Alright so I don't feel the way that the title comes across that is the title of the article I am came across today, thanks conservapedia (I know I shouldn't but they make it too easy):
Now let me start by saying that I will tend to stay out of politics because well it is liable to piss off somebody and in the long run a lot of politics is based on personal opinion and not actual fact so it quickly gets iffy but this article and other stories like it have been hitting the airwaves a lot recently so I figured I would say something.Alright let me break this article down paragraph by paragraph (skip to the bottom if you want my summary of what I think is wrong with this article)
Lets begin:
How can we explain continued public support for Barack Obama's extremist spending plans, even though it is painfully obvious that his much touted "remaking America" means mortgaging the financial future of young people with trillions of dollars in debt? Are the American people really willing to let the government be our nanny, manage our economy, federalize our schools, decide which businesses can keep their doors open, what health care we will be permitted, who will get new jobs, and how extravagant will be the foreign handouts as Obama "rejoins the world community"?
One answer to these questions may be what has been taught over the last 30 years in U.S. colleges and universities where the radicals of the 1960s have become
tenured professors. David Horowitz has made it his life mission for the last two decades to expose the hypocrisy of professors pushing propaganda instead of education.
Ok so I know that this is two paragraphs but the first one is just an open ended attempt to get a rise out of people by tying everything that some people, aka the right, thinks is wrong with Obama to what students are being taught in schools. Let me just say right off that this is BS because while I and many other college students voted for Obama I have not agreed with everything that has gone on over the last few months nor will I always agree with everything he says/does. The second paragraph starts off trying to scare people, "[...]the radicals of the 1960s have become tenured professors." You know what else the radicals of the 1960s have become? Parents, grandparents, lawyers, businessmen/women, doctors, nurses you name it should we be afraid of all of those as well? I for one am going to go with NO. Please note that the only classes that David Horowitz has "exposed" are those that are more along the lines of a philosophy course so the fact that comes out of those classes tend to be those that the student actually draws for himself.
Ok I am going to skip the next paragraph nothing in there but the title of the book.
So moving on:
Horowitz documented 150 college courses at 12 elite universities, from Columbia
in New York to the University of California at Santa Cruz, which he calls "the
worst school in America" and whose highest ranking professors are the Communist
lesbians Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker. Other institutions along the way
include Duke, Penn State, the University of Colorado, and the University of
Southern California
Heaven forbid 12 "elite universities" and a total of 150 courses that clearly means that every college across the US, and probably other countries, and all of their classes are liberal based. Most of these schools listed are what I would call "Liberal" colleges. It doesn't say anything about their educational quality it is just that they tend to have a higher percentage of liberal students. Where I just graduated from, VT, I would consider a pretty conservative school although there are some aspects where it is very left leaning and other where it is very right leaning. I also find it funny that the article goes out of its way to point out that Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker are lesbians. I don't know anything about this two women but I could care less about if they are lesbians it adds nothing of value to the article, or if it is in the book the book.
Horowitz quotes directly from the syllabus of each course he critiques,
lists assigned readings, and reports on the credentials and background of the
instructor paid to teach the course. The most offensive departments are women's
studies, black studies, and peace studies.
By quoting directly from the syllabus it should make it pretty obvious that the student should know what course is going to entail before he or she signs up. In other words they don't have to take the damn class if they don't want to. Again the departments listed tend to be liberal because they are philosophy departments if I went into pretty much any business school in the US I bet I would find them to be some of the most conservative departements in the universites and I could write a book about how all colleges are conservative.
These so-called academic departments teach students to hate America, to believe
that women, blacks, and all minorities are the victims of oppression and racism,
and that America is a land of injustice that needs drastic change in our social
structure. The universities teach William Ayers-style "social justice," which is
the template for a socialist political agenda.
Lets start with that first sentence. Lets remember that this professors live and work in America so I have a very strong feeling they do not "hate America" they may dislike its policies or what it has done but I doubt very strongly that they hate it. Minorities have for centuries and still are oppressed and there is still racism in the US don't believe me come down to New Orleans or Baton Rouge sometime. I sure hope the book has some facts that show the opposite because well I can show you countless evidences of minorities being oppressed. As for America being a land of injustice etc I believe that in the past there was more and at present there is still plenty of injustice but we are slowly turning ourselves around but note slowly is the key word. I swear William Ayers has become a favorite of the right since the election, and I would also like to point out that prior to that I had never heard of him and am still a little iffy on the details. But needless to say I have never heard a teacher say that we need to bomb government building to get change accomplished in fact I have never heard anyone say that. The best way to get change after all is through peace and make those attacking you look like the dicks.
Women's Studies departments teach that gender is not a fact of nature or
biologically determined, but is a socially or environmentally determined
classification that ascribes qualities of masculinity and femininity to people,
a peculiar view accepted by feminists as though it were a principle of Newtonian
physics. Women's Studies instructors consider it a given that women have been
subordinated and discriminated against by an unjust male patriarchy and need
government action by legislatures and courts to give women their just due.
