This week the Texas legislature is kicking off its 83rd session in Austin. The funding of public education in the state will be a hot topic as it always is, but this session, the content of public education will be worth a look. The National Association of Scholars today released the findings of a study into the contents of university-level history teaching at two of Texas’ (and the nation’s) most highly regarded public universities, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, in Bryan-College Station.
Specifically, the NAS looked at the syllabi and reading assignments of classes at both universities, in 85 sections of lower-division American history courses. These classes covered the state requirement, passed by the legislature in 1971, that all undergraduate students at Texas public institutions take two American history courses. What the NAS study found is very disturbing.
The study found that U.S. history courses at both universities strongly emphasize race, class, and gender (RCG) in reading requirements. Fully 78% of faculty members at UT emphasize race, class, and gender, while 50% of faculty members at Texas A&M do the same. Likewise, 78% of UT professors have special research interests in RCG, while 64% at A&M do too.
The study contends that the strong emphasis on RCG crowds out other relevant themes in American history, such as the nation’s intellectual, military, spiritual, and economic history. The emphasis on RCG studies also influences a further narrowing of history subject matter and the tailoring of “special topics” courses, which omit the use of significant primary source documents. These narrowed-focus classes, the study finds, “seem to exist mainly to allow faculty members to teach their special interests.”
The effect: Students at two of Texas’ flagship universities are not being assigned to study such important and influential milestones as the Mayflower Compact or President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. “Only one faculty member,” the study finds, “assigned the ‘Letter from a Birmingham jail’” or Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Major historical figures, from John Dewey to Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, are increasingly being left out of American history courses at both universities. The result of this is that we are losing touch with our history, replacing it with an overemphasis on grievances.
Well,fine…let the precious twits get a degree in lower class gay minority women’s studies or some such….that way they can be fully prepared for a McJob once the graduate
They will get jobs, not to worry. Those who hire are advancing the policy of “diversity”. I wrote about class, race and gender here: http://clarespark.com/2011/03/26/race-class-and-gender/. The total effect of these post-1960s education policies will be to further polarize our country, as if that were possible.
Whaah, rich straight white men owe me! (Why?) Uh… ’cause they suck! Gimme, gimme!
Old news.
This has been going on since the Vietnam War. Other fields such as military history have completely disappeared from the scene – in fact, what military history stills exists on campuses now does so under the guise of “war & society.”
You’ll never be able to force change. Look at the experiences of Harvard & Cambridge alumni Mark Moyar – conservatives are blacklisted at universities, I’ve seen it firsthand. Better to just ignore them and watch them wither. Besides, would you really trust these types to accurately teach basic precepts of American or World History without a leftest tilt?
One hopes you are right. The modern profs know a few hifalutin terms, all very naughty and sexy, like transgressive and phallocentric. But like the amateur who takes on a home reno he can’t handle, if it doesn’t work they will have to call on a professional to fix the system. One imagines celebrities, journalists, academics and even democrats won’t like it when they have dehegemonised the U.S and suddenly they have far less global influence. They may begin to rouse the people to the ideal that strong is better than weak. Would take a while and who knows maybe I am too optimistic, maybe you will have appointed so many incompetents by then that the whole country might simply detroit away. I wonder if this idiocy would take root in China, Russia and the Mid-East? Believe it or not, they are more your philosophical allies than these acadegenerates.
History demonstrates, quite conclusively, that change is always forced. A great deal of force went into making the USA what it is today. That came to me from History classes.
There is a problem with following your advice, “. . . just ignore them and watch them wither.” Since UT and TA&M are publicly funded, and as long as that continues, withering seems very remote.
The primary purpose of UT and TA&M is to benefit the State of Texas.
Actually, the way to make them wither is to drop the history requirement. Once history becomes either a major (for future Starbucks employees) or an elective, the number of students enrolling for the classes will plunge. That will eliminate the need for so many leftists professors.
History is very important, too important to be left to the academics. It’s one of the most important yet worst taught subjects at any level of education and has been for decades.
Believe me, I do feel that history is important. To think otherwise would be suicide as I am an historian.
Truthfully, I spoke out of emotion more than anything. Yes, there is public funding, so it wont just wither and die. By that same token, I don’t believe dropping its requirement will change anything. Those who sign up for history classes because they are required to do so more often than not don’t pay that much attention to what they are learning. Most history majors go into law – which is a scary thought.
History majors do have value though, particularly in writing and research skills that shame most academic communication programs. But cleansing it of leftist cancer is a problem that exists outside the history department – it covers virtually the entire campus. Texas A&M has a reputation as being one of the more conservative schools (historical studies wise), but even they have problems.
So, what are we to do? Start more conservative colleges and historical societies? I believe they’d be crushed before they have a chance to grow. We used to have classes dedicated to slandering Victor Davis Hanson, imagine what they’d do to an organization who rubbed elbows with Larry Schwiekart and David Barton. Quality conservative historians do exist (Hanson, I believe, is exceptional), but they have to make a living, so they’re not likely to stand for their beliefs (see my reference to Mark Moyar).
That’s why I got out of professional academia. History is too important to be left to the “professionals.”
“Most history majors go into law – which is a scary thought.”
History and political science. The scary though is worthy of a very deep conversation in and of itself. The legal ‘profession’ is one of the most corrupted, intellectually and in paractice, institutional professions in America.
