Thursday, April 12, 2012

Higher Education--Fair and Balanced?

Some say not:
"I don't know any polite way of putting this -- but he's lying," said professor John Ellis, president of the National Association of Scholars' California division. Ellis was reacting to a critic's characterization of the NAS's damning report, "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California."

California taxpayers spend $2.8 billion to educate the more than 230,000 students at the 10 campuses that comprise the UC system. But the report says the UC system does not help students learn how to think, but rather teaches them what to think. And what they "learn" is that they are victims -- whether of racism, sexism, classism or discrimination because of sexual orientation. Liberal profs, says the report, turn the UC campuses into "a sanctuary for a narrow ideological segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas"...

NAS's Ellis says the answer is for the UC system to first acknowledge the problem. Then the UC system should stop ignoring its own regents' "Policy on Course Content." It states: "(Regents) are responsible to see that the University remain aloof from politics and never function as an instrument for the advance of partisan interest. Misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination ... constitutes misuse of the University as an institution."
It's not a "problem" if it's exactly what you want.

2 comments:

pseudotsuga said...

The AFT (american federation of teachers) of which I guess I am a paying member, recently sent out an email to members in my home state of Washington, urging us to write to our representatives (P. Murray and M. Cantwell) to support the Buffett Rule. The email included a link to a boilerplate letter basically talking about how evil rich people are, and that they don't pay enough taxes.
So I deleted the boilerplate and sent them my own message, urging them to NOT support such class warfare nonsense. Way to be fair and balanced, AFT! Let me speak for myself!
Just thought you, Darren, might appreciate such a gesture.

Darren said...

Of course I do :)