What ‘Highly Trained and Certified’ Professors Don’t Want You to Know
A new report grades universities on what they actually teach their students — and professors don't like it one bit.
Most have heard reports about the outrages in our schools: Ward Churchill writing that the 9/11 victims were “little Eichmanns”; 1960s terrorist, now professor of education, William Ayers addressing high school and college students; Al Gore propagandizing via his film An Inconvenient Truth in classrooms; and now President Barack Obama wanting to get elementary school children to scrutinize themselves on how they are fulfilling what he “asks” them to do.
I’d like to say these are exceptions, but after nearly two decades in education, I have to say that they are the tips of icebergs that aren’t melting.
Most of the public is unaware of how deep the ideology is. They are apt to dismiss the situation as being that of one or two professors that Johnny needs to deal with until the day he has a well-paying job and never needs to read “literature” again and be beaten over the head with illustrations of how his ilk have oppressed others. Many parents even think of the terms “academic freedom” and “social justice” as noble concepts.
Now that they have had four decades to take over the campuses, the radical Ph.D.s prop their Birkenstocked feet upon their large desks, until someone dares to question their “expertise.” Rushing to their computers, they then splutter out their invectives against assaults on their “academic freedom.”
Doug Steward, associate director of programs at the monopolistic Modern Language Association (MLA) and Association of Departments of English (ADE), is typical. He is upset about the intrusions by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), the National Association of Scholars, and David Horowitz. Writing in MLA’s Profession 2008, he accuses ACTA of “subordinat[ing] the systematic pursuit of truth and knowledge by thousands of highly trained and certified experts to the personal opinion of a tiny number of wealthy persons.” The “highly trained and certified experts” are the humanities and social science scholars “trained to make complex judgments about human values.”
Receiving little outside scrutiny, these “experts” grant each other degrees, offer each other recommendations, invite each other to conferences where they favorably quote each other in papers, publish each other’s books, hire each other at conventions, and promote each other to tenure where they enjoy rarely seen power and job security.
ACTA works to expose these goings-on with reports and surveys. They educate and encourage trustees who likely work in the real world. They educate alumni who may be under the illusion that professors at their alma mater still teach the sonnet form, when in reality they teach about Shakespeare’s “sexualities.” In short, they provide a critical check on the protected professors who believe that their “expert opinion” should be immune to scrutiny and criticism.
ACTA now has a new guide to colleges that surveys their requirements in core areas like composition, U.S. government and history, economics, and foreign languages. The dominant U.S. News and World Report guide categorizes by reputation, without regard to what is actually being taught. The fact that U.S. News and World Report quoted favorably a student’s paean to the fraud and communism-monger Bill Ayers indicates its limitations. Another guide put out by Washington Monthly grades schools on non-intellectual criteria, like the recruitment of low-income students, emphasis on “service,” and production of “cutting-edge scholarship” and Ph.D.s (which means wacky, radical theories and little emphasis on teaching).
ACTA’s report What Will They Learn? has received much publicity in the mainstream press because, program director Charles Mitchell says, “We’re saying something that’s true.”
But desperation has been evident in counterattacks. Steward described ACTA as part of “anti-intellectual movements” that “seek not merely to exercise the right to critique how universities run their affairs but to put the stopper on controversial scholarship and teaching, to defund institutions sheltering controversial professors, and to institute a kind of academic unfreedom [sic] closely monitored by trustees, governors, alumni, legislators, parents, and affluent think tanks.”
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Mary Grabar earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia and teaches in the Atlanta area. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and published fiction writer. Visit her website and get on her mailing list at MaryGrabar.com. Mary blogs at the TheLiterateCitizen.com.
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60 Comments
1. ForNow:“As important is what is left out, and that includes a factual presentation of the numbers killed under the ideologies these professors promote….”
1. Visited your site, you’re highly cute.
2. Agree with quoted statement, have been posting the numbers (85,000,000 to 100,000,000 according to The Black Book of Communism) lately at L.com. The young ‘uns don’t know, we need to tell them. If a big lie, continually repeated, becomes a Big Lie, then a big truth, continually repeated, becomes a Big Truth.
3. Small quibble, should say “the numbers murdered under the ideologies these professors promote….”
Keep up the good work!
Sep 8, 2009 - 2:19 am 2. Ruvy:Yet more reasons to make sure my sons NEVER study in the United States. Better they go to Bar Ilan or Ariel and stay away from the commies there. If this is what “education” in America has fallen to, I pity you Americans stuck sending your children to be crammed with this trash.
Sep 8, 2009 - 2:48 am 3. Mike Murray:I worked for years in “higher education” (as an administrator), and I am married to a woman who has a Ph.D. in English (and has taught at four colleges / universities).
I wish I could say that Mary Grabar is wrong. Alas, I cannot. The ideological indoctrination she describes is all-too pervasive.
I have great respect for those dedicated teachers who do their level best to educate and encourage. See: http://emmeffemm.com/id1.html
But I have nothing but contempt for those who — in the name of “academic freedom,” of course — think it their prerogative to turn classrooms into bully pulpits from which to spout personal opinions.
Teachers should mount soapboxes only on their own time, and only on their own dime.
