Posted on 07/22/2007 10:24:53 PM PDT by goldstategop
On December 27, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote William Roscoe about his vision for the University of Virginia (chartered in 1819), "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error as long as reason is left free to combat it."
But what should happen 200 years later when our public universities avoid the testing of truths? Or suppress alternate opinions because they are unpopular or politically incorrect? Or no longer tolerate opinions now considered errors by the elite?
What happens when sociopolitical agendas or scientific paradigms dominate university views to the exclusion of a minority even being mentioned? When higher centers of learning fail to be places where all ideas are examined from a variety of reasoned perspectives?
What happens when the political and public educational pendulum swings from concern for the tyranny of sectarianism in Jefferson's day to secularism in ours?
The New Narrow-mindedness Of The American University
Dr. Jim Nelson Black, founder and senior policy analyst of the Sentinel Research Associates in Washington, D.C., in his excellent book "Freefall of the American University," documents well the clear biases pervading our public academic settings. Among this educational lopsidedness is the intentional training of students to distain America, freely experiment sexually, forcefully defend issues like abortion and homosexuality, as well as become cultural advocates for political correctness, relativism, globalization, green agendas and tolerance for all.
One of the primary ways these educative platforms are propagated is by recruiting and retaining faculty members who reflect and teach them. For example, citing from the polling firm of Luntz Research, Dr. Black notes that the 57 percent of faculty members represented in our most esteemed universities are Democrats (only 3 percent Republican) and 64 percent identify themselves as liberal (only 6 percent conservative). Moreover, 71 percent of them disagree that "news coverage of political and social issues reflects a liberal bias in the news media." And the No.1 answer they gave to the question, "Who has been the best president in the past 40 years?" was Bill Clinton (only 4 percent said Ronald Reagan).
The impact of secular progressive influence is being experienced by students across this land, tens of thousands of who have already cried out with complaints of academic inequity. A sampling of hundreds of student grievances from across the academic spectrum can even be found on websites like the Students for Academic Freedom and NoIndoctrination.org.
While I fully realize there are some great conservative people on the staffs of many higher learning campuses, I know virtually all of them would concur that a liberal bias in our academic curricula and system is overwhelmingly dominant and ubiquitous.
Is this present, restrictive and one-sided educational environment that which Thomas Jefferson and other founders intended for the future generations of America? Absolutely not! Rather than encourage free thinking, the U.S. academic system has turned Jefferson's plans for open education into our culture's system of indoctrination.
Ways To Stabilize The National Academic Imbalances
Among the list of correctives recommended by experts, I concur that our adherence to the following would bring a better balance to our nation's public education:
Don't blindly believe in a university's broad-base education, based solely upon its past reputation or a descriptive catalogue. Confront the administration. Ask the hard questions of course professors.
If you experience courses that create an intimidating atmosphere for expressing varied opinions, disparage alternative views, or advance one-sided political or social ideologies, report such courses and programs. Inform and educate the online community of your complaints as well. If our government is not going to hold our academic institutions accountable, then its citizens must.
Encourage your academic institution to accept The Academic Bill of Rights and The Students Bill of Rights.
Consider a counter-cultural mission by teaching or assisting in a public school, college, university, or even the U.S. Department of Education.
If proposed changes are not satisfactorily handled, consider alternative means of education. Private, charter and home schools and online educational opportunities not only flourish today but are producing some of the best and brightest in society.
Encourage your children to attend a private, conservative or Christian college or university.
Be an active and vocal part in your school's board, PTA or equivalent. Volunteer to assist in any way that can positively influence the academic current in the right direction. Work for installing Bible curriculum into your public school, which is even now happening in 373 school districts in 37 states.
Encourage you're teens and college-aged children to join The Rebelution – a counter-culture movement led by 19-year old twins Alex and Brett Harris, who are seeking to reinstitute and educate families on traditional values and beliefs. Like their parents Gregg and Sono Harris, so we should intentionally educate and build a legacy of leadership in our children, before culture and a secular education zaps it from them. Train your children in the tactics of America's culture war while they're at home, so they are equipped to engage it when they leave.
Additional counter-culture Blogs and resources can also be discovered at other teen sites, including pushbackignorance.blogspot.com, christianthink.blogspot.com, agenttimonline.com, and politicallyincorrectzone.blogspot.com.
When In Rome…
Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic advocate for public education and believed it was the key to preserving a republican government and society. Yet, he was equally an ardent opponent against "any tyranny over the mind of man." Whether that dominance is sectarianism or secularism, conservatism or liberalism, Jefferson (and I believe our other Founders) would oppose and seek to correct today's disproportions of instruction in our nation's public schools.
If Jefferson supported reform in public education as a prerequisite for a lasting republican nation, would he not expect the same of us today?
But will we follow his lead? Or will we allow the present path of degradation of the American educational spirit? If the latter, then I agree with Dr. Black's assessment, echoing the warning of Alexis de Tocqueville, in his classic work, "Democracy in America"
Because Roman civilization perished through barbarian invasions, we are perhaps too much inclined to think that that is the only way a civilization can die. If the lights that guide us ever go out, they will fade little by little, as if of their own accord….We therefore should not console ourselves by thinking that the barbarians are still a long way off. Some peoples may let the torch be snatched from their hands, but others stamp it out themselves.
Yeah, heaven forbid they should actually read or learn something they didn’t read or learn in school.
