Teaching American history has come down to this: race, class, gender
I’m old enough to remember the beginning of the push for courses that catered to special interest groups. Women’s Studies. Black Studies. Those were the big two at the beginning, and now no doubt there are many more.
At the time it seemed like the redressing of a previous omission, an expansion of knowledge rather than a contraction, a chance to look at history in a different and meaningful way. The courses were just small and specialized additions to otherwise conventional history departments that still (at least for a little while) emphasized Western Civilization and its achievements.
But the camel had gotten its nose into the tent, and that camel is very very pushy and very very well-entrenched now. In fact, it’s taken over American history, even in Texas:
The study found that U.S. history courses at both universities strongly emphasize race, class, and gender (RCG) in reading requirements. Fully 78% of faculty members at UT emphasize race, class, and gender, while 50% of faculty members at Texas A&M do the same. Likewise, 78% of UT professors have special research interests in RCG, while 64% at A&M do too.
The study contends that the strong emphasis on RCG crowds out other relevant themes in American history, such as the nation’s intellectual, military, spiritual, and economic history. The emphasis on RCG studies also influences a further narrowing of history subject matter and the tailoring of “special topics” courses, which omit the use of significant primary source documents. These narrowed-focus classes, the study finds, “seem to exist mainly to allow faculty members to teach their special interests.”
The effect: Students at two of Texas’ flagship universities are not being assigned to study such important and influential milestones as the Mayflower Compact or President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. “Only one faculty member,” the study finds, “assigned the ”˜Letter from a Birmingham jail’” or Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Major historical figures, from John Dewey to Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, are increasingly being left out of American history courses at both universities. The result of this is that we are losing touch with our history, replacing it with an overemphasis on grievances.
And of course, this is hardly limited to Texas:
“These trends extend beyond the two flagship Texas universities,” the study report says. “History departments at other universities around the United States share similar characteristics, such as faculty members’ narrow specializations; high emphasis on race, class, and gender; exclusion of key concepts; and failure to provide broad coverage of U.S. history.”
Has any other nation in history been so focused on self-flagellation? We may be destroying and Balkanizing ourselves as a country and jeopardizing our future, but we certainly are a wonderfully penitent group. And so diverse!
This is quite intentional and just part of the Gramscian march through academia;
Promote and facilitate historical ignorance.
Engage in historical revisionism to attack western civilization’s accomplishments.
Unceasingly inculcate a sense of guilt in the white population, the primary depositor of western civilizational values.
Indoctrination progresses to ever earlier grades.
The purpose of race, class, and gender ‘studies’ isn’t factual education but the promotion of division, envy and resentment with the goal of social disintegration.
So I just moved here to College Station/Bryan Texas and it’s not that shocking, actually. Oh, you likely won’t find a more conservative place in the US than College Station. Almost 70% voted for McCain (McCain!). But having attended another public university in the South in another conservative area, it doesn’t matter. The professors generally don’t reflect the surrounding population. Many pride themselves on joining institutions in conservative areas as sort of their Mission to convert the hayseeds who attend from the local population.
Likely most Texans don’t know what they’re funding at their higher ed schools, so the more information like this is disseminated, the better.
Postmortem, coffin, nail. RIP
Geoffrey Britain: I agree that it’s intentional.
holmes, 2:26 pm — Regarding Texas, yeah. My stepson lives in Austin, home of the big university (UT) there, and one of the local tee shirts proudly proclaims that Austin is “an oasis of blue in a sea of red”.
—–
“race, class, gender”
vs
“language, borders, culture” — Michael Savage
(I’m not a huge fan of Savage — he definitely has his shortcomings — but I’ll certainly go with his signature trio instead of the Gramscian left’s.)
MJR- Austin is great. But it shows that liberals are a good fit when they’re running coffeehouses and artshops and restaurants, contributing privately to civic culture. Not so good at running government.
What’s really a shame is the topics of race, class, and gender were the subject of some very good research in sociology over fifty years ago. The people in English and history think they discovered the concepts and they are not trained in empirical research.
Yawn….. to borrow a line out of Art’s playbook…. I’ve been pointing this out for awhile.
At my school, if you don’t have RCG as your primary research methodology, then you are not hired except in the sciences and math. And, BTW, the current crop of students (past 4-5 years) aren’t buying. They are not going to make waves because they want their grades, but many have told me privately that they think it’s all a crock. There may be a little bit of hope in there as the Reds may have gone too far pushing this particular line.
