Is college making people stupid?
Well, it certainly doesn’t seem to be doing much to make them smarter these days. Or rather than “smarter,” let’s say more well-informed and better able to think clearly.
And I strongly believe that this is purposeful. The majority of educators now see their job as indoctrinating students in right (that is, left) thinking/feeling, and countering whatever faulty programs may have gotten there first. So education has become one big re-education camp, telling students that they are privileged (white, of course), racist (white, of course), sexist (male, of course), and how they might redeem themselves.
And it doesn’t just start with college. By now, entering students have been programmed enough earlier on that there isn’t quite as much to re-educate. And yet there’s always room for improvement, isn’t there? And it’s always necessary to bar other points of view from getting through.
Inculcation is not education (even in a nation where not a tax is a tax). The value of an ‘education’ has been misrepresented in many, most cases (e.g., the value of a JD from YakaTaka U hasn’t the same intrinsic value as one from ol’ ivy — not even a relative one). Most all of the educational complex is a flim-flam scam. Having mastered remedial courses, identity angst, and all manner of ressentiment studies, and having the rest of the curricula deconstructed leaves one with little more option, upon graduation, than to intern at the DNC and do some pimping or whoring on the side to pay off the ‘loans’.
And those expensively educated — ol’ ivy, etc. – are as likely poorly educated and highly inarticulate (Bush duh, Ophilia uhh) or prolixly esoteric, fit for nothing but continuing the line ‘professoriate’. Mr. Dewey and the culprits at the Dept of Education have much to answer for. Hope there’s room for expansion in the poet’s Inferno.
When I graduated college, (1954) there were no protests about who was giving the commencement address. 99.9% of us didn’t care. In fact I’d wager most of us dozed through the speeches, eager to get our diplomas and get the heck out of there. Most had jobs lined up (Isn’t that a quaint idea?) and were wanting to go out and earn money on a full time basis. Had there been any protests, the students would have been told they had the option of skipping the commencement exercise and picking up their diplomas at the registrar’s office.
Most college students know little of the world. I sure as heck didn’t. I was blown away in the 1960s when I was a Navy recruiter on college campuses. When I would engage a student on his knowledge of Communism and why we were trying to stop the spread of Communism, they invariably spouted the same boiler plate we hear today. That is: The U.S. is imperialistic, racist, unequal, etc., etc.
That the college administrators of the 60s gave in to these know nothings stunned me. What cowards they were. I have continued to be stunned. The leftist brown shirts and Obama youth are on the march. Truth be known, they are a small percentage of the student bodies. Even as they were in the 60s. They just made/make a lot of noise on the theory that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So far they’ve been correct. My position is that the squeaky wheel is defective and needs to be set aside for a wheel that doesn’t squeak.
The First Amendment is being savaged everyday in academia and the cowardly administrators allow it. I have told my alma mater that I’m done giving them money until they stand up for the Constitution. If alums all over the country would do the same, maybe things would change.
A few immodest proposals for a Conservative higher education strategy:
Conservatives in Congress need to start promoting the reform of taxpayer-funded student loan programs. Loans should go to students who are a good credit risk, and the risk assessment should be based on whether employment prospects provide means to repay the loan. University propaganda courses depend on student enrollment. No students funded, no students, no courses.
At the sane time, there have to be serious efforts to cut back taxpayer-funded research grants to faculty whose research product is little more than propaganda. If this can’t be done with a scalpel, then take a meat-axe to the Arts and Humanities research budgets. Faculty are hired and retained based on their record of research. No research, no faculty.
Finally, federal and state higher education accreditation standards and procedures need to be reformed to encourage individually-paced online education.
If these measures are taken, the propogandists will be weakened. They will still control large parts of the universities, but those parts will be much less significant.
The college atmosphere is very schizophrenic these days. The STEM side of the university is very capitalistic in practice. There is a great emphasis on being entrepreneurial, forming startups, designing new products, etc. The humanities seem to have gone full socialist if not Marxist. They dominate when it comes to social issues. How long can such a vast difference in thinking co-exist?
