The Oprahization of Academia
In Feminism and Composition Studies, a volume emblematic of the scholarship that teachers and directors of freshman composition participate in, old assumptions about what students should be taught are replaced. Taking issue with such commonsense notions that writing courses are “firmly grounded in the ‘self’ of the writer-student” and “based on the notion of the subject as a rational, coherent individual who, at times, is present to himself,” Mas’ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton reveal their agenda: “Writing courses … have become the last bastion of defense of traditional humanism against radical (post)modern critical theory.” My former boss at the University of Georgia, the director of the largest freshman composition program in the state, provides her own contribution to this volume in an essay advocating “a pedagogy based on a feminist politics of friendship”; for support, she cites such theories as bell hooks’s rejection of “phallic logic.”
In the years around and after 1991, when this volume was published, fluid, emotive group experiences, facilitated by the teacher, have become the standard mode. Perhaps, most females, by nature, thrive in such environments. And there is a place for such interaction — the nursery or kindergarten classroom.
The feminist imperative, not to exclude anyone from the playground, however, applies only to those who play by their — new — rules.
Consider this description in The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing of an article in the prestigious journal College English:
Students frequently attack a teacher’s feminist perspective as something personal that does not belong in the classroom. … Feminist teachers should recognize that teaching these students will be a form of persuasion, in which they need to adopt an authoritative but not authoritarian position in setting the course’s ethical agenda. … In seeking to persuade students to feminism, teachers should aim to provoke not only resistance to sexism but also identification … with feminism’s egalitarian vision of the social order.
What about those who resist “feminism’s egalitarian vision of the social order”? Our rapidly dwindling number of male college students, especially in the humanities, may evidence that this new feminine “social order” is smothering to them. At departmental meetings as a temporary assistant professor at one of the low-rung state universities in Georgia, I felt smothered by the preponderance of women, all feminist, in attendance. The fact that I was served cookies by the department head did not ease the pain of watching an older gentlemanly “man of letters,” a Shakespeare scholar, steamrollered over with the ideas of these women as they assertively proposed and incorporated such nonsense as the study of ladies’ undergarments and rap lyrics into the curriculum.
It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life. Contrary to the propaganda about the bad old 1950s, women scholars were working alongside men, though not in as large a number. Their scholarship stands head and shoulders above the nonsensical babbling of today’s feminist. And they weren’t driving men out of the classroom either, as my thesis director, a former student of the late Marjory Nicolson, attests.
One would expect that the saccharine gushing from Oprah as a commencement speech would have raised an objection at least from those who are not in her fan base, the men. Adam Gorlick of Stanford News Service accurately sums up her speech as another rendition of her standard theme of “feelings, failure, and finding happiness” — and organized in an associative, fluid manner. According to Jack Hubbard, associate director of news services at Stanford, other than one online letter criticizing the speaker’s lack of intellectual accomplishments, Oprah was “very well-received.” In fact, my call to ask if formal objections had been raised was greeted with a tone of wonder at the possibility of such a question.
Oprah not only gave the pep talk that believing in yourself is even more important than formal education, but left graduates two gifts on their seats, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. A whole new mind, indeed. These books are the popular version of the new philosophy reigning in the academy. Only a couple of my fifteen students last semester recognized the reference to “judge not that we be not judged” in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address: “It’s somewhere in the Bible, isn’t it?” they asked.
Need we say more to demonstrate how far our educational system has deteriorated in the hands of women and weak men?
Women? Well, maybe. But the real problems with the academy can be traced to (largely French) post-modernists who are almost all men.
Yeah Big City Boy, I’d tend to agree. While I agree with Grabar’s sentiment, I’d look to Derrida and Foucault for the source of much (but not all) of this.
But she does make some excellent observations. I’m in the midst of a multiculturalism class in grad school, and as one of two men in the class (and one of only a few men in the entire grad program), I tend to keep my mouth shut on a number of issues, for fear of being condemned a white/male/Christian/conservative phallic oppressor, or something of the sort.
pope linus – by “keeping your nouth shut” you have become part of the problem.
Well, BCB and PL, considering that if it’s true (and, sadly, I think it is) that few women academics do the serious, deep, critical thinking (in the traditional sense) needed to provide the philosophical underpinnings of anything (there are exceptions, such as Camille Paglia), why should it surprise anyone that the feminists are essentially derivative from the works of male theorists?
Perhaps psychoanalysis provides a good early example – most of the early patients (with the money and leisure to pursue the ‘talking cure’) were women, and I suspect it was only as women became fascinated with psychoanalysis that it became fashionable in the Anglosphere West (in a way it never really was in its native German language sphere). I suppose I ought to blame William James for inviting Freud to lecture in the US….
You guys have it backwards: ideas have no agency, and do not succeed without individuals to nurture their fame. Women provided this in this case. It flatters their vanity. Thank god another woman said this most obvious thing.
Secondly: Pope Linus, goddamnit, speak up! They aren’t going to lynch you dude. Damn. This is exactly the point of the article. Stop being so goddamn intimidated by the hippie prostitute-catamites. If they start hurling feces at you, so what? You leave. This hegemonic shift within the culture has got to stop though or else the next generation is going to be entirely at the mercy of destabilization. Look at the Iraq war! If you don’t think the massive anti-war culturual hysteria-manipulation isn’t a bad sign, please find another hobby than blogging.
College is a scheme to separate one from their money. Most courses are utter BS. How many credits to matriculate, 150 or more? Even on-line courses are expensive. Paradise Lost should have been read while attending grammar school.
Mary is right: the “I think, therefore I am” has been replaced by the self-pitying and all-accepting “I feel, therefore I am” – and the result is a serious diminishment of people’s CRITICAL SPIRIT and of its positive effects upon the larger human enterprise.
Clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance and objective vs. tolerance, cultural relativism, unconditional love, non-judgmentalism, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, acceptance, diversity, four-legs-good, two-legs-bad – the promotion of these “one-size-fits-all” concepts/policies require the annihilation of critical thinking, whose precise measurements bring the above-mentioned concepts’ fuziness to their right size, i.e. ridiculous, if not outright idiotic – no wonder that one like Barrack Obama thrives in this warm, non-judgmental under-rock environment (and that, generally, Obama’s supporters are fuzzy-s like Oprah).
Critical thinking (short/Wiki): [...] “Critical thinking consists of mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation. It includes possible processes of reflecting upon a tangible or intangible item in order to form a solid judgment that reconciles scientific evidence with common sense. In contemporary usage “critical” has a certain negative connotation that does not apply in the present case. Though the term “analytical thinking” may seem to convey the idea more accurately, critical thinking clearly involves synthesis, evaluation, and reconstruction of thinking, in addition to analysis. Critical thinkers gather information from all senses, verbal and/or written expressions, reflection, observation, experience and reasoning. Critical thinking has its basis in intellectual criteria that go beyond subject-matter divisions and which include: clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance and fairness. [...]”
Isn’t there a causal relationship between the curriculum crappiness and Obama’s being a serious choice for the US presidency? Methinks oh yeah.
Ex-dem, you’re mistaking a grad student for someone who has either power or rights.
How much are these degrees worth? There are certain majors that I view as disqualifiers. In other words, people who hold them are basically trained to hold grievances versus useful skills. How many other managers see that as a red flag?
Sooner or later the truth about the value of a college degree will get out. It is irrational to pay $100,000 for a degree that will get you a $25,000 a year job. The earning premium for a college degree isn’t evenly distributed – engineers, doctors and other professionals get most of the additional lifetime earnings attributed to holding a college degree. Many of these students will graduate with big debts, and not much in the way of prospects for a good job.
When I decided to pursue my teaching certification, I was forced to endure a full menu of feminist hokum and bogus educational pedagogy. I frequently found myself in classroom discussions outnumbered 20:1 by feminists and feminized men. I quickly discovered that educational theory is nothing but meaningless jargon masquerading as erudition. It’s hard to feel threatend by opponents speaking nonsense.
I am today a successful classroom teacher at a school where the faculty insists on order, discipline, structure, hard work, and genuine academic achievement. In contrast, one of my colleagues started her own school based on all the empty buzz that passes for educational theory: bi-lingual, multi-cultural, experiential, unstructured, and fully feminized. My school received a bronze star from US News & World Report. Her school is scheduled to close after two years of abject failure. Reality has teeth. And it bites.
Allan Bloom said all of this twenty years ago in “The Closing of the American Mind”, (a MUST read for anyone who still believes in independent thinking).
Since, as he calls them “the thugs” took over the universities in the 60′s, today’s youth are taught such things as diversity, multi-culturalism, self esteem, etc. and t’hell with the teachings of Plato, Milton, Locke. Hey, blame the university hierarchy who gave in to those demands. Yer pays yer money and yer gets whats yer pays for.
no sex for you – oprah hater
“It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.” So this is the most sexist thing I’ve read anytime lately. Ranks right up there with my high school teacher who said women weren’t as good in math and science as men and refused to give me a perfect paper, going so far as deducting points for spelling separate with an e (seperate) to keep from giving me a perfect score. What’s wrong with you teachers anyway? I can’t believe anybody is stupid enough to invite a talk show host to give the commencement speech and the rest of the faculty should have had a fit. But anytime you attribute certain characteristics to a group of people, you are treading on extremely dangerous ground. Think Hitler.
I’m seasrching for “Order, discipline, structure,hard work, and genuine academic achievement” in a school. Would ~Paules please pass along the name or city of the school he is referring to?