Sep 8, 2009 - 3:49 am 4. Martin Snigg:Ah the judgments the leftists make that pretend to be freeing us from judgments. Human nature is an oppressive construct, marriage in patriarchal and oppressive, the West’s history is one big pile of Christian colonial mistakes! “Let us be free of the judgments of the past”! (everyone likes freedom right?) And the only way that easy cache comes is if you attack traditional values, the settled judgments (you can’t use the natural settled judgments about things and present them as being non-judgmental and liberating).
Young people are fooled into thinking any progress can come from outside of our civilization – as if going back to a pre-pagan or barbarian neo-stone age (they don’t rise often to the level of the natural law of pagan antiquity) in their epistemology represents learning! Only from within our tradition can things old and new be drawn – like the articulation of human rights drawn from 11th century canon lawyers, who ultimately drew from the Gospels and the fact of the Incarnation and creation in image and likeness to God we read in Genesis.
These leftist stakeholders are cream skimmers and ruining our civilization, getting fat off inherited capital that they were supposed to have passed on.
They are vandals – thank you for reminding us Mary.
Sep 8, 2009 - 4:18 am 5. Martin Snigg:Addendum:
Richard Rorty: Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.
“It is central to the idea of a liberal society that, in respect to words as opposed to deeds, persuasion as opposed to force, anything goes. This openmindedness should not be fostered because Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake. A liberal society is one which is content to call ‘true’ whatever the upshot of such encounters turns out to be. That is why a liberal society is badly served by an attempt to supply it with ‘philosophical foundations.’ For the attempt to supply such foundations presupposes a natural order of topics and arguments which is prior to, and overrides the results of, encounters between old and new vocabularies. (pp. 51-52)”
“Let us call truth whatever we call it at the moment” says Rorty. How many disciples has he in the academy at present. God help us.
Sep 8, 2009 - 4:43 am 6. Martin Snigg:(that quote was stolen from The Maverick Philosopher Prof. Vallicella)
Sep 8, 2009 - 4:50 am 7. BackwardsBoy:Need a shining example of what’s wrong with higher education in America? Look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Av. in Washington. There you’ll find a Constitutional professor who refuses to govern within the confines of that document. This well-educated fellow can’t seem to find a common-sense solution to any of the problems our country faces, but instead thinks that by wasting our tax dollars, government will magically make everything right.
Sep 8, 2009 - 5:18 am 8. Montaigne's Cat:FYI, a journal search yielded these three essays by Douglas Steward. I have not read them and so cannot speak about them. The second one is online.
The illusions of phallic agency: “Invisible Man,” “Totem and Taboo,” and the Santa Claus surprise – in Callaloo 26.2 (Spring 2003) p522+
Saint’s Progeny: Assotto Saint, Gay Black Poets, and Poetic Agency in the Field of the Queer Symbolic – in African American Review 33.3 (Fall 1999): p507+
Anti-Oedipalizing Great Expectations: Masochism, Subjectivity, Capitalism – in literature and psychology 45.3 (Fall 1999) p29+
Sep 8, 2009 - 5:45 am 9. venividivici:I was a grad student in Classics at one point and had a run-in with a Leftist ideologue that cemented my decision to exit the academic world. I wrote a paper on the course text, analyzing it without reference to the Left’s holy trinity of race, class or gender. I was called in to the professor’s office and given a chance to re-write the paper because, in his words, I couldn’t use the framework I did because the authors were “bad people”. No attempt to rebut my analysis on the merits were made. I left the program a while later, after getting myself a job that had nothing to do with academics.
Whenever I hear people like Horowitz being accused of being “anti-intellectual”, I immediately recall my professor’s first instinct at “rebutting” my analysis, which was to go straight for the ad hominem attack.
Sep 8, 2009 - 5:50 am 10. bibio44:‘…President Barack Obama wanting to get elementary school children to scrutinize themselves on how they are fulfilling what he “asks” them to do.’
Shameful! I hear he’s telling them to take up arms and fight for his health care bill.
Sep 8, 2009 - 5:51 am 11. bibio44:“One fellow instructor at the University of Georgia a couple of days after that fateful day told me that he had provided historical context for his freshman composition students with descriptions of assaults against Muslims by the West from the Crusades and on.”
Horrible! Kids should be taught that 9/11 had NO context, that the attacks came without warning (despite the memo on Bush’s desk), and with no history at all behind them. Oh, Mary, you must be a wonderful teacher!
‘These are the people who have argued for … replacing Shakespeare with multicultural “texts” written at the fifth-grade level …. In fact, these are the people arguing for eliminating writing itself.
Maybe at the University of Georgia.
Sep 8, 2009 - 6:03 am 12. Fred Beloit:#5
“‘…That is why a liberal society is badly served by an attempt to supply it with ‘philosophical foundations…’”
He then proceeds to badly serve us with a philosophical foundation.
There is always a central and crucial contradiction in what these nitwits offer, Martin. It is captured in the quote. The theme is always that there is no objective truth, except of course the truth of the statement that there is no objective truth. This is always objectively true, isn’t it.
Sep 8, 2009 - 6:52 am 13. Steve:I think university faculty work very hard and struggle to do everything asked of them. I wonder if the demanding work environment may lead to selection of individuals willing to suffer for a ‘collective good.’ It is good that the self-selected experts are being challenged however. They should be able to defend their work. Maybe this is a role for the new media?