The problem is more systemic, than just the teaching of history. You find the same left wing garbage in English classes. Education classes seem to be nothing but leftist nonsense. I’ve endured it even in Business classes. Ceding the topic will not guarantee an improved outcome, or reduction in unethical leftist professors.
I don’t think the problem is the poor quality of college history courses. The problem is that young people don’t read. Instead, they are addicted to electronic devices which teach them nothing. I have 2 bright daughters in their 30′s. One reads only a little, and the other not at all, although their peers think they are exceptionally well informed. Fortunately, I have been able through conversation to teach them conservative values along with a little history.
I have been reading and enjoying American history since I was in 3rd grade. In recent years I have read biographies of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Polk, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, TR, Coolidge, Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan, as well as books focused on such topics as the Panama Canal, the Great Depressionl, various wars, etc. I will leave this library to my children and hope that they or their children will someday find it as fascinating as I do.
It’s not just English. An overview class on occupational safety and health at my institution is replete with discussions on race and gender inequality, Marxism as reform, etc.
My part in this grant-funded travesty dissolved with a budget cut… by the grace of God.
Actually, it exists under Military/Naval Science classes taught by the local ROTC unit.
And what, pray tell, are all of those countless RCG grads going to actually do with their “knowledge?” I’m not certain that they’re even qualified for a McJob.
Sure know how to complain though.
They will vote Democrat and hate America. That is the problem. Google Critical Theory .
Bingo. Severed from the past, they’ll swallow anything. Look no further than the results of the last election.
Sorry, I should have been clearer; my comment was rhetorical in nature. Believe me, I know all too well their ilk.
What I was mulling over was just how incompetent and ill-educated they’ll be when they hit the workforce. What are their skills? Haranguing people about (fill in artificially contrived “cause” here)? That does not even qualify you to operate a cash register, let alone do anything that might earn you a decent salary.
It qualifies you to get jobs in academia or government, which is where most of them end up.
Bingo! And lawyers.
That sounds good on the face of it, but there just plain isn’t enough room in all of Academia for them; even less so as the cost of a college education continue to rise and fewer can afford to attend.
I suppose it’s entirely possible we’re about to see the “rise of the non-profit,” in that every one out of three of them will try to start one up, to address “Gender Issues,” “Race and Culture Discrimination,” “Feminist Studies,” and such-like.
Saying “I work for a non-profit” will become synonymous with “Slacker, going nowhere, but with an agenda.”
Saying “I work for a non-profit” will become synonymous with “Slacker, going nowhere, but with an agenda.”
They also seem to be trust-fund kiddies.
It seems that getting a government job (where few really have to work, no skills are needed and it’s almost impossible to get fired) is the high holy grail for many graduates. The job becomes even more attractive when a portion of student loan debt is forgiven. Add to that the fact that many states exempt government pensions from income taxes while taxing all other retirement benefits, effectively creating a two-tier society.
Getting a job with a non-profits are the second most desirable goal. It gives them a sense of moral superiority while not having to accomplish anything more difficult than being a parasite on those businesses that do make a profit.
is a viable profession, for those with leadership skills and initiative.
They’re qualified for any job in any government that has “a degree” as a minimum qualification. “A degree” is worth about ten years of career progression in most government’s classification schemes. You can come out of HS and go to work as an entry level employee in an administrative or technical job. If you do a decent job, often defined as showing up regularly, you can make it to the mid-level technical level or the low-level supervisory level in about ten years. “A degree” will get you to the mid-level technical or low-level supervisory level right out of college with no experience.
From one of those positions, a person with good social skills and at least enough ability not to get blamed for screwing up can be at that vital area at or one step below a direct report to a political appointee manager by the time they’re in their early 30s, maybe sooner if pretty and willing to sleep with the boss. Once at that level, the right cocktail pary, a check in the right amount, or sleeping with the right person will make you a political level manager.
This is really insiduous because it makes it possible for greenie radicals with a degree in “Environmental Studies” to become managers over the scientists in an environmental protection department, or union ideologues with a degree in “Labor Studies” to wind up in an employer’s labor relations or HR section or in the wage and hour enforcement section. Every Republican governor in the Country ought to set his director of personnel to work eliminating the “a degree” minimum qualification. If there’s going to be a degree requirement, it needs to be in the actual profession administering the program or required for licensure.
Starkly put, these are the 3 also-rans of Western history books. But instead of studying failure, explaining it away, creating fantasies about it and parceling out blame, maybe it would be better to study those women-hating, racists who created the very institutions and tech these people enjoy.
In fact, in those sectors of education where negative connotations are stripped away, that’s what people do.
You can have some weird payback that gives psychological surcease to people who over-identify with race, class and gender, or you can get in the winner’s circle.
As a senior last year, my daughter was involved in our state’s National History Day and she and two friends did a great presentation that was over my head- I just know it had the words “Multi-revolutionary” and “Napoleonic” in the title. She did all right, but most of the winners had “sexy” topics like the History of Jazz. She and her teacher were a bit puzzled why their project didn’t do better, but when one of the judges (ostensibly a college instructor) had no clue what the Treaty of Versailles was, we all just gave up, and she decided she had no interest in going to Nationals or pursuing a history degree after all.