As far as self-flagellation goes, this is all just a result of the Baby Boomers legacy once again.
physicsguy: I think lots of us have been pointing it out for a while.
I thought this was especially interesting, though, because it was an actual study, and it took place in Texas.
It’s teaching the old Marxist paradigm of victims and victimizers. White males are of course, always the victimizer.
Neo, yes you are right about that. I am also a member of NAS which produced the study. They also did one a few years ago on AA in admissions.
They do good work. However, maybe I am just getting too cynical and depressed after this past November. I support NAS, but I think at this point it’s all just spittin’ in the wind.
Recently, someone I know who is going back to school asked me for some advice on what classes to take for their liberal arts requirement. I told them to sign up for something with “studies” in the course name.
Why would I encourage someone to expose themselves to the evils of far left academia you ask? Because the courses are easy that’s why.
College students have real work to do, yet most universities require them waste time with all sorts of liberal arts requirements. The students respond in a rational way by trying to complete these requirements with the minimum amount of work. And everyone knows women’s studies is easier than a prom date.
So when you hear about how popular courses on race, class and gender have become, relax. They’re only popular because no one takes them seriously.
At the time it seemed like the redressing of a previous omission, an expansion of knowledge rather than a contraction, a chance to look at history in a different and meaningful way.
Nope. Angela Davis made this clear: the various Grievance Studies departments (for which she was then leading the agitation) were to provide sinecures and bully pulpits for Red agitators. She didn’t put it quite like that, of course, but I’m translating from the Red lexicon.
Contaminating the educational process was just a cherry on top.
Because the courses are easy that’s why.
One colleague once characterized them as “intellectual sandboxes.” That apt turn of phrase has resonated with me ever since.
physicsguy: completely understandable.
You may have noticed that more sarcasm and cynicism has crept into my posts lately, as well. I think it needs to be fought, though.
Occam’s Beard: I’m not disagreeing; that was indeed the left’s agenda. What I’m trying to say is that, to the average student (and probably the average professor, as well), I’ve described the way it seemed. It seemed reasonable.
That’s how the camel got its nose in the tent.
Ya love your cancer too much to survive…
now you have more than one…
not like people didnt lay it out and say what would happen and where it would lead and so on
not my problem…. my line is exterminated by all this and its way way way too late to do anything about it after more than 20 years below replacement and longer lifespans and all that.
and i am just tweedling till their regulations ration or permit something that will just hasten my attendance at the choir triumphant concert tour.
pointed out, laid it out, explained it, copied and posted it, and so on.
and what i saw was a highly inventive collective of humans come up with and endless series of irrefutable (but untested by thought) reason why what things were couldn’t be what they were, what the quotes were about, what the sources were, actual intents, disparity between promise and outcome, and on and on.
i guess i have come around to their side on it…
which is any group THAT stupid while at the same time crowing how smart they are ends up on the dinner plate like that, well maybe they really are not fit and belong in Darwin’s dustbin.
the fact they have thrown the rail all the way to the right, going full speed ahead, and expanded, and so on to the point where their one sided planned war against their loved ones has reached near the level of the fantasy antithetical mythic opposition dream of evil oppressors which never existed, and certainly wasn’t planned nor visited upon loved ones.
not to mention that this is what they did when life for people was the best it had ever been EVER. and i mean that in the extreme sense of actually ALL TIME…. 20 or so billion years. while the prior conditions stemmed from the requirements of the worst times for people in the same EVER.
I guess its what you value…
if you value family, and your mates, and children.
then poverty is not a bad idea for a nation or religious group
certainly there was a big mistake as defined by Darwinian outcomes (not by my or others opinions), in loving your mates so much you made life easy enough for them to turn on you for not making it even better, hate you outright for the history that got them there, and dispose of you like scaffolding once the job of getting them to that point was done (by siding with a few strange men and their wives and children against your own husbands and children).
quite the different attitude as laid out in the parable of the talents as to their rewards.
[edited for length n-n]
So what happens to the grievance industry if and when the Supreme Court decides to outlaw racial preferences in the pending affirmative action case? I think leftist-led institutions may themselves on the receiving end of lawsuits and deservedly so.