Sep 8, 2009 - 6:58 am 14. john from cinncinatti:it sounds like college education is a waste of time and money for what it teaches, yet the credential is all important. merit over credentials.
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:01 am 15. Fred Beloit:#11
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:01 am 16. Pelaut:Good call, Bibio. You present another objective truth and philosophical foundation for the modern leftist:
“The people of the West used to be bad. They are bad now, Americans most especially. I’m a Westerner, but I am good. Why am I alone good? Because I know Westerners are all bad.”
Speaking of ad hominem, #8. Montaigne’s Cat citations reveal Stewart’s more a pervert than a professor. Well, he only represents the state of the American academic ‘art’ for 40 years.
All this is what MOST Americans bought into with Marcuse & Company in the 60s & 70s, to wit:
“contructionsist education” — worked over Socrates/Rousseau/Dewey and Metaphysical Poets’ ‘angel infancy’ where you don’t have to teach a child, you just free up its memory and it will learn what it already knows — it also relieves the teacher from having to know squat him/herself.
“deconstructionist reading” — take away everything that’s in the text and look for what’s NOT there, then you’ve got the message. They really meant this stuff and taught it in Humanities! It’s how they made Jefferson evil for generations of kids who are now your policitians and academicians. Science and Math got squashed and “thinking with images” got taught. The kids (now YOU) got left with unordered, kaleidoscopic mental gestalts they’re incapable of expressing with ordered words — God helps them with algebraic symbol strings or algorithms.
I was there at the time and heard EVERYBODY talking this tripe. It worked. If you believe election results and polls, the vast majority of Americans wander the streets with these irreversible mindsets.
I suppose Marcuse was sent to subvert the US by the 30s Soviets like Germany shipped Lenin to Moscow in WWI, or they conscripted him after his immigration, but the result is the same: generational destruction.
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:26 am 17. adam:Welcome to the world you made while you slept.
The solution here, as with so many other areas of modern life, lies in the breaking of the higher education monopoly. If employers were permitted to establish their own criteria for hiring–their own exams, their own training programs, their own assessment of grades and standardized exams, etc.–without fear of anti-discrimination lawsuits, the need for so many people to go to accredited institutions would decline, and those institutions would no longer have a captive audience. We might get to the point where doctors go to specific pre-med institutions and get the preparatory training they need, and so do those aspiring to enter other professions requiring advanced schooling. Employers might demand specific course work, meeting specific standards, and institutions which can meet those standards will establish relationships with employers, and offer those courses in various formats (e.g., on-line)and packages.
There would still be genuine universities in the liberal arts tradition, and they might give some small edge in economic competitiveness to those who go through them–but they would mostly be for those who thirst for a sense of the scholarly experience, or hope to go on and become scholars themselves.
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:35 am 18. TQ:Not to nitpick, but, yeah, actually I’m going to nitpick: you claim graduate students in the humanities/social sciences get very little teaching experience in a Ph.D. program. You know, being a professor, that this is not the case. Only science Ph.D.’s are supported such that they can often avoid teaching. The humanities and social science grad students are poor, indentured servants and they bear a substantial teaching load. Hell, I’ve known of English professors giving advanced undergraduates large teaching loads. That is the real problem–these folks are often shifting their teaching duties onto non-Ph.D. subordinates. In my experience there is a lot less of this happening in the sciences, whereas it seems rampant in the humanities.
You then take a pot shot at the end at film and graphic novels. Really? Who is the elitist academic now? Film is worthy of study? And personally, I think Neil Gaiman’s work in the graphic novel medium was better than his novels. He’s an amazing story teller–the stories are less worthy because he teams up with an artist? Indeed, the reason some of the best films over the last few years have been based on comic books is because they are good stories that resonate with people.
As for the rest of it, yeah, universities are overrun with a bunch of kooks.
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:40 am 19. Kipling:All is not lost but we need to act quickly in addressing the situation. First, we must inform ourselves – Grabar, the ACTA and Horowitz – do a good job of this but we need more. Second, we must vote with out pocket books and refuse to support institutions that indoctrinate rather then teach. Third, we need to support conservative schools and professors like those at Hillsdale College and others scattered throughout the liberal system.
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:46 am 20. JFP:bibio44: There was a context to 9/11, all right. You just didn’t want to see it. I’m going to point out the events in that context that are relevant for you.
1. The Iranian revolution, which had the following stages:
a. Leftists and Muslims band together to evict the Shah.
b. Shah is evicted.
c. Muslims take over.
d. Muslims butcher leftists.
2. The fatwa against Salman Rushide, who was left of center.
3. And just in case you still didn’t understand, the subsequent murder of Theo van Gogh, because he wanted to stick up for women’s rights.
Face it, bibio44, Muslims are gunning for the left just as much as they are for ordinary Americans.
And in case you don’t believe me about Muslims butchering leftists, here’s what Nick Cohen (a British leftist) says about it in his “Waiting for the Etonians,” p. 119: “The Islamists murdered tens of thousands of leftists, perhaps up to 100,000, after the 1979 Iranian revolution.”
Oh, and the memo on the desk? Presidents get these every day. Why pay attention to one of them more than any of the others?
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:57 am 21. Mr Lucky:15. Fred Beloit. Well stated.
11. bibio44.