I am in my last year in a career in the humanities at an east coast liberal arts college. The pathology described in this blog is very wide spread and very deep. Frankly, I think we are too far gone to fix it. Though I have not cooperated in the disease, I haven’t openly fought it either. I have to feed my near and dear, and if I were to take a public stand against this insanity my classes would be boycotted and my tenure either revoked or a dead letter. The current presidential administration is a product of this abomination and it isn’t going away. A far cry from M.L. King’s wish that a man be judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character. It pains me to say it, but the civil rights movement, which seemed so promising, was a Trojan Horse for the birth of a monster.
Best,
Richard
Take heart Richard. There is hope as you see eventually the fuzzy thinking sector of our brave new world eventually fails and collapses the system when the day comes that they no longer understand simple and basic parts of the whole as recently happened to me with a young lad who had recently graduated from university, my step-son. I was in the garage repairing a window and he was there talking at me (Note: he is a member of Mensa and he and I get along fine) when I asked him if he could bring me a Phillips screwdriver, he returned with a flathead screwdriver, I showed him the difference. A few minutes later I asked him to bring me a pair of pliers. He returned with a pair of scissors and asked “Will this work?”. I smiled and showed him what I needed.
A complicated system simply cannot last with undereducated fools like this running/ruining the show who are generally very hard to understand when they are talking, especially if you are an old guy from the old college education days when we learned more basic knowledge that could actually be used in the real world. Indeed I find them hard to understand and what’s more they are even less inclined to listen to anything old guys like me have to say. So be it.
The whole big thing will collapse eventually with this mindlessness about everyday things that we old timers take for granted i.e., pliers, screwdrivers, history, economics, business management,etc. Most likely blood will flow and most of these young knuckleheads won’t know which end of the gun a bullet comes out of, nor do they/ will they believe or understand that tyranny by the elite is still alive and well in the world and that will be their demise. And then the Human Phoenix will rise again. In what new guise I do not know, but humans are ever so creative little creatures so it should be quite the show. Wish I could be around.
Note To All: Still on the other hand I have met and talked to many very intelligent young people who DO GET IT and I pray that there are enough of them left to throw off the parasites and get us going again.
For the record my step sons father has a Masters and has been in the building trades all of his life, hands on building trades and the kid doesn’t know what a pair of pliers are? HHmmmmmm. It is more than just formal education that is lacking.
“IF” R Kipling. Read it. Heed it. Live it!
In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head in the beginning and at the end. The bright promise of an end of institutional discrimination against black Americans has turned into back-biting payback and a ludicrous assertion that Jim Crow was never done away with, but altered and gone underground. The New Jim Crow is the single biggest current meme adopted by the black community and white liberals which seeks to explain away the failures of black culture and transfer it onto whites, by claiming whites are endemic racists.
As for pathology, that was a good choice of words. Look at the flagship pop culture venue on cable TV – MSNBC. I don’t know that you have to be a professional to understand there is something deeply disturbed in the world outlooks of Chris Hayes, Chris Matthews, Michael Eric Dyson, Rachel Maddow and Mellisa Harris-Perry.
Fanatics don’t froth at the mouth and scream, they are often quiet
“…deeply disturbed in the world outlooks of Chris Hayes, Chris Matthews, Michael Eric Dyson, Rachel Maddow and Mellisa Harris-Perry.”
The ‘other’ side is equally loaded up with the mold of these types you list — they just represent a different philosophy.
Really? Make a list of nuthatches of the Right that have been acceptably mainstreamed into American culture five nights a week on cable TV and whose views run through American cinema and literature as “justice.”
You’re to funny! You want to just limit a list to “nights a week on cable TV” eh? That a very weak attempt to hedge your loss on the point I made. Just curious why you would choose to leave out print, radio and internet mediums? If you want to be adult and play fair, let me know and I’ll give you a lengthy list of highly recognized personalities with a whoppong millions and millions of followers!
This is not surprising. The Academic Left is largely marxist. The dominant belief is that the struggle between the proletariat groups (minorities, women) and the bourgeois group (white, heterosexual men) is the defining conflict of history, especially American history.
Time conquers all. The spirit of mankind loves freedom and I think it doesn’t matter if America survives or fails. We will be a footnote so enjoy your ringside seat.
Funny you should mention that…
Sad, sad, sad – this pecular sort of overspecialization, since it tends to leave out the broadly interesting part. I take a little bit of comfort in that what the broader public knows of history, they take from pop culture – like the movies. (This is why I write ripping good historical fiction yarns, in an attempt to fill in the gaps in pop knowlege.) But those who are really keen on history are joining reenactment groups. The last couple of reenactor events that I went to in Texas had a large number of younger people participating, so I believe there is hope. But not in the higher-ed classrooms.
As another old white guy, I believe this last election showed us the handwriting on the wall. It has showed us that education and knowledge of history, science, or anything, actually is no longer of any importance in how a voter chooses a candidate for public office. Now that changing demographics has given the grossly ignorant a majority vote (and it is only going to get worse as us old educated white guys and ladies die off), all candidates must now appeal to this new lowest common denominator. Oops, I guess I should not use that mathematical term since few if any of these majority voters have any idea to what it refers.
The only thing that now matters is which candidate promises more “free gov’mt money”. Thus we have become a Marxist Paradise. But as with all Marxist Paradise countries, the concentration camps will soon open and people will begin to disappear.
This was a severe problem 20 years ago. I was very fortunate that I faced none of this nonsense as an undergrad in the 80s. However, as an English grad student in the early 90s, my classmates were already heavily indoctrinated with PC at their universities, which must have been in the 80s, too.
