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A Professor’s Tough Examination—Of Our Higher Education System
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | July 18, 2018 | George Leef

Posted on 07/18/2018 5:49:52 AM PDT by reaganaut1

There are lots of people in our higher education system who claim that it is “the envy of the world” and just needs more money to graduate more young Americans with the degrees that are supposedly in great demand. One naysayer who disputes that rosy picture is Professor Warren Treadgold, who teaches history at Saint Louis University. He has just written a book entitled The University We Need that gives readers a decidedly negative assessment of our higher education system.

Something like the mafia’s code of silence—the academic omerta—keeps most professors from speaking unpleasant truths about the system, Treadgold argues, leaving the desperately needed criticism to outsiders who don’t really know what’s going on. He has stepped in to rectify that criticism gap with a book that lands solid punches on every page.

“Universities,” he writes, “have lost interest in teaching great literature and art, empirical knowledge, and critical thinking, which used to be considered the main functions of universities. Instead, our universities want to teach only leftist writings and ideas, most of them very recent, while teaching other writings and ideas only as examples of oppression that should be condemned.”

At very few colleges and universities do students gain anything resembling a coherent education. What they are offered instead is a smorgasbord of mediocre courses, often very narrow in scope (because professors prefer teaching their specialties), taught mostly by faculty who have been molded by the “progressive” and “postmodern” concepts that have smothered most academic disciplines and are gaining ground even in hard fields.

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...


TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS: college; education

1 posted on 07/18/2018 5:49:52 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

I know the professor the article speaks about, and his book with its criticism of academia is like preaching to the choir here on FreeRepublic, because so many of us have paid attention for years to so many sources that have critiqued the ills in academia.

That does not make the report from the Martin Center useless, if we take it upon ourselves to take the best of what we get here and share it outside of FreeRepublic as widely as we can.

If, rejection from any particular recipients is likely if you share the FreeRepublic source, then share the original source; sometimes it can change how what you share is initially received and thus more likely to be read.

I try to use FreeRepublic that way with everything, to expand the reach of what we share here.

And yes, I use FaceBook and other blogs, and yes FaceBook has me tagged as “Very Conservative”. Maybe they think that is a “warning” to others. I wear the tag proudly.


2 posted on 07/18/2018 6:06:57 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: reaganaut1

“Professor Warren Treadgold, who teaches history at Saint Louis University. “

Finally, a libarts prof worth of the title “Professor”.
I’ll bet his classes are a delight to attend, his tests are not easy, and his students are not SJW dumbasses.


3 posted on 07/18/2018 6:08:17 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: reaganaut1

bttt


4 posted on 07/18/2018 6:09:00 AM PDT by aberaussie
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To: Da Coyote

Oops, that’s “worthy”, not “worth”. In any case, this prof is to be admired.


5 posted on 07/18/2018 6:09:27 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: reaganaut1

Prof Anthony Esolen was chased out of Providence College by an administration approved leftist student gang, he translated Dante’s Divine Comedy, teaches this missing classic cultural curriculum from 10 great ancient civilizations. He says in the 1930s, Thomas Dewey at Columbia Teachers College stripped out the core Western Civilization curriculum which teaches WHY we exercise core values in public life. Esolen says “I’ve got the textbooks to prove” that this curriculum was used in high schools before Dewey purged it. But by the time of Why Johnny Can’t Read in the 1950s, there were no more teachers who’d been trained in Western Civ. One doesn’t give what one doesn’t have. This made us vulnerab!e to the Frankfurt School invasion of the New Left’s Herbert Marcuse to “make Western civilization stink” in 3 generations of college classrooms.


6 posted on 07/18/2018 6:14:08 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: Wuli

Wuli, what to do? Use John Senior’s 1,000 Good Books. http://www.kofc15693.org/john-seniors-list-of-1000-good-books/


7 posted on 07/18/2018 6:16:56 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
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To: reaganaut1

https://www.umass.edu/education/departments/sd/social-justice-doctor


8 posted on 07/18/2018 6:25:04 AM PDT by pabianice
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To: CharlesOConnell

YOU are now preaching to the choir. Just as to me the report is preaching to the choir here on FreeRepublic.

That does not make the report unworthy or useless. It still has good purpose, outside of those of us that have encountered so many sources demonstrating how lousy academia in the U.S. is.

But for the sheeple, the report is better than merely saying: “Use John Senior’s 1,000 Good Books.”, because the critique of the professor is from inside academia. It is more likely to be read by the people than some statement that attempts to tell someone all the good books they should read. The sheeple don’t understand that that is not what academia is already doing. They are stuck in the myth that academia has sold the public on, that it is professional, unbiased, expert, and the top of its class. And it has been very successful selling that myth.

The sheeple don’t need a simpleton’s lecture that says “here, read these 100 books”. They need to understand how academia is operating, how it has an embeded political orthodoxy that denies as invalid anything not inside that bubble, and that preaches propaganda and does not teach.

It began in the humanities and is now rapidly spreading in STEM courses.


9 posted on 07/18/2018 6:39:44 AM PDT by Wuli
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