Posted on 10/03/2015 12:10:20 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
Western culture is not transmitted through the genes. It has to be taught to each succeeding generation.
To transmit this heritage, we depend on our schools and colleges.
Never has a public trust been more misplaced.
We are reminded of the rupturing of our cultural pipeline by the current debate over curricular changes at Stanford University.
In a speech at Stanford on April 18, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett blasted that University for scrapping its basic course, "Western Thought," which has been required for all freshmen.
The "Western Thought" course was introduced in 1980. It was a step toward rebuilding the worthy curriculum that was trashed in the 1960s and '70s at the hands of nihilistic students and deranged faculty.
The course consisted of the study of great books that are the landmarks in the long development of Western culture.
"Western Thought" from its inception became the target of a small but loud gang of protesters.
Their chant in a demonstration last year, led by Rev. Jesse Jackson--"Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's got to go!"--
tells us what they are and what they want.
Their ostensible objection to the course is that white males are overrepresented in the reading list while women, blacks, American Indians, Hispanics etc. are omitted.
The Stanford Faculty Senate voted 39-4 with 5 abstentions to gut "Western Thought."
Nine of the 15 required books and all 18 "highly recommended" books are dropped, to be replaced by "works by women, minorities and persons of color."
Whatever may be the proper role of such books in education, they are no substitute for the great classics that are the foundation stones of our culture.
Choosing books by authors' gender or ethnic category rather than by the books' quality ought to embarrass all educators.
“.... two Marxist theorists went to work on it: Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary. Gramsci said the workers will never see their true class interests, as defined by Marxism, until they are freed from Western culture, and particularly from the Christian religion – that they are blinded by culture and religion to their true class interests. Lukacs, who was considered the most brilliant Marxist theorist since Marx himself, said in 1919, “Who will save us from Western Civilization?” He also theorized that the great obstacle to the creation of a Marxist paradise was the culture: Western civilization itself.”
http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/
Colleges once understood that their purpose was the transmittal of the details and history of Western Civilization.
The precedent for losing that mission was set by ‘land grant’ colleges, which moved the purpose toward being mere trade schools.
The trade school trend took over after WWII with the GI Bill, leaving the Western Civ part as an afterthought that was soon taken over entirely by nihilists.
Now Western Civilization itself is despised by everyone from clergy and professors to motorcycle gangs.
bmp
Another leftist victory for the coalition of Third World peoples in their relentless drive to conquer us.
That’s because people in the West never lived without it.
Yet
Funny that JJ would chant hey hey ho ho, western culture has got to go. Western culture is the only culture that has outlawed black slavery.
When I was in high school in Florida in the 1970’s, they called it simply “Americanism vs Communism”. No bones about it, the curriculum taught that the American Way of Life was good and Communism was bad.
We didn’t have conservative commentators or shelves of conservative books to read, so we read and discussed what the communists themselves had to say and then we looked at what they actually did.
The funny thing is that the “liberal teachers” of the time did not push back the slightest bit. They were all 1960’s hippies, but they knew that only in America could they have actually effected change as they did without dying by the millions in prisons and work camps.
Today’s Progressives do not understand that simple truth.
Ping.
So we have feminism to turn women against men, the “youth movement” of the sixties to turn the young against their parents, black radicalism to turn blacks against whites, environmentalism to turn everyone against business and capitalism and the gay rights movement to completely destroy the concept of sexual morality.
It is very clear now that I look back on it for forty plus years.
Let’s see....blacks and half-bred “latinos” are “excluded”....could it be that Europe “the West” was populated by white people?
“Western Thought” has brought the world (or,at least,he parts that have embraced it)the telephone,PC,cell phone,747,penicillin,juries,prosperity,elections,”vacations”(among many other things).Other types of thought...no so much.
A couple of decades ago I heard of an exchange student from Russia talk of his experience in an American university.
The overriding impression left on him was the extent of the hatred for the United States in the American colleges.
He said as much antipathy the Russkies have toward America, it was nothing compared to the venom his professors spewed on a daily basis.
I don’t think anyone would be surprised that this attitude has since filtered down to K-12 public schools as well.
