Posted on 09/19/2012 4:00:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many of the nation's colleges and universities have become cesspools of indoctrination, intolerance, academic dishonesty and an "enlightened" form of racism. This is a decades-old trend. In a 1991 speech, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned: "The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind."
Unfortunately, parents, taxpayers and donors have little knowledge of the extent of the dishonesty and indoctrination. There are several clues for telling whether there's academic dishonesty and indoctrination. One is to see whether a college spends millions for diversity and multiculturalism centers and hires directors of diversity and inclusion, managers of diversity recruitment, associate deans for diversity, and vice presidents of diversity. See whether colleges spend money to indoctrinate incoming freshmen with programs such as "The Tunnel of Oppression," in which, among other things, students call one another vile racial and sexual names in order to develop "oppression awareness."
An American Council of Trustees and Alumni survey in 2004 of 50 selective colleges found that 49 percent of students complained of professors frequently injecting political comments into their courses even if they had nothing to do with the subject, while 46 percent reported that professors used their classrooms to promote their own political views. One English professor told his students that "conservatism champions racism, exploitation and imperialist war." The "critical race studies" program at UCLA School of Law says that its aim is to "transform racial justice advocacy." At an East Coast college, an exam was found with questions such as, "How does the United States 'steal' the resources of other (third world) countries?" The answer marked correct was, "We steal through exploitation." An economics professor told his class, "The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world." A Germanic languages professor told his class, "Bush is a moron, a simpleton and an idiot."
A recent National Association of Scholars report, "A Crisis of Competence," reported that the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute found that "more faculty now believe that they should teach their students to be agents of social change than believe that it is important to teach them the classics of Western civilization." Use of public funds for private advocacy not only is academic dishonesty but also borders on criminality.
In today's college climate, we shouldn't be surprised by the outcomes. A survey conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut gave 81 percent of the seniors a D or an F in their knowledge of American history. Many students could not identify Valley Forge, words from the Gettysburg Address or even the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that only 31 percent of college graduates can read and understand a complex book.
A 2007 national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions," by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, found that earning a college degree does little to increase knowledge of America's history. Among the questions asked were: "Who is the commander in chief of the U S. military?" "Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II." The average score among college graduates was 57 percent, or an F. Only 24 percent of college graduates knew the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States.
A 2006 survey conducted by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management found that only 24 percent of employers thought graduates of four-year colleges were "excellently prepared" for entry-level positions.
Our sad state of college education proves what my grandmother admonished: "If you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing, you can't do what you're supposed to do."
It is absolutely impossible to overstate the position which Liberals have and ABUSE on campus.
Your hair would stand up if you could see and hear some of the monkeyshines that go on here.
Great insights. Thanks for posting.
You are welcome
It is not just universities. Last night a friend told me her eighth grade daughter had to write a report about Obama and she cannot write anything negative. Free speech in school is a thing of the past.
As usual, Dr. Williams hits it out of the park, a walk-off homer. Unfortunately, even Dr. Williams’ employer, George Mason University, does have an office for Equity and Diversity Services. It seems that the scriptural admonition about the mote in your brother’s eye while overlooking the beam in your own applies here.
I think Dr. Williams is just the guy to tilt against that windmill. It’s unlikely he would achieve his goal but it sure would provide for some great column material. Of course, Mike Adams kind of already does that schtick.
To be fair, if they arrive at college unable to decode and comprehend basic texts, the college doesn't have much to work with.
Thanks, Kaslin, excellent post.
I think this is one of the greatest dangers and evils in the U.S.
Not only does the college system deliberately churn out millions of left-wing activists every year, but it also uses a nasty procedure of income redistribution to do it.... working families pay obscene amounts of money for inflated tuition to subsidize the offspring of the families that don’t work.
The amount of foreign aid we shell out every year notwithstanding, eh? Well, maybe we should cut all these ungrateful countries off and see how long they survive.
If students would take science and engineering curricula as opposed to “queer studies” or “Beatles lyrics studies” more than half the current college population would be forced to drop out due to being unable to handle the work on the most basic level.
Sometimes I wish I could turn myself back to a school kid and go back knowing what I know and knowing that the opinions of teachers like the one your child has to deal with are totally unimportant.
And here’s the essay I’d write:
“President Obama is the best president we’ve ever had, except for maybe Johnson, FDR and Lincoln - but that’s just maybe - he’s probably better than them too.
People in all 57 states know how wonderful he is. People all over the world recognize his greatness, even those who speak the Austrian language”
Look at how much he is loved by the military - even Naval corpsemen hold him in high regard.
Barack Hussein Obama - mmmh, mmmh, mmmhh - so great, no one is allowed to say anything negative about him. All hail President Obama.”
Straight talk, as usual, from Walter Williams.
The Officers of our Armed Forces are drawn from this pool.
Recall the political commissars of the Soviet Union, whose job it was to maintain ideological purity in the ranks? In our military are "Diversity Officers" who exercise the same purpose. They enforce PC speech and thought codes. The people who we think exist to defend our rights, may not exercise their religious rights if they conflict with DOD policy on Islam and homos.
An officer corps that is ignorant of our most cherished traditions, and is actually indoctrinated to oppose those traditions, poses a tremendous danger to this republic.
If crap goes in crap comes out.
You hire this great mass of educated liberal idiots and you place them among the young impressionable minds of America's youth and what you get is more minds filled with Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and Obamaism.
Remember the old saying Those who can do, those who cannot teach. What we get teaching are those who have spent their lives among academics and have no idea what it is to work for a living.Like Obama, they have never seen a real days work.
From an early age, students realize that they cannot trust their own intuition or common sense to reach the "right" answer so must wait to be told the "teacher approved" answer to regurgitate.
This stifles independent thought and cripples them throughout their lives.
Or is that the plan?
That's called a ‘Praetorian’ guard
I told her I would preface every statement with “He says.”
“He says the recession is over. He says he has created jobs.”
It will be hard to write complete paragraphs with anything positive to back up those statements.
I don't know whether either of you is old enough to remember, but time was (as recently as the 60s or even a bit later), when high school teachers spoke of whether a high school student was "college material," i.e., one who was bright enough to benefit from an academic education -- but that was before a college "education" came to be regarded as a civil right! ;-)
The one thing the colleges can’t control is the student’s rebellion against authority. You see it in the youth use of the phrase “gay”. As in that’s so gay. If the kids arrive at school with a good base to start the indoctrination does not work. Remember most of these liberals grew up rebelling against authority. Now they are authority and handle it no better.
After two, four or six years of only hearing one side it is enlightening to graduates to find the real world is not academia. Yes some fall into the trap of believing the crap they spew but I would believe in no greater percentage than before.
I think the biggest problem with college today is graduating students that haven’t learned a thing and seem unprepared for the real world, but hasn’t that always been so.
So many things have changed since then. College is no longer (even to the extent it once was) about high-level academics. Many "teachers" ... daycare providers, really ... wouldn't recognize an academically competent student if he talked to them in words of three syllables or diagrammed sentences or produced geometric proofs.
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