Mary Grabar –
“One fellow instructor at the University of Georgia a couple of days after that fateful day told me that he had provided historical context for his freshman composition students with descriptions of assaults against Muslims by the West from the Crusades and on.”
bibio44 –
“Horrible! Kids should be taught that 9/11 had NO context, that the attacks came without warning (despite the memo on Bush’s desk), and with no history at all behind them. Oh, Mary, you must be a wonderful teacher!”
Context?
“…assaults against Muslims by the West from the Crusades and on.”
Bibio44, you are ware that the Muslims had overrun largely Christian areas several hundred years before the Crusades? You can research further back than 1095 if you wish, and see that many power struggles in that region played out over centuries of time, but then again such information may be being presented by those who are not considered politically reliable.
Were/are you a wonderful student? Of what?
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:59 am 22. Poor Citizen:As with that immigration article. I am a teacher in a foreign country, so once again I am prejudiced with this issue as well. Except to say I did live and attend schools and university in my beloved homeland and 80% of the education I recieved there did me little good in the real world. Like most americans, my real education began the day I left america as a soldier, rarely to return. I am sure its pretty much the same thing now. But I could wrong.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:11 am 23. venividivici:Horrible! Kids should be taught that 9/11 had NO context, that the attacks came without warning (despite the memo on Bush’s desk), and with no history at all behind them. Oh, Mary, you must be a wonderful teacher!
You want “context”? Here’s your context:
http://www.cspipublishing.com/Primary_Doctrine_Books.htm
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:12 am 24. Bill Owen:And I thought the purpose of higher education was to teach… and to develop critical thinking. Armed with those skills, anyone can pursue knowledge from any source.Throughout history, self-taught people have advanced. Their skills? Great “crap detectors” based upon their critical thinking and applications. Would someone criticize the application of a good “crap detector” when sorting through the myriad of information from all sources today?
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:20 am 25. Gretel:This nonsense goes all the way to the grade school level, where “social studies”, a subject I fondly remember as covering civilizations, geography, history etc., now covers “the different types of families” as its main focus through third grade. No surprise we home school.
PS I am as conservative as the day is long, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Birkenstocks.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:28 am 26. Steve Sampson:King Lear Act 2 Scene 4
Fool: Fathers that wear rags
Do not make their children blind;
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind.
Fortune, that arrant whore,
Ne’er turns the key to the poor.
Translation
Men who are figuratively castrated
have no respect from their children
But fathers who maintain their cajones
have children that are kind to them
Fortune that obvious whore,
never opens the door to the impotent
The American cause of Freedom has allowed itself to be figuratively castrated in the world of academia by the Marxist Front. The Marxist has the patience to wait for generations to accomplish their ultimate goal of world domination.
We are now faced with a program of Marxist indoctrination from the primary grades to th University. The American public has become King Lear who is being tormented and tortured by his sadistic daughters, the Progressive Marxists.
It is noteworthy that the final scene of this play has a stage littered with dead, while a group of clowns (Marxists led by Obama) sing ribald songs and dance in a lewd choreography that leaves the audience laughing insanely. To me this is the current version of the play that has Obama as the protagonist who brings into the open the polemic of the Marxist infiltration of our society. The epitasis or climax or denouement is approaching as the confrontation of the freedom loving patriot pitted against the evil Marxist dispersed amongst our citizenry and public officials. Unfortunately, the epilogue is yet to reveal itself, failure to depose the Marxist Regime will mean the end of the Republic.
The Marxist control of the University is only one factor the Progressives have employed to dominate and destroy the US. Perhaps some of us who are nearing retirement should contemplate obtaining a PhD and teaching in the University as a second career, retirement might not be possible after Obama is done manipulating the economy and stimulating us into the poor house.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:32 am 27. billslayer:I think that this is a good article but it again, like so many articles on this site, begs the question: what are we going to do when Obama’s one term is over and we own the levers of power again? My modest proposal is to simply eliminate pell grants for liberal arts. Yes, that’s 100% jerkis, but I live in a town where the amount of PHDs owned by the waitstaff of any and all restaurants eclipses the amount of stars in the the sky. These degrees were subsidized by the taxpayer. They are of zero benefit to our country. This money would be far better spent on math and science.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:45 am 28. Wynne:“Textbooks that I have been required to use in the public colleges in Georgia have in so many ways distorted history and promoted leftist ideology.”
When history (or verifiable fact, in general) conflicts with “the greater truths” of ideology, easy fixes are available: ignore, revise, deny.
Newton — ignored, revised, denied — may have said it best.
“This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypothesis.”
That wise old fellow seems not to have been a relativist.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:50 am 29. Educated American:The same thing is happening in Israeli universities. For an eye opener visit http://www.isracampus.org.il .
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:51 am 30. Apollo:Another issue is how our universities are now used as a matchmaking and recruiting service for homosexuals. Lesbian professors develop trysts by traveling to “symposiums” frequently at taxpayer expense by renaming their gay lifestyle as Feminism and Gender Studies. This goes on worldwide. Similarly, a gay lifestyle is taught as socially desirable. I’m not anti-gay, but there is a preoccupation with “Gay Studies” now far in excess of the population of gays in our universities.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:54 am 31. Calvin Ball:You just described climate science perfectly. Their circular literature citations are so bad, Steve McIntyre refers to it as “check kiting”. The citations in a typical “Team” paper read like the “spam, spam, spam, and spam” routine from Monty Python.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:56 am 32. goy:The tenured class lives in a bubble / echo chamber that shields them from the harsh realities and accountabilities of real life. This bubble has been under construction since those who “were Deweyites before [they] read Dewey” took over academia. These folks’ opinions are largely ruled by a moral mind which has reached only a limited level of maturity.