It was untenable then and has metastasized into the larger culture now. In the humanities, the students and now professors are not getting/do not have the education they need, only the indoctrination.
One might, perhaps, sum up the curriculum described as “Owe Me and Blow Me.”
to pay back, it’s more like “I Owe You”
You forget that “a college education,” access to loans for same, and a “good job” afterwards are now being touted as entitlements—and that an amnesty for student loans is being bruited about.
and it may well happen just as you say it will
but, it could also come with a price
obama will forgive student loans providing
they serve in his civilian defense force
and they’ll be paid regulars, of course
an armed-to-the-teeth OWS in uniform
They can call it the Student Auxilliary and give them nice brown uniforms with armbands that have the Obama O on them. Seems like I saw something like that once.
Damned hippies and their Gramscian march through the institutions.
Not to sound all tinfoily, but once their institutions collapse, then everything burns, and we have some hard times, all of this foolishness will sort itself out.
That Gramscian march was well underway before any ’60s hippies were even a gleam in their daddy’s eye. The left had the humanities departments of the elite schools by the late ’20s, the state schools by the ’40 or ’50s, depending on where in the Country. The Left had much of the movie industry by the ’30s and much of the print media and radio by the ’20 to ’30s, again depending on where you were. When the first Baby Boomers arrived at college in ’64-’65, the communists were there ready and waiting.
One can find hope in the homeschooling community where young men and women are still actually being educated. The movement is responsible for the reprinting of many great old books that had gone out-of-print. Homeschoolers tend to hunger after truth and real knowledge – that’s what drove them to self-educate in the first place.
Of course, the Left is constantly trying to squash them and that’s where you can help. Whenever the Left makes a move to undermine the parent’s right to determine their child’s course of education, you can stand with them when they fight back. Familiarize yourself with the Homeschool Legal Defense Assoc. and other entities fighting for our most basic of freedoms, the right of self-determination.
Too late.
Go Galt.
This is a religious obligation: Race/Class/Gender is the Trinity of the Left to which all must be subordinated, converts indoctrinated, heretics punished. These are medieval minds in essence.
genders can dance on a pinhead
You misunderstand. There isn’t an overabundance of RCG in history. RCG IS history. The things you lament are the product of old white men, of the patriarchy.
And even your lament is tainted–
““Only one faculty member,” the study finds, “assigned the ‘Letter from a Birmingham jail’” or Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America”
‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ is RCG, not history. Consider how your own mind has been subtly infiltrated and understand how deep the damage is.
Maybe the point is that “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is one of the primary documents of the civil rights movement in the 60s, yet the “professors” of RCG do not see fit to to include it in the curriculum. Maybe because, while MLK recognized black identity, he didn’t necessarily espouse identity politics. He wanted to solve a problem, not establish a culture of perpetual grievance against old white men. In these two matters, at least, he differed from the people who make their careers studying RCG – the “experts” who teach our kids how to think. MLK might be useful to them as a symbol of racial combat, but his actual IDEAS might not pass muster with today’s PC crowd.
University administrators allowed their social studies leftists to get away with this for so long, voting for it, petitioning for it that now it’s the new normal at American universities and colleges. To change back to teaching real history might be too wrenching and could cause riots. This stuff is really the spillover of social studies silliness lefties couldn’t get away with teaching in purpose-oriented courses by the same name.
University administrators are social studies leftists.
Contemporary historians, who certainly aren’t all liberals or leftists, by the way,investigate a far wider range of human experience than the political and military affairs that used to be the privileged subject matter. Dealing with race, class, and gender represents a widening, not a narrowing of focus since it means that historians now try to understand what most of the human race did and suffered instead of treating the past as if the only ones who mattered were a handful of white males. Anyhow, it wasn’t all that long ago that dealing with intellectual, economic, or artistic history was denounced as a radical innovation—lots of people have always wanted history to be the endless repetition of the sacred narrative of the heroic nation and nothing else. That’s especially true of Texans and other folks who have a lot of reasons to pretty up their particular pasts because, well, they really weren’t very pretty.
Living by choice at the bottom of a well, it’s small wonder if you think the sky is six feet across.
It’s not a question of who matters – everyone matters. History is not an attempt to say people don’t matter, or have no worth. It is an attempt to show who did what. History is not and should not be about President Lincoln’s maid’s cousin and the “critical” part she played whispering in someone’s ear and yadda, yadda.
If that history is boringly white men, then so be it. The trouble is that libs don’t like that, no matter how real it is, and it IS real, it’s what happened. Uplifting people by race, class and gender in historical terms is a bald-faced lie, one that libs see as “truth.”
I’m not interested in the history of those who died by the sword, or who almost built pyramids, woulda conquered, shoulda invented or coulda done better, but those who succeeded. I do not relate to failure or dead ends, interesting though tragedy may be. No one’s buying DVDs of the terrific year the 3-13 Minn. Vikings had in 2011, so why should colleges sell such tripe?
He’s just trying to justify the lefty Holy Grail of making the World safe for fu*kups.
Art Chance, Why do you waste your time responding to Harrison? You’re just giving him the attention that he craves.
Oh, it’s just a busman’s holiday; spent a lot of years getting paid to fu*k with lefties, hard habit to break plus I enjoy doing it. Lefties are kinda like a slinky; they’re not good for anything, but it sure is fun to push them down the stairs.
