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Education, Meet Derbyshire
10/30/2003

John Derbyshire's column today is in blog/diary format. The first and third items, which aren't presented as unrelated, make it clear that the politicization (read, "Marxification") of educational establishments is in serious need of reform. In the first anecdote, Derb does something that is forbidden in modern discourse: he paraphrases a professor's acts too exactly:

We were some way into the arrangements when my friend called me with a piece of news. Apparently a professor of political science at the liberal-arts college had taken strong exception to my NRO column of June 25. If you can't be bothered to read the piece, the gist of it is that a sufficient concentration of open homosexuals in the higher levels of an organization — and I was writing with particular reference to the Episcopal Church — changes the character of that organization, to the degree that heterosexuals feel unwelcome in it... Our poli-sci professor thought this "extreme," and objected to my presence on her campus.

Bear in mind here that I was coming to this college to talk about analytic number theory, not homosexuality or "straight flight." It was not the topic of my address that bothered the lady, but my opinions about unrelated matters... Her position was: "Mr. Derbyshire holds some opinions I consider extreme, and so I do not want him on my campus at all, in any capacity." She would presumably object to me being hired as a janitor on her campus, because of my opinions. [Emphasis in original.]

The other item illustrates the early strategies for making certain worldviews too horrible even to be stated by a non-demon who actually believes them:

Apparently graduates of British high schools can identify quite obscure members of the Hitler regime, while being unable to name a single prime minister or U.S. president, or to tell you which century the Wars of the Roses occurred in. ...

One cannot help but suspect that this has something to do with the fact that the British educational establishment, like our own, is dominated by Lefties, who all hold the peculiar conceit that Hitler was "right-wing," and therefore an ideological ancestor of, say, George W. Bush. Important to show the kiddies where these modern conservatives have their roots, you see. Important to impress on their receptive little minds the fathomless wickedness of the Right.

Unfortunately, Mr. Derbyshire's got it partly wrong, something he illustrates by getting it so right in the second paragraph: the young Brits surely know the name of at least "a single" U.S. president. Heck, they probably even know his middle initial.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:57 PM EST