How many U.S. History classes in high school or colleges ever mention the fact that FDR’s so-called “New Deal” was largely repealed by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional? How many go on to discuss the ethics (or lack thereof) of his attempt to pack the Supreme Court with justices sympathetic to socialism as a result?
How many journalism classes mention Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer-grade propaganda in support of Stalin’s murderous excesses?
Except for YouTube and PJTV, where can students go to learn about American Exceptionalism rather than being bombarded by cherry-picked events from history “proving” America’s institutionalized racism and cultural imperialism?
If conservatives were to do nothing for the next ten years but focus on and undo the corruption of American educational institutions, pretty much everything else would turn around all on its own. The far-left ideologues directing education need to be released into the real world, where they can learn to appreciate the other 3/5ths of the intuitive ethics that make for a sustainable society.
Sep 8, 2009 - 8:56 am 33. Wynne:‘Highly Trained and Certified’ Professors [and other leftist intellectuals]
In the US the situation in our educational system has not yet played out to the reduction ad absurdum endpoint. In France it has. For a glimpse into the future, read further.
At the Brussels Journal website* I came across an article that is priceless. It is at once hilarious and pathetic. It deals with a panel of “experts” comprised of a historian, a writer, an artist, and two bearded pundits (one of whom may be a psychologist). They have gathered for a TV discussion of the state of crime in France.
To give readers an idea of the content I offer two snippets:
Third speaker (identified as writer Antoine Bello): French society is less violent than in the past, I agree with my colleagues on that. Compared to past eras, such as the Middle Ages, the French Revolution, the Commune [...] French society is much less violent.
Fourth speaker (later identified as artist Ivan de Montbrison): I agree with the others that French society is less violent, compared to Pakistan…
As they say you just can’t make this stuff up. Again, priceless.
* By contributor, Tiberge http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4083
Sep 8, 2009 - 9:20 am 34. Fantom:20. JFP:
“The Islamists murdered tens of thousands of leftists, perhaps up to 100,000, after the 1979 Iranian revolution.”
Well, I guess the moslems have some redeeming value after all.
Sep 8, 2009 - 9:53 am 35. billslayer:Like I said, if you want to end this phenomenon, starve the beast. Eliminate pell grants for students to go to these clown training camps. Pell grants for math and science only! And being that Obama is going to leave us with an unsustainable deficit, there will be plenty of opportunities for spending cuts across the board. No more comparative lit, alternative gender history, etc- except for the idiot leisure classes who can afford this stupidity on their own dime and deserve all the ennui that a life dedicated to this garbage will afford them.
Sep 8, 2009 - 9:58 am 36. Jack Olson:The average American college senior cannot pass a basic test in American history. This does not refer to low grade, undistinguished colleges. I mean the best known. This was demonstrated by ACTA in a history test given to a thousand college students at fifty well-known universities a few years ago. On some campuses, such as UC Berkeley, the freshmen outscored the seniors. I took the test myself and scored 100%, so I know it wasn’t too difficult. The average senior scored 50%. Yet, this was multiple-choice, so by random guessing alone one could easily score 25%. It’s astonishing how little education college students get for their $100,000.
Sep 8, 2009 - 10:07 am 37. JoeCR:I was older when I studied for my MBA at a major university. What I found was unexpected and shocking. The changes were disturbing. I had one professor in economics who was a Communist and made no secret of it. We disagreed often, but he did not punish me with lower grades. Most of others would call themselves liberals, and most of them acted like egotistical, selfish children. And if you disagreed with them – you would never be forgiven. I think few of them thought of helping students; they were only interested in those who were or pretended to be worshipers of their magnificent professor. My counselor only talked about how great he was as a student and scholar.
I used the degree because it helped me get a job in an organization that only looked at credentials. But If I was famous, I would never give the name of the university. It is an institution of shame.
Sep 8, 2009 - 10:30 am 38. jeff carter:I don’t believe this should be a left/right thing. The goal is to become an educated person. You can’t be considered educated without basic math skills, writing skills and the ability to reason. The core curriculum should encompass that goal.
For every college grad we ought to require, 1 math course-at least advanced algebra (I am puking inside because I would like this to be Calculus); 1 Composition course, 1 Micro-Economics course(macro has too much debate), 1 Science course (Physics, Chemistry, Biology etc)
1 Public speaking course, 1 History of WESTERN Civilization(not because we are better, but you have to know how we got here)
then maybe a foreign language. English is the language of international business, so it’s not necessary.
That’s a minimal core.
Sep 8, 2009 - 10:37 am 39. Calvin Ball:What constitutes a broad education is a completely separate issue. The dysfunction with the Marxist academy is in the ideological monoculture, and the willingness of the professors to be petty dictators, who abuse their discretion. This kind of abuse can occur in the herd sciences, and is happening in some highly politicized fields, such as climatology.
Did I say “herd sciences”? I meant “hard sciences”. That was a typo. Really.