To Pope Linus’ defense: should he not have TENURE (read: AIR, WATER among normal humans), he would be dead in the water the next morning. Notwithstanding any chance to speak up when no repurcussions may arise (in such an arena…unlikely), “A profession is a terrible thing to waste.”
Again, Mary makes perfect sense.
Without getting lost in the minutiae of the “big bang” when higher education started to go to hell and take everyone with it, it is enough to realize that it is in the gutter. Let’s talk more about how to fix it rather than just bemoan the fact that it isn’t working for anyone.
I think the point of all this is that our institutions have created curricula that make the individual professors (I paused before using the term but, decided to be gracious)feel good at the expense of teaching anything of value. For these sorry people, it is impossible to conceive that standing on a podium and lecturing on classical philosophy has any value. The result is that the market is flooded with millions of 20 somethings who are dumb as a box of rocks. It is not scary that they have not been taught anything, it is scary that they will never know how to learn anything or to perceive the value of knowledge.
Are we ready to create the higher ed version of home schooling?
I have several observations to make…
First of all, I do not believe that this feel-goodery approach to education is the product of women so much as it is the 60′s. There was a New York Times article in the past few days about how the generational turn over in academia was brining a move back to research.
Secondly, I do not believe that you will find this kind of dumbing down in the hard science and engineering; this is something we see primarily in the social science, education and literature.
Thirdly, I am not sure that the increase of women in academia is due to the feminization of the curriculum; I suspect that more men have simply realized that academia pays peanuts compared to industry.
Fourth, we are seeing an attempt to rewrite history using these ‘alternate narratives’. If you want an example happening before our eyes, look at the Israeli-Arab conflict. Histories are being re-written and massacres by Jews made up whole cloth. Take a look at Israel on Google Earth and you will see marked hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel; the problem is most of those villages never existed or were abandoned. It’s a lie.
Finally, multi-culturalism is the death of academic standards. In an attempt to prove that modern society is not indebted to white men alone, we have raised up discoveries/disciplines of minor consequence at the cost of truly momentous events.
Let’s be honest, besides Egypt, can you think of a single invention or culture of real importance in the last two thousand years in Africa? We’re so busy trying to prove that people of dark skin made as many contributions to our world that we ignore important events in the Western world. Even worse, we trivialize the contributions of India and China.
I have to wonder is this happening elsewhere or is this just an American phenomenon.
Stanford initiated the late no entry drop in the 70′s and as a result the average GPA shot up to over 3.8 as best that I can recall. One of our Ph.D. students started her career in economics at Stanford. She told me that the kids negotiated an A at the beginning of the quarter by using the threat of dropping the course during the quarter. They signed up for more courses than they intended to finish in order to maximize their grade point average.
Then they complained that the economics course was too hard.
This is really going to shock you! I think all of this came about as a result of giving women the vote. Now – before you go ballistic – women vote for security over freedom! Our country was conceived under the umbrella of total freedom of the individual to do as he pleased as long as it did not do physical or monetary harm to another. Now – we can be arrested, tried and convicted of hurting someone’s feelings!
Education in America should be based on the idea of that freedom. Freedom means being able to say “That is a dumb idea – you get an F.”
Reason no longer should be assumed – it should be taught. I am amazed, that when discussing (arguing) a point with most individuals today – they think a compelling argument is “Well, the Republicans did it, too!”
Mary is right on. This is a woman who can think and reason! What is wrong with the rest of womanhood? And I refer to our girly-men crowd as well – the metro-sexual crowd.
Linus: Don’t be quiet, the hell with worrying about it. Print a T-shirt with
Proud white/male/Christian/conservative phallic oppressor
Or such. Hell, this is YOUR country, stand up and fight back you white/male/Christian/conservative phallic oppressor.
(o:
It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.
All except the author, that is. She is not as other women. She is better.
What prompted this unsupported, irrational generalisation? Hormones?
How much are these degrees worth? There are certain majors that I view as disqualifiers. In other words, people who hold them are basically trained to hold grievances versus useful skills. How many other managers see that as a red flag?
I do. I see someone holding almost any of the “studies” degrees (e.g. “women’s studies”, ethnic studies) as professional malcontents. Why would I want to bring that into my workplace?
Besides, what skills do they bring? Face it, for the majority of jobs, a degree is just another hiring discriminator that often has nothing to do with the position being offered.
At one time, a high school diploma meant something. Today, it just means you didn’t quit. A college degree today is worth about the same (as an indicator of education) as a high school was about 40 years ago. Soon, it’ll be a graduate degree.
What matters most is that a person aquires skills that an employer is willing to pay for. A construction worker has skills. A mechanic has skills. Computer programmers have skills (at least some of them) as do nurses and other health care professionals, engineers, etc. If you have no marketable skills, you’d better get used to saying, “Would you like a muffin with your latte?”
Only, Starbucks is getting ready to close 600 stores. There go a lot of job opportunities for “studies” and journalism majors.
The best critique of the Oprahfication of America that I have read is “I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional” by Wendy Kaminer – a secular liberal with a mind of her own.
Keep in mind their goal (libs) is to have sheeps totally dependant on social programs at all cost.
If you know the goal, all this is explainable. Only libs don’t know they will not be the overlord.
I have a friend who did not even finish high school – probably a good thing although he is 62 and schools apparently were not totally destroyed at that time. He has read all the classics – and can quote from them. His mother gave him a great foundation for learning in that she was curious about everything. I like to say that he was home schooled in college curriculum – and graduated Magna Cum Laude. He has uncommon good sense – meaning that he thinks logically – and he does think before acting.
Isn’t that part of what is missing in higher education? Students are not being challenged to think weighty thoughts – or explore ideas that are logical in their application!
Someone above suggested that Home Schooling for College may be the logical extension. I think that is already happening as men choose not to go to college – but rather to start their home schooling in the school of life – working an 8-5 workday in the College of Life Studies called – a JOB!!!!
“It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.”
95% of them truly aren’t. But they all think they’re in that 5%.
I have an engineering degree; feelings and “female ways of knowing” are pretty useless for learning Maxwell’s Equations or Gauss’ Law. In fact, I wonder how much this “guide on the side” stuff in K-12 is responsible for the frightening lack of American high school graduates qualified to study engineering at the undergraduate level.
Summer time is a great time for classes to refute feminism and the “klan with a tan” ideology of “diversity” known as social studies. It is up to parents to educate their children and there is no reason that the summer can not be used to help kids overcome the dumbing down of leftists.
Organize classes taught by conservative grad students and retired professors and other professionals in summer home school for smart kids whose parents are conservatives. Collect the nonsense dished out by the leftist social studies and sex education teachers during the school year and analyze it which always leads to subservive bonding, good laughs and ridicule. Pay close attention to the “heros” the Leftist teachers present as role models for the students. Our public school was into Jane Fonda and reviewing Jane and her ideology – Marxism – and what it produced in millions of deaths and massive poverty is great for kids to know and something they will never find out in school! All the Left’s “heros” are easily exposed as zeros. Comparisons are fun: We had a lecture on Jane Fonda versus Thomas Jefferson, for example.
We limited our homeschool summer program to conservative boys, since boys are targeted by feminists at the school for all blame and are often down graded by virtue of their strength, independence and intellegence. They tend to go after atheletic boys and boys with a solid sense of ethics and logic with low grades and class ridicule. We also researched teachers and combined our experiences at the high school and avoided the leftist wackos/activists as much as possible. The boys’ GPA’s went up! The younger siblings, who came after them did even better. This skill of evaluating teachers and class material helps in college, too.
You can do this with your own kids; but it is supportive and good to form a group of subversives in the Left’s school community. Be selective in who you invite and be quiet about it so the Leftists at school do not target the kids with escalated harassment and bad grades. Teens enjoy sneaking around and rebellion – use it to your advantage. When they get stuck with a leftist teacher they know exactly how to get an “A” by only saying shallow stuff and slogans that the lefty wants to hear. Manipulating lefties is great fun. Having the power to identify and avoid them, is even better.
I noticed a number of posters resisting the notion that women in this environment are the primary problem because of their attitudes. Granted, the soft-lefty, post-modernist gibberish may have a gender-neutral or even a male origin, but it is women who tend to lap it up, as well as those men who are willing to be feminized. What is sad about all this is that “feminism” has stereotyped how women are supposed to think (excuse me, “feel”), and yet at the same time rail against male “domination” of the hard sciences and technology. Last I checked, lots of women are quite capable of thinking in very simlar patterns to those attributed to men, though perhaps in somewhat fewer numbers.
As to certain kinds of feminist-inspired literature, I once came across a marvelous collection of letters, diary entries and journal entries of American women from the 18th to the mid 20th century. They were fascinating and revealed a great deal about daily life and moments of crises in past times through the eyes and experiences of women. The collection, called “A Day At A Time” was published by the NYCC Feminist Press. Here’s the point of bringing this up, though: I was able to enjoy the writing fully because I could put each and everyone of the writings and the women who wrote them in a solid historical context. I, as a man, am able to enjoy these writings more fully than many intelligent, college-age women simply because their education has robbed them of the opportunities to learn the harder historical and literary material surrounding these by-gone lives. I find this sad.
I’m just now reading Heather MacDonald’s The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society. The sources of this idiocy, according to MacDonald are the Charitable Foundations dedicated to revolutionary change in the culture. They are pouring money on the universities and spurring on all the programs that won’t pass the common sense “smell” test. Tom Wolfe calls these people the Charming Aristocracy. God help us.