Youth who head to college to gain marketable skills in the hard sciences, engineering, and business are not on the same page as youth who major in the latest fad in leftist ‘studies’ and expect a cushy tenure in academia once there is a PhD on their resume.
Don’t forget discarding the smart but poor of the wrong target group… this way the numbers on the reports show results without having to think about the tragedies behind their gaming the line totals.
since wealthy guys of the target group can pay, and have collateral, and so on… it never affected them, but to make room, first for all the women, then for the other groups, they HAD to cut out something, as they sure did not build schools to accommodate the change that would have occurred if they did not denude a certain class of their future, and there are quite a lot of them…
how many?
well… you can see it in the reports of lower entrepreneurial spirit, inventions, and on and on…
those are the long shot plays that the group cut out participated in, given its outcomes when successful.
Jon Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office has (proudly?) highlighted the fact that the allowance rate for patents is currently 42%. This is in contrast to allowance rates in excess of 70% just eight years ago. So, did patent applications really get that much worse in just a few years? – 2008
now its worse
many of the people who would have built companies and hired people and innovated, instead were put out of commission and sidelined without their knowing it for most of their lives (if ever). who replaced them didnt replace them, but just occupied their places in the head counts.
they did more than just indoctrinate, they marred, hurt, ommitted, and destroyed thousands of lives, and only a few realize it looking back and learning about policies which resulted in being turned down (and later their being told to stop by the supreme court, and then another version).
at this point, you can crack any newspaper insert, and any web page of the systems and you will see who is being courted and who is absent except in teacher roles (haven’t died yet)…
given the math of it, nothing can be done…
mathematically speaking, there is no way there from here…
Real education at a Jesuit college.
The short answer is “Yes, College is making them stupid”. This is because they don’t get taught anything of substance. What I mean is they are not taught the truth. Outside of science, math, and learning a language They are taught either irrelevancies or lies. They become “stupid” therefore because they have in their heads what should not be there, and what should be there will never be there.
It is not College though. Today’s college student is a cowed and docile sheep. They’ve no heart. It has been beat out of them by their parents and teachers from K thorough 12, on TV, on the street, and everywhere government is today as well.
Their next rebellion will be their first. Their music stinks, their art stinks, their intelligence stinks. They have no religion
Want to know why zombies are all the rage? These poor kids are zombies. Real ones. I hope they wake up before it is too late. They have been abused from Day 1 and it will be a true testament to the human spirit if they ever rebound.
To top it off, they know none of this and have an immature sense of entitlement that beggars belief. Overall, they are truly children who were never allowed to grow up. Poor things.
This subject is much on the mind of Conservative bloggers, and their forum contributors at the moment. With good reason.
Others may have seen the note this evening that Oberlin College is considering imposing a Transgender awareness requirement on its athletic program. Really.
I have commented that until recently, much of this nonsense was rather limited in scope, and the average person could ignore it in their daily lives. This seems to be changing rapidly. I wonder how long the American people will tolerate this trend; and what form push-back might take.
On the broader question of the worth of college for most kids, I have postulated that enrollment in an occupational training program might be a better investment. As a long time owner of a septic system, I have noted (only somewhat TIC) that septic tank servicing is a reasonably lucrative profession that does a much needed service for society. My last service person was a young woman in business with her Dad, (I watched her grow up in the business so to speak). She knew her worth and was happy in her work. Believe me, customers were glad to see her smiling face when problems developed. She was very pleased to have obtained her own truck. How many current college graduates are as well off?
And these tools are the ones telling the Christians that Christianity is being rammed down the throat of the American public.
I’ll post this once more: hidden-camera footage of the “2014 White Privilege Conference,” comprising educators and teachers from across the country:
“What would you imagine would be spoken about at the fifteenth annual White Privilege Conference? Would it surprise you to learn that some 2,400 students and educators were recently taught that “racism is central to America;” “the longer you are in the Tea Party, the more racist you become;” and “this country was built on white principles for white people”?
http://preview.tinyurl.com/m673z82
Note that the “White Privilege Conference” is the fifteenth annual one.