Sep 8, 2009 - 11:39 am 40. JFP:Apollo, not only are those junkets often funded by the taxpayers, but I suspect that most of the professors involved come from wealthy backgrounds. It’s welfare for the rich, but in this instance the left doesn’t protest against it.
Sep 8, 2009 - 11:42 am 41. Zeke the Sneak:An enlightening column, as always, by Dr. Graber. I am glad I receive her emails.
One educational option is Community Colleges. I love taking college courses, and enjoy furthering my education. I found if I took courses in the evening, I got interesting teachers, well-qualified in their own field, who were teaching part time. The other night students were older, and I don’t think colleges try to foist as much on their working, more mature, night students.
Plus Community Colleges are much cheaper for all of the pre-requisites. Good luck with your graduate studies though.
Sep 8, 2009 - 12:29 pm 42. JFM:Second, we must vote with out pocket books and refuse to support institutions that indoctrinate rather then teach.
Not enough. Institutions that indoctrinate rather than teach translate into poorer jobs for you or your children; Sue for damages and, in case it is a state university, for diverting your tax dollars from the purpose approved by teh legislature.
Sep 8, 2009 - 2:11 pm 43. Bohemond of Taranto:Hmmm. Well, I suppose the Crusades could be seen at long term as a factor in 9/11. After all, the many blunders (political and military) committed by the Crusaders, especially the devils’ bargain between the leaders of the Fourth Crusade and Doge Dandolo of Venice which led to the sack of Constantinople, meant that ultimately the Crusades failed to destroy Islam and cleanse it from the earth centuries ago- and thus 9/11 could occur.
Sep 8, 2009 - 2:18 pm 44. Banned by Huffpo:#23 VVV:
Thanks for the link!
Sep 8, 2009 - 2:53 pm 45. Nobama 2012:11. bibio44:
Couldn’t list all the attacks for the month of Ramadan,
Sep 8, 2009 - 3:33 pm 46. Nobama 2012:But…
The Religion of Peace needs 11 (bibio44)
to shell for them. Keep on appeasing the terrorist and they will cut your head off last…
11. bibio44:
Horrible! Kids should be taught that 9/11 had NO context, that the attacks came without warning (despite the memo on Bush’s desk), and with no history at all behind them. Oh, Mary, you must be a wonderful teacher!****************************
Couldn’t list all the attacks for the month of Ramadan,
Sep 8, 2009 - 3:37 pm 47. Jim Baker:But…
The Religion of Peace needs 11 (bibio44)
to shell for them. Keep on appeasing the terrorist and they will cut your head off last…
List of Islamic Terror Attacks For the Past 2 Months
Date Country City Killed Injured Description
2009.09.07 Afghanistan Kabul 3 0 A family of three, including the parents and child, are wiped out by a Taliban rocket as they are sleeping in their home.
2009.09.06 Iraq Mosul 2 0 An elderly woman and her 3-year-old granddaughter are successfully taken out in their home by Mujahideen gunmen.
2009.09.06 Iraq Baghdad 1 6 A civilian is killed in a Jihad bombing.
2009.09.06 Thailand Yala 3 0 A 61-man is mowed down along with his son and daughter in an automatic weapons attack by Islamic separatists.
2009.09.06 Chechnya Grozny 1 0 Islamic militants shoot a young traffic policeman to death.
2009.09.05 Iraq Kirkuk 1 0 A 62-year-old man is abducted, bound and executed by Mujahideen.
2009.09.05 Afghanistan Kunar 2 3 Two women are killed by a Taliban mortar attack on their neighborhood.
2009.09.05 Pakistan Swat 2 1 Holy Warriors gun down two brothers outside their home.
2009.09.05 Somalia Mogadishu 6 18 Children are among the dead when al-Shabaab Islamists stage an attack in a residential area.
2009.09.05 Thailand Yala 1 1 A Buddhist rubber tapper is gunned down by Muslim radicals.
2009.09.04 Thailand Yala 1 12 A policeman is burned alive in his car by Jihadis outside a restaurant.
2009.09.04 Thailand Pattani 2 0 A man and his 15-year-old son are slaughtered by Mujahid gunmen.
2009.09.04 Afghanistan Nimroz 3 0 Three security guards are murdered by a Shahid suicide bomber.
2009.09.04 Pakistan Peshawar 2 0 Two local police are gunned down point-blank by Islamic gunmen while sitting in their car.
2009.09.03 Thailand Pattani 1 27 Twenty-seven people are injured, and an elderly man killed, when Muslims toss a bomb into a restaurant packed with Buddhists.
2009.09.03 Iraq Mussayab 4 24 Sunnis bombers take down four Shiites, preparing to break Ramadan fast outside a mosque.
2009.09.02 Afghanistan Kabul 23 50 A Shahid blows himself up outside a mosque, taking twenty-three Afghans with him.
2009.09.02 Iraq Mosul 2 1 A 19-year-old girl in her home is among two people executed by Jihadis.
2009.09.02 Afghanistan Jowzjan 1 6 Taliban bombers kill one civilian by planting a remote-controlled bomb on a bicycle.
2009.09.02 India Rajouri 2 0 Two local cops are killed in a brutal Mujahideen ambush.
2009.09.02 Pakistan Hub 3 0 Three people are shot dead in a targeted sectarian attack.
2009.09.02 Thailand Pattani 5 0 Four men are shot to death in separate Muslim terror attacks. (A fifth is killed in Yala)
2009.09.02 Pakistan Bannu 2 0 Two small girls, ages 8 and 13, die from shrapnel injuries when Islamists toss a grenade into their home.
