The original European universities were corporations of students who had assembled together, with some combination of learning and dissipation in their plans. At some time in their learning, all students studied the Trivium and those who went on to the next level studied the Quadrivium.

A small, like-minded cadre of students that put their money together could hire learned academics to teach them the Trivium and Quadrivium and any other courses of study they found necessary, better and cheaper than a college or university could do it. Maybe that is the way the revolution in education will break through the ramparts and shatter the useless, post-modern, politically correct academy.

“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” – William F. Buckley, Jr.

I didn’t expect to “like” my professors. I didn’t demand that they entertain or even engage me. Somehow, I was under the misapprehension that it was my job to be engaged, learn as much as I could.

Poor benighted me.

Of course, the even worse news about Dartmouth these days is how many of the trustees and the leadership of the college administration are both trying every propaganda trick imaginable to persuade alumni to vote for a slate of alumni association officers committed to furthering the college’s aim of disenfranchising alumni from having much of an impact on the college’s board of trustees.

A friend of mine coined the action going on here as “litigating liberalism”. Spot on, I tell you. If you don’t agree with me, then I am offended, thus, you are discriminating. To which I would reply, you’re damn right I’m discriminating. This extension of the Utopian theology of liberalism is scary. Operating blindly, thinking everything is fair and equal, while Rome burns around you is no way to go through life. Self-determination is in the corner whimpering.

A similar story is unfolding in a Northern county of Illinois. Here is the link, make associations at your own risk.

http://www.mchenrycountyblog.com/ and

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-tshirt-arrestmay02,0,1435143.story

Apparently, it’s okay to say “Goddamn America”, but it’s is no longer okay to point at someone. One more step to Balkanization.

But first, I think it’s obvious why younger people subscribe to liberal / progressive / socialist ideology: it represents a continuation of the only reality they’ve ever known, which is for someone else to be responsible for them and their wants / needs / desires. Ultimately, cradle-to-grave support is the (false) promise of socialism and “social justice” programs ostensibly aimed at ‘victim’ groups. Since that’s what almost all young people already enjoy – especially while in college – it’s no wonder that the ideology appeals to them.

I believe that it’s for precisely this reason we see ‘progressive’ efforts to lower the voting age or get out the young vote: they are predisposed – through worldly ignorance, lack of experience and nonexistent reasoning skills – to blindly support an ideology that represents a continuation of the only thing they understand. This is reinforced, of course, by things like handing out condoms instead of emphasizing personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, eliminating grades, not holding teachers accountable for classroom outcomes, making most school activities a “group-grope” where everyone in the group takes credit for the work done by the few willing to do it, as the teacher lays off as a “guide on the side” watching students wander aimlessly, etc., etc.

Same deal with Academics – adult adolescents whose positions and futures are guaranteed through tenure, making them wholly unaccountable for their actions and/or their performance as teachers. We see the result of that in cases like this one.

What to do? Call ‘em on it whenever one sees it, I guess. This is of course going to be mostly limited to people either actively pursuing an education (or whose children are doing so), those working in academia and those associated with same. My wife is pursuing a doctorate and all three schools she’s attended to date have been riddled with this kind of problem. Education takes a back seat to ideological indoctrination, “sustainability” programs, so-called “diversity”, Bush-bashing, feminaziism, and other popular progressive pastimes.

Perhaps we need an online clearing house (somewhat similar to F.I.R.E.) where even the most seemingly innocent examples of this silliness are exposed. I don’t know.