Posted on 03/12/2009 7:49:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
Education: A new survey shows America's professors downgrading the classics and elevating social activism as a teaching goal. There must be cheaper ways to train community organize.
Based on responses by 22,562 professors at 372 colleges and universities during the 2007-08 academic year, the survey found that only 34.5% placed high value on teaching the classic works of Western civilization.
Far more — 58.5% — said it was important to mold students into agents of social change; 55.5% made it a priority to "instill in students a commitment to community service."
These are numbers from slightly before the Obama era, but the president does seem to be riding a trend with his change-agent message.
Three years earlier, for instance, only 36.4% of respondents said it was important to promote community service. In general, goals that used to be considered nonacademic were gaining favor.
Helping students "develop personal values" was cited as an important goal by 66.1% in the latest survey, an increase of 15.3 percentage points.
More than 70% saw developing "moral character" as a key part of their job, compared to 57% in the earlier survey. Politics aside, college is getting to look like a sort of secular Sunday school.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Seems like they should teach the classics in high school.
Yep. That is why I quit teaching. If I ever go back, it will be a small Conservative Christian college.
After that, geometry, trig, and algebra.
Then linear algebra and calculus.
Those who can't handle that, off to arts class, the athletic field, or trade school.
Abolish the fields of psychology, sociology, ethnic/womyn's studies, political science, and anthropology.
/rant off>
Cheers!
They'll lack the intellect and critical thinking skills to make sound decisions based on reason, therefore being easily led by articulate and charming politicians who make empty promises.
Funny. In the sciences, we still get LaPlace, Fourier, Einstein, etc. Somehow, our side of the house still expects answers that work.
Too bad about the lib arts side. Those of you with real lib arts degrees from many years ago might start getting those clowns out of the classroom. It’s your degrees that are loosing their cachet,not ours.
Of course, should you answer “global warming” I’ll readily concede. Darn....
>secular Sunday school.
W/o moral absolutes, this is ludicrous.
No! I like psychology! lol.
I’m not sure why you are proposing to abolish psychology. The television/Bob Newhart branch of psychology represents one small part of the field. Cognitive, physiological and quantitative psychologists, for example, never treat patients. They spend their time in the laboratory.
Cheers!
Most Biased College Courses in America
By Fox News
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, March 12, 2009
Transcript of Hannity’s interview with David Horowitz from “Hannity,” March 9, 2009.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: It is common knowledge that U.S. universities are predominantly liberal, but judging by some of the classes being offered, well, it looks like blatant radicals are running these schools. And they’re not even trying to hide it.
Now the University of Texas features a course in Che Guevara’s Latin America where students serve a class relations in the countries mentioned by Che in his memoirs. Then they examine the Cuban revolution and Che’s rise to power.
Now if that’s not left enough for you, well, you can always transfer to the University of California at Santa Cruz and take community organizing where students are required to do a minimum of four hours a week of practical organizing with a community group. The professor is a member of the Santa Cruz City Council who describes himself as a radical and political activist for life.
David Horowitz, he details all of this disturbing information in his brand-new book “One-Party Classroom,” and he joins us now.
• Video: Watch Sean Hannity’s interview
Good to see you, David.
DAVID HOROWITZ, “ONE-PARTY CLASSROOM” AUTHOR: Hey, Sean.
HANNITY: Before we get to the specifics of your book, and the book is phenomenal, and you outline, you know, frightening scenarios. Here’s a question I have. When I ask people what the role of the U.S. is, you know, should the U.S. provide health care and daycare and housing, and are they responsible for cradle-to-grave society, many people say yes when I interview them on our “Man on the Street” segments.
HOROWITZ: Well.
HANNITY: Is this a result of...
HOROWITZ: They’ve been to a university. Yes. One of these Santa Cruz courses describes itself this way. The seminar — the goal of this seminar is to learn how to organize a revolution, and then it goes on to explain that that revolution is anti-capitalist, anti-global capitalism.
What’s happened to our universities, we do — Jacob Laksin and I wrote this book. We have 150 courses from 10. There are 4,000 universities. So I estimate there are somewhere between 10 and 30,000 indoctrination courses, that is, courses designed that when you come out of them, you have a radical Marxist anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-free market point of view. And you only get books on one side of this course.