No word of this have I ever heard, anywhere. Only saw it this week because it was on The Blaze (no wonder the cable people preferred Al Jazeera to Glenn Beck).
Paul in Boston: “How long can such a vast difference in thinking co-exist?”
Indefinitely. Universities are big tents that can comfortably contain both.
There’s no conflict. STEM students can be taught an entrepreneurial outlook within their major while also absorbing social-cultural norms and values from humanities electives and the culture of the campus community.
JJ: “They just made/make a lot of noise on the theory that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So far they’ve been correct. My position is that the squeaky wheel is defective and needs to be set aside for a wheel that doesn’t squeak.”
Or a wheel that squeaks in good ways.
The student-veteran activists and ROTC advocates who recently re-normed civil-military relations on the Ivy League campuses that had stigmatized the military in the 60s and 70s were squeaky wheels who out-squeaked the campus left.
Oldflyer: “This subject is much on the mind of Conservative bloggers, and their forum contributors at the moment. With good reason.”
Don’t underestimate the potential of what the Right can engineer and make viral on campuses right now, as is.
Colleges already have dissident Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, genuine liberals, etc., among the students and faculty. They’re just not as organized and activated on campus for greater social effect as they have the potential to be.
When they do organize and activate properly, they can make a difference.
As I comment here often, Marxist-method activism is not an ideology. It’s a mercenary method that anyone can use to reify any cause, and that’s more true on campus than anywhere else.
Activism seems to serve the Left on campus only because the people of the Right seem to have a constitutional aversion to using the method. But it’s effective when used in opposition to the Left, too.
The Left has done the hard work of programming college campuses to respond productively to the activist method. The Right doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. They merely need to learn how to use the activist program that’s already been put in place by the Left, but instead for the purposes of the Right.
Colleges are a good social cultural/political investment, because as social nodes, they are intellectual and cultural founts with an amplifying, multiplying, generational effect if done right. College students, with their youthful vigor, optimism, place in life, and where they’re going in life, are also ideal social-political recruits.
The higher-education bubble that Instapundit is always talking about can’t come soon enough.
The right is upset that *their* indoctrination is not the one being taught rather than facts.
You never hear them complain about religious universities and EIB/Limbaugh is always promoting that one university, Hillsdale College, which is considered the bastion of conservatism. And I can gar-on-tee that liberals would have hissy fits like this if the shoe was on the other foot.
These complaints on both sides have nothing to do with education and everything to do with future voters. I teach college history and do my best to maintain neutrality – the good points of Reagan, the not so great points of the Great Society, etc. The students in my class have already formed their opinions or just don’t care.
Beverly
notice how reality does not leak through to “reality”
whether you have film, white papers, policy turncoats confessing, or even a two generation victim, no one cares… mind building an oven for me to crawl into and get it over as the whole null zed naught future is a waste of time and amounts to torture to a slow demise.
Only stupid people can survive 4 years of college. 2 years, not so bad. 4. 6. 10…
Rachel
The right is upset that *their* indoctrination is not the one being taught rather than facts.You never hear them complain about religious universities …
Pray tell, Rachel, WHO is complaining about “religious universities?” Who should complain about the existence of “religious universities?” I have never been a churchgoer, but my family background is Protestant. There hasn’t been a Roman Catholic in my family tree for about 400 years, but I have no problem with the existence of educational institutions affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church such as Georgetown, Holy Cross, Notre Dame. Should I?
What kind of BIGOT would complain about the existence of “religious universities?” As I see it, those who do not like such religious affiliations do not have to attend those schools. If there are people who want to attend schools with religious affiliations, who am I to object to their choices? It appears to me that you are telling me that I should object to them.
You, Rachel, are a BIGOT.