Great column, Mary, as usual.
Dave Sim was saying this years ago. But he’s just an evil misogynist comic book creator, so nobody listened.
It’s not just Feminists that are the problem. It’s Political Correctness, Multiculturalism, Moral Relativism, and the Left in general.
That all being said, if Oprah did a commencement speech at a business school, I’d probably attend.
The very fact that there can be a course on multi-culturalism only underscores what an utter waste of time and money college is.
Unless you plan on becoming a doctor or an engineer, save yourself $150,000 and four years.
My kids ain’t going to college without an ironclad agreement to study a hard science.
Actually, believing in yourself and hard work are lot more important than the education dolled out by today’s universities. Happen to know a few happy millionaires without a 4 year college’s stamp of approval.
…so in a sense Oprah got it right.
Listen to you guys dissing French PoMo philosophers. Sara is on the right track.
The French english profs are merely the outgrowth of the real root cause of this inversion of rationality. The actual cause is the Frankfurt School neo-marxist philosophers, particularly the incisive Gramsci and turgid Marcuse. They (and their followers, legions of 60′s radicals) believed that the revolution could only come by privileging the criminal over the cop, the lunatic over the psychiatrist, the oppressed over the hegemon.
Because white males (particularly dead, well known ones) discussed a lot of stuff about empirical method, rationality, and so on, and they are associated with things like A-bombs, televisions, and cars, then anything having to do with science and rationality and empirical method must be overturned.
The notion that men and women, in their ordinary lives might have a pattern of picking one type of career over another in disproportionate numbers, is anathema to the neo-marxists. The sooner that can be overturned, the better. Hence there’s an outcry when there aren’t enough women engineers, or enough women varsity athletes, or women deans, but nobody gives a damn that the female/male ratio in college is now roughly 60/40, or that the odds of a black male graduating high school in a lot of urban areas is under 10%. (See, e.g. Durham, NC). See? Revolutionary success.
The radical egalitarians who insist no animals are superior to any others (even in math tests), the feminists who insist women must be as interested as men in engineering and sports, and the weepy Oprah fans who insist women’s special way of knowing is superior to your puny empiricism, are simply the useful idiots, the unknowing footsoldiers in this revolutionary war. Most of them don’t appear to realize they are co-opted since egalitarianism, equality and all that stuff sound pretty good. The bottom line is there are a lot of footsoldiers in that army and they are winning a lot of the battles. Once again it’s Athens against the barbaroi, only this time, most of Athens doesn’t realize it’s at war, since the barbaroi are arriving in Priuses with MacBooks, not on horseback with bows.
Elsewhere I told the tale of my two friends in hard science molecular biology. They do their research at a major medical school in California (Immunology and Genetics)
They simply refuse to accept female graduate students. Or if forced to, they get rid of them as soon as possible.
Asked why so? and I was told that their work is generally less than rigorous, sloppy and wishful thinking in their laboratory books, and just plain out to lunch.
“Good pairs of hands, not so good brains” was a direct quote. “They might make good techs if they were supervised by hard nosed bastards. Otherwise their sloppy thinking would sink a project.”
In both their years of experience, they estimated that 5-15% of their females could make the intellectual cut line they had determined.
Ironically enough, these guys also considered themselves card-carrying liberals.
Interesting, eh?
In reference to the comments about all this intellectual decay being traced back to the French theorists: The feminists criticized the theorists like Derrida and Foucault precisely for being theoretical; the feminists then posited their own theories, which were rooted in the material world, the “body,” because women as birth-givers are necessarily more connected to the body. This is a presumably female way of thinking. Hence, “phallic logic.” Thus, the feminists themselves presented logic and theory as masculine and body and emotion as feminine. In their mishmash, however, they used many of the tools of these deconstructionists in their own deconstructions of privileged masculine writing. (Yes, feminist “scholarship” is full of contradictions.) So I disagree with posters who claim that Oprahization came from the postmodern theorists. They, instead, were criticized by feminists for being coolly removed from the very real suffering of the “other” in her body.
Judy R’s, Lisa’s, and Mary Jackson’s charges of “sexism” are predictable. The takeover of English departments by women en masse I think is in large part responsible for the loss of esteem for the discipline. It was not that way when Allen Tate could write about the role of the “Man of Letters.” But scientific studies back up my generalizations about women as a group. Notice, again, that I did not say that women–and yes those besides myself–are incapable of earning advanced degrees, teaching, and even running departments and schools. Socrates said it and Larry Summers said it: women are wired differently. That’s why there aren’t as many female engineers and tycoons.
And, yes, I am arguing for a return of the “man of letters” as the dominant mode to restore dignity to the study of literature. The femiinists are driving away potential English majors. Perhaps, female domination in an intellectual endeavor is a bad thing. Think about other group dynamics. When women get together they talk about fashion, relationships, gossip. Think about a bridal shower or girls night out. Conversely, what do men do? They focus on activities that involve goals, competition, rules–in other words, sports.
In the humanities, at one time, one idea was tested against another, the common goal of truth or a correct interpretation was aimed for, and a commonly held set of rules refereed the enterprise which was conducted through vigorous debate (rather than crying). Maybe this is, as the feminists claim, a masculine way of proceeding. But in the realm of higher learning it is the superior way.
Wasn´t it Jeremiah Wright who said that “feeling” was a “black thang” and “thinking” was a “white thing”?
Let´s all take another look at this: In Oprah´s case is it a feminine thing or an Afro-American thang?
I think it´s both and the latter!
2 separate issues:
First, there is the surrender of critical thinking. Many fields have given up on critical thinking and discovering the “truth”, and that area treads water, until somebody else figures out that nothing of value is being done in that field and turns off the money tap. Lots of posters above have laid out the details, but a field without a search for objective truth has gone down the rabbit hole into personalized wonderland.
The second is the nature of woman’s thinking itself. Men are better able than women to compartimentalize tasks, personalities, and feelings. Someone someday is going to state that, by being able to separate the task from the person directed, this makes men better department heads and instructors, but of course that person’s career is then over. So women take over departments and classrooms and colonize it with other people they like and ideas they find “inclusive”, by their definition. End of new ideas and thinking in that department. (Happens in business as well).
I can only guess that the overall goal of the sheepification of the American student (through education at all levels) is conditioning to become good servants of the state.
Combine that with the fact that it’s way easier to whine and emote than it is to indulge in forging new neuronal connections in the brain and voilà, modern American education, writ large.
In the high school Civics course of old (and I’m talking decades ago) it seemed even then to be a toss up between teaching the principles of the Constitution and the workings of government and intimidation/brainwashing to prepare you for good (subservient) citizenship. It has only gotten worse.
I read the other day that the American Constitution is widely and deeply studied by students in Poland. I’d guess many American students can’t even name the 3 branches of government, let alone distinguish between separation of powers and checks and balances. Again, if your training up Sheeple, this might be the point.
Feminist teachers ? I recall reading of one feminist teacher at Duke who was failing one of the 3 Duke LaCrosse players while those guys were still under the (false) cloud of accusation. Apparently, there was not any academic justification for said “F” grade, and that particular situation (anyway) was remedied. That would be the closest I’d ever want to come to any “feminist’s” classroom for brainwashing, uh, academic pursuits. Or the classroom any ideologue, for that matter, and it seems that “higher education” is chock full of them these days.
The standard of education when I was going through school was that it was incumbent on any instructor to keep his or her personal views ideas out of the mix of the teaching. These days, the lectern seems to have become a pulpit.
As for Oprah, on the few occasions when I have caught her show, she seems to be expiating some deep personal guilt in giving whiners such a hefty and wide venue. It can’t be healthy for the psyches of legions of Americans at home, watching the crapola.
As for screeching feminists demanding this and that on American college campuses, it seems such a shame that education is so weakened and that wimp administrators have given in to setting up inane, self-indulgent, courses. Again, you gotta catch those neurons during the young, plastic phase
or they’ll cement and atrophy and you’ll get carbon copies of Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand.
…if your training up Sheeple…
Make that “you’re” and a couple of other minor gaffes in that writing.
Well, good that Mary Grabar is different from “women as a group”. Guys, what’s not to like about a woman who is “rational” enough to know that her sex is inferior? It’s the next best thing to a woman who knows her place – a woman who knows other women’s place.
What does “women as a group” mean”? I’m a woman – I don’t see myself as part of “women as a group”. How does Mary Grabar know that she is not part of that group, rather than the exception that proves the rule?
Why spoil what might be a good article by such crass, stupid generalisations?
When women get together they talk about fashion, relationships, gossip.
Right. Ms Grabar is privy to the conversations of all groups of “women getting together”. How so? Does she “get together” with them? If so, is she one of the group or not? Does she sit passively by amid this girlish chat and not think to interject a bit of rationality?
Change is a bitch. Embrace it or get run over by it.
“objective scholarship”? In the arts and humanities. What is that?
Physics requires objective scholarship. Mathematics requires objective scholarship. The arts and humaities have always just been gossip for smart people. Now it’s supposedly the ‘wrong kind’ of gossip you start bleating.
Mary, where did I accuse you of sexism? I reread my comment and found no charge of sexism;I simply disagreed with your premise.
The reference to the influence of charitable organizations is interesting. My brother and his girlfriend both teach junior college level and were involved the last two years with a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation project to help direct underprivileged 13 & 14 year olds toward careers. They felt it was a discouraging failure, with most of their time taken up with fundamentals of appropriate class behavior and reading instruction. They even had to segregate the white/Asian kids from the black/Hispanic kids because of the behavior and learning issues. One teacher quipped, “Well, this is where social justice meets social reality.”