Ha Ha! I know it! I did 15 years in the Army and THEN went to college and got my degree in Business. I wanted to grab every professor..
I met one or two Conservatives teaching, but by far and large, it was the tired old liberals spewing forth their tired old talking points. I used to argue, but then I just got tired of it.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or “starlet”
Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling).
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?
Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-capped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!
Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin’, darlin’?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin’).
Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
L’autre soir un air froid d’opera m’alita;
Son fele — bien fol est qui s’y fie!
Il neige, le decor s’ecroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie?
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I’m dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.
Officer, officer, there they go—
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.
Officer, officer, there they are—
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out and take cover.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.
Very cool article. I didn’t know Chucky was writing a column. I checked out the other ones and was really impressed. http://www.wnd.com/news/archives.asp?AUTHOR_ID=274
I prefer this version by Jimi Humbert Hendrix
Dolores Haze was in my brain,
lately things don’t seem the same,
actin’ funny but I don’t know why
‘scuse me while I kiss the sky.
Dolores Haze all around,
don’t know if I’m coming up or down.
Am I happy or in misery?
Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me.
Dolores Haze was in my eyes,
don’t know if it’s day or night,
you’ve got me blowing, blowing my mind
is it tomorrow or just the end of time?
That's not the point. Quotes should always be attributed.
We did Hamlet in high school.
Ah, but can you name the opera to whose music the "Gilligan's Island" castaways set "Hamlet?" It was Bizet's "Carmen."
There, I've just proved that I am both culturally literate and culturally illiterate.
We did Hamlet in high school.
This is neither the time or the place for sexual confessions of your youth.
.
Seems the profs HATED engineers and loved to flunk us. So we technically stopped being engineering students for a year, got our A's (the courses were pud, full of business and liberal arts majors who did a great job of holding up the bottom of the curve.) In their favor at least those classes had girls in them.
color me immature, i laughed my behind off at your post ; )
Well, who am I to criticize if some people like a little Danish...But the real question is: was he any good? I mean, was he a great dane?
The barbarians are not only in the gates, they are running the city and are now feeding the Christians to the lions ....
Someone linked to this website, which in turn has this tidbit:
http://www.thefire.org/
“After a months-long campaign led by FIRE, the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) has reached a settlement with Professor Walter Kehowski, allowing him to return to teaching classes in the fall. In March, Kehowski was placed on forced administrative leave and faced possible termination because he e-mailed George Washington’s Thanksgiving address to the MCCCD community last November. Kehowski found the address on Pat Buchanan’s website and linked to the site, where Buchanan also discussed his views on immigration and other topics, in the e-mail. Some MCCCD employees were offended, and Kehowski was charged with violating district policies. A confidentiality agreement prohibits either side from discussing the details of the settlement, but Kehowski affirms that he is satisfied with the outcome...”
Emailing the words of our First President is now a firing offense?!?!
“P.S. I was in a checkout line the other night and the clerk noticed .... went on to how they talk about MB in Rock and Roll class at the local college.”
With that kind of “education”, this man is now qualified to ... continue to be a clerk.
The Liberal Arts is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Killed by the post-modernist Left. No matter. The University is becoming obsolete anyway. The Liberal Arts originally representing knowledge of the high Middle Ages. As time progressed, science and the ‘humanities’ became more distinct, the latter becoming, since the time of Buckley’s ‘God and Man at Yale’, a cesspool of cultural antagonism towards freedom, civility, and traditional mores. In other words, the left ruined it.
All those classics that the University refuses to teach while they are teaching good time rock-n-roll? You can get them all in the Gutenberg project files - for free. consider the possibility that literally thousands of textbooks are now available for free via bitTorrent, and hours of lecture are becoming more available over time, for free. It’s a bizarro world where the product sold by elite universities is substantively cr*p, but the ‘prestige’ goes far beyond the reality now.
Want to learn something? The last place to look would be a University or College; on the internet is any useful or useless fact you can to pick up. Want to pick up knowledge? There is no ‘knowledge’ in the hollowed out shell of the post-modernist humanities, just a jumble of incoherent and false marxist dialectis mixed with ‘decontructivist’ attacks on the concept of knowledge itself. The University is now fully close-minded to all the core cultural values that sustain our civilization.
Chuck Norris is right. unless you are seeking the specific professional skill education to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer, or unless you are studying science or math, you will not get much of value from the university. If you buy a humanities education in all but a few select schools , you are simply funding marxist professors to rant and propagandize. find a way to get a basic ‘core curriculum’ on the cheap, via internet-based distance learning, and save the $100,000 and give it to your kid to start a business.
He's a clean cut, articulate guy, I neglected to ask his area of study, so I can't comment on his future. But he didn't strike me as the pants down around the butt type, going home and smoking.. whatever, and smacking around his ho.
And while it was funny at the time, I can see some study of pop culture being relevant. And as loath as I am to admit it; the golden era of rock and roll did have a profound impact (for good and bad) on history, and here's the part I loath; that era is far enough back to be considered history today.
Thankfully, it is not yet "ancient" history.
But you're right, I'd like to see more of the classics taught. After all, our founders were classically educated, and it would seem to me that having a good understanding of the world that came before, will help us to keep the world we have built.
hamlet’s good, but do we remember where this little tidbit came from ...
“mom always said, don’t play ball in the house.”
teeman
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