Rephrase:
You, Rachel, appear to be a BIGOT, or at least guilty of sloppy writing. Even professors need to think before putting fingers to keyboard.
Rachel
The right is upset that *their* indoctrination is not the one being taught rather than facts….I teach college history and do my best to maintain neutrality..
I’m glad to hear that you do your best to maintain neutrality. When I was an undergrad, I did not have any professors who tried to impose their political views on their students- they were politically neutral in the classroom.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case today: Professor: ‘Colleges Will Start Closing Up’ if ‘Racist, Misogynist, Money-Grubbing’ GOP Wins.
This indoctrination scares me. When you claim that “The right is upset that *their* indoctrination is not the one being taught rather than facts,” I would reply that I would like to keep politics out of the classroom, so you are misrepresenting the point of view of at least one member of the right- myself.
It also appears to me that students who disagree with the likes of Professor Brent Terry run the risk of ruining their grades.
Of course the start and core of this was Bella Dodd head of CPUSA and Teachers union…
but who cares? better to prattle witout the facts looking towards imaginative things as the answer… sure saves time…
besides… if your not going to care enough to get it right, why care enough to discuss it when there are other more interesting thigs one could waste time on (but not preten so much they arent wasting time)
the left is redefining voting in the US
With little fanfare and nearly no national media attention, the National Popular Vote effort is now 61 percent of the way toward its goal of legally bypassing the Electoral College established in the U.S. Constitution.
Last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the National Popular Vote, or NPV, bill, making his state the 11th jurisdiction to enact the plan. With the passage of the bill, the interstate compact now has 61 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to put it into effect.
“I prefer not to give labels, but there’s no question we’ve had the trend toward growing inequality, and I personally find it very worrisome trend that deserves the attention of policy makers,” Yellen said deftly.
As our friends at ZeroHedge observed about her answer: At least she didn’t flat out lie.
More worrisome, as ZH affirmed, is that the question had to be asked at all.
Most worrisome, however, is that neither Yellen nor Sanders really understand what they are talking about.
Sanders looks at the concession to oligarchy as a gottcha question that supports his notion that all we have to do is tax the rich even more to make the oligarchy crumble.
Yellen isn’t as clear. Her answer is more one of a diplomat trying to obscure her views than that of an oligarch trying to soak people whose views are different than her own.
Because it’s not rich versus poor that makes an oligarchy–not in the old Soviet Union or in the New Soviet Union.
Ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky, billionaire oil tycoon, and oligarch, who nonetheless served time in Russian prison for crossing swords with Vladimir Putin, if money makes the oligarch.
Or ask any of the 6,000 other “white collar” criminals who, according to Forbes, served time in Russia in prisons because they “ran afoul of the Putin administration”, if somehow simply being rich were enough to save them.
The United States has always had its share of very wealthy people, yet somehow remained free of the corruption of oligarchy, for the most part.
But not today.
And the reason is clear.
A government with the ability to create $5-$6 trillion dollars out of thin air–almost half our yearly GDP– and distribute it to its backers, is by its very definition an oligarchy.
Dodger:
Of course the start and core of this was Bella Dodd head of CPUSA and Teachers union…
For those who are interested, Bella Dodd’s autobiography is available without cost at many internet sites, including this one: School of Darkness
Gringo,
save your breath.. been trying to show them the key books to read and so forth… but they are not interested at all, as the useless sensational new farcical crapola entertains them more…
they wont get it till their entertainment is curtailed to the point they have nothing else BUT reality to deal with!!!
which is why the depression era people, refugees, holocaust survivors and all that have a different view than those who still ahve a whole ass they are offering the aligator of state to chew on!!!
the evne more incredible thing is that history repeats. ie. the people who existed when school of darkness came out and ignored it, are the first version for the dupes and others today, here now, that are doing the EXACT SAME THING
how can one talk about wanting history to NOT repeat and then openly, and without any regard or self examination, repeat the exact same mistakes while crowing that doing so was the right thing!!! (for watever reason… the truth is that inventing a reason NOT to is the hard part… so the idea of being clever inventing reasons to do things you shouldnt, well, thats just morons patting themselves on the back for beingt too clever by half!)