The purpose of race, class, and gender ‘studies’ isn’t factual education but the promotion of division, envy and resentment with the goal of social disintegration.
yes.. but don’t you find the irony of those who saved people from ovens having children that crawled into their equivalent themselves out of superiority and self loathing cause some strangers told them their families hated them and they were having horrid happy gulag lives?
fascinating… completely fascinating…
even more fascinating was that the women were less fit for the world than the men… darwinistically speaking. given equal choice to do what they want, they self exterminated…
Yawn….. to borrow a line out of Art’s playbook…. I’ve been pointing this out for awhile.
i just got cola on my monitor screen…
no… dont go there… it doesn’t work!!
(see me waving my arms trying to stop you… )
“My playbook don’t work – save yourself!!!”
🙂
They are not going to make waves because they want their grades, but many have told me privately that they think it’s all a crock. There may be a little bit of hope in there as the Reds may have gone too far pushing this particular line.
no.. you have that idea because your idea of the other place is that the people believed and didn’t think or know it was a crock. you don’t need gulags for true believers who don’t think its a crock.
the whole learning how to pretend the alternate reality is what happens. So your hope is because you dont know that part, and think their not being brainwashed is sign it doesnt work.
i explained a long time ago, no one cares what the horse is thinking when you make it turn, neither to they. they are all surface, so if the whole society pretends but thinks otherwise, who cares? its indistinguishable from a society that is not pretending, no? the mental state of the body acting out its motions is not a requirement of the thing. its only important to YOU.
so all these punishments come up as it takes THAT much force to get everyone to dance around to the piper and not break the false face of it.
once that is all around, you don’t know who is acting, who is believing, you just dance with everyone and keep your mouth shut in case you make a mistake in your choice.
so if your seeing whole groups of people learn what masks to wear and how to wear them, and hiding their beings inside as if they dont have them, your not seeing hope, your seeing the self die.
the fire of the individual going out…
Get this: Howard Zinn’s red propaganda history was used as a standard text at the US Coast Guard Academy. At least some parents complained (to no effect of course).
So I guess we well have to learn how the US was set up no other reason than to persecute minorities.
This is probably a result of a herd mentality rather than some sort of leftist conspiracy. As George Will said about the intelligentsia “that herd of independent minds”.
Steve
there is a long history of this kind of thing. they do something, a decade or so passes before enough numbers exist they cant game it, the supreme court chastises them and that PARTICULAR process ends.
then a year or so passes and now its another way to do the same thing. why? because the supreme court has already ruled its ok to use preferences, so they cant just say none of it is allowed. so they get to test every process that is not equal to a prior process every decade or few… trying to find the LEGAL process that allows the previously determined and approved legal end
a whole lot has been happening outside the public’s purview… just note how many times what they decide and what it means has reached you on tv, radio, or the newspaper…
and note, this is just the stuff that someone can frame in such a way that they would even listen to it.
all the stuff in loans, and in SBA things, and mentorships, and so on.. has reminded untested for decades.
but suffice it to say… if one group is paying a lot into tax stuff like that, and they have less children because of it, and the money that is taken is given to others who are less able, and they have more because of programs and favoritism.
your using the ability of the better able to fund their extermination and replacement until such a time that the math works out and the vote to act outright is a majority vote and that’s that… start digging ditches and standing them on the edge
by controlling who participates you control the outcome over time as one is lifted the other is pushed down by their own resources being applied to them and denied to them.
its like taking a bottle of milk from the healthy puppy and giving it to the unhealthy ones. over time, what happens to the population that is the target of that.
the old word for it would be “withering” as in “withering on the vine”
1. To dry up or shrivel from or as if from loss of moisture.
2. To lose freshness; droop.
1. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Botany) to droop, wilt, or shrivel up
2. (intr; often foll by away) to fade or waste all hope withered away
3. (intr) to decay, decline, or disintegrate
4. (tr) to cause to wilt, fade, or lose vitality
5. (tr) to abash, esp with a scornful look
6. (tr) to harm or damage
waste away till what remains is too weak to defend itself from the superior numbers who are being taught social justice and may have enough anger to vote in some pretty nasty revenge forgetting that most are not children of those of the historical past here, but immigrants that came after 1900…
the point is not to lift africans up or help minorities
compare the point of helping them with the serious proportionate hit from abortion which is ALSO state run.
if not for abortion, would africans even be minorities 15 million also would have had babies and so on… it really means a hell of a lot more… (more the farther back you go).
so they are constructing the demographic that makes the justification to then act upon the other demographic, and on and on it goes.
ie. Sangers ideas keep black population down to 12%. it disfavors the black men and women who are smart and work hard and have few kids and pay in.
add the 15 to it straight out and its 45 million as a population.
you can double the 15 if you think the first half would have had two children who would have grown up.. and you can even add another 15 easily if the children had children and werent aborted at that rate.
so they easily could have been over 70 million to 100 million and not 35 million
but if they were, then where would the left be in terms of causes, and devoted voters, and bleeding hearts and so on?
similar is true about the spanish.. and they had one amnesty already.
so all of this is just different versions of the transfer of wealth
the sap, the thing that keeps us from withering on the vine.