Art Chance, I think you’re a member of a secret vast right-wing Zionist conspiracy.
Kinda funny for the marginal people who inhabit this site to complain if historians look at losers as well as winners. How do you suppose anybody is ever going to remember the likes of you? After all, absent the advent of a new dark age, you are hardly a heroic vanguard of anything. You endlessly bemoan the way that elites look down on you. One can safely predict they will look down on you in the future as well, that is if they bother to think about you at all.
You wonder why you lose elections when you go around asserting that nobody matters but white men. Thing is, your version of history is not only objectionable because it comes down to “Hurray for us!” but because you can’t understand what happened in the past by looking at the doings of a small elite. Oddly enough, the bulk of the human race wasn’t just some mass of losers. They did most of the living, fighting, building, and creating.
It USED TO represent a widening of historical knowledge. It has since become the new narrowing. Let’s NOT study George Washington’s contributions to the American founding. Let’s study George Washington’s slaves’ contribution to the American founding INSTEAD – because it’s more “relevant.”
It’s like learning about “Hamlet” by studying “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.”
I started to watch “Lincoln” and I was up to my eyebrows in PC bullsh-t in the first two min. How can they write such nonsense? I’m surprised they didn’t have a woman who passed as a man and a Muslim talking to Lincoln.
And just what was wrong with “Lincoln??”
Wow, what is such and empty reply it leaves me awestruck. By the way, have you ever heard of the Treaty of Versailles or any particulars of such?
Google is cheating and wickies are tainted. Start!
not only is there the epidemic of mal/mis education
but the very specific endeavors relating to the upkeep of a free people are non existent
— economic literacy
— historical literacy
— constitutional literacy
when encountering the usual useful idiot who has been indoctrinated in our school system (as opposed to your typical lib who doesnt care/know about anything really- other than keeping up appearances and following the herd) any exposure to the above usually triggers a pavlovian response
and your pavlovian response is an orgasm
Daxypoo,
I disagree. There are islands of rationality and intellectual courage fighting against the PC academic rot. I have personal knowledge of the economics program at George Mason University and it is a fine example. The department has a generally libertarian bent with many strong voices particularly in the areas of public choice, economic history and constitutional economics.
However faint, there is hope.
i hope you’re right
RCG is Marxism, communist nonsense to foment the revolution. Actually, I disagree with the NAS report because I do not think that the study of American history should include major sections on Race, Class, and Gender. The subject of Race is important in American history because of the existence of slavery until the Civil War, and the legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson which made government-enforced racial discrimination legal, which existed in the Southern states until the decision of Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of1965, are important parts of American history.
The subject of Class in American history? Those pushing the CG communist agenda are ignorant even of the Declaration of Independence, 1775, which declares that “all men are created equal.” And what does sex (“gender”) have to do with American history? The suffragette movement was important, and the first state to give the vote to women was Wyoming, I believe in 1896 (?), but the role of women is not a major part of American history.
On the tendentious communist line on American history, see the latest TV documentary by Oliver Stone – Ron Radosh has an interesting article about this. I notice that among the texts used in some of these courses are those by Howard Zinn (a communist) and Eric Foner.
“…the role of women is not a major part of American history.”
Amazing! The virgin birth was a minor miracle compared to what you’re proposing. I had always thought that each and every American had a female parent.
Why not write a book about the critical role oxygen played at the Battle of Gettysberg? After all, men must breathe.
You belabor the obvious and seek to give it not only equality but star billing. Failure have mothers too. So what?
Please don’t waste your time and energy on the likes of Jim Hitlerson. He has venomous opinions on every topic, even ones he knows nothing about. He is simply too ignorant to understand how ignorant he is. However, he thinks he knows everything about everything and thinks he has the solution to all of the world’s problems. The guy is what Thomas Sowell might call a self-anointed messiah. He believes that civilized and successful people and countries are intrinsically evil and he has a vicious hatred of Jews and Israel. His posts are often incoherent ramblings. He evades questions, he tells outright lies and he throws tantrums. Please don’t waste your time and energy on this immature, malignant, narcissistic, attention-starved, anti-Semitic demagogue.
http://academeblog.org/2013/01/10/what-kind-of-history-should-we-teach/
What goes on in private colleges is to a great extent private. But what goes on in public colleges is a matter of public policy. I can’t believe that the Texas legislature cannot impose a traditional liberal arts curriculum at UT and A&M. They have full control of primary and secondary curricula, so why not get control of higher ed? This is taxpayer money.
They can, but control over state universities seems to be an afterthought to Republicans. My state has had a Republican legislature for most of the last 30 years and Republican governors for the last decade, including Saint Sarah. The University Board of Regents is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature, and our university system is still a vipers nest of lefties and greenies providing sinecures for out of office Democrats. With Republicans we seem to always wind up with the wife of some friend of the governor, often once a teacher, or old rich guys who want their legacy to include having been appointed to something “important.” The Educrats just have their way with these people. We need to pay as much attention to who gets appointed or elected to the Board of Regents as we do to who gets appointed or elected to head the Highway Department.