My brother’s degrees are in Humanities with a minor in music. I have seen his far-left views march steadily to the right with every passing year as he deals with the loonies that inhabit the Humanities departments. He is just too intellectually honest to deny the sloppy, disordered thinking behind their pet theories.
I think women can be intelligent, logical and science-oriented (ever notice the number of Asian women in basic science research?), but our wider culture gives us more points for having bigger boobs. I grew up in a family of engineers and eggheads and ended up in a science-related field graduating Summa Cum Laude. I was expected to “keep up with the boys” at home and at school and I did. The feminist movement has seemed to make rigorous academic achievement “acting male” and left us with a flabby, pale imitation, much like the black liberationists’ calls to stop “acting white” has left a generation of blacks with Ebonics and substandard academics.
I graduated from college a couple years back, and my university experience was a dud. There was no real fellowship or a genuine love for ideas, neither was there a circle of wise men, or even a decent place to get a drink. Every day I walked on that campus I couldn’t help but laugh that people actually believed this is where wisdom had taken up residence.
Most of my instructors tacitly assumed that ideas and historical events only bored and tired their class, and they were not mistaken. Around the university, critical thinking was regarded as an unpleasant activity that could only be sustained for a limited period of time—something akin to yard work or church service—and the minute class ended, everyone dropped even the pretense, uniformly reverting back to the world of pure un-thought. In any given class, probably no more than 5% of the students had any business being there at all.
I have excellent ears, and I never heard a single conversation of any substance conducted, impromptu, outside the classroom, among the students. Not one. I even used to record, surreptitiously, some of the more surreal exchanges I’d overheard just to document the inanity. I must have rolled my eyes so many times I’m surprised someone didn’t take me for an epileptic. Eventually, I stopped listening altogether and spent my time on campus in the library, creating my own instructors from the writings of men worth listening to.
And that is where, at least in the humanities, a world of genuine meaning opened up for me; where I discovered Eric Voegelin and Kenneth Clark, Jacques Barzun, Chesterton and Emerson, William James and Harold C. Goddard and William Auden and a thousand other men (and women) of enduring wit and erudition whose ideas will be with me for the rest of my life.
Alan Bloom was entirely correct about what has befallen the university: the natural sciences sail along along with great aplomb, but the humanities are a shipwreck–and Oprah is just the tip of that iceberg. Perversely, I would say that for a man or women whose heart is genuinely touched by the love of wisdom, the university is about the last place on earth to find any, love or wisdom.
While the ideas extent in comtemporary academia are trash, the hard political and economic mechanism that allows them to persist and spread to the exclusion of good ideas is TENURE.
The evil of tenure is it allows a self-selecting group to exclude others and to achieve an independence from outside accoutability. I returned to grad school for an MBA at age 45 and was shocked by the BS, in-fighting, and mediocrity of the facility, even in B-school. Finance and accounting were better than marketing, by far. Political science was a waste.
We must crush tenure if we are to recapture our academic institutions and replace it with trustees who will insist on service to Western Civilization and the students who will perpetuate it from professors and administrators.
‘I don’t see myself as part of “women as a group”.’
Bah – yes you do.
You want to skip all the BS that colleges feed you and just want to get your undergraduate degree faster? Take the CLEP exam!!! Check out http://www.collegeboard.com. Pay $85 to get undergraduate credit. Depending on the subject, you can get up to 3, 6, or 12 credits for undergraduate school. Most schools are up to $700/credit for some BS course you may not need, so all u can do is get a piece of paper after 4 years that says you know something! Try it! Now, if only they have exams like this for graduate school, I’ll be happy!!!
Maybe the single-sex university/college setting needs to be readdressed for males? Seems single-gender junior and high school classes are getting some much needed attention.
“Women,” in their contemporary role, feminists, post-modern French philosophers, Marxists and the appeal of Oprah and Obama are all players in a larger, more comprehensive intellectual collapse that began during the late Enlightenment. The discerning, critical side of human consciousness that sees underlying universal principles common to particulars (the “masculine,” in mythic language) was discredited beginning with Kant. It was discredited for two reasons. First, it did not deliver the goods it claimed to be able to deliver: a comprehensive way of knowing reality—which neither the masculine or feminine can delver—-only a transcendent consciousness glimpsed by Schopenhauer, Heidegger and others in the West, but still invisible to most, casn do that. Second, its very profound contributions to civilization and the evolution of Man were marred by abuses and pathologies that could be summarized as the repression of the feminine. Nature, “wilderness,” cultures not as discursively evolved and the “races” that populated them, emotions and yes, women, were not integrated properly into the view of the real promulgated by the masculine. It was proper to point out this grave shortcoming.
The trouble is the baby is being discarded with the repressive bathwater. Now, the masculine must be entirely discredited by the feminine, and it is the feminine that will now oppress the masculine, just as it did in the feminine-dominated cultures of thousands of years ago. Industry, capitalism, intellect, agency, individualism, courage, honor, and so on, are all to be discredited. The elevation and primacy of feelings, sex, the body, “nature” (which humans, representing the discredited masculine culture, are deemed no to be part of but are defiling with their masculine repression,) communion, contextualism, relativism (“there are no truths”)and what has become of Marxism, are all attributable to the rise of the feminine. Not just women, but the feminine pole of human consciousness.
It must destroy the masculine and all the institutions and norms assoicated with it. That is why the Democrats, the lead party of the feminine, have no articulated goals and seek only to destroy the masculine (conservative) institutions, which are all portrayed as repressive. It’s why we are enchanted with a speechmaker who has achieved nothing, but asks us to believe and to hope. It’s why men in popular entertainment must be portrayed as weak and childlike and women as wise and strong.
I think there are many causes for the decline of the intellectual life in the West. Not one of them gets the ring for being THE cause. Marxism, deconstructionism (Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan), and femminist ideology all play a role. Through out it all, the fact that conservative or even slightly Right-of-center academics have to shut up and pretend to be something else testifies to how vicious and vindictive the Left is: it will brook NO OPPOSITION. In a word, totalitarianism is on the march, and now it is linking with Islam, the oldest totalitarianism, to attack the West.
I’m not unsympathetic to Pope Linus’s circumstance; if you choose to speak out or are in any way derisive of the feminist project, you risk having your academic record dented, and dented badly.
I would routinely drop 4 or 5 classes each semester–and this was after doing all my due diligence reading the published work of the prospective professor, and looking thoroughly at the reading that would be assigned in the syllabus so I would know what I’m up against. There are so many radicals, drug-addicts, twits, and mooncows teaching university level courses that it is an obstacle course just to find someone reasonable, or even competent according to a pre-1960′s understanding of the word.
If you have no way out, and that happens, lie your ass off, read “The Captive Mind,” and remember how much worse so many people had it in this past century.
I’m glad I’m gay with no children.
Despite some disagreements in the comments, I saw no one arguing that a degree was worth having.
I have my high-paying “phallic logic”-based job, with virtually no chance that someone will take it away – despite the fact that 70% of my company’s work is out-sourced – because there is no one younger than I who can out-think me. It’s not that I am particularly brilliant; it is that they are so incapable of logical thought.
If it makes anyone feel better, Eastern European schools are only slightly – but not hugely – better. I assume Western European schools are worse, since that’s where this infection originated.
China is demographically doomed, even moreso than Japan, so all we really have to worry about is India. (Africa and Latin America are, as always, totally irrelevant and the Middle East is about as non-21st century as it is possible to be.)
Hopefully, we can stay ahead of India, which, with its crushing overhead of poor people, should be possible despite our current cultural insanity (no, I don’t think gay marriage is a good idea).
Bollocks. It’s always easier to scapegoat than to speak up. As a teacher, you either know your subject matter or you don’t; you either fail unsatisfactory performance or you don’t. You’re either willing to be fired for low pass/retention rates or you’re not.
And who does the firing? Well, in universities across the US today, the admin in charge of hiring and not re-hiring (no one “fires” anyone anymore) is still largely male-dominated.
But you gotta dig past the first layer of this argument to find the real culprit. In state-supported institutions at least, admins are almost entirely motivated by funding formulae that depend on 21-day head count. It’s all about the money. And male or female, a teacher or administrator has to have a steel pair to go against the money.
You know, no one says you have to take the wishy-washy multicultural classes if you don’t want to. At my state school a few years back, I could (and did) choose to take math, science, formal logic, history, economics, accounting, etc. If your school requires 40 hours of women’s studies or whatever, go somewhere else.
If you want to take good literature classes, take a class on Shakespeare or Chaucer or Milton or the Greek or Roman classics. They still exist! And in my experience, they’re still popular. They do have substantially more men then other literature classes, for whatever that’s worth.
The reality is that students can choose what to take. I don’t blame academia for offering this crap so much as I blame lazy students for taking the easy way out. Students aren’t idiots: They know they can take Shakespeare’s Tragedies, read a lot, write a lot, and risk a B or C (though even that would be hard these days), or take Women’s Lit and get a guaranteed A if your politics are right. It’s a marketplace of ideas, all right, and the supply side is just answering the customer’s demand for an easy A. Does the school care how little its customers learn or how little their degrees are worth? Nah – more customers = more cash. End of story.
RogerG: “Linus: Don’t be quiet, the hell with worrying about it. Print a T-shirt with
Proud white/male/Christian/conservative phallic oppressor”
I’ll just wear my NRA t-shirt instead. Gets the point across even better.