I have tried to give the key books… in the education arena if you have no read
Dodd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Dodd
was a member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) in the 1930s and 1940s who later became a vocal anti-communist. [but of course, she is a changer we must avoid discussing and knowing!!! why mamet is important – being a nothing but famous, and dodd is not important, being a leader and part of it and confessing… is interesting in itself as it shows a desire to focus on marginally relavent but safe items (safety first women always say), than the very relevant core material that would give one a handle on things… so are not easy safe… ie. keep em busy, keep them from being effective… and if this isnt the purpose, they are sure doing a great job of it, while beleiving otherwise!!! (and personal beleif wont change it in reality!)]
Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Thomson_Iserbyt
an American whistle blower and freelance writer who served as the Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first term of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and staff employee of the U.S. Department of State (South Africa, Belgium, South Korea). Iserbyt’s father and grandfather were Yale University graduates and members of the Skull and Bones secret society.
[edited for length]
read it while you can as it will ba auto censored
you know, like a random search of your person negates the constitutional protection from searches.
just cutting long things without thinking, that negates the idea that its censorship…
of course we have to ignore the idea that what you can discuss on twitter is nothihg like what you can discuss in email… but i have already shown that its nicer to breath sea air than realize its your own and others piss in the wrind… this is just another one of those inventions to make doing whats wrong, right.
as i said, the trick is inventing why be moral
not inventing a way around the moral making things like censorship ok…
it fits the same formulae of a machine collecting your information is ok as a person doesnt see it… what is not good for a person to see, is great for a machine and some software to see… removing a human mind makes the immoral moral..
cutting a document in half for having “too many notes” allows the censor to feel they are not censoring. And endlessly argue that when i cut your leg off, its really not gone, IF i do it without looking or withotu any thought… then its fair
interesting to see people who want to negate what is happening unable to negate the irrational programming that they use to choose actions..
to the dead victim, reason is irrelevent… such things are only for the ones in power or the ones who are to remain to think about it… they can say they died instantly… when 99% of the time this is impossible… or that it was an accident, which is so muych better to die from than on purpose.
funny
the victims never seem to “get it”
do they?
Those who compare the bare-chested conqueror of the Crimea with the metrosexual ruler of the United States and find our emperor weak to the point of deserving ridicule miss the essential strength of President Obama.
It’s no ordinary weakling who can turn a once-respected country into an international joke; reduce Congress to a gaggle of sniveling sycophants; turn the world’s finest medical system into a failed third-rate socialist nightmare with a stroke of his pen; shatter our Constitution without attempted recourse by the sons and daughters of frontiersmen and pioneers whose blood was used to write that inspired document; and turn the people of our once-united states into a herd of competing minorities who, like suckling pigs, are each afraid to lose his place on the government teat should he raise his voice to protest the ruin of our country.
So don’t denigrate the nonentity ruler who has overcome his uncertain ancestry and ludicrous incompetence to do what no other king or dictator has been able to do in our 237-year history: He has destroyed America.
REIS R. KASH
Springfield
Why does the USDA need submachine guns?
Because the
Post Office,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
the National Weather Service,
the Social Security Administration,
the Department of Education,
the Environmental Protection Agency,
and of course the Department of Homeland Security (which won’t be needing them to defend the homeland) have all been stocking up on munitions, so it wouldn’t do for other agencies to fall behind.