2009.09.02 Thailand Pattani 2 0 Muslim gunmen murder a man and his 13-year-old son.
2009.09.02 Iraq Tal Afar 2 0 A married couple is brutally gunned down by Islamic terrorists.
2009.09.02 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 A man in a tea shop is among two people murdered by Muslim militants
2009.09.02 Thailand Narathiwat 1 1 Terrorists gun down a man and injure his wife.
2009.09.01 Ingushetia Dattykh 3 2 Islamic militants murder three local police with a roadside bomb.
2009.09.01 Afghanistan Zabul 1 3 An Afghan civilian is taken down by a roadside bomb.
2009.09.01 Somalia Mogadishu 2 10 Two civilians die from gunshot injuries suffered during an attack by Islamic militants.
2009.09.01 Iraq Mosul 3 1 The head of a local charity is among three people gunned down by Sunni militants.
2009.09.01 India Poonch 0 0 Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists shoot an Indian soldier to death during an infiltration attempt from Pakistan.
2009.09.01 Afghanistan Border 1 0 Video surfaces of the Taliban strapping explosives to a man accused of spying, then detonating him.
2009.09.01 Pakistan Mohmand 1 0 A tribal elder is murdered outside his home by Mujahid gunmen.
2009.08.31 Iraq Khanaqin 1 12 Jihadi bombers kill one civilian and leave a dozen more with injuries.
2009.08.31 India Srinagar 2 12 Jamiat-Ul-Mujahideen terrorists gun down two guards outside a bank.
2009.08.30 Pakistan Mingora 16 11 Sixteen local cops are murdered by a Shahid suicide bomber.
2009.08.30 Iraq Baghdad 2 13 Separate bombings, one a Shahid, leave two civilians dead.
2009.08.30 Pakistan Swat 3 0 Two political activists and a student are murdered by suspected hardliners.
2009.08.30 Iraq Mosul 1 0 A woman is shot to death by Mujahideen.
2009.08.29 Iraq Hamad 12 15 A Fedayeen truck bomber detonates near a police station, killing at least a dozen innocents.
2009.08.29 Iraq Mosul 6 23 Six Iraqis at a market are blown to bits by Jihadi bombers.
2009.08.29 Algeria Algiers 5 3 Five people are killed in two terrorist attacks by armed fundamentalists.
2009.08.29 Yemen Sawad 9 16 Shiite rebels kill nine local tribesmen in a mortar attack.
2009.08.29 Iraq Mosul 1 0 A young girl is gunned down by Muslim terrorists.
2009.08.29 Pakistan Bannu 2 0 Terrorists ram a police vehicle, then open up with automatic weapons, killing two officers.
2009.08.29 Afghanistan Zabul 2 21 A Fedayeen bomber blows himself up in front of a bazaar, killing two civilian bystanders.
2009.08.28 Pakistan Quetta 6 7 Six Christians are gunned down after refusing a ‘convert or die’ offer from Islamists.
2009.08.28 Thailand Pattani 1 17 Islamists hurl a grenade at a group of villagers playing an outdoor game, killing a 62-year-old.
2009.08.28 Iraq Mosul 5 6 A young girl shot to death is among five Iraqis murdered in at least two Jihad attacks.
2009.08.27 Afghanistan Khost 4 0 Four local cops are taken out with a Taliban landmine.
2009.08.27 Thailand Yala 1 0 A 70-year-old man is gunned down outside of his home by Muslim militants.
2009.08.27 Iraq Mosul 5 10 Five Iraqis are murdered in various Mujahideen shooting and bombing attacks.
2009.08.27 Pakistan Tokham 22 27 A teenage suicide bomber pretending to beg for food blows up twenty-two Pakistani soldiers gathered to break their Ramadan fast.
2009.08.26 Afghanistan Kunduz 1 0 A government official is taken out in a Taliban roadside bombing.
2009.08.26 Afghanistan Baghlan 1 2 A Pakistani engineer is shot to death by suspected extremists.
The left knows that only a small percentage of people are able to advance their knowledge base much beyond what they get taught in their schools. That is why the left has focused on teaching our children what they want future adults to think. Based on what I encounter, they have been very successful and the stupid right has sat idle and watched it happen. Now, after 40 years of government unions and leftist educators, we have a population that will vote for an obvious communist and not have one inkling about what could be wrong with that. The subject of American history is the most egregious example of leftist propaganda overriding the truth. The twisted logic we all encounter from the left is not accidental, it comes directly as a result of the propaganda. Lenin called the mindless followers of the propaganda the ‘useful idiots’. I don’t know if freedom loving people ever get back control of our schools, but the alternative is not a happy situation. This was the only country in history that was set up as an actual People’s Republic, and I hate to see us losing it.
Sep 8, 2009 - 3:51 pm 48. turfmonster:We need to identify these radicals who think that their job is to indoctrinate their students (instead of teaching them how to think for themselves) and remove them from any teaching jobs permanently and as soon as possible.
Anyone who practices what Gramsci preached should be the first to go.