You’ll hear a lot of bleating and wailing about “academic freedom” but it is a lie. A public employee who happens to be a college professor has no more freedom in choosing the means and methods of doing his job than does a cop or a custodian. They are hired to teach what they are told to teach. Their freedom is limited to choosing whether or not to take the job. “Academic Freedom” is a creature of contract or statute, not an organic right. Absent some specific conferal of “academic freedom” or “freedom of speech,” a public employee who happens to be a college professor checks his/her academic freedom and freedom of speech at the door to the classroom. There is a really good 9th Circuit case on the limits of freedom of speech for public employees.
To rein it in, you’ll have to endure people like James Harrison here calling you a neanderthal, but it is a good thing to be called names if it is the right people doing it. Be a peasant with a pitchfork and go after the statutes that confer “academic freedom” by whatever name and do away with tenure. Public employees in today’s world don’t need something like tenure because they’re either protected by merit system rules, union contracts’ just cause provision, or court imposed “covenants of good faith and fair dealing.”
Then the governor or the chairman of the finance committee has to call the head of the university in and tell him how the cow ate the cabbage. In my experience with bureaucrats, including Educrats, if you have them by their budget, their heart and mind will follow.
Academic freedom is meant to insulate the world of thought from the desire of authoritarians to impose their ideology on everybody. The extremes meet. Hard rightists like Chance endorse the same kind of mind control insisted upon by commissars in the old Soviet Union.
Even intelligent authoritarians recognize the problem with making profs and teachers into puppets: free inquiry pays. Unfortunately, with unintelligent authoritarians like Chance, all bets are off.
It is amazing how the extremists of any issue, on any side, employ the very same tactics for the very same reasoning — power and control over others lives and thought. I just look to them and their reasoned tactics as a barometer of how many are actually anti-constitutional rights of freedom and emotionally disturbed in our society.
Zeke, Don’t waste your time responding to Jim Harrishmuck.
“What goes on in private colleges is to a great extent private.”
Well, not so much as you might think. Even private schools get a lot of money from the government these days—not only in direct grants, but through the federal loans and grants which go to pay many students’ tuition.
You may recall that when the First DA/DT Justice was still running Harvard Law School, she attempted to ban military recruitment from the campus because the military was following the DA/DT directive imposed on it by the government of which she was, at that time, a part. The federal government told her, “Fine. No military access, no federal money.” She went to court to get the money and failed.
Thus, through judicious withholding of public money, it should be possible to address the currently-ingrained biases endemic in even private colleges and universities—provided the political power and will can be mustered to do it.
I think if you check, Harvards problem was with a breach of DOD ROTC memorandum agreement. The same thing happened during the Vietnam era but the numbers of schools were so large in numbers and a national anti war sentiment so strong the government took no similiar actions in those cases. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Well, actually, lefty punk, the feckless Democrat Congress just let Hahvud and the other Universities of Spoiled Children get away with it. When adults took over, they cut the funding if the communists would play nice; should have just shot them.
I love when you get angry Art. Your origins in the hood slips out.
I’m not surprised. Those who can’t deal with reality invent their own. It’s tough being a coward, and much easier to have taken a moral stand – with student deferments to make sure somebody else pays. The power to punish, with grades, is kind of cool too, especially with the get-out-of-jail-free card called tenure. Why debate when you can impose?
I’ve not much use for much of my generation.
My daughter is in an AP European History class as a senior in High School.
She complains to me this is what her HS course is all about.
Her text has 2 pages on Napoleon.
The Teacher had to bring in an outside expert toi talk to the class for 2 days on him to offset the deficit.
UNC CH is searching for a new chancellor. They’ve sent out a survey to get an idea of what alumni, students, parents, etc. want to see in a chancellor and vision for the school. The questions were either checklist of attributes, or ranking items of importance. Many, if not most, of the options had “diversity” as
a choice (others being “quality of instructors”, “quality of education”, etc). I’m hoping it will rank so low that they’ll have to defund some of those silly gender bender whoa is me victimization classes and administrators. Not holding my breath.
What is most interesting are those themes not considered by the NAS that clearly should be featured in any study of American History. Where is the discussion of the “Trail of Tears,” Wounded Knee, or the American Bureau of Indian Affairs development of the “concentration camp” (we call them Indian Reservations)–or any deeper discussion of America’s policy of waging war against Native Americans for nearly a century (and stealing their land). Clearly some people’s property rights were not that important during the formative years of the American nation.
Where is the discussion of the American internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps in World War II? Where is the discussion of American destruction of the environment. Hunting buffalo until they were nearly extinct? The closing of the “range”?
Where is the discussion of the largest socialist project in the world–the building of the interstate highway system with Federal dollars. Or read alternatively, a discussion of how mid-20th century highway and urban policies operated essentially as corporate welfare for the automobile industry. Wasn’t it the philosophy of the Big Three auto companies in the 1950s that whatever the Federal Government spends is good for the Big Three?
The NAS has no special insight into how history should be taught. The NAS represents merely one ideological agenda–an agenda that holds vesting property and wealth in the hands of the 1% is a good thing.
The biggest “mistake” in how folks teach American history is the usual theme that America was largely a peaceful nation from the time of the war of 1812 until the Spanish American war. The Mexican war is treated as an event of minor consequence. The Civil War is treated as a major bloody domestic quarrel.
But what most history ignores is the nearly 100 years of continuous war that America waged against native Americans. Europe was a tranquil place after the end of the Napoleonic wars. The US was the scene of continuous bloody struggle. That is the untold story of American history.
When did you go to school – in the 1950s? None of what you said reflects the situation in 2012.
