Until recently, classical education served as the foundation of the wider liberal arts curriculum, which in turn defined the mission of the traditional university. Classical learning dedicated itself to turning out literate citizens who could read and write well, express themselves, and make sense of the confusion of the present by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Students grounded in the classics appreciated the history of their civilization and understood the rights and responsibilities of their unique citizenship. Universities, then, acted as cultural custodians, helping students understand our present values in the context of a 2,500-year tradition that began with the ancient Greeks.
But in recent decades, classical and traditional liberal arts education has begun to erode, and a variety of unexpected consequences have followed. The academic battle has now gone beyond the in-house “culture wars” of the 1980s. Though the argument over politically correct curricula, controversial faculty appointments, and the traditional mission of the university is ongoing, the university now finds itself being bypassed technologically, conceptually, and culturally, in ways both welcome and disturbing.
Continue reading “The demise of the university”
Dec 31 2008
The demise of the university
Dec 18 2008
Incoherent ignorance, squared
In a recent survey listing medical workers as the most trusted, educators scored very high in trustworthiness.
Other eligible — and admired — professions were education, at 14 percent, and science and technology, at 10 percent.
Educators and doctors were also voted the most trusted by an overwhelming 86 and 87 percent, followed by homemakers and those in science and technology.
Only one percent picked retail professionals as partner-material, and those in media and marketing, as well as entertainers, did little better at two and three percent.
These professions were also among the least trusted by respondents, who, across the seven markets, picked the media as the single least trusted group.
Why is this incoherently ignorant? Simple. The professoriate and the major media agree about almost everything. Education is no longer primarily about learning facts and how to reason from them, it is now mostly about indoctrination in left-wing “principles.” Just like the major media. If you trust one, and not the other, it means you don’t know what either are really about these days.
Apparently, all have been doing a great job in informing and educating the public, since the public seems largely unaware of this, and actually thinks modern educators and the media are up to different things, when in fact they are two of the great arms of the grand left-ward slide of our culture, the third being government entitlement programs, upon which both depend, but in different ways.
Dec 16 2008
Coming off sabbatical soon
I’ve been on sabbatical this semester, but I start teaching again next semester. I am hoping against hope that the following is not the experience of my students.
Dec 05 2008
The Left at Christian Universities, part 7: Speech codes
Part 6 in this series can be found here.
Speech codes limit campus freedom
Millions of high school seniors have started the process of deciding which college or university to attend in the next academic year. Prospective students will take into consideration cost, academics, social life, and location. And while many students will also look at schools that reflect their interests and values, virtually none will be thinking about the school’s speech codes or free speech zones. They should. Students at colleges and universities who articulate conservative and traditional views are at particular risk of bullying and indoctrination by campus administrators and faculty who are zealous ideologues.
Continue reading “The Left at Christian Universities, part 7: Speech codes”
Dec 02 2008
On compulsory service
That brilliant observer of society, Thomas Sowell, on “service” requirements. The whole thing, as usual, is worth reading, but this part stands out to me:
The most fundamental question is: What in the world qualifies teachers and members of college admissions committees to define what is good for society as a whole, or even for the students on whom they impose their arbitrary notions?
What expertise do they have that justifies overriding other people’s freedom? What do their arbitrary impositions show, except that fools rush in where angels fear to tread?
What lessons do students get from this, except submission to arbitrary power?
Supposedly students are to get a sense of compassion or noblesse oblige from serving others. But this all depends on who defines compassion. In practice, it means forcing students to undergo a propaganda experience to make them receptive to the left’s vision of the world.
I am sure those who favor “community service” requirements would understand the principle behind the objections to this if high school military exercises were required.
Indeed, many of those who promote compulsory “community service” activities are bitterly opposed to even voluntary military training in high schools or colleges, though many other people regard military training as more of a contribution to society than feeding people who refuse to work.
In other words, people on the left want the right to impose their idea of what is good for society on others– a right that they vehemently deny to those whose idea of what is good for society differs from their own.
The essence of bigotry is refusing to others the rights that you demand for yourself. Such bigotry is inherently incompatible with freedom, even though many on the left would be shocked to be considered opposed to freedom.
As with many such issues, it’s what you call it that matters. If instead of service, we substituted “compulsory performance of duties other people think someone should do”, we’d be in better shape on this one.
Is it any less “service” to participate in the creation of a useful product that society would not have as much of without your efforts? I don’t think so.
Those who think serving in soup kitchens is more laudable than growing wheat tend to be people who think motives matter more than results, and for whom only certain results are acceptable.
Nov 17 2008
The Left At Christian Universities, Part 6: You can’t post that HERE!
If you missed it or want to read it again, Part 5 of this series is here.
At Pepperdine, students aren’t allowed to post signs announcing meetings that might be critical of Obama. And they have a “Director of Intercultural Affairs” to enforce the rule on 18 yr old freshman Republicans, too. After describing the de facto censorship of the the College Republicans at Pepperdine, Mike Adams delivers this assessment of one of the players:
Continue reading “The Left At Christian Universities, Part 6: You can’t post that HERE!”
