ILLIBERAL EDUCATION: THE SAD DECLINE OF OUR SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES

The Iconoclast ^ | December 22, 2002 | Murray Soupcoff (The Iconoclast)

[clintonbaiter]

THE ICONOCLAST
WEEKLY RANT

ILLIBERAL EDUCATION: THE SAD DECLINE OF OUR SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES

by Murray Soupcoff

According to the cognescenti in academia and the media world, America's universities are the last bastion of free speech and independent thought. As evidence, they proudly remind us that thousands of overpaid professors can't be fired from their jobs thanks to "tenure," a traditional accreditation that protects their right to write and say whatever they want. Hence, the conventional media stereotype of American university campuses as the last shining beacons of free thought, independent inquiry and the unfettered exchange of ideas.

Of course, what we are learning more and more is that a less praiseworthy sensibility of stifling left-wing conformity and political correctness has permeated today's university campuses, resulting in some of the most repressive Orwellian sinecures in America -- complete with Stalinist-style thought police, secret tribunals and the occasional show trials against political incorrectness. Freedom is dead on our college campuses, and few parents realize just how repressive and intolerant have become the institutions of higher learning to which they are paying thousands of hard-earned dollars to educate and enlighten their sons and daughters.

And of course, let's not forget the dark cloud of political correctness that has descended upon publicly-funded elementary and high schools in America. Children are being schooled within an educational environment that suppresses individual freedoms, promotes minority-group victimhood and denigrates the proud history of the United States. For example, the new guidelines for teaching history in New Jersey public schools fail to mention America's Founding Fathers, the Pilgrims, or the Mayflower. Furthermore, the term "war" has been replaced with "conflict" and most of the references to inhumane treatment that many American soldiers endured in foreign wars during the 20th century have been omitted (in contrast to even the most minimal retaliation against their ruthless enemies by the American military which are highlighted).

For a further litany of the kind of suppression of free thought that now flourishes in our schools and on North American college campuses, we recommend The Top Ten Campus Follies of 2002, educational outrages documented by The Young America's Foundation, a group that promotes conservative ideas on the nation's college campuses.

Here's an excerpted countdown list of the top four outrages, as compiled by The Young America's Foundation:

4. Harvard University re-invited controversial poet Tom Paulin after withdrawing the original invitation because students had complained of his statements comparing U.S.-born settlers in the West Bank with Nazis and how they "should be shot dead." The school reportedly re-issued the invitation to show support for free speech. Earlier in the year, however, two editors of Harvard Business School's student newspaper were reprimanded for publishing a cartoon in which they used the term "morons," criticizing the school's computer system.

3. According to the school newsletter, a Santa Monica elementary school principal banned the game of tag because "there is a 'victim' or 'It,'" which creates self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children, and "the oldest or biggest child usually dominates."

2. Texas school board administrators toned down the curriculum that teaches Texas independence by suppressing "us vs. them" perspectives in lessons about the Battle of the Alamo and the state's independence from Mexico. According to the social studies curriculum manager of the Houston Independent School District, the school board administrators made the change because they don't want "Hispanic kids, or any kids, to feel like we're teaching a bias approach" to the history of Texas.

#1. Bucknell University held a forum in response to articles regarding free speech on campus that appeared in the conservative campus paper, The Counterweight . The dean of students and the assistant dean of students for multicultural affairs were in attendance. During the forum, students called the articles "hate speech" and the dean of students said that he was sure the editor-in-chief of the paper intended to hurt people by publishing the articles. The school administrators made no attempt to protect The Counterweight staffers in attendance at the forum who were being threatened by other students, nor did they reprimand the students making the threats. In fact, the multicultural affairs dean commented that the staffers were "lucky" the offended students at the forum were "such good kids" or the staffers would be risking physical harm. The dean of students threatened to have public safety officials remove the staffers from the forum if they did not leave on their own.

Pretty depressing stuff, isn't it? And of course, the above litany of illiberality doesn't include the many outrages that occurred on college campuses after the tragic events of 9/11. For example, it will take a long time to forget the following 9/11 ivory-tower piece de resistance of political correctness and Orwellian "doublethink" documented by the Daily Atzec student newspaper at San Diego State University (SDSU).

Not long after 9/1l, the Daily Atzec reported that an SDSU student was accused of "verbal harassment" after he criticized four Saudi students who were celebrating the Sept. 11th tragedy. Zewdalem Kebede, a native Ethiopian and naturalized American citizen, says he overheard the conversation in Arabic. "With that action they were very pleased," he told the newspaper. "They were happy. And they were regretting of missing the 'Big House' " -- obviously the White House, not the prison that some of the Saudi students' more overzealous countrymen later occupied.

Kebede reported that he approached the four Saudis and said to them, in Arabic: "Guys, what you are talking is unfair. How do you feel happy when those 5,000 to 6,000 people are buried in two or three buildings? They are under the rubble or they became ash. And you are talking about the action of bin Laden and his group. You are proud of them. You should have to feel shame."

The Saudis, who weren't named because they were designated as "victims" by the university, filed a complaint of harassment with the university police; and Kebede was summoned to the university's politically-correct Center for Student Rights star chamber. After giving his side of the story, he got a letter from the Center warning him "that future involvement in 'confronting members of the campus community in a manner that is found to be aggressive or abusive' will result in severe disciplinary sanctions." Just another sterling example of students rights on today's American college campuses.

Yes, it seems that there's no low that the post-modernist academic proponents of toleration, cultural understanding, American self-loathing and national suicide will stoop to while providing the college students of America with the kind of quality higher education which we know all the moms and pops of America have scrimped and saved to provide to their kids.........

[clintonbaiter]

What a mess!

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"What a mess!"

The article? I agree.

[zebra 2]

If you wanna spread disease, you nurture the germs in a petri dish. If you wanna spread slavery, you nurture the germs in a school. Like Hitler did.

[yoe]

History has taught us that Socialism in all forms, is a failure. As our education system has become more and more socialized, is it any surprise that it too is a failure?

[nebula]

Saving this country will require that at some time in the future the colleges are closed and their (liberal arts) faculty and administration removed.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"Saving this country will require that at some time in the future the colleges are closed and their (liberal arts) faculty and administration removed."

All in the name of academic freedom.