You’ve probably heard of the list of 45 Communist Goals that was read into the Congressional Record in 1963. They originally appeared in a book entitled “The Naked Communist” by Cleon Skousen in the late 50s.
It’s worth reading the whole list to see how many have come to pass since then. (Hint: Practically all of them.)
Let’s review the ones that are relevant to this thread:
Artfldgr: as I’ve said before, very few people on this blog disagreed with your basic premise that this sort of thing was a problem. Maybe you are thinking of huxley, or someone else? The vast majority of the criticism of you here has been about length of posts rather than content. Not that every thing you say is agreed with—but certainly the basic premise that feminism, etc., is used by the left to further a certain agenda (and was from the beginning), and that many of its consequences have been negative, is not in dispute here.
I know that, long before I began this blog—certainly at least 20 years ago and probably even ten years earlier than that—I saw that in education and hiring and many other arenas, special interest groups (all the things in this post, and much more) were BIG problems. I observed myself how it was that entrenched PC institutionalized feminism was a problem in the school system, due to certain incidents I personally observed that were shocking and made a deep impression on me. And I certainly see what’s happened to the family, and have written about it, as well.
And I was against affirmative action the first time I ever heard of it. The dangers were clear; two wrongs do not make a right.
What’s sad is that this is also how current news is provided to readers/viewers – always with a race/class/gender slant. How many times do we hear some journalists tell us about “the Latino vote” or what “women support” as if there were no individual, independent thought, merely interest groups with a single viewpoint.
Forgive me if this has already been mentioned as I have not read all the comments; however, this is also going on in high schools (deleting appropriate hs level western civ topics). As a matter of fact, not only is this happening, but civics classes are also being dropped. I recently taught for three years at a public high school where most of the students were immigrants, both legal and illegal. These students had no knowledge of our history or government but were most definitely going to vote when old enough. So, upcoming voters ignorant of US history, customs, government etc. Lovely, no?
The Pastor at the mega Church I am a member of has been making a point lately to quote the Founders in his sermons. Typicaly it involves some mention by one of the Founders concerning religion, God, etc. He points out there has been an effort to erase much of this from the students history classes. And the famous “..if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great…” quote from Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s made it into one of his sermons lately. Spheres of influence…
Self flagellation? Nah, we’re being flagellated by institutional elite who need not bother with daily realities. If we are lucky the modern university will collapse under bureaucratic burden and excess costs. And let’s hope home schooling, vouchers, and online learning take over more of the education experience.
That’s how the camel got its nose in the tent.
neo, I’m not sure that that’s anatomically correct, but I take your meaning.
and it breeds contempt… not just from their view on us… how many of us take a university education as seriously as we would have 30 years ago? When people study classes like these, how much did they really learn ‘earning’ their degree? I’m already at the point where I’d be fine offering my daughter her college fund in cash if she reads 100 classic / important books…
M J R Says:
“I’m not a huge fan of Savage – he definitely has his shortcomings ”
Well; at least he isn’t a phony. He is the same bucket of good cheer off the air. 🙂
I honestly have no idea why anyone would ever send their children to these government child-prisons. They are disgusting Bismarckian police-state apparatai to indoctrinate children in statolatry. They always have been, they always will be. Education is a matter for individuals, communities, families and churches to handle.
These brainwashing-prisons are not even schools at all – read John Taylor Gatto, for example. They deliberately lie to children and hire the same bunch of good-for-nothing unionized substandard nobodies that every useless socialist government agency does.
On top of that, given the fact that these institutions are run by God-hating left-wing psychopaths I would rather have a child that can’t even read than put them into that atheistic meatgrinder.
The sole reason people send their children to these Hells is ignorance and laziness.
These courses also teach a lot of pure made up BS.
Examples inclue the argument that the Founders based our federal system on an indian system, the claim that the word squaw is derived from an indian word for vagina, etc.
