Tuesday, December 12, 2017

A Crack In the Math/Science/Engineering Wall

Should idiocy like this take hold, higher education will fall apart.  Real, normal people will not agree to fund such nonsense with their tax dollars:
The leader of Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education recently declared that academic “rigor” reinforces “white male heterosexual privilege.”

Donna Riley, who previously taught engineering at Smith College for 13 years, published an article in the most recent issue of the journal Engineering Education, arguing that academic rigor is a “dirty deed” that upholds “white male heterosexual privilege.

Defining rigor as “the aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality,” Riley asserts that “rigor is used to maintain disciplinary boundaries, with exclusionary implications for marginalized groups and marginalized ways of knowing.”
Note that the author previously taught at Smith College. 'Nuf said.

5 comments:

Left Coast Conservative said...

Is not higher education already falling apart? $70k student loan debt for a -Studies degree?

Anonymous said...

The solution shouldn't be to dumb down expectations for higher learning; it should be to INCREASE expectations starting in early childhood and preparing them for a changing, technical-focused world across all races, genders, and income levels. It's idiotic that the professor would even consider this as a solution to "level the playing field." If the author wants to resolve the issue of gender/race inequality in STEM classes, it comes down to sparking interest and providing resources to grow and succeed while they're most curious and growing the most.

Pseudotsuga said...

"Marginalized ways of knowing?"
So there are more ways of knowing if a bridge (for example) will stay up than mathematics? What do you propose-- slaughtering a chicken and reading the entrails? Holding hands in a seance and asking the spirits for knowledge about the bridge?
Does this person actually teach engineering? Apparently she is faculty at the Orwellian-named "School of Engineering Education" (whatever that means).
Another Education major, doing her hardest to bring social justice to the world instead of quality engineering.

Anonymous said...

I think educational process dhould be improved and i agree with you. I really appreciate some educational centres. Children can learn with fun there, without becoming so exhausted that they can't do their homework. They shouldn't write a lot of essays, researching papers or use https://pro-papers.com/research-papers-writing-service . But what is going on in the whole education i don't know. I think my children will study at home

Ellen K said...

It's time to stop giving scholarships and grants for anything other than merit. I don't care if you call yourself a purple giraffe, unless you can do the work, you shouldn't be in the program. By the way, a similar attitude is very worrisome in medical programs. I have former students, male and female, who say some students 'feel' they shouldn't have to deal with the type of rigorous proving grounds that medical school and internships require. Do you really want a doctor handling your injury when they can't perform in stressful situations?