Mary Grabar: “In their mishmash, however, they used many of the tools of these deconstructionists in their own deconstructions of privileged masculine writing.”
Your points are good ones Mary, and I agree. I only mentioned Derrida et al because of the influence–which has trickled down into popular culture–of deconstructionism, post-foundationalism, etc. The feminists didn’t particularly like them, but found themselves doing some of the things that the Frenchmen and their followers espoused. Are the deconstructionists to blame completely for this Oprahisation of our culture? No, certainly not completely.
All, very good stuff here. A couple of thoughts:
1. If you’re being abused, file a lawsuit. Check out http://thefire.org/ – these guys wrote the book on fighting back.
2. Spread this documentary: http://www.indoctrinate-u.com/.
It’s unfortunate that the last female academic writers whose work I truly respected and that made a deep impact on me were Barbara Tuchman (the bulk of whose work was composed in the “bad old days” of sexism and discrimination) and Anne Curry (a medieval historian of note).
In all seriousness, reach Tuchman – she is a great example of what COULD be…unfortunately not how it is…
What a shame that so many women hold militant, miserable hags like Alice Walker or Gloria Steinem, who seem to have mistaken their own unhappy lives for those of women everywhere, over women of real accomplishment and talent…I’ll read Wuthering Heights over Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison any day of the week.
My unfortunate description of so many women writers?
Overrated.
Perversely, I would say that for a man or women whose heart is genuinely touched by the love of wisdom, the university is about the last place on earth to find any, love or wisdom.
It’s interesting, uburoisc, maybe the paucity of real mental stimulation led you (out of desperation) to another world of thought.
With a few minor (too minor) exceptions, I didn’t really enjoy learning until I got out of college and was free to gravitate to writers that really interested me. Authors, some of the ones you mention, as well as A. Huxley, H. Hesse, Nabokov, Solzhenitzyn, v.s. Naipaul, even Vonnegut and the SciFi writers, Asimov, Bradbury et al. and many more.
It has been fun, and I’m so grateful for this wisdom of the ages that seems to stand well apart from “formal” education.
As someone upthread has said, when the public money stops coming in, the entire edifice of academic trivia will dry up. It’s time to stop funding these stupid “studies” departments and to end the tenure practices that produce groupthink departments of propaganda and blathering.
Also, it’s time to start taxing the foundations and NGOs that use their tax-exempt status to spread marxism and ignorance.
Jack at (6:28 pm) wrote, “You know, no one says you have to take the wishy-washy multicultural classes if you don’t want to.”
Well, I didn’t know and yes, one does “have to take the wishy-washy multicultural classes” if one is seeking a degree at any of the campuses of the University of California, the California State University system, and community colleges in California. (Yes, even to get a 2-year associates degree one must endure putting in the multi-culti seat time.)
North Americans outside California or thinking of attending a private college shouldn’t feel too smug however, for the same is true of too many private colleges and a whole lot of state universities elsewhere.
Let me be the first to welcome you to 21st century America, Jack. (When were you frozen?)
Hello All:
I am a professional scientist, but have studied history independently for over 35 years (since childhood). Simply for intellectual stimulation and to meet others interested in the subject, I began taking post-grauate work PT in history. At the university I attend, the dumbing-down – the “Oprahization” of the academy is complete. In my historical methods class, expecting to be taught the basics of archival work and other methdologies of research, instead the feminist professor launched into a lengthy diatribe against western civilization, the great books canon, and indeed the scientific process. There was plenty of post-modernism and Marxism, including plenty of Derrada, Foucault and the rest. I was dumbfounded that many of the students as well as the professor sat there questioning whether facts exist, or scientifically verifiable truth. If any of my classmates had been scientists or engineers, I’d have discussed the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Godel’s Theorem, but they were not talking about that. They were questioning whether or not the Gettysburg Address happened, or the like. I retorted with a couple of simple questions: If scientific inquiry is simply a social construct, a matter of feelings, then when you (a post-modernist) are sick, do you go to a witch doctor or shaman, or a scientifically-trained physician or other healthcare provider? When you want to fly somewhere, what do you do – board an airliner designed and built by engineers and other skilled technicians, or go up on your roof and flap your wings? Needless to say, I have not yet received an answer that supports the post-modernist position.
Incidentally, after years of self-study, I know more history in my specialty areas than any of the Ph.D.s on the faculty.
Universities love Oprah because universities, as Dennis Prager has noted, are places of little wisdom. They also now esteem making money over academic achievement. They know where their bread is buttered! Well, looking on the good side, I will be too old to attend any university with buildings named after Oprah or Jerry Springer… I hope!
If you are a parent, you are better off sending your child into a skilled trade, the military or elsewhere than into a university – unless he/she is going to study outside of the humanties, “studies” departments or the like. Engineering, the hard sciences and business fields earn their pay still. If you have any doubt at all about the wisdom of sending a child to a four-year school, by all means let them work in the real world for a few years first, or use a community college instead of a big-name school.
Unfortunately, much of what goes on at most of our colleges and universities is a waste of money and basically an excuse to extend adolescence.
You will do your child a favor by investing the tuition money in a good index fund or some other productive inevstment, rather than throwing it away on useless courses. After a few years, it could be used for a nice downpayment on a home or something useful.
This explains perfectly why I want nothing to do with sociology or politics in college, and am planning on going into astrophysics. Nothing like good solid science.
Pope Linus — do you have an Operation Chaos shirt? I’m thinking that might almost be better than the NRA one. (I wore mine and my moonbat sister just about blew a gasket.)
Not only do you have to take the classes (even English Composition can be turned into a stream of feminist moments), but you have to pay the salaries of divirsity officers, womyns centers (centers for everyone but straight white capitalist Christian men), gay clubs and a variety of events that are intended to split those SWCCM away and throw them away.
Single sex education would be a very good idea.
“Incidentally, after years of self-study, I know more history in my specialty areas than any of the Ph.D.s on the faculty.”
The sad thing is that I’m sure you are not exaggerating. When will the general public realize just how serious the situation has deteriorated? I contend that the soft science Ph.D. should be discontinued. Only the hard science advanced degrees are generally worthwhile. It all boils down to the ability to measure the quality of the work. A scientist is compelled to respect the fact that 2+2=4—and this does not change regardless of one’s ethnicity, gender, or victim status. Only in the liberal arts might someone get away with declaring that objective reality is relative to an individual’s place in the universe.
I’ve long considered that emotion was more fundamental than thought, as one wouldn’t bother doing the work of rational analysis unless motivated. But there are emotional rewards for coherent thinking and scientific discovery which need to be acknowledged, encouraged, and facilitated. Some young people discover such pleasures for themselves, but it’s far from automatic.
There is also a strong emotional substrate to self-respect, which can derive from nothing except honest effort to create positive outcomes despite opposition or social disapproval by the compromised consensus. I was just watching a Rose interview of Creighton on AGW, and he had almost decided not to write his latest book, a denunciation of the anti-empirical roots of the claims and projections of the “consensus” view, when he discovered himself feeling like a coward. So he wrote it, expecting (accurately) to be vilified and abused. But, all in all, he prefers having his self-respect intact.
The corruption of the education process by liberal ideologues isn’t limited to colleges, of course. Participants in this blog would be well-advised to read
“The Language Police: How presure groups restrict what students learn” by Diane Ravitch.
She details how liberal ideologues have ruined K-12 English and social studies textbooks, tests and curricula. But they haven’t stopped there. They’ve even forced publishers of math textbooks to inject leftist indoctrination and rewrittes of history into the math lessons.
However, unlike the contributors to this blog, Ravitch also lambastes right wing activists for the extensive damage to education that they’ve done as well.
And since the liberal/feminist failings have been detailed at length here, consider these fruits of conservative meddling in American education:
1. Evolution is no longer taught in a majority of American high schools (see the National Center for Science Education website for the details), due to Christianist pressure on individual teachers and school principals, as well as on science textbook publishers. As a consequence, a majority of American adults deny that we evolved, and many also deny that the Earth is more than 6K years old.
And of course this denial undercuts the rational, empirical base to all technical/scientific learning. You can’t be an empiricist except where it interferes with GoodThink–regardless of whether that’s Left-wing or Right-wing GoodThink.
2. All literature is vetted for themes and language conservatives object to. Since the Lefties do so as well, all that’s left is intellectual sawdust–textbooks that are almost literally unreadable by anyone whose prefrontal lobes are intact.
3. A significant proportion of American high school graduates don’t know how babies are made in enough detail to make sure they don’t make any babies inadvertently. A big plus: abstinence-only education victims are more likely to get STDs as well as unwanted pregnancies than those who’ve learned how their naughty bits work.
4. Hostility to literature that contains anything but G-rated pablum appropriate to a Disney Channel sitcom has produced several generations of adults who hate literature because they think it’s the sort of pap they were forced to read in school.
Of course in college students are given four years of leftist indoctrination in their liberal arts courses. This tends to roll off the backs of conservative students, however; the real work was done in high school by the unholy alliance of lefties and righties bent on producing students to know little but at least don’t know anything anyone doesn’t want them to know.
So yes, please struggle against leftist indoctrination in college. But how about struggling against ALL indoctination and pablumization? Then you won’t look like hypocrites.
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” –Mathhew 7:3
So, the author decries the feminization of scholarship, and then uses the (incorrect) feminine personal pronoun (“her”) in her narrative. “Her” means 50% of the world. “him” means 100%. The feminization of our whole society is a disaster, and the author is really pert of it. “Her,” indeed.