Alright so I have never had someone tell me that gender is not a fact of nature but I have heard them say the second part. Look it is true, it is also ironic that the person writing the article is a woman, prior to the feminist movement women who worked were looked down on, and they still often times are, but women have proven again and again that they are capable of doing at least as good a job at most jobs as men and therefore work in pretty much every field possible. Show to me how women haven't been subordinated and discriminated against. We have all heard of the glass ceiling pretty much a woman doing the same job as a man gets paid less for the same work, guess what that is illegal but it still happens hence the reason that laws need to be passed and courts need to make rulings.
At Columbia University, students who hope to be teachers are expected to adopt a
radical view of American society and to attack the legitimacy of the social
order. The courses dish out a running attack on capitalism and the free-market
system.
I was going to get this on lack of facts but I guess since this is a critique of a book I will let it slide. I would hope that anyone who is going to teach my children will be able to think for themselves and not be stuck with what they were told to believe, which is I am sure the point of the classes, after all we all need to be able to think for ourselves and I think I children should be taught how to do that. We should not just be told the past etc through red, white, and blue colored glasses.
Even at the University of Miami in Ohio, the Women's Studies department
makes clear that its courses are organized around radical feminist theory. To
get a degree in Women's Studies, the first requirement for the senior thesis is
that it "must incorporate feminist perspectives."
Let me start by saying all of the Women's Studies peoples I met were all liberal and feminists before they started so lets not kid ourselves here and pretend they were nice upstanding young conservative women before they started school. But as for their thesis requiring feminist perspectives I would hope so just like I would expect their thesis to include nonfeminist perspectives but since the feminist movement was the biggest pro-women's rights movement well ever I think it is somewhat important. And again why is the feminist movement looked down on with such disdain, esp. by a woman writer.
If any course syllabus promises to include "critical thinking," that means
criticizing men and the patriarchy.
I call BS.
The University of Texas uses required texts that take as their starting point
the patriarchal structure of society. Twenty-five points of a student's final
grade are determined by a gender journal in which students question norms about
sexuality.
How is society not patriarchal? At least western society come on people think. Never mind I should have read the next sentence first. When did questioning everything become bad? If something is right then it shouldn't matter if it questioned because the answer will always show it to be right. Heaven forbid we question something we do everyday and find that well we have been doing it wrong. QUESTION EVERYTHING!!!
Typical readings assigned at the University of Arizona reveal the bias of the
courses: "Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism," "Sexual
Democracy: Women, Oppression and Revolution," and "The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism."
Those seem like fine philosophy books to me. I might not agree with what they have to say but at least I am sure they back up facts to support their conclusions.
A course at the University of Missouri asserts that U.S. institutions exert
social control over women's bodies to promote gendered inequalities, especially
the media, the legal system, and the medical profession. Missouri courses attack
femininity as "a tool of self-oppression," and courses are frankly described as
"a training course for radical feminists in radical feminism."
"A course" you mean like one whole class holy tuna sandwiches batman then every class they teach must teach the same thing. Although isn't this the whole heart of the abortion issue which does break down to women wanting control of their own bodies and the government, well at least the right side, trying to take that away? I don't know how many more arguments I feel like making about the feminist movement there seemed to be a lot less when I actually read the article I guess since they all kind of say the same thing I kind of blurred them all together.
Women's Studies courses don't assign readings by any of the great women writers:
Jane Austen, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, or the Bronte sisters. Also
blacklisted are those who criticize feminism, such as Christina Hoff Sommers,
Carolyn Graglia, Daphne Patai, and Camille Paglia.
They don't assign those readings because I read them in English class I don't need to read them again. They also very rarely say anything about women's rights. Those who are "blacklisted" I doubt that they actually are more likely they just aren't read because there is no reason or the professor doesn't see their writings as fitting in with the point of the class.
The cultural Marxists have been teaching college students long enough to deceive
two generations. The abuses of the liberal arts curriculum were set forth 20
years ago by Allan Bloom in "The Closing of the American Mind" and nearly 50
years ago by E. Merrill Root in "Collectivism on the Campus."
Sure there are probably plenty of teachers who follow the model that Allan Bloom put forth but what does it matter they are in the liberal arts portion of the university. I, being a science major, had to take 1 philosophy course and 2 art courses in college so they clearly indoctrinated me. I will also have you know that most of my beliefs were set well before the philosophy course it just made me think about stuff that I hadn't thought about before.
When are young people and their parents going to stop paying exorbitant
tuition for the privilege of being brainwashed by the Left?
Agreed tuition is high, too high in many cases, but that is because some people on the right keep cutting the funds to education!
Alright so I am going to ignore the cartoon at the bottom because well I just don't want to dive into that political minefield right now it is not the one I set out to tackle.
SUMMARY: Let me start by saying I have not nor will I ever (probably) read the book they are critiquing if you have and have something you need to say about it please go ahead in the comments section but I am not. I will give the author that there might be some "liberal" professors out there, heaven forbid, but when we get right down to it there are some "conservative" professors out there. One of the beautiful things about college is that you can choose which out of major classes you take. If you are in one of the majors that they list you signed up for that and were probably pretty "liberal" to begin with, again heaven forbid. If by the off chance you, or your child, ends up in a "liberal" class hopefully they will learn something from it. You don't always learn the facts the teacher is trying to tell you in a philosophy course, after all they are few and far between, but you learn the most important thing and that is how to think. As I said before question everything it will only confirm those things that are true and you will be able to toss out those things that are false. In fact I think I have found my new sign off
QUESTION EVERYTHING