Bugs
I am delighted to learn that we now teach in history the story of American genocide. My thoughts were based on my own teaching experience (and tests I gave my students). You know my students could not get basic factual questions correct. For example, who had more tanks in 1940 France or Germany? Or in January 1942, whose fleet submarine had longer legs, the US or Germany? Or what was the standard weapon issued to a US cavalry soldier in Kansas in 1875? In 1835? (perhaps that is unfair because we may not have been in Kansas then).
What was the relative disadvantage of US standard carrier aircraft versus land based air craft in terms of service ceiling, fuel capacity, top speed, rate of climb, and ammunition load in 1943? 1945?
Since the Vietnamese attack on the US in the Gulf of Tonkin, identify every time the US Navy has successfully shot down enemy air craft or missiles using ship based missile systems.
I agree with your comment that I may be a bit old fashioned in my approach. But that does not in any way show that NAS has a good idea about how history should be taught.
If you think those are basic factual questions for students you’re a goof.
Well, fool who wants to impress us, as I recall, a Gato class was made for patrolling the Pacific, a much larger American lake than the North Sea that the German IX was made for. The French had a Helluva lot of tanks that they really didn’t either know how to use or have much desire to use while the relatively few German tanks had radios in each tank and much superior doctrine. A trap-door Springfield was an economic modification or the 1861/63 Springfield muzzleloader, but its rate of fire was so inferior to the Winchester Yellow Boy and other repeaters such as the Spencer that many Plains soldiers used repeaters of private provenance rather than their issue trap-door. Now there, I knew all that stuff without looking it up. That said, I don’t think I learned any of it from a high school or college history class and I don’t think I would have expected to.
I would expect at least a college history class to touch on why the US felt the need to be able to patrol the vast distances of the Pacific, why the French had such a large military but so utterly failed to use it effectively, and why the US had the need to convert its Civil War muzzleloaders to breechloaders and carry them into combat against the Plains Indians. Somewhere in there a history professor might work in how Sitting Bull’s troops with their Yellow Boys and their bows, both of which had a better rate of fire than a trap door, related to the Hayes-Tilden Election and the end of Reconstruction. That’s the stuff that good history professors do rather than discuss the race, class, and gender issues. Oh, and by the way, the Indians were shooting too, and often shooting first.
Art — Don’t you just hate when a history teacher or any intellectual tries to infringe the knowledge of a PhD graduate in every discipline from Wikipedia University such as yourself? I just can’t begin to realize fully, your frustration when it happens.
No, Zeke, people like him just amuse me; I reserve hatred for smartass lefty punks like you.
Since the Vietnamese attack on the US in the Gulf of Tonkin, identify every time the US Navy has successfully shot down enemy air craft or missiles using ship based missile systems.
Except for the USS Vincinnes, which had its defense radar turned-off, nobody has gotten close enough to launch a missile at a US warship. The combat air cover dealt with any threats long before they were within proximity of any ship. See Ghadaffi’s line of death in the Gulf of Sidra in the arely 80′s for an example.
But what most history ignores is the nearly 100 years of continuous war that America waged against native Americans. Europe was a tranquil place after the end of the Napoleonic wars. The US was the scene of continuous bloody struggle. That is the untold story of American history.
Do you have a clue how many wars German and France alone had prior to WWI? Europe was hardly tranquil in the 19th Century.
Not sure I understand your reply. You went from talking about the overall emphasis on genocide in history courses to questions about obscure points of military history.
My point was, nobody teaches “Columbus Sailed the Ocean Spirit of ’76 Remember the Maine” American history anymore. No more triumphalism – only criticism. Criticism is good, but only if it’s balanced by acknowledgement of genuine achievement. Instead, the main lesson seems to be “Everything Americans have ever done is morally tainted.”
How is a civilization, a country, supposed to continue if its citizens believe it is evil? If you can’t make a move without hurting, offending, or disempowering someone, why move at all?
History is one of my passions, but I never made a formal study of it or tried to get a degree in the subject. I’m certainly no prodigy–education just sort of settled on me, thanks to my bookish family and the fiction I was encouraged to read. The history courses I was offered in college tended to be about, yes, the black experience in America or the female perspective on the Vietnam war. Ancient history tended to be slightly more reliable, and I had a very good seminar on the rise and fall of the Roman empire, but most of the time it’s more about perspectives and interpretations than what actually happened, when, and why.
Parents are now their kids’ best hope for history lessons. “I, Claudius,” John Julius Norwich, period films, “Horrible Histories,” mythology, museum visits–they all add up.
Hmm, Conservative organization that opposes multiculturalism and liberal bias in education releases a report that says…
There’s too much liberal bias and multiculturalism in education.
Using a sample size of two schools.
I don’t mind that the report is one-sided. But two schools? It’s like they’re not even trying.
The reason they chose those two schools has to do with the law. Texas requires transparency in public college course materials, many states don’t. And, the Texas lege is meeting now so the study might do some good. Being a person of the left, I’m not surprised that all of that slid right past you even though most of it is in the article. You’re a fine example of liberal education’s failure to educate.
A liberal education has taught me to consider the source of information and not to judge a book by its cover.
Both of which are applicable to this study.
I studied history at a venerable Ivy league institution three decades ago. Although the anti-intellectuals were beginning to make their presence known, the history professors back then were seasoned and distinguished scholars. There was no overt political bias that I recall. They have all retired by now, most have died.