Evolution is no longer taught in a majority of American high schools (see the National Center for Science Education website for the details)…
That is not a true statement and doesn’t appear at the Website you mention although there is discussion of efforts of so called creationists and intelligent designers to thwart the teaching of evolution.
Also, although some right wingers have undoubtedly tried to influence curriculum, by far the bulk of such activity has been by the Left which might decide that some literature as fine as Huckleberry Finn offends their tiny sensibilities.
Back in the olden daze, we all knew how babies were made, and our time in high school was (hopefully) spent on more challenging intellectual pursuits.
I think homo (not particularly) sapiens is marching backwards in the intelligence department.
This is one of the best articles I’ve ever read–absolutely outstanding. Thanks so much for publishing this one, Dr. Grabar.
I think part of the reason that fundamentalist anti-science views and stances gain any traction is the Left’s excesses in deconstructing and dissolving academic and rational standards. People like standards, at heart; they give guidance and a consistent way of keeping score.
It’s not just the universities … the public libraries are also under assault. I’ll leave it at that since it may be worthy of a separate thread.
Fat Jolly Penguin: I’ll get myself an Operation Chaos shirt ASAP.
And it’s good to hear that you’re going into the hard sciences, which are desperately need in America if we want to stay globally competitive. But there is some indoctrination there too (although probably not to the extent that one may find in the humanities or social sciences). Just look at a topic like global warming. Some scholars (hard science scholars) have advocated denying anthropogenic global warming skeptics tenured positions, or opportunities to publish in peer-reviewed journals.
Still, we need tons more rational thinkers in all academic fields.
Great column, bar the glaring accusation against “women” rather than “feminist ideologues” or “multiculturalists.” That’s terribly unfair to the generation of women who could only get jobs teaching composition (rather than English or Literature), a phenomenon that had everything to do with simple sexism and the economic reality that most women aspiring to become professors weren’t wealthy enough to count themselves among the Seven Sisters crowd and acquire a PhD. through the very exclusive exceptions available only to those women.
Just because a particular cohort couldn’t be satisfied with eradicating discrimination and barreled through the perverse system of affirmative discrimination we have today doesn’t mean that sex discrimination didn’t both exist and impact non-wealthy female scholars in unique ways. Some of my best, most rigorous, most disciplined female teachers experienced severe economic consequences due to the latter and don’t pander to the former. So why blame them for a phenomenon driven by a small elite of both sexes?
Older women still take the thankless jobs and teach the old-fashioned way. If grammar, rhetoric, and basic writing skills are even on the agenda these days, you’ll probably find an older female at the front of the classroom. We owe them respect, and if we wish to return to traditional pedagogy, I can’t think of a better way than to look to them for leadership. Light-hearted controversy aside, the remark isn’t worthy of Grabar, a very perceptive observer. I was sorry to see it.
Light-hearted controversy aside, the remark isn’t worthy of Grabar, a very perceptive observer. I was sorry to see it.
Likewise. The article is actually very good, but that generalisation will put people’s backs up unnecessarily.
Great article. I am presently in the process of sending copies to my daughter and friends who would benefit from the most cogent analysis of “Oprahization of Academia.”
Dr. Bud Ellis
A “generalization” by definition implies exceptions. We make generalizations all the time. I can make the generalization from observation that men enjoy watching football, whereas women enjoy watching Oprah. That does not mean that there aren’t some women who would rather watch football.
Generally speaking, and from the studies the beleagured Larry Summers cited, men are more geared towards the hard sciences. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t women who are capable of winning the Nobel Prize in physics. It’s just that the odds are lower.
I think that the ideological feminists latched onto the emotional way of thinking theory because for the majority (not all) women that is the more natural way of thinking. Because this is so, they felt it should be dominant in areas it had no business being, like the academy.
With these women in charge we have no appeal even to the notion of fairness (a concept alien to emotion-based thinking). The women in charge are hostile to anyone who does not conform lock-step to their way of thinking. Woe to the man (or woman) who does not adhere!
I have no doubt that Tina Trent knows some teachers who were discriminated against and were not permitted to prove themselves in the traditional arena.
That was unfair because they were discriminated on the basis of gender, and shame on those individuals who may have excluded them based on such a trivial basis. Today’s job candidate is discriminated on the basis of believing in reason, for thought crimes, by the lights of these feminists. And it is for that reason, more so than personal prejudice based on gender, I think, that we see fewer men in the humanities.
In all fairness to the fair sex, if Oprah is mentioned in the context of this article, it would help to also introduce the reader to the uncompromising intellect of someone like Oriana Fallaci. But than again, I bet that 99.9% of US college students never heard of her. So, they are left empty handed, holding on tight to Oprah…
Painfully I write this sad e mail on this very subject that is very close to my heart .
My own Daughter(now 31 ) went off too the Bastion of Liberalism now . UVA .
She was a model Daughter but not anymore after her freshman year there .
When I Graduated from UVA as did her Mother back in 1966 .Me with a MBA in Business and her Mom with a degree in Science .
UVA was a Bastion of Conservatism back then .
Our Daughter has a 6 Year Masters Degree is Sociology and a Minor in the Humanities from that same UVA .
$ 421, 000.00 later my Daughter is lost in space and Mentally supports every far left cause , Code Pink , Move on . org , Tree huggers AND EVERY FEMINIST movement there is and yes SHE IS A OBOMA Fan .
She also hates the Military knowing her own Dad was a Captain in the USMC serving two Tours in Nam .
Knowing what I and Her Mom know now ……. We would not have spent a Dime too make her UVA Educated Stupid sadly .
She stays sad over Global Warming as well and wants to move back home since America is too nasty and toooooo Capitalist .
Last month We told her to move to the Netherlands to be with her Socialist kind .
“It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.”
Despite the criticisms, this may be the most important line in this whole piece. Sometimes, someone just has to point out that the Queen isn’t wearing any clothes.
“It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.”
Despite the criticisms, this may be the most important line in this whole piece. Sometimes, someone just has to point out that the Queen isn’t wearing any clothes.
Mary Grabar – couldn’t agree more. One form of unfairness has been replaced by another, more tyrannical form.
I just wanted to say how amusing this thread is.
It has everything from women who question the intelligence of women to men who are sure that the main obstacle their natural tough and manly selves because they are constantly oppressed by stupid and weak women, and throughout it all the never-ending conviction that the damn kids are no good and everything was better back in the good old days.
I was dumbfounded that many of the students as well as the professor sat there questioning whether facts exist, or scientifically verifiable truth. If any of my classmates had been scientists or engineers, I’d have discussed the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Godel’s Theorem, but they were not talking about that. They were questioning whether or not the Gettysburg Address happened, or the like.
How do you know it did?
In all seriousness, questioning the Gettyburg Address sounds stupid because it is a relatively recent event that was independently attested to in several places.
OTOH, there are PLENTY of historical “facts” that go all-to-frequently unquestioned – particularly as you recede into ancient history where more and more of our knowledge comes from what boils down to only a handful of sources (sometimes only one) which were often written far removed,in both time and space, from the events they purport to describe.
I have met PLENTY of people whose idea of the “facts” was entirely derived from these problematic sources and who resisted attempts, no matter how well-merited, to re-evaluate them in light of other known material.
For example, the world is filled with amateur students of Greek history whose entire pseudo-knowledge of the Persian wars comes directly from Herodotus and who are largely unaware with the serious problems with that source and who uncritically pass on some of the garbage contained therein as “facts”.
In my experience, there are far more people who want to wrongly assert the existence of solid and knowable historical facts than there are those who foolishly question the few “facts” that can be relied on.
Yup, all the right wingers are out there talking trash while pretending they are the victims. This is the same old crap recycled for the 100th time. Nothing is new here.
ex democrat,
you made some papist reference, I am reminded just how boldly the Papist stood up to the Nazis, alerted the world to the Holocaust then declared war against the Axis power to be just. Honestly this isn’t the O’Reilly show, nobody cares about that or the fatuous war on Xmas.
you realize that everything you wrote, beginning with “The”, is false and can’t be supported by evidence. But, of course, you wingers can’t be bothered with the facts.
Badly written bollocks. Fail.
Seriously, there are and have been huge womens’ brains.
Madame Curie, Jeane Kirkpatrick come to mind
Ok, that list is admittedly extremely truncated and in no way all inclusive.
However, “one” would be (should be) hard pressed to differentiate between women of achievement and conditioning of women to “not” achieve, historically. Despite Larry Sommers’ rather candid observations, some of the disparity is simply a function of societal conditioning and expectations (or lack thereof).
(I didn’t think Sommers should have lost his job over the brouhaha resulting from the interesting questions he raised. Is academia so touchy that it can’t tolerate interesting question anymore ?)
In any event, it would be a tough road to attribute it “all” to DNA, given highly achieving women. It has been a rough road, and the encouragement or return factor hasn’t, historically, gravitated to the woman achieving.
It’s unequivocal, however, that modern womens’ studies proponents, Oprah Winfrey, and “feminists” in general are not ranked among interesting and achieving female brains.
(for the record, sorry ReCon USMC that your investment in your daughter has yielded such disappointing returns)
Men are not naturally logical. Rather, they are naturally violent and aggressive. They learn to be abstract and theoretical and logical, just as they learn to use a napkin. Most women, in contrast, are naturally emotional, and they should be encouraged to work very hard to be logical. Instead, they have made monuments to their bases instincts.