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven replaced by rap ‘artists’ muttering “Kill the police” in a monotone
Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt replaced by Andy Warhol’s soup cans
Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton replaced by lesbian West Indian “authors”
The government will have to budget a lot more money for unemployment when these folks start graduating.
continuation of the article:
The name of the course was changed from “Western Thought” to “Culture, Ideas, and Values.” The Senate voted to drop “Western” from the course description as “inappropriate,” “anachronistic,” “provincial,” and “because of its symbolic significance.”
Class discussion (in each quarter of the academic year) is to include “substantial attention to” issues of class, race, and gender.”
The Stanford Senate’s action was not an educational but a political decision.
In Secretary Bennett’s words, “A great university was brought low by the very forces which modern universities come into being to oppose—ignorance, irrationality and intimidation.”
True to form in answering Secretary Bennett was Stanford University President Donald Kennedy, who has appeared feeble of mind and character in previous radical campaigns. They include the so-far unsuccessful attempt
to divorce Stanford from the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace; and the successful campaign to prevent the Reagan presidential library from locating at Stanford (which would also have put the University
in electronic contact with all presidential libraries around the country).
President Kennedy, who had welcomed the change as “a significant improvement,” appeared bothered chiefly by Bennett’s charge that the University had been “intimidated.” Actually, the disgraceful behavior of the
faculty and administration would be less disheartening if it could be explained by intimidation. The other explanations—ignorance and irrationality—are far more destructive of a university than cowardice.
DARTMOUTH, CCNY
If Stanford were the exception, we doubt that Secretary Bennett would have bothered to denounce it. One termite is not going to bring down your house. One rotting university is not going to bring down Western civilization. But when you see one termite, you can be sure there are more.
The Stanford disease permeates our university system.
Dartmouth recently made headlines for its prosecution and persecution of students who dared to publish a criticism of a rubbishy course of a black professor. That episode was only the latest in a series of punitive
strikes at students who challenge Dartmouth’s ultra-left faculty and administration.
At The City College of New York, another of our many festering institutions, fascinating examples of rot have transpired. College President Bernard W. Harleston wrote the Department of English last November 10 complaining about a line in its newspaper advertisement of a scholarship to study English literature— “ONLY THE BEST NEED APPLY.”
Wrote President Harleston, “For a variety of reasons, I find this statement inappropriate, insensitive, and inconsistent with the policies of the City College of New York. I do not want to see such a formulation within any future ads from City.”
“Insensitive” to whom, we wonder. Mediocrities and incompetents?
“Inconsistent” with what policies? To encourage and support mediocrities and incompetents?
The answer, we fear, is that the ingrained racism of
black President Harleston leads him to believe that black students cannot be “the best,” so scholarships for “the best” are insensitive to blacks.
This kind of insult to blacks and to education is now orthodox college policy.
The education produced by the Harlestons of this country was described by a courageous student who attended a course in the Black Studies program and reported on it in a City College student newspaper, THE CAMPUS, on April 15.
The professor, in the limited time available between his frequent absences and the ten-to-twenty minutes left by his late arrivals, told the class about the biological inferiority of whites and how the space shuttle’s blowing up was probably the best thing to happen to Amer-
ica in a long time because the space program needs something to slow it down before white people start spreading their filth throughout the universe.
“What do you think we should do about the white people?” asked a student during a particularly virulent attack by the professor on the “white value system.”
“If I had my way,” said the professor, “I’d wipe them off the face of the earth.”
And so it goes in higher education.
Hey, hey, ho, hum, wait till you see the culture to come.
This is so depressing. Our whole country is being dismantled right before our eyes.
The professor, in the limited time available between his frequent absences and the ten-to-twenty minutes left by his late arrivals, told the class about the biological inferiority of whites and how the space shuttle’s blowing up was probably the best thing to happen to Amer-
ica in a long time because the space program needs something to slow it down before white people start spreading their filth throughout the universe.
“What do you think we should do about the white people?” asked a student during a particularly virulent attack by the professor on the “white value system.”
“If I had my way,” said the professor, “I’d wipe them off the face of the earth.”
I look back on my life and remember having such interesting and fun debates with people, then we’d go have a cookout or see a movie. ..together. There wasn’t ever a sense that those with whom I disagreed were evil, or bad. We were friends. Today, my world is smaller. It’s not possible to discuss ideas and philosophies with the left. These former friends and acquaintances inhabit a country in a world far from me.
It’s a polarized nation and we’ve all lost something American, something irreplaceable.
It went faster when “music” suddenly had no melody.
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