Yet, the people who replaced them and proceeded to defile the institutions of learning with their anti-intellectualism were the rebellious products of these institutions. Chomsky, Zinn and their acolytes mostly did their schooling in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
That gives me some hope. My impression of intelligent young students I encounter is that even though they don’t have a good grasp of the facts because no one has provided them, they see through the frauds who lecture to them. The challenge to them is that the leftist orthodoxy controls all the easy paths to success. If a young person wants to be a professor in the humanities or a journalist for a major media outfit, he has to conform or his advance will be blocked and tenure denied.
But when I read the New York Times, for example, its columnists are so stale and written out. No one voluntarily reads the endless gender, social history garbage that academics churn out. There is opportunity here for fresher, young minds to take on these older radicals and beat them at the game they once played against earlier generations.
i.e: “Group-rights” victimology (extortion) studies; they are being taught CRIME, by these libertine (“liberal”) criminals.
What they are teaching is Neo-Marxism, with women, brown people and homosexuals as the “Noble Workers” and white males as the “Capitalist Pigs” and “Oppressors”.
It’s been going on for 40 years and it’s how Obama got elected.
Being least familiar with UT, Austin, I chose it to take a look at it.
There are a few professor’s who teach emphasis classes but only a few, as I remember. Furthermore, it would be enlightening for all the review the history departments professor’s and their academic backgrounds . Maybe note how many come from the Ivy League schools and many other domestic and international liberal schools and environment. Then, remember its Texas and their universities who hire all these professors and approve of the academics in conjunction with their regional certification board – if there’s some disagreement among Texas citizens. I’m hoping more TX professor’s will weigh in with their comments on the site where this study is posted. Remember also, that the American Heritage Education Foundation was principle funder of this study. Rightly or wrongly, they are a biased special interest group. From the NAS website: “Our website presents a daily stream of educated opinion….” “We file friend-of-the-court briefs in legal cases, defending freedom of speech and conscience, and the civil rights of educators and students alike.” In my opinion, the ‘opinions’ expressed in ‘this report’ are subjective and biased if considering their friend-of-the-court statement above.
The problem with most college kids today, that are not presidential or honors awardees, is that they do the minimum required to get a minimum passing grade . Nobody prevents them from going to the library to research and read any history books from the masses available for diversified knowledge. This study like most, never point a finger in the direction of student responsibility!
I’m going to suggest one more consideration when evaluating their data and charts. Interests of professors are generally swayed to where the money is for research. Generally, most institutions require their tenured professor’s to be involved in grant funding and research. As most students know, research professor’s often involve their classes indirectly in the realm of their forthcoming or active research projects. Again, they follow the money. The report ignores this issue!
Somebody can correct me if I’m wrong, but the suggestions of the last paragraph of the article are, in most states, taught in the high school college prep and AP courses I know they are in the southern regions where I live.
In my experience students are not able to see through the brainwashing. It’s reenforced in sociology, English, political science, geography, and more as race and diversity take center stage. Multiple readings across fields drill the message home. Economics has maintained its integrity better than the other subjects.
“students are not able to see through the brainwashing.”
No parental responsibility in bringing up their children? I understand the reality of you point. However, It becomes so frustrating to see the numbers of adults who blame educational instiutions and government for their own failures.
One of the greatest freedoms in America is that parents are free to provide primary educations and direction in addition to public or private schools instruction, in molding their childrens upbringing.
The single greatest issue in my mind is not the sad consequences of a single parent home out working to provide. Even more sad are the millions of children who live in homes with NO parents — that is two parents reside in the home but far apart from their children — both parents choosing to work and have or make no time to invest in their childrens educations and futures. Then of course, you have the functional illiterates, most generally by choice rather than poor teachers, who can’t help provide education support for their childrens educations and futures. Again, akin to no parents.
Communism is the dominate political force in the United States. The history of the Communist movement will never be read by American college students. They were immersed in the Communist economic fictions from the first day they entered the Head Start programs. We are posthumously ranting about an evil that can’t be reversed in several generations, even if we try to, which won’t happen because most of us won’t even see the problem until this trickle up poverty is affecting everyone except the comrades of the high command. The history of the United States is about the experiment of a free market system as opposed to the collectivist claptrap that has dominated economies all over the world since the beginning of time.
These treasonous hostiles need to be defunded. Private universities can do what they like, but Republican controlled states need to defund the war on Western Civilizaiton and European Christendom in our state funded universities, a priori. We are funding the intellectual and political assault on ourselves, like insane fools, giving lavish benefits and pay to hostiles to wage war upon us.
The Diversity Industry is thriving, and provides high paying jobs for these hostiles to forcibly discriminate against and disempower Whites/Christians/Males whilst hiring and promoting other hostile minorities into all our institutions and businesses.
Stop funding the insanity! We are killing ourselves by not just silently acquiescing but active funding and promotion of this war upon European Christendom.
Good Lord!
AArt Chance
“they’re not good for anything, but it sure is fun to push them down the stairs.”
I need to remember that one!
Perhaps what we need is a White European Studies Department? Where we can nuture our history and celebrate our heritage without having to appease others greivances and demands for inclusion. We need to nuture OUR history and worldview, for the purpose of it’s continuation…lest we become the losers whose history is written by these other groups, the new winners, as “Whiteness Studies.”
The tribe must re-organize for it’s own survival.