“..if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great…”
Yes, America is only as great as its collective determination to make ‘right choices’. Obama’s reelection and the apathy of much of the American public to his and the left’s policies and actions makes clear that a perhaps slim majority of the American collective have made the determination to consistently make the choice of emotional self-interest, a self-evident ‘bad choice’.
In a representative democracy, the majority eventually rules and a majority of Americans are turning their back upon the responsibilities that America’s international leadership demands. There is however no other nation that can fulfill America’s role in world affairs.
In the modern world, America is much like ancient Rome, the guarantor of civilization and the force that has held the barbarians from entering through ‘the gate’.
If America falls, whether through economic collapse or any of the other outward threats developing upon the horizon, a new dark age shall begin. And among its first victims will be the left’s useful idiots, liberals who shall simply be reaping what they have sown and richly deserve.
If Obama and the left are not able to abrogate the Constitution hope remains, if they are able to do so, then civilian force of arms alone would prove inadequate to prevent the final ascendency of the left. In such circumstances, the last hope will be the American military placing its oath to the Constitution above all else.
If that choice shall arise and they fail to do so, all will be lost and the world will fall into barbarism once again.
thomass, 9:54 pm — “Well; at least [Michael Savage] isn’t a phony. He is the same bucket of good cheer off the air. ”
I don’t know him off the air (you do?), but based on my on-air exposure to him, I readily believe he’s the same off-air as on.
By the way, what I wrote about Savage may have come off as unduly negative. I see and acknowledge his strengths as well, one of which is his unyielding emphasis on “language, borders, culture” — which brings me approximately full circle!
I don’t know what the solution is to this. If you give the PC professors a hard time, they will cry “infringement of academic freedom!” One partial solution is that when the academic bubble bursts- law school applications are already down about 30% from 5 years ago- the PC fluff courses will the the first to go.
Interesting that physicsguy says that students tend to blow the PC nonsense off. I suspect this is more true for the STEM majors that physicsguy mostly deals with than it is for the Humanities or Social Science majors, for at least two reasons.
1) STEM majors are forced to use rigorous thinking in their major courses to survive, so are less likely to fall for the PC nonsense. While spouting the party line may enable you to survive a PC course, such behavior will flunk you out of STEM courses. So STEM majors have more practice in rigorous thinking.
2) STEM majors have much less exposure to the PC courses than Humanities or Social Science majors. Less brainwashing time.
There is a lot of copyright-free, pre-1922 material on American history and literature which is free for the downloading at Project Gutenberg. As others have pointed out, you can put the great works of Western Civilization at no additional cost on an e-reader that these days costs as little as $60-80. [At Project Gitenberg- Browse Catalog is better than Search Catalog.]
IIRC, Texas voted only 52-47 for Romney, so even Texas is on the brink.
As a parent of Texas college students, you would not believe the garbage that is taught as “goverment” and history. The central “text” of one son’s “government” class was a book written by a vagabond who went around the country commenting on the social injustices and total failure of the American system. Intro by Bruce Springsteen. An utter load of crap, a teacher with an avowed socialist agenda, who would not tolerate anything other than regurgitated communist propaganda that he taught.
Students were not allowed to think for themselves; they were soaked in the “America is a shitty, unfair, terrible place” for the entire semester, and most were duly impressed. I’m told a few astute students would whisper to each other, “this guy is a freaking commie”, but most just thought it was insightful and truthful. The dissidents were not rewarded with decent grades; they quickly learned to knuckle under to get decent grades.
I’m grew up in upstate NY, and was appalled at the baloney this guy spewed for the whole semester. These are people who could not hold a job doing anything useful outside of a college environment, where expressing opinions and rewriting history for kids who don’t know any better is all you’re capable of doing. Disagreement was not tolerated, regardless of how the arguments were documented.
This class was supposed to teach US government; instead it taught socialism and what’s wrong with US government, all according to a weasel who makes a living off the incomes of parents, by telling their kids how rotten the system is that supports him. Justice will come some day, when these clowns have outlived their useful idiot status, and have to dig ditches or sweep floors, which all they are qualified to do in a socialist system.
At the time it seemed like the redressing of a previous omission
Buyer’s remorse. Too late.
