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The Regrettable Decline of Higher Learning
Townhall.com ^ | February 4, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 02/04/2016 5:25:36 AM PST by Kaslin

Edited on 02/04/2016 6:19:03 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]

What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning?

American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.


(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: collegesandunis; education; microaggessions; safespace; triggerwarnings; vdh; victordavishanson
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To: Kaslin

In a just world, the DoJ civil rights divisions would be filing charges against universities.


21 posted on 02/04/2016 7:09:03 AM PST by KC_Conspirator
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To: Kaslin; PIF
declining since 1916? You can't be serious

Irving Babbitt, author of Democracy and Leadership (Boston: Houghton Miffiln, 1924) and other works would argue that the decline began even earlier.

22 posted on 02/04/2016 7:17:43 AM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: KC_Conspirator

When history is shackled to propaganda—all suffer. PC and Multiculturalism have destroyed thinking in the west—the Hippies won but, rather than lead the universities in a new age of reason they have slipped into Communist group think. A new revolution is needed—a new age to pull the universities back from the edge. As an American, I believe that the following should be done:
1. A whole set of new private colleges set up coast to coast—inexpensive to educate the young—these could be class rooms without tenior—use older—professors to teach what they know—cheap.
2. Use all te tools we have for inexpensive books and teach real classes—not PC junk.
3. Expand classes to include the practile —likeways classes on how to get and keep a job, will out taxes, resume, and marriage.
4. Teach skills—like weilding, automove repare, Tech support, Medicine (Nursing) -—
5. Use volunteerism—to expand the classroom and make it better like work in Red Cross.


23 posted on 02/04/2016 7:22:56 AM PST by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll Onward! Ride to the sound of the guns!)
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To: Kaslin; PIF
This had me look up when Greek was abandoned by our top schools. Unbelievably, Harvard dropped Greek as a requirement in 1886! Yale abandoned its Latin requirement in 1931.
24 posted on 02/04/2016 7:25:51 AM PST by Oratam
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To: Kaslin

In 1900 there was 2% of the population with a college degree. Today there is 45%. We hand out college degrees as participation trophies.


25 posted on 02/04/2016 7:26:36 AM PST by CodeToad (Islam should be banned and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
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To: Oratam

Like I said declining for 100 years (or more). Glad y’all see the light as to how far the educational system has actually fallen - side note: I had Latin, advanced math, statistics, and so on at the private school I attended - and look were it got me - misspent youth ... maybe next time ...


26 posted on 02/04/2016 7:33:39 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: CPT Clay

I agree


27 posted on 02/04/2016 7:40:54 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Kaslin
As an engineer who graduated in the ‘70s, It scares me to think that the rot will eventually migrate from the “Liberal” Arts to the Hard Sciences. Do you really want to cross a bridge designed by an engineer that feels that Pi is an artificial construct of ancient white men and that it is OK to make up any convenient value.

How about a doctor who graduated Med School because he/she/other met a quota for special snowflakes but didn't meet the minimum academic or practical requirements?

28 posted on 02/04/2016 8:06:10 AM PST by nuke_road_warrior (Making the world safe for nuclear power for over 20 years)
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Comment #29 Removed by Moderator

To: doxteve2old2operate

I noted in reading through a few 1950s textbooks that the levels were consistently more advanced for every grade than more “modern” texts. But today’s students can produce slick presentation that a 1950s salesman would have drooled over.
Style has replaced substance.


30 posted on 02/04/2016 3:54:04 PM PST by hoosierham (Freedom isn't free)
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To: Labyrinthos

They hire college graduates for the kind of jobs that were often done by eighth grade dropouts in the fifties and sixties.


31 posted on 02/04/2016 7:07:02 PM PST by RipSawyer (Racism is racism, regardless of the race of the racist.)
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To: PIF

Thank you. That is exactly correct.

Ask a college student who John Locke was and you’ll get a blank stare.
Try to get someone to give a geometric proof and they’re lost.
It goes on and on.

I read my daughters anthropology text and it made reference to the movie armageddon . It was so juvenile and simplistic AND I paid over $75 for this pile of crap.


32 posted on 02/04/2016 8:31:52 PM PST by Dick Vomer (2 Timothy 4:7 deo duce ferro comitante)
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