Free Republic

A friend of mine is an expert on education. We were in his apartment in New York maybe 6-8 years ago. He said: the schools are so bad that I bet my son doesn't even know about George Washington. He called in his 12 year old son and asked what he knew about George Washington. His son said--no kidding, "George Washington Carver?" In subsequent discussion, he couldn't tell us anything about the American revolution, the Constitution, or the Federalist papers. And he was a smart young man. He just hadn't been informed. When I was a visiting professor at a...

The course was taught by Assistant Professor Robert Dunkley, who is still with UNC as an Assistant Professor in the newly-formed Criminal Justice Department. The course is now offered through the Criminal Justice Department, as opposed to Sociology, which may explain why some members of the media failed to find it listed among the current course offerings in the Sociology Department at UNC. Taken from the 2002-2003 UNC Course Catalog, the course description is as follows: "SOC 346 - Criminology. Prerequisite: SOC 100 or equivalent. Survey criminal behavior generally, including theories of causation, types of crime, extent of crime, law...

Legislators in the House of Representatives are currently considering an "Academic Bill of Rights" that would encourage universities to develop an environment of intellectual diversity by adopting ideologically neutral hiring practices and academic policies. The bill was introduced in Congress by Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., and is supported by conservative lobbyist David Horowitz and his California-based Center for Study of Popular Culture. According to Horowitz, the bill was a response to trends of the last 30 years, in which liberal professors have increasingly outnumbered conservative ones in a more politicized university setting. "In the [university] typical faculty, Democrats outnumber Republicans...

If high-school students seem bored by history, consider what they get to read. A panel of scholars perused the pages of this country's history textbooks and found weighty volumes filled with shallow writing masked by colorful illustrations, bright graphics and copious quantities of white space. "These books include so much about so many topics and people that it is nearly impossible for teachers or students to know what information or themes are of greatest importance. All resort to an approach that may be described as 'if this is Tuesday, we must be studying the Hittites.'" reports the 10-member panel, led...

Mobile Register University accused of censorship 01/19/04 By SEAN REILLY Washington Bureau A conservative faculty organization at the University of Alabama is accusing administrators of censorship after the group was barred from using the campus mail system to distribute its newspaper without regular postage. Leaders of the organization, known as the Alabama Scholars Association, charge that the decision is payback for their efforts to shake up the status quo, including a proposal for term limits for university administrators and a report that found widespread grade inflation in some departments. "It's just an effort to quash any sort of dissent," the...