The catastrophic ‘morph’ of today’s history depts leaves me gasping. My God, what a crime. My BA(’67) & MA(’69) were in History—my lifelong love—and, having just sidestepped the draft and hit 26/Draft Age cut-off, I was headed for Munich and the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte for a year and doctoral studies, university teaching, research & writing back home…and, then came that clearing in the woods and, almost on a whim to help an old friend out at a major studio…ahhhhhhhh…
Thank God, not ALL history depts in small, muscular, impressive colleges are as described. But, way too many are and the Big Schools–state or private–are ruinous.
Liberals hate America and are trying to destroy it. They are educating Americans to think of themselves as members of tribal groups rather than free citizens. This is a conscious, deliberate policy. Liberals are actively, intentionally working to destroy America.
We must fight them. What’s the phrase they love to spout? “By any means necessary.”
Fight them. Don’t just write cranky letters, don’t just post snarky comments. Fight them. Don’t just argue, don’t just put up signs or bumper stickers. Fight them. Destroy them. By any means necessary. The time for reasonable discussion and compromise is long past.
Fight them.
Hey holmes! I just moved to Bryan/College Station from New England and let me tell you I love it here. I love A&M so much (getting my PhD here) because although they are kind of a typical public college sometimes, they have so much better values that they intentionally keep at the forefront, like honor, loyalty, etc.
I actually turned down both MIT and UTexas to come here because I valued quality of life over academic prestige and I have not regretted it.
M J R Says:
“I don’t know him off the air (you do?)”
Yes.
the PC fluff courses will the the first to go
No, I fear they won’t be, for several reasons.
First, many students come to university to get a degree in … something, to make them employable, and don’t much care what it is. They want the easiest options possible, so as to maximize party time. (Witness the popularity of, e.g., sociology).
[One sociology course at Berkeley (“Contemporary American Culture”) consisted of watching movies, for which students received five credits. At the same time STEM courses were three credits apiece. It became a cause celebre among STEM faculty at Berkeley because half of the sociology majors were carrying 24 units per quarter, and a number carrying 28 units per quarter, whereas no one had ever done that in the history of the College of Chemistry, or has to this day.]
Second, university administrations are often Red-infested, or at least leery of crossing the hard-core Reds in the faculty, because the latter can call on their brownshirts to disrupt the functioning of the university. Administrators want quiet lives, and so knuckle under.
So PC courses will probably stay, unfortunately. They’re the academic equivalent of the “Obamapho’.”
Don’t forget that teachers have been trained by these “studies” prof, so they are taking the message down to first graders. Remember that Bill Ayres recommends using basic arithmetic courses to incorporate lessons about fairness.
Maybe we need a set of books or websites for teens about things your teachers don’t want you to know. Play to teen rebellion. My high school geometry teacher was really dumb, and the greatest delight of our class was in working out theorums in advance so we could show her up.
I second what Willa said.
}}}} Those were the big two at the beginning, and now no doubt there are many more.
I want to study Asian Lesbians, but so far, the only courses of study I’ve found are on Japanese videos.
😉
Anyone up for a colloqium on Lesbian Spank Inferno? 😀
Ok – new college semester starts tomorrow in Texas for the youngest son. US History up to 1865 is the course. What’s one required text book? A tome covering current political topics and discussion.
The agenda of these guys is predictable. They will teach US history, but only if they can frame it in the context of today’s political correctness and moral superiority. If only our predecessors were as smart as us, things wouldnt be the horrible mess they are today.
Gringo:the PC fluff courses will the the first to go. [the first courses]
Occam’s Beard:
You are correct that those teaching the PC fluff courses will put up a big stink when they get the pink slips, making it tougher to get rid of those courses and their teachers. Regarding the ideological makeup of many administrators and professors: ditto. [Pink slips for pinkos… 🙂 ]
However, the cleaning up of the mess from the burst education bubble may well give administrators the gumption to finish the job. For one thing, the first to go in the campaign to reduce university costs will not be the PC fluff courses and their teachers, but administrators, as the administration cohort has increased faster than students. An undue proportion of administrators who will be let go will be those involved in “administering” all the PC programs at universities.
Those administrators who remain will have little sympathy for those professors who want to preserve their own little pieces of academic turf. After all, the administration cohort will have been gutted before professors, and in greater proportion. My estimate is that universities could get by with half the administrators they have. Professors will not be let go in such proportions.
Those administrators with queasy stomachs when it comes to discharging curriculum and professors will simply get the message from their higher ups: “If you don’t have the guts to get rid of these courses and people, we will get rid of YOU and find someone else who does.” [At least that is how it works in the profit-making sector.]