Sep 8, 2009 - 4:04 pm 49. Keith:Divide the country! The Left and Right are not just ideological differences. The capacity for objective thought is almost non-existent amongst those on the Left. Their brains are designed for emotion, not the enlightenment. Just like trying to accommodate Islamic fanatics is impossible, the Left is unredeemable. Their brains are simply incapable of objectivity.
So stop trying to convince them of something they are incapable of understanding. Its simply hopeless. Be free of them. East-to-West or North-to-South, it doesn’t matter–divide the country. A new Velvet Revolution to save classic western thought; one last monastery to preserve what we hold dear.
Sep 8, 2009 - 4:26 pm 50. venividivici:44
No problem. Lots of very thorough analysis of Islamic doctrine in those texts.
49
Agreed. The only way those people are going to learn is if they have to actually make a country of their own work without being able to soak the rich. I virtually guarantee if you gave them half the country, they’d muck it up in less time than the time than it took the Soviets. The Russians were political daydreamers, but at least they had good heads on their shoulders, unlike the buffoons who make up the US Left.
Sep 8, 2009 - 5:33 pm 51. Steve Sampson:Nobama, we were looking for specific examples!
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:53 pm 52. Steve Sampson:Nobama, that is humor from a jaded mind. Thanks for your work!
Sep 8, 2009 - 7:55 pm 53. Inrptrn:Out of 100 schools surveyed only 11 had US Hist./World Hist. and only 17 had Literature requirements…and people wonder why our average 20-40 somethings are often brainless sheep…
I am absolutely sickened.
China and Russia should be looking to the USA for communist/Marxist inspiration. We are once again world leaders in education!
And whoever suggested that this should not be a left/right debate is completely wrong. 11 out of 100 schools requiring US Hist or any history whatsoever is a political maneuver of the highest order. Machiavelli would be proud/unsurprised.
Sep 8, 2009 - 10:04 pm 54. Jamie W.:Oh, it’s going to be fun pretending to “go along to get along” for two years in a UGA grad program. My, my.
Heh, who am I trying to fool? I’ll never be able to keep my mouth shut. I’ll survive somehow!
Sep 9, 2009 - 1:17 am 55. fred lapides:same old complaint. Get real. There are plenty of liberals and leftists in CERTAIN disciplines–ie, English, sociology, art etc and lots of conservatives in Business, engineering, P.E. science…the big difference is that those in the humanities write a lot of stuff and those in other fields do no (in newspapers, camps papers, etc)…Since most students must take a few humanities courses, basic stuff, they believe they are filled with leftist profs…then the go on to their majors and hear nothing political because those subjects deal with specified, specialized subjects that are non-political.
Sep 9, 2009 - 4:46 am 56. Clayton E. Cramer:My experience is that clowns like Ward Churchill are a fairly small minority of professors–but they are a very influential crowd, because of their willingness to scream “homophobe” and “racist” to get their way–and the vast majority of professors (who are very liberal) immediately toe the line for fear of being considered not liberal enough.
Clearly, we are producing vastly more graduates in the humanities and social sciences than our society needs. Way more. There needs to be either a substantial reduction in funding to these degree programs by state universities and college, or the federal government’s funding of students majoring in these fields needs to be cut. (Maybe both.) If you want to spend the unsubsidized out-of-state tuition amount to get a degree specializing in trash like this, fine. But the taxpayers shouldn’t be funding it. Get a degree in a useful field–perhaps one that might require some work, not the ability to parrot idiocy.
Sep 9, 2009 - 6:08 am 57. Nzewi Uchenna Osita:In the holy bible the revelation by john and Daniel vision are about the end time that will happen in the the same era.
The livng creature that will have two eyes in the front and three eyes on the back is the arabic alphabet with more than two dots and the one with three dot on the letter.
The beast with seven horns and five horns even ten horns are fish from rivers called Azu ndu which has a horn used for sting and defence called EBU in ibo language,then the beast with seven heads are what is used to describe size of the fishes that has no horn,which meant by sizen heads of the one that have ebu is equivalent of the one that has no horn used to sting that is electric fish.
The beast that is not electric fish are the one that has many fins which the cord horse chew while riders are on top is what the fish wants to multiply when it digest after 3 and half days which will take up to five months for people where electric fish is caught called cat fish to get it far lands like Sodom and gomorah.
Dragon and dinasur is what cat fish is been called i when sodom and gomorah was changed to Jerusalem.
The 666 numbers are Mandarin letters of chinese language that has six pieces to for a letter on there alphabets,which can be represented to roman numeral six letters and direct to the six letter words of any language alpha numerical code.
Sep 10, 2009 - 1:39 am 58. aaron:This is what happens when we substitute feelings for facts, and social status for skills.
Sep 10, 2009 - 5:43 pm 59. Boyd:Unfortunate they don’t have an A+ category to place Hillsdale College in Michigan in. Sent my daughter there. They are what a liberal arts college should be.
Sep 10, 2009 - 7:41 pm 60. richardsson:I can vouch for this trend as a college instructor. It wasn’t that way back in the 60’s. I had several avowed communists then who had even traveled to Cuba and they taught their classes with a left tilt but honestly so. Nowadays its pathetic. One instructor’s post Civil War U. S. History was a continuous rant against George W. Bush. He went from 40 to 10 students.
Sep 10, 2009 - 9:28 pm