How to make American Higher Education a laughingstock

Hobit wrote:

I see no need to "indoctrinate" students. I am more concerend with pounding history into their little Britney clogged brains! I rarely allow politics into the classrooom.

If anyone here believes that I've got some beach front property in Arizona I will sell for a very good price.

Perc, I'm not going to argue with you. Go flog your monkey somewhere else.

Hobit:

Actually I believe the donkey belongs to your party and everyone is flogging it/him.

It's not already a laughingstock?

Well, not. Our universities are held in pretty high regard by other nations. They are seen (or were, until the hyperpatriotism xenophobia bug hit after 11th September) as places where education and free exchange of ideas were more important than political affiliation. If this stupid idea goes through that would pretty much be the end of that. Universities would probably fall into the mess that primary and secondary schools have, where state school boards can forbid the teaching of certain subjects, etc... A great deal of my time in teaching western civ is taken up with correcting mistakes kids have learned in HS, or filling in gaping lacunae. In my upper division Medieval class, the students are often surprised by how little they understand of the era. Most of what they know comes from bad sword and sorcery fiction (which I'm also partial to, but...) and the History Channell. I spend more time trying to get people to understand what I had such difficulty adjusting to: The idea that history is about synthesis and understanding what it is to be human than about dates and battles and kings. Unfortunately many sacred cows get hit by the proverbial freight train in the process. This nefarious movement by the far right would prop up the dying cows as exempla for students about how "superior" Western Civilization is. Current scholoarshp rejects any doctrine of "superiority."

Hobit wrote:

This nefarious movement by the far right would prop up the dying cows as exempla for students about how "superior" Western Civilization is. Current scholoarshp rejects any doctrine of "superiority."

If you reject the notion of "Western superiority" how do you account for the fact that most of Muslim world is at or near the bottom of the "food chain" now versus being at or near the top during the reign of the Ottoman empire.

Now don't take offense at this question----I would appreciate a serious answer because I find it puzzling

What food chain? Your questions make no sense.

Posting articles that rely on misrepresentation of passages from the Koran and the Hadith, both of which make up Sharia, will get you nowhere. The subject of this thread is the attempt by the conservatives to introduce right wing indoctrination into higher education. From your posts and your tone it is clear that you favour this. Thank you. Go away.

Now who's being evasive professor?

Hobit wrote:

A great deal of my time in teaching western civ is taken up with correcting mistakes kids have learned in HS, or filling in gaping lacunae. In my upper division Medieval class, the students are often surprised by how little they understand of the era.

This nefarious movement by the far right would prop up the dying cows as exempla for students about how "superior" Western Civilization is. Current scholoarshp rejects any doctrine of "superiority."

Are you trying to correct mistakes or are you trying to rewrite history more to your liking----in other words are you trying"indoctrinate" your students?

Back up your words professor ----- this little exercise is very germane to the topic

Well, soon enough history will be looking back on us as unhealthy, unhygienic, odd-talking, uncivilized weirdos in the same patronizing way many want us to look at our predecessors.

Neither of the above. I,and others in the same field, do just what I said above: fill in lacunae and offer expanded information. Right now in my HIST 3050 (The Middle Ages) we are discussing the dispersion of Christianity in Europe in the 4th-8th centuries, and the various "flavours" if you will, that were in competition. Celtic Rite Christianity flourished in Ireland and the British Isles. Aryan Christianity was fairly widespread throughout southern Europe, and the Mozarabic Rite developed in the Iberian Penninsula in the period from about 800CE onward. These were eventually subsumed into a conglomeration that would become "Latin Christianity" by various means, such as alliances of local leaders with missionaries from Rome, and the growth of the power of the Bishop of Rome compared to the localized power bases of the smaller, less centrrally organized orthodoxies.
Most graduates of US high schools have only heard of one "Church" in the west during the Late Antique/Early Medieval era. I know I hadn't heard of the others,and I went to a Jesuit high school. Knowledge of these competing orthodoxies is important to help one understand later events in western Christendom. I don't think that I am "indoctrinating " anyone. If I were to imply that one system were better than any others, that would be indoctrination. The concept of "better" and the corresponding value judgements placed on civilizations has no part in modern academic discourse. Value judgements are the province of people like Daniel Pipes,and those who seek appoint faculty by political party.