Another reason this will be difficult is, in addition to the ideological component that Occam’s Beard has pointed out, is that there will be an undue proportion of minorities and women in the useless administrative positions – created in the last 40 years to enforce PC mandates- and in teaching the PC fluff courses. It might be better to simply give them ten years’ salary or some such golden parachute.
Time will tell.
}}} The dangers were clear; two wrongs do not make a right.
But, strangely enough, Two Wrongs do often point to The Left.
:oD
}}} So PC courses will probably stay, unfortunately. They’re the academic equivalent of the “Obamapho’.”
Do keep in mind, however, that the entire notion of “college” is under fire at the moment. Change is afoot, and that’s where conservatives and libertarians ought to be working diligently to prevent/discourage a simple transliteration from physical studies to virtual studies of the Bogus Agenda.
Something keeps resonating inside my brain; the Soviet Union taught how wonderful their system was for 70 years and almost completely blocked competing views, yet the whole pyramid of lies could not prevent collapse once the people no longer feared the terror apparatus of their government.
If the lies did not work under those conditions how can they be expected to work here? The average student need only know his family history to know the worthlessness of PC. What is far more frightening is that masses surrender all interest in the truth just so people can feel fashionable, which is to say sexy. The Obama cult has seized the fashion high ground. Read the latest at the Rubin Report for this week’s example:
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2013/01/mystery-solved-why-are-some-liberals.html
Hopefully the next generations teenage rebellion will attack the problem. Being poor and less free should give them a better understanding of the problem.
glad you noted it..
now wha did you do for 30 years since they guys could do nothing and it woudl take the women who noted it to get up and do something..
did you?
no… and no one else did..
so thats my point…
men have rescued women for thousands of years dying for strangers women and children…
women? not so much..
so the one time that the men needed the women who NOTED things… where were they? absent.. waiting… too afraid of the other women… sad on the side hoping it would all turn out?
well ya got what ya worked for
and thats my beef.
a person gets hit by a car bleeding on the floor
and you didnt stop to help, but you noted it
the issue is you dont get how much you and others who saw and noted things, stood on the sidelines and let it all happen…
and now… when the fit hits the shan…
then what? you gonna stand shoulder to shoulder or just sit out and note the end result?
ergo..
way back when i said we would not survive this
because i KNEW and KNOW the people we depend on this time in history…
will let mankind down..
every woman that noted it, but did not act let mankind down, or else they expected men to save them… either way… not this time..
oh. by the way
the left selected women as their main group because they knew that women woudl let mankind down…
otherwise, if women wouldnt, were would all their plans and efforts go? to naught.
they picked well…
and they won
now we get to die early from obama care, higher taxes, higher crime, maybe a civil war, and bone breaking poverty
but as i said.
not my problem any more.
i am just killing time till time kills me
as i have no other options
so i dont have to be polite or pc, or anything like that
i can call the kettle black and thats that.
and the kettle just sat there noting the world
and letting it go to shit with all the others mankind depended on.
and if you dont think so, just think of what the world will become in 100 years with no free country or people who believed in it and willing to ACT
most revolutions succceed becuase the key people who have to act, wont act..
and there is nothing the others can do.
end of story
it was over before it started because the subjects selected were selected because they always fail.
if you don’t think so…
point to one society in history that was that way and lasted long enough to even be remembered
and remember… they basically fought their mates and hated them to self exterminated, pulled their thumbs out of their arses and said, what a good grrrrl am i..
apply this to germany befor the jews were exterminated
on the night of crystal nacht, would you have tried to claim some form of positive participation by noting how hitler was and thats it?
you see… prior to the end result, you can imagine it wont be and someone else will hepl and so on.
thats why eveyone stands around and watches someone bleed to death rather than help
but i dont think you and others realize thta the game is completely over.
in fact i am SURE of it givne the commentary
the state has bought enough bullets to put five shells into each of us.
the military uses 70 million shells in a war
homeland security bought 1.5 billion
who do you th ink they are going to use that on?
they are domestic….
and what about those FEMA camps now? you know, the ones with the pre digged mass graves that everyone said wasnt what it was?
AFTER the fact, like the germans, people will wonder how it happened. and no one will sit there and confess… i noted it, but did really nothing that mattered… until it was way too late..
i did my part.
the game is over.
my family is gone… eternally
millions of others are also gone… eternally
and demographics is going to make sure of it all…