THEY HAVE BEEN DOING THIS ON NEO’S WATCH!!!
nothing they do is enough to discuss the things they do that will affect everyone when the new SHOAII starts in a neighborhood near you..
or maybe neo has an explanation why all these machine guns and councils and such… now, do notice that if you dont have an edumacation in how things existed and were structured somewhere else, you will find it easy to pish tosh the whole thing!!!
lacking education, the smart person would try to find the minimum most concentrated stuff to read (we do the opposite as we ahve all the time in the world)
please neo. list out what has been done
unilateral disarmament
over 150 military officers purged
russia soon to attack latvia, which will cause a crisis in NATO… (how many more of those soviet goals from that sheet need to be completed before its important enough to notice? ask neo)
destroyed out ability to borrow to pay for a conflict
destroyed out peoples health so that less than 20% are able to defend us
destroyed the moral of the military
destroyed their retirements
immitated hitler by nationalizing everything from healthcare to education
the list goes on and on and on
but we NEVER discuss THAT list…
heck we wont even discuss that there are no limits to executive orders
as the time to fight them takes longer than the powe to remove what would fight them, can act!!!
ie. the executive order, ordering the removal of the supreme court would work before the supreme court could act to stop it!!!!!!!!!
Eric: “Or a wheel that squeaks in good ways.”
Good point! There’s always being a louder squeaker as well. The TEA Party squeaked quite a bit for a while, but got no grease. So they changed tactics to work at the grass roots and influence nominees. It hasn’t always worked, but we have to just keep at it. The progressives fail all the time, but they don’t give up. They’re like vampires – hard to get rid of. We on the right should do the same.
This indoctrination scares me.
I’ve seen scarier stuff than that. For all the power and funding and time the Left has been given, they have not nearly plumbed the depths of human knowledge on this subject.
But as an organization, they have done more than any other.
JJ: “The TEA Party squeaked quite a bit for a while, but got no grease. So they changed tactics to work at the grass roots and influence nominees. It hasn’t always worked, but we have to just keep at it.”
To Tea Party organizers, I recommend Bill Moyer’s book, activist social movement practical guide, Doing Democracy.
Intro website: http://doingdemocracy.com/ .
Regarding the part of your comment I bolded, check out the chart on page 5 of
http://doingdemocracy.com/notesandcharts .
Moyer labeled the 5th stage of social movements as “Perception of failure”, matching what you describe for the Tea Party. It’s faced by many activists in many causes. It’s par for the course in activism, same as for the Tea Party as for left activist causes.
The ‘darkest before the dawn’ (however that saying goes) is actually a situation that activists need to push through in order to reach the greater reward for their social movement on the other side of the setback.
In other words, what appears to be a discouraging dead end is actually a developmental stage.
In my view as a former activist who experienced Moyer’s stage 5 and pushed through it to eventual victory for the cause, the Tea Party was doing it right when they started. They went off track when they got discouraged and switched their strategic focus to elected office. At that point, as activists, the Tea Party should have been pushing through the perceived setback, instead.
Elected office is fine as a lesser included element of an activist social movement, but the Tea Party’s primary strategic focus needs to be on their activist social movement, as Moyer guides and the Tea Party started out to be.
I have no problem with Rachel’s comment.
What she describes is simply the nature of competition. Left activists have created an encompassing evolutionary struggle for the social environment of either/or: win or lose.
Unless actually enforced for all sides, adhering to an ethical code in real-world competition is a practical vulnerability that is a luxury only affordable to the side that’s strong enough to absorb the competitive cost.
Right now, the Right is weaker in the activist game. The only thing the Right can accomplish by sacrificing competitive value in order to protect an ethical self-image is losing for real in the activist arena – losses that the Right cannot afford.
Teachers like Rachel can try to protect the integrity of her classroom, but her classroom can only be an island in the living ocean of the cultural zeitgeist. As she points out, despite her best efforts to teach critically, her students are soaked in the biases they carry with them into her classroom.
I hope Rachel stubbornly persists to teach critically in her classroom. But that doesn’t change the evolutionary struggle in the social environment that surround her classroom, washes into it, and storms around it.
The history that Rachel teaches is manufactured by biased, competitive activists, after all.
Neo,
FYI. It looks like my comment responding to JJ’s comment at May 15th, 2014 at 1:25 pm was placed in moderation.
Eric:
I found it in the spam filter and liberated it, so now it appears above.
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