HANNITY: Do you think this is designed to condition students, young people, to think that socialism, redistribution, Marxism — you know, to each according to his need, from each according to his ability — are you saying this is a strategy designed to indoctrinate a nation? Is it that severe or am I overstating it?
HOROWITZ: No, it is a strategy. It derives from an Italian Marxist named Antonio Gramsci who saw in the 1930s already that the proletariat was not going to make the revolution, the working class. And so what he said was you have to change the culture, the ideas, and that’s why radicals went into the universities and became professors and then redesigned the courses.
I describe at the University of California, Bettina Aptheker, 20 years on the central committee in the Communist Party, took over the Introduction to Women’s Studies course, made it political, made the whole department a department of feminist studies.
HANNITY: Right.
HOROWITZ: And was told by her communist — other communist professors that it’s her revolutionary duty to do this.
HANNITY: All right, Bettina, Ward Churchill, you were on “Hannity & Colmes” one night, and you just debated Churchill, then he came on the program and I got in a big fight with him. But Ward Churchill, Bill Ayers, unrepentant terrorist, now he’s a rock star on college campus around the country.
HOROWITZ: Unrepentant terrorist, compulsive liar. He’s lied about every — you know, he — to this day he says that he was protesting the Vietnam War. He was setting bombs when Jimmy Carter was president, three years after all Americans...
HANNITY: But here’s my question. How do these guys — you know, what hen Barack Obama said about Ayers, just use that as an example, let everybody knows, well, he’s a well-respected professor.
HOROWITZ: He is. He’s a distinguished professor. He was a moron when he was — I knew him when he was a radical. He was an idiot. Very shallow person, very dedicated to the destruction of this country.
HANNITY: How is it that there’s so many of them? I mean, that’s I guess the thing.
HOROWITZ: Because they recruit each other. I mean the — you know, you want a job? You know you’ve...
HANNITY: Academia.
HOROWITZ: Right out the string. You know there’s no more demonstrations, come into academia, you can work six hours a week, you can make $100,000 a year. You have a lifetime job, you get four months paid vacation, why not?
HANNITY: You have...
HOROWITZ: And then you have all these captive students that you can indoctrinate.
HANNITY: And they’ve got to regurgitate. This is their position. The students, when they’ve got to regurgitate the lines that they feed you otherwise they risk getting poor grades, they risk getting into law school, medical school.
HOROWITZ: In every women’s studies program in the country, you have to believe in order to get a decent grate that gender, that is the differences between men and women that are not anatomical, is socially constructed, that it is determined by society, not by biology.
You know, you have — if you go to the biology department or the neuro science department, you’ll find out that men and women are different. They’re hard wired to be different.
HANNITY: It’s interesting.
HOROWITZ: What any 5-year-old can tell you, but not in the universities.
HANNITY: It gets serious as even — as it relates to the issue of terrorism. You have a chapter “Uptown Madrassa, Columbia University.” And we’ve gone over some of the people that have been teaching there over the years but...
HOROWITZ: Yes, the Middle Eastern studies departments are supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. During the Gaza war Hamas is a genocidal, Jew- hating, America hating, terrorist organization.
Professors on campuses across the country in conjunction with the Muslim Student Associations, which is part of the Muslim brotherhood and the jihad, organized demonstrations to attack Israel. This is almost universal in the Middle Eastern studies department, and it’s part of the political recruitment structure in the university.
HANNITY: And the net result of this is now we condition a generation of people in this country to think — to not read the constitution, the words of our framers and founders, but to actually believe that it is the responsibility of society to provide everything for them.
HOROWITZ: Sure, and if the government provides everything and it can take everything away, it’s a totalitarian plan, and if you wondered where all those Obama activists, all the ACORN activists came from, they came through American universities and were trained in courses like that.
HANNITY: All right, it’s called “One-Party Classroom.” David, thank you for being with us.
HOROWITZ: Thank you.
HANNITY: Appreciate it as always.
Never forget one thing. Education was turned over to the left in order to change the society. Republican and Democratic administrations have allowed this degeneration of our culture to take place.
Academic credentials have been de-valued and average competence in the workforce is abysmal. Thank your government for everything that has happened to your country. It has taken a long time to create a society that would elect Barack Obama. Welcome to America. A third world nation. God Help Us All.
What do you mean, “if they keep this up”? It’s already happened!;))
American Universities..grooming the societal parasites of tomorrow
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