I am a history professor and one of the major issues in our field is that conservatives have largely abandoned the field of ideas. It is an ideological surrender by the right, not a victory by the left.
It is true that there are still a few of us who try to teach American history as if we were the good guys, but in the history departments of this nation conservatives are vastly outnumbered.
Why is this?
I think many of the posts here will surely illustrate the problem. A sizable portion of people who claim to be “conservative” actually denigrate traditional fields like history and instead urge their children to enter more lucrative fields. For them college is nothing more than a job training program or a very expensive vocational school. They don’t view college as a discussion of great ideas, or a rumination on what Russell Kirk once called “the permanent things”. For the short sighted among us a college course in American History, Philosophy, Literature etc. is a “total waste of time”. If it doesn’t make enough money to buy the big McMansion and new car then it is meaningless.
This leaves entire swaths of the university staffed by foaming at the mouth liberals. So do keep this anti-intellectual current in mind when we complain about how so many the social science professors are raving liberals. We only have ourselves and our so-called conservative allies to blame.
Good post, thanks.
OK, let’s discuss this a bit.
Let’s break down the choices here:
I love history. Study history on my own, for my own edification. No one has ever had to “make” me study history. I’ve always loved history and how knowing something about it helps explain what is occurring today. Teaching history doesn’t require a student be pursuing liberal arts degree.
But let’s think about the choice you’re laying out here:
I got a BS in engineering, and I retired by the time I was 40.
You’re telling me that I should have gotten a liberal arts BA, then gotten on the PhD track, piling up more student debt, then having to put up with the tenure BS in a university (while being a conservative - boy I’m really liking my chances here), to hold down a job where I might have been in a non-stop conflict with the lunatic liberals in a university.
Let’s think about where I’d be at age 40 in your plan: A job where I’m going to be miserable, ostracized by my co-workers (and likely the administration) and get paid rather poorly for putting up with this.
Oh yea, sign me *right* up for that.
Here’s a little nugget for you: In Silicon Valley, we called stock options “F... You” money. Because after you reached a certain amount, and some idiot was telling you what to do, you realized that you didn’t need to put up with their crap any more. You told them what to do, in graphic detail, you packed your desk, and you walked out, a free man.
Today, I’m a free man. No one tells me what to do. That’s what is lucrative, not the money.
And part of what I do with my time is pursue “the permanent things,” to the great consternation of liberals who have confounded indoctrination with education in the American academy. If nothing else, it leaves them gob-smacked and wondering just what they taught in my engineering school.
It seems that high schools, colleges and universities used to exist to educate, now they are vocational training schools. Those who denigrate liberal arts fail to understand the difference between education and training. The founding fathers were educated men, computer science graduates are trained men. When there are no more truly educated men we will understand the real meaning of Hell on Earth.