firing was not a result of administrator and faculty decency. Private donations had plummeted, and Missouri lawmakers were proposing an $8 million cut in the system's budget. That proves what I have always held: Nothing opens the closed minds of administrators better than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut.
“That COLLEGES now have courses in remedial math and English.. .”
And this is only for the TEACHERS !
I know who Walter Williams is!!!
Since we're discussing illiteracy, the word wanted here is "fewer". You're welcome.
I read plenty of articles written by college professors who can’t construct a sentence correctly.
Have you looked at a college text book recently? There seems to be no such thing as linear thought any more. Every page of text is interrupted at 3-5 times with pictures, sidebars, end notes, and other information inserted into the text. Today’s text books seem to be designed for readers that have the attention span of a flea.
So, the normal reader tries to read and absorb the text, but some sidebar, or other interruption, is constantly vying for the reader’s attention. And, heaven help the student if he doesn’t read it all — it could show up on his final.
My grandchildren don’t even buy their books any more — they rent them! So, as they get farther along in their majors, there is no hope of referring back to a favorite text.
I want back to college about 12 years ago to finish a degree and couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe how frequently “group” projects were assigned and “group” grades given. As an older student, particular about my work, I always ended up carrying much of the burden of the group. I always did the typing because none of the other cared about proper footnoting and hadn’t learned the rules, despite my university making it really easy to find the answer to sticky questions. (There was a nun in the library who devoted her life to understanding the APA system and passing that info along to any student willing to ask.)
I had been an English Major in my previous life as an undergrad at UC Berkeley, so I am good with grammar, syntax, etc. I wouldn’t re-write, but I did correct glaring errors. One of my group members Gave me her part of the paper to type in its final presentation and the wording sounded awfully familiar. I checked the text and found that she had COPIED the entire first chapter. I called her, and she said, “Oh, that’s a “block quote”. I pointed out that she cannot quote an entire chapter as her contribution to the paper because the grades of 4 people depended on the whole. She didn’t care, so I re-wrote.
She was the niece of the Milwaukee Superintendent of Schools!
so have I, and I don’t mean one or two either!
I didn’t write the article. Contact Walter Williams.
Not a recent phenomenon. I lived in the Baton Rouge area in the mid-80s. At that time, a bit over 50% of LSU incoming freshman required remedial (read: high school) coursework. And this was at the state's "flagship" U.
LOL! College text books are the USA TODAY of books. I went back and got my MBA about 13 years ago and only bought one book because the profs don’t teach to them. They all just lectured and expected you to take notes, which was convenient but wrong. A friend’s mother worked in a college library and she said the book sales are a scam. The book companies want to sell new books every year so they allow professors to write a chapter in the new book. In exchange, the professors deem the previous year’s book obsolete.
Physics don’t really change much from year to year.
I hope my grammar is okay on this thread or I’ll hear about it!
#9 ~ “There is always journalism school for the dumbasses.”
Brilliant! - A quote from Søren Kierkegaard (maybe not verbatim, I am only relying on my feeble memory)from the Kierkegaard Anthology:
No profession is lower, no occupation is more vile in the eyes of God; than that of a ‘Journalist.’ Ha!
If a foreign power did this damage to our children we would declare war and kill their leaders. I’d suggest the same response is appropriate for the leftwing education establishment that intentionally performed this mass lobotomy on our youth.
How about the countries involved in the Spanish-American War?
Or the name of the president who proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine?
Or the city where the Boston Tea Party took place?
fewer than....
Fewer than, not less than... More importantly, the author doesn't know the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation either (hint... it DIDN'T free the slaves.). I've only met one in a thousand (not 20%) college graduates who knew this, so I'm assuming the 20% referenced are college graduates who incorrectly believed it freed the slaves.
Lazy parents. The same ones that think discipline is “mean”.
It’s why cops have to shoot so many little morons when they get out of control and pull guns on cops in their little deadly temper tantrum.
Good post........
I might be the patron saint of cursive incompetency. I learned to do it, sort of, in the 50's and early 60's, but abandoned it in favor of printing in my "junior high" years. Never looked back.
Jesus Was Shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1300’s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyQ2JnCdSk4&feature=player_embedded
#ignorantpeoplematter
Yes, they’re illiterate, but, hey, they feel good about themselves.
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