Posted on 04/28/2009 6:07:34 AM PDT by Military family member
Several years ago I wrote an essay addressing liberal bias in the (mainstream) media. That essay reviewed a scholarly article by a sociologist who did a careful content analysis of leading newspapers. What I didn’t realize at the time was how many people take such statements as “the [mainstream]0 media is (liberally) biased” as an article of faith. The article concluded that the content examined didn’t show much liberal bias, indeed, more conservative bias than many are even willing to consider.
Sociologists are good at this kind of thing: debunking myths and taken-for-granted “truths.” It is never a good idea to try to suggest things may not be what they seem to the faithful. Nevertheless, I am going to do it again — call it the “sociological impulse.”
(Excerpt) Read more at tribstar.com ...
I'm teaching business classes this semester, and my conservative students are worried about disagreeing with their socialist and marxist economics teachers, and thus failing the classes.
Gosh.
Why in the world would anyone think that?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Does a wild bear sh*t in the woods?
Is ice cold?
Does Obama want the US to be a socialist country?
Liberal? NO
Marxist, Che Loving, Anti American treasonous talk??? You betcha.
The day will likely come when certain kinds of conservatives won’t even be accepted to college.
You must remember that an awful lot of tenured college professors are “refugees from Woodstock”. That alone should tell you something about their ideology.
To your students, it really depends on the teacher. I've found that in many classes it is an advantage, to some extent, of being conservative because you can better critique arguments and ideas that are discussed in class. Some subjects it is much easier to just accept the premise for purposes of policy discussion, like global warming exists and is human activity that causes it.
And there is an admission of liberal bias, in what this guy thinks is the opposite. Not so long ago, the quick definition of sociology was something like: "the study of human behavior in groups." Sometime since they've simply adopted the liberal "social inequality" notion as their "core".
And another very weak point is the idea that the bias varies across disciplines. Even if true, the problem with that is that all students must take several courses from the liberal arts areas, while courses in science and business and other areas most likely to have conservative professors are not required for all students.
Is that a trick question?
David Horowitz, please pick up a white courtesy phone.
Extra! Extra! read all about it, Social Science professor finds sociology professors free of political bias.
My experience as a conservative adult who likes to return to college for several days of classes every once in a while is, No. I've probably attended classes with 100 different professors over the past ten years or so. Maybe one or two have shown some pronounced political bias in their classes. To be sure, quite a few more hold left political views which come out when speaking to them after class. I do avoid the "gender studies" type classes which I'm sure are nothing but left-wing circle-jerks, but mainstream history, law, literature, and religion classes I've experienced a remarkably politics free, even at one of the most notoriously left universities in the country.
ML/NJ
What more needs to be said?
So way down into the text, in his discussion of how some academic disciplines care more about objective truth than opinion, we find:
"The core of sociology is the study of social inequality. Questions about social inequality or its effects on society are not high on conservative agendas; it happens to be central in liberal-left political agendas." [His words.]
But, the OBJECTIVE TRUTH is,
sociology is: "the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specif: the systematic study of the development, structure and behavior of organized groups of human beings".
Only a Marxist, Progressive or a Liberal finds "inequality" hidden between the lines of the classical meaning of sociology.
Then, he goes on to say that the study suggests most teachers do not employ political bias in their teaching [he says the study says] while he describes the comments on this topic by the study's author, as follows:
"Faculty disagree whether they should reveal their own political views when addressing politically controversial topics in class. Faculties’ views on this, Gross claims, cross-cut the disciplines."
Does that sound like "most" professors do not use their own political bias in their teaching?
But wait, that paragraph ends with Mr. Steiger's own INTERPRETATION of what the author of the study meant:
"In my read of his work, what varies is how “secure” the individual faculty member feels in their position at the university. White male tenured full professors are the most secure in sharing their political views in class while untenured, female, minority, professors are more guarded. My perception of this differs, but I’ve never conducted a systematic study, either."
And, at the end, we understand why he is an apologist for Liberal bias in academia:
Thomas L. Steiger is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Indiana State University. E-mail: tsteiger@isugw.indstate.edu.
.....go to any college campus and check out the bumper stickers in the faculty parking lot....then walk down the halls of the English Dept faculty offices and look at all the stickers/posters/cartoons stuck on their doors...it’s all the same: pro-abortion/anti-Bush/anti-logging/Che/anti-Republican/anti-war/pro-gay marriage ect.
....it’s mostly the young faculty that do this...they’re still stuck in rebellion....the older ones are just trying to hold on to get their pension....with the younger ones it’s strictly revenge of the nerds.
Well, I’m certainly not, unless you mean “classical liberal”. I sneer at central planning and other leftist notions whenever it seems opportune in my business calculus class. I’ll probably make even more fun ‘liberal’ (i.e. socialist) ideology when we hit the Leontieff input-output model that only really seems to be useful for central planning.
And, well, it doesn’t come up in other math courses.
My father sitting in a college clasroom in the 40’s shouted out that the professor was a communist. Then my father went to war and flew the Burma Hump.
This is shocking news! My feminist-marxist-liberation theology-postmodern-nihilistic-atheistic-humanist-professor totally refutes your claim.
In other news, is the sky blue? Film at 11..
I don’t know what your situation is, but my experience with my daughters ( one is a Sr. - one is a Jr.) at a public university has been reasonable. The youngest is fairly conservative, and she has never felt “picked on” or felt like she would receive a bad grade because she expressed conservative views. The oldest, said in four years of college, she only saw one instance where a professor “crossed the line” in the classroom. That’s actually not that bad IMO. I don’t know if it differs by region, they attend school in Oklahoma. FWIW, my favorite prof. in college was a flaming liberal - although you would have had a hard time figuring that out in the classroom. He challenged all of us, and you could see his passion was not ideology, but opening young minds to possibilities, to teach us to look at an idea from all sides. I learned how to think in that class. Young students should be so lucky to have such an instructor.—JM
AIDE: We’re concerned that the university harbors too many fellow traveler types....
GEN LESLIE GROVES (head of The Manhattan Project): Hell, where do they expect me to find scientists if not at the university?!
One could have a debate about whether "liberal" or socialist or Marxist would be the more accurate term.
But there are a LOT of left-wing nutjobs and kooks teaching at colleges and universities. They may not be the only assholes at the podium but are certainly in
the top of the competition.
The lecture I’m giving at 2:00PM is on Area Moments of Inertia.
Those are precious years to spend wasting listening to utterly worthless garbage pretending to be science.
Absolutely baffling to me.
To emerge from that or any other school one hundred thousand dollars in debt is absolutely insane.
The insanity of it negates any pretense that the person has received a formal education.
Formally educated people don't do anything that crazy or stupid.
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