Sep 28 2008
Some inconvenient truths about racial preferences and affirmative action/diversity policies
Here are the first few paragraphs of a scholarly paper presented at “Race and Gender Preferences at the Crossroads,” a conference organized by the California Association of Scholars and cosponsored by the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and the Center for Equal Opportunity, held January 19, 2008, at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. The title of the paper is The Effects of Proposition 209 on California: Higher Education, Public Employment, and Contracting 09/25/2008 Charles L. Geshekter
In 1996, Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 209 that prohibited all state agencies from using anyone’s race, ethnicity, or gender to discriminate against them or give them preference in university admissions, public employment, or competition for a state contract.
Those who opposed Proposition 209 predicted that ending racial or gender favoritism would result in sharp declines in black and Hispanic college enrollments, setbacks for women in public employment, reduced funds for cancer detection centers and domestic violence shelters, or other alarmingly negative effects.
Sep 20 2008
If you doubt the validity of affirmative action, you must be a racist
As usual, anyone who tries to scientifically study the actual effect of affirmative action is accused of racist motives.
In his 19 years as a law professor at UCLA, Richard Sander has pondered a nagging question: Does affirmative action help or hinder black people who want to become lawyers?
Two years ago, he published research suggesting that racial preferences at law firms might be responsible for black lawyers’ high rate of attrition and difficulty making partner. He hypothesized that, in the interest of promoting diversity, law firms sometimes hire black lawyers that are under-qualified, and that when there is a “credentials gap” between black and white lawyers at a firm, black lawyers often fail.
The research stirred debate throughout the legal community, and Sander said he was surprised at the vehemence with which people attacked his motives. A former Vista volunteer, fair-housing activist and campaigner for Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, Sander insisted he was simply trying to examine an important question.
Now the law professor has waded into another controversy. Sander says his goal this time is to examine whether law schools set up many affirmative action beneficiaries for failure by admitting them into rigorous academic environments in which they are ill-prepared to compete. He proposes to study almost 30 years of data on California Bar Association exam-takers. In the end, he hopes to explain why, as reported in a Law School Admission Council study in the 1990s, blacks are four times as likely as whites to fail the bar exam on the first try.
Continue reading “If you doubt the validity of affirmative action, you must be a racist”
Sep 18 2008
What your history teacher or professor didn’t tell you
Amazon.com: 48 Liberal Lies About American History: (That You Probably Learned in School): Larry Schweikart: Books Here is the publisher’s weekly short review.
Textbooks have long served as a main battlefield in the culture wars and the latest salvo comes from Schweikart, a history professor at the University of Dayton (A Patriot’s History of the United States), who examines leading American history texts and other books that he sees as purveying a distinctly slanted view of American history—one that portrays the United States as oppressive, imperialistic, and evil. Each lie is deliberated in a brief essay. A chapter on the notion that FDR knew in advance that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor focuses largely on countering Robert Stinnett’s Day of Deceit. The belief that Columbus was responsible for killing millions of Indians (drivel) is, he says, based on faulty statistics. In examining the belief that Richard Nixon sent burglars into the Watergate office complex, the author accepts G. Gordon Liddy’s account of events over John Dean’s. Regarding the Rosenbergs, Schweikart cites Soviet documents proving they were indeed spies. Schweikart marshals an arsenal of statistics and scholarly studies, and while his own biases will limit his reach, he offers an object lesson in the need for scrupulous balance in the writing of history textbooks.
That line, “his own biases will limit his reach”, is standard boilerplate that is true of every book ever written (including the review I just quoted), and trotted out whenever the reviewer isn’t really friendly with the thrust of a book, but can’t find something specific to criticize.
UPDATE: I am in mind boggle. I am about to praise yet another LATimes editorial, which happens to quote Larry Schweikart approvingly on the matter of the guilt of the Rosenbergs in spying for the Soviet Union (which is established beyond shadow of doubt, despite the nay-saying of the Left). If you’re a regular reader, you know how rarely I approve of major media reportage and opinion, but this is spot on.
I haven’t read this new book yet, but if it’s up to the author’s usual standards, it will be excellent. I’ll let you know.
Aug 29 2008
The Left at Christian Universities, part 5: Silencing Free Expression the Gentle, Positive Way
This is a post in the chain on “The Left at Christian Universities”. The last, on diversity, was The Left at Christian Univs, part 4: Diversity.
It now appears that at least portions of the American academy are waking up to the threat against free speech and academic freedom represented by speech codes and “hate speech” laws, even in other nations.
Beware of Canada, where academic freedom is in jeopardy. That’s the message of a growing number of eminent scholars within the American Political Science Association (APSA) who have signed a petition expressing concern about presenting their work in Toronto, the expected location of the 2009 APSA conference.
And excerpts from the petition:
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