Mary, I read some of your writing and I am curious about this sentence:
He didn’t need to in order to get to the Auto Zone next door.
Do you bother to edit your writing?
Blue,
If you are refering to Javelin’s and Fred Jone’s comments, I agree.
“Today’s job candidate is discriminated on the basis of believing in reason, for thought crimes, by the lights of these feminists.” Yes, and many are the thought crimes committed in the name of feminism, not the least Irigaray’s “labial thinking” and other otherwise unmentionables promulgated in the name of “women’s ways of knowing” — happily and appropriately mocked by Grabar. Keep it in your knickers. Their knickers. Please.
But, on the other hand, it isn’t “some” women who were deprived of the possibility of fulfilling themselves intellectually and professionally while educating their students. That was the norm until feminists changed it, and they do deserve quotidian credit where credit is due, if nothing more. Yet women teachers in general deserve credit for being the backbone of real education in the humanities, without prestige or paycheck, for most of the Twentieth Century. Thank a nun, for example, if you can diagram this sentence. I still think the blame for the current situation lies with a more elite and nefarious bunch.
Unfortunately, what I have little faith in is my own generation, or anyone who comes after it, male or female or polymorphous. Weaned on nothing other than “multicultural” pap, they deeply believe in the barren significance of their own intentions. It keeps you awake at night.
If Ms. Grabar truly rejects “feminism’s egalitarian vision of the social order” why is she so unhappy with her assigned role as third rate English teaching assistant?
David Thomson:
“Only in the liberal arts might someone get away with declaring that objective reality is relative to an individual’s place in the universe.”
Damn that Einstein — I knew he was wrong!
tanstaafl criticized my earlier post, in which I said “evolution is no longer taught in a majority of American high schools (see the National Center for Science Education website for the details)…”
He said:
>>That is not a true statement and doesn’t appear at the Website you mention although there is discussion of efforts of so called creationists and intelligent designers to thwart the teaching of evolution.<>Also, although some right wingers have undoubtedly tried to influence curriculum, by far the bulk of such activity has been by the Left which might decide that some literature as fine as Huckleberry Finn offends their tiny sensibilities.<<
This is a perfect example of how ideologues left and right continuously excuse and minimize the harm they do while at the same time magnifying identical actions by the other side.
A few years ago the New York Times reported on research carried out during the 2004 campaign. Democratic and Republican partisans were given material adverse to Kerry and to Bush and asked to read and consider it while placed in an MRI scanner.
Both the Demos and the Repubs behaved EXACTLY the same: at no time were their higher cortical functions engaged. Everything was processed in their “dog brains.”
The processing consisted of rationalizing their guy’s sins while going ape over the other guy’s. As this process concluded their brains were washed in endorphins–pleasure stemming from rationalization and hypocrisy.
Hence my quote from Matthew in the New Testament (and the source for a classic SciFi novel’s title, I might add).
But to answer Taanstafl’s point precisely, do read Ravitch’s book on textbook censorship. She lays into liberal censorship savagely, and backs up her judgment with thorough research.
And she says that both the lefties and the righties have been amazingly successful in getting the publishers to omit what they didn’t like. She does say that each side has focused on different kinds of things to censor, and she does say that publishers’ staff tend to agree with the lefties and regard the righties adversarially. And neither lefties nor righties get what they’d like to see. They just get to veto everything they don’t like to see.
The result, as I’ve said, is intellectual sawdust.
Numerous successes at banning Huckleberry Finn are an example of Leftie sociopathology, anachronism, and historical revisionism.
But I’m even more offended by the righties’ success in degrading science education (and not just in biology–geology takes a big hit too due to the Creationists’ 16th century cosmology.
Fact is, ideologues are always ready to sacrifice truth for their cause; always eager to brainwash kids; always eager to prevent the other side from speaking.
On one day a few years ago I listened to a right wing radio station host tell listeners nationwide to call into an Ohio GOP senator’s office complaining about something he’d done that wasn’t in lockstep with Bush’s dicta. Then on the same afternoon I heard a left wing radio host congratulate a caller-inner on how he’d joined with other lefties in preventing Ann Coulter from speaking on his campus the day before.
A pox on both your houses, I say. A plurality of Americans are centrists, neither conservative nor liberal. Yet we’re nearly voiceless in talk shows, news analysis programs, blogs, and newspapers. Righties and Lefties both act as if only each other exist.
And so we get Obama and McCain to choose from–each an eager slave to his side, despite mucho independent posturing.
Ehkzu: Writes
A pox on both your houses, I say. A plurality of Americans are centrists, neither conservative nor liberal. Yet we’re nearly voiceless in talk shows, news analysis programs, blogs, and newspapers. Righties and Lefties both act as if only each other exist.
And so we get Obama and McCain to choose from–each an eager slave to his side, despite mucho independent posturing.
_______________________________________________________
In all due respect I don’t believe there is really such a being a Centrist or No opinions . That is about as Interesting as Nothingness but a lot of it .
You either believe in Socialism or Capitalism …. You either believe in Abortion or not ….. You either in Big Government or not … You believe in the Death Sentence or not ……
You believe in European Courts laws being used rather than our own Constitution on occasions ……. You either believe in Unions or not ….. You believe the Rich don’t pay enough it Taxes or Not ….. You either like Steven’s ruling or the Supreme Court or Judge Thomas views . You either Think far left Judge’s Steven’s , Bryer ,and Ginsburg have more common sense that all Judge on the right do and interruption of the Constitution .
You don’t believe that riding in the middle of the Road you get hit from both ends . Your no fun in a debate about anything ….. In all due respect ?
Does Mary Grabar’s students know how much she detests them?
Ms. Grabar, you’re a raging mediocrity.
Leonard Pierce at Sadly, No has analyzed this post beautifully…..you know, in his pussy, liberal arts sort of way. Brilliant!
What I criticized Ekhzu was your bald-faced and erroneous statement that “evolution is no longer taught in a majority of American high schools” and then your citation of a website “see the National Center for Science Education website for the details” where no such erroneous claim is made.
Adding on a lot of extra words and elaboration doesn’t make your original statement any truer.
I would agree (if it makes you feel any better) that manipulation of material in textbooks by any ideological “side” is abhorrent. It goes back to my original point here, that schools at all levels (including the university level) have come to see the charges assembled before them (i.e., the students) as fodder for brainwashing.
A very sad situation all around and America will pay the price for decline of intellectual rigor in academia.
Tanstaafl is corrent about my answer not answering his points directly. However, to paraphrase an unsuccessful presidential candidate, I did answer his points before I didn’t–somehow my direct answer got truncated after I entered it on this site. So I’ll try again and hope it isn’t truncated this time.
I said that evolution is no longer taught in a majority of American high schools as a prime illustration of how big c Conservatives do serious mischief to our educational system, while acknowledging that self-styled Progressives do serious mischief too, as detailed by the author of this blog and many posters.
I based my conclusion on a 2007 survey of American high school teachers conducted by a team at Penn State U., published by PLOS Biology, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Public Library of Science. This survey was summarized on the NCSE website at:
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2008/US/580_evolution_and_creationism_in__5_21_2008.asp.
You can read the original article at:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124&ct=1.
The survey concludes that, and I quote it exactly: “a majority [of American high school biology teachers] either avoid human evolution altogether or devote only one or two class periods to the topic.”
So they either omit it or soft-pedal it such that Fundamentalist students can blow it off without fear of getting graded down.
An interesting corollary conclusion was that the teaching of human evolution did not vary by state, but by individual teacher. Since only [!] about a quarter of these teachers deny human evolution, they conclude that the others are caving in to pressure in their school districts from Fundie students, parents, pastors and local officials–and are getting no support from craven principals.
This support my own conclusion that right wingers, having failed to subvert evolution instruction in the courts and state legislatures, have collectively decided to fly under the national media’s radar and attack teachers directly on a onsie-twosie basis. This attack has been appallingly successful outside of urban districts and those in college towns.
And as Ravitch points out in her book, both Conservatives and Liberals also manipulate textbook selection committees at the state level, with no effective oversight by the public or legislators.
And if it makes conservatives on this blog feel any better, my wife–a Mormon Republican accounting manager who has never voted for a Democrat for president in her life–went to San Jose State University in California in the 1980s, and found repeatedly that tenured left-wing Liberal Arts professors would not only turn their classes into indocrination–they would lie on the course catalog listings in order to rope in students trying to get an actual education. My wife never protested this bait-and-switch tactic because she’d gone back to school as an adult after a decade in the workforce, and she just wanted to get her degree and get out of there. A friend of ours at church had the same experience as a psychology major at San Francisco State University a few years ago, with class after class of militant feminist indoctrination.
These teachers must not really believe in their ideologies, since they won’t present them on a level playing field.
And even though I’m not a Conservative or a conservative, I firmly believe that my wife and my friend got cheated in their university educations, and that even where I might agree with some of the feminist ideas being put forth, I would never agree with them being presented in this way.
And I can assure you that this indoctrination did nothing but solidify the conservatism of my wife and my friend. However, they both went to school as adults, not as impressionable youngsters. So they were harder to manipulate.
tanstaafl:
I dealt with your challenge before I didn’t. That is, the answer you read was only part of the answer I posted. All the links and surrounding text had been deleted.
So maybe this website deletes links in answers. No prob. Just go to Google and search on:
“Evolution and Creationism in America’s Classrooms”
That’s the name of the study. The first link Google provides is the site of the original source document, published by the peer-reviewed journal Public Library of Science.
