Thursday, March 24, 2005

Two Organizations You Should Know About

I've already mentioned Protest Warriors. They're the good guys.

I've already spent way too many electrons mentioning the California Teachers Association. They're the bad guys.

You probably already know about the ACLU, who are usually the bad guys but every once in awhile, perhaps only by accident, they get something right.

Then there are two others you should know about.

Go to the NoIndoctrination.org web site. Here's part of what's on their Mission Statement page:

NoIndoctrination.org is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that collects and disseminates information to promote the importance of multiple and contrasting points of view in higher education. Our mission will be accomplished in the following ways:
1. To give a voice to the voiceless.
2. To inform the public about the frequent lack of balance in higher education.
3. To educate the public about academic freedom and open inquiry.
4. To notify college administrators and support organizations about possible indoctrination.

View or leave a posting. Look up your university and see if anyone's posted a complaint. Or be the first on your block to do so!

The next is FIRE, the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education. From their About page:
The mission of FIRE is to defend and sustain individual rights at America's increasingly repressive and partisan colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience -- the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE's core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.

FIRE goes after schools with unconstitutional speech codes, among other malfeasance, and often with surprising results. Their blog, The Torch, is accessible from the main page. High school seniors planning on going to college should order the FIRE Guides relating to free speech, due process, student fees, religious liberty, and first year orientation and thought reform.

The antidote to hate speech, or any speech you disagree with, is not censorship. It's more speech.

3 comments:

EdWonk said...

I like the Torch. And I've read their latest post on Idiot Chruchill with great interest.

Anonymous said...

How does your last sentence justify your practice of only allowing comments to your blog that only support your point of view? Your students reply here, and remain anonymous out of reasonable fear of persecution/retribution in your classroom, yet you censor their comments. Are you, in fact, afraid of "more speech"? You, like all the other black/white thinkers out there, undoubtably are. If you ever tire of the rant, there is a whole world out there who'd like to talk with you, as in dialogue, and your students are among those waiting. On the other hand, they'd enjoy learning some math in your spare time. With all the rant-time you seem to enjoy, there shouldn't be a single grade below A in there.

Darren said...

The fact that you continue to post here shows that I don't censor your views.

And I'm not even bound by the First Amendment. I'm not a governmental organization.

And please don't suppose that you know a thing about what goes on in my classroom, nor should you try to use my students, whom you don't know, as some sort of weapon against me. They post here using their actual names, showing they have more guts than you do.

And you have no idea how good, or bad, a math teacher I am, or how much time I spend covering math. You know nothing about that, so might I recommend you follow the good advice that says it's better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.