Hobit wrote:

If I were to imply that one system were better than any others, that would be indoctrination. The concept of "better" and the corresponding value judgements placed on civilizations has no part in modern academic discourse.

Then why would you object to hiring few more conservative professors? You imply that only liberal professors possess ethical academic standards----care to try and justify that allegation?

Again, you, seem to have difficulty with reading for content. I object to vetting of faculty regarding political oreintation. period. End of sentence. Do I object to conservative professors? No. Do I object to liberal profs? No. Do I object to purple profs with orange polka dots? No. I object to political orientation as an employment category. I object to peole being hired because they are liberal, conservative, martian, etc.... I also object to people not being hired for the same reasons. I also object to politicians mucking about with the curriculum, which is really the goal of this whole sort of thing. I know many liberal arts and social science faculty members who are politically conservative,and view this with at least as much trepidation and contempt as I do. What is at stake is intellectual freedom.

Exactly.

The whining of conservatives who say there aren't enough of their ilk on campus is hogwash. Their motive is to overwhelm everything with a politically-tainted view and THAT is unethical. What must really prickle is the fact that most students, being young, think conservativism sucks.

perception- You are quite correct in your post regarding the fact that brain science has shown that "ethics" can indeed be taught into the twentieth year.

Your allusion to the "blank slate" leads me to suspect that you are familiar with the wonderful book by the Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, whose ideas would play havoc with the simplicities offered by Tartarin and Hobibit.

The Western Canon, as outlined by Harold Bloom in his book- "The Western Canon" contains more material than can be read in a lifetime.

Bloom suggests that a reading of the works outlined in the Canon would be a better choice than reading the current garbage trumpeted as great literature.

Bloom contrasts the sublime Proust with the acerbic and and Androphobic Alice Walker. Bloom, of course, indicates that precious time would be utilized much more profitably reading Proust rather than Walker.

Unfortunately, despite the "fear" that conservatives are taking over the Universities, it is clear that the kind of garbage written by Walker, Morison and Angelou are driving out the truly great literature.

As Judge Robert H. Bork commented in his book, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah"

quote

"(Stanford) had a very popular required course in Western culture. The idea was that students should have at least a nodding acquaintance with the minds and works that have shaped the West that constitute our heritage. But radicals and minorities objected both because Western culture should not be celebrated being racist, sexist, violent, imperialistic and not at all like those wonderful Third World cultures, and because the authors that were assigned --Aristotle,Machiavelli, Rousseau, John Locke and Shakespeare--were all white males.
The culmination of the campaign consisted of a conga line snaking across campus, led by Jesse Jackson, the protestors chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's gotta go"

And go it did"



Conservatives taking over HIgher Education?????

Anyone who knows anything about Higher Education would laugh out loud at that comment.

When I read that value judgements have no place in the teaching of history and that there is no such thing as the concept of "better' being used, I wonder why the Roman system of numbers did not continue to be used instead of the Arabic system.

Could it possibly be that the Arabic System was
better?

This Bloom of yours sounds pretty damned racist: by what you report, he's compared one very odd Frenchman, Marcel Proust to Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Maya Angelou, who all happen to be black and female. If Walker is "androphobic," it is little to be wondered at. But let's be sure to include in our Western Cannon (of which i've personally read, i'd wager, as much as, or more of, than you), our fine friend Plato--the proto-facist with his praise of the militaristic slave-state, Sparta. Let's not leave out a single misogynist, racist, elitest writer in the cannon. Let's make sure they're all white, that they all come from Europe, and, as much as possible, let's make sure they have no tainted "liberal" values.

It doesn't seem to occur to you, does it, that one can read Plato (third-rate) and Proust (first-rate, and definitely an odd boy), and then read Morrison (first-rate) or Walker (third-rate), in the attempt to find some balnace?

Gotta go to work, otherwise, i'd love to stay and point out how one sided your nonsense is.