The seceond link that shows up is report on this study appearing on the NCSE website. The report isn’t on the NCSE website’s home page, but it was and is on the website. You just had to dig a little to find it.
The key finding I cited is, and I quote it exactly:
“…a majority [of American high school biology teachers] either avoid human evolution altogether or devote only one or two class periods to the topic.”
The study adds that the teachers not teaching human evolution (or soft-pedaling it, i.e. letting students deny human evolution without harm to their grade) were not distributed by state–it was an individual thing, most likely caused, as I’d said, by pressure on individual teachers from Fundamentalist students and their parents, pastors, and fellow travelers among the local poo-bahs.
None of this means that I disagree about the corruption of our educational system by left wing/feminist ideologuyes.
As it happens my wife is a conservative Mormon Republican accounting manager (but I repeat myself) who went back to college to finish her degree after a decade in the workforce.
She found that time after time the course listed in the catalog turned out to be nothing of the sort. Instead she’d get a semester-long indoctrination in some tenured radical’s pet feminist/Marxist/anti-American obsession. It was pure bait-and-switch. And of course dissent was not tolerated, either in class or in tests.
Worse yet, this was at San Jose State University–a public school financed by my wife’s and my tax dollars.
A friend of ours from church matriculated at San Francisco State University and had the same experience–only worse, if that was possible.
Even where I agree with elements of feminism–and even my wife does also, reluctantly…after all, she is a business executive and a veteran scuba diver–I don’t agree with having anything I believe rammed down people’s throats.
So I wholeheartedly agree with the proposition that tenure has become precisely the source of political corruption it was expressly invented to prevent.
And this is just the sort of topic where all you diehard conservatives can and should seek allies among the rest of us–if you want to bring about actual change instead of just whinging about how awful things are.
Because only a third of the country consider themselves conservatives, according to one reputable poll after another. Without us centrists/independents you won’t get diddly.
Of course the same goes even moreso for liberals. Only about a quarter of the country put themselves in that camp.
So we’re not just the swing vote–we’re the plurality of voters. Think Sandra Day O’Connor, who defined the Supreme Court until she retired to take care of her ailing husband. I didn’t always agree with her decisions, but I agreed with her process–how hard she thought about her decisions, and how much love for America she showed at every step of the way.
And that’s my ultimate challenge for the posters here–we centrists have a hunch that you put your cause before your country.
Prove us wrong.
Sorry, my last two posts are repetitive because I didn’t think the first got in. I come from a long line of repeaters and I really don’t want to emulate them.
“M. Vukobratic”
From this article and several in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I do not get the least impression that Mary Grabar despises her students. Rather, she sounds like an unusually engaged and thoughtful teacher. That type of personal attack doesn’t belong here.
To those who find it so easy to attack Pope Linus for his honesty, let me say, some of us have to live in the real world. As a white, male, christian, conservative with a degree in social work and a graduate degree in counseling, let me say that those who stood up for the truth got cut off at the knees. Period! (That doesn’t mean I didn’t speak up for the truth when the opportunity presented itself) I went to several state universities because that was what my mother could afford. I majored in social work and counseling because that was what I was good at and I wanted to get a job and support myself. Not all of us had a choice about where to go to school, what courses to take, and whether or not we needed to graduate.
Let me also add that I know many people who homeschool their children and the children are the better for it. However, these same highly educated, well employed, middle-class parents have decided while they needed advanced degrees and good job training that their children do not. Wake up! I do not like the fact that liberals have taken our educational institutions and the media hostage better than anyone else, but if you are not educating your children in an effort to keep them away from liberal educational institutions, you are sentencing them to a life of poverty. (Yes, I know, millionaire so and so had no eduction and they did fine. So what?)
Not all males are good in math and science, not all males are going to start their own business. Like I said, some of us just wanted to support themselves. And before you accuse me of being anti-intellectual because of this approach, I ussually applied myself to the subject mattter at hand more than other students in my class.
20 years of working in a female-dominated profession and 10 years of marriage have taught me one thing for sure. And that is that regardless of how stridently women preach feminism to the exclusion of all else, a woman’s focus is on her home, family and children (is my house clean, are my kids o.k.) and a man’s focus is on his work and his profession. Nothing right or wrong about that, it is just the way we are wired. How many millions, billions of women are going to reach the end of their lives and say “I missed my child’s first words” or “I missed the chance to make a home for my family” and pursued a career instead. Sometimes circumstances dicate otherwise, however, I don’t believe you will ever hear a man honestly say, “I wish I had stayed home and raised my children”. Except maybe John Lennon, and as far as I’m concerned, his “Imagine” type of thinking has already done enough damage in this world.
This is not meant to disparage women in any way. My wife is the most intelligent, courageous, moral, hardworking person I know, she is simply wired differently from me.
Finally to the person who said that conservative thought has as much currency in the publication of textbooks and the disemmination of ideas as liberal thought, my question is “What are you smoking?” it must be really good stuff.
Thanks for the opportunity to express myself, and I hope I did not offend anyone, at least not too much.
Recon USMC — I think sending your daughter to The Netherlands would be a good idea, although they have way too many socialists there already. At least she won’t be able to vote there to increase my family’s tax burden. Hence me moving from there to the United States. I am actually pursuing my second graduate degree here, and I am constantly doubting whether I should not drop it altogether and learn a practical profession. My degrees are great though, and I cannot complain about my undergraduate education in The Netherlands either. There is good stuff out there, but it’s RARE. My undergrad was a nice mix of economics, finance, classical philosophy and even some old-school anthropology. My grad degrees here in the US are a PhD in (classical liberal) economics and I’m branching out now with an MA in strategic studies. I still don’t know whether I am making the right decision, but my new MA degree is highly-respected and of excellent quality. I see it as a luxury though to be able to pursue a more abstract type of learning instead of studying applied science that will produce tangible value in the marketplace. If I was a US citizen I would probably go into the military though, but for now, that path is still closed.
The rot in higher education is tremendous. It seems that this will be the next great bubble. At least in the United States, students or their parents bear most of the cost of the education (god forbid the state making it free for all). Across Europe, government subsidizes higher education completely, leading to ridiculous situations where students in their late twenties have been indoctrinated with left-wing philosophy their whole lives at the tax-payer’s expense. At least in the United States costs become so high that people will decide against graduate degrees and enter the productive marketplace. Although in the United States, the huge proliferation of Law schools that supply the pawns to be used in a battle for the ruins of the once proud Common Law and the rising costs associated with them are an area where Europe seems to be more efficient — although I am not sure whether it’s a good thing that a state-controlled organ is that “efficient”.
Philip:
“no sex for you – oprah hater”
Philip just let the secret out of the bag. The weak men are simply PWed. The whole school system has become nothing more than a way to seperate people and there money. Up until the early 70′s many employers could use proficiency exams to determine if someone could do a job but a supreme court case ended that and now all employers have to go by are degrees. Since so many people need to get degree’s they have to dumb down the classes. Why are there so many Sociologists? It’s this very reason. I’ll trust the observations and judgements of an engineer on social issues before I trust a Sociologists.
…letting students deny human evolution without harm to their grade…I don’t agree with having anything I believe rammed down people’s throats.
Ehzku,
These two snippets from your post don’t agree with each other.
You may get around this by using the fact/value division as in ‘Evolution is a fact, and should be taught as such, and enforced as such, but I don’t believe in imposing my beliefs on other people.’ Unfortunately science is pretty clear…evolution is bunkum. And my ‘fact’ is this is so, but I’ll be willing to let you continue on with your illogical belief because I don’t believe in forcing my beliefs down other’s throats.
You also protest that teachers spend only one or two days on evolution. Just how much time do you think a teacher has? There is a whole lot to be learned in Biology, and if its a General Science class that whole lot just got at least an order of magnitude worse. Besides, evolution is not really that complicated an idea. Its a rather simplistic and vague notion supported by a bit of speculation and some just so stories.
You seem to want some serious indoctrination with penalties if the students fail to ‘take’ the indoctrination.
Me, I’d be willing to accept a day of evolution which pointed out its nature in full (including warts and weaknesses), and allowed the student to maintain their own beliefs about what really are the facts as long as they can explain the Neo-darwinist Synthesis.
But then I’m a Conservative and I believe in Free Speech and Independence of Mind.
I’ll suggest that Darwinism might be part of the downfall of the academy. Believing in simplistic illogic is not good for the thoughtful brain. And once you get the Science Establishment with Big Government money involved, well….in one hand we have logic and truth, and in the other hand we have fame and fortune…How many men are there that are willing to buck the crowd for the right just so they can be spat upon? We need the separation of Science and State.
I must be missing one of the main points of the article. It seems to me that any analysis of fiction/literature is just somebody’s opinion. Newton’s equations of motion require no need for opinions. but how do opinions and “I feel statements” not belong in an English/Comp Lit class? What else would you have?
As for Tennwriter: I assure you that the science is in fact clear: evolution is pretty clearly an accurate description of how the world works. It is also crucial to an understanding of biology.
Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no evidence of evolution in a human context. None. While there has been evidence of evolution in animals, even the fabricated evidence of “human evolution” would not fill the average car trunk. Not much to base a philosophy on that has killed, is killing and will kill billions of people in the future, especially when the proponents of another farce, “global warming” use it justify the “greening of the planet” killing off those of us who are considered less enlightened. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
I find the idea that evolution is scientific and a proven fact laughable and a sad by product the indoctrination we see in western education these days. Perhaps the Darwinists on this blog should re-educate themselves about the most modern scientific evidence on the issue.