As I've announced elsewhere (I think), I'll be writing a biweekly column, published Thursdays, for TheFactIs.org, an online opinion magazine jointly sponsored by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and the Culture of Life Foundation. My first offering is "Communicating with the 'Faces of Hate'," about conservative Christians' designation, in certain circles, as an unprotected target class.
Rocco DiPippo has a piece on FrongPageMag investigating Montclair State University's Grover Furr — professor of (apparently) Leftism. From the extended version that Rocco has published on his blog:
... the reader might have concluded that Professor Furr, by spreading disinformation, pushing Marxism and communism on his students, and advocating for one of mankind's greatest mass murderers, behaves exactly as a professor of English literature and professional educator shouldn't. Unfortunately, I doubt that many of his colleagues would be so affected. During extensive research of Furr I found not one example of a university professor, teacher or administrator questioning his in-class behavior or his teaching methods.What I did find was quite the opposite--a network of high school and college teachers and administrators who actually support his methods, views and goals and recommend his web pages as both a teaching resource and as a guide in developing curricula--sad commentary on Humanities departments nationwide, which as you read this, sink deeper and deeper into a miasma of pseudo-intellectualism, fatuous scholarship and anti-Western Marxist propagandizing.
As Lane Core has noted (click "confer"), the network that Rocco has discovered is an achievement a half-century in the making.
Over on Anchor Rising, I've taken a look at a law proposed in the Rhode Island legislature that would centralized sex ed. requirements for all public and (I believe) private schools. Among them is the explicit barring of religious doctrine as part of the curriculum. In other words, it looks as if Christian schools would have to teach the benefits and drawbacks of various methods of contraception, but they couldn't list among the drawbacks damage to the child's eternal soul.
It isn't difficult to see other issues about which social conservatives are concerned following a similar route toward status as a mandatory point of view.
While we battle back and forth about the sanctity of evolution in the public school science curriculum, a reminder of the broader field in which we work is in order:
According to benchmarks for middle school education, the top objective for the district's math teachers is to teach "respect for human differences." The objective is for students to "live out the system-wide core value of 'respect for human differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors."Priority No. 2 is where the basics come in, which is "problem solving and representation — students will build new mathematical knowledge as they use a variety of techniques to investigate and represent solutions to problems."
No, I'm not arguing that the establishment of political correctness as a central goal of education means that the door has been opened to ideology. No, I'm not taking this extreme example as representative. Still, our schools are not hard-line institutions of knowledge collection, and I don't believe that they ought to be.
It's also interesting to note that mathematicians and the ACLU aren't mounting a campaign to beat back this infringement of ideology — the armies of Unreason — on the cold truth of math. Shouldn't the courts be called in to straighten out these liberal fundamentalists?
Look, I'm neither a prude nor (regardless of what some readers might think) an extreme moralist. I do believe that schools should ensure that children have a base-level knowledge of what is happening to their bodies, and when they transform into teens, they ought to learn about diseases and the biology of childbirth. Just as science classes ought to teach what scientists believe to be facts, just as history classes ought to teach what historians believe to be facts, the mechanics of the body are important for children to know, whether we're talking pimples or penises. The sex ed. establishment goes much further than that, however.
Once teachers make the shift from sex to sexuality, they're crossing into an area that inherently requires a choice of worldviews. Translated out of secularese, that means a choice of religions. As someone who believes that the "separation of church and state" has gone way too far, both in its strictness and in its pervasiveness across various levels of government, I don't have a problem with school districts' making that choice in some degree. The problem is that the current legal approach allows communities only one "choice" — which is to say no choice at all.
In my ideal American system (incidentally the one that I believe the founders of the United States intended to create), districts would retain the authority to make school curricula conform with the values of the communities that they serve. There would still be limits, no doubt, but they would be well beyond the self-determination currently allowed, which is superficial. Regarding sex ed., some districts might maintain their programs as they are. Others might declare anything beyond a cold biology lesson beyond the boundary. Others might offer complementary sex ed. and morality classes. Still others might offer parents a choice of teachers, say an overt Christian and a secularist. And others might recast their vision of "healthy sexuality" to adhere to local mores.
In such a system, parents could become involved, working for change if they so choose. If a family's bottom line requirements couldn't be met, then that family could seek alternatives. (School vouchers would be especially appropriate in such a society, and parents' choices could be more detailed than between a public school and a sectarian school.)
With our current all-or-nothing approach — beloved of liberals because they've currently gotten pretty close to the "all" — the fight is unnecessarily divisive and inclined toward tectonic shifts. Social liberals don't seem to believe that this is possible, but make no mistake: a relatively minor change in the public mood could result in strict moralism's being taught to all students, with liberal parents being offered the non-choice of singling out their children through moral exemption.
It would be better for America to actually believe in the pluralism and diversity that so many Americans preach as gospel truth.
Lane Core's first anniversary Blogworthies highlights several interesting posts, among them this bit of perspective from Craig Henry:
Look at it this way: When a school board anywhere promotes Intelligent Design or Creationism, the education establishment, the MSM, and most of the blogosphere react with a combination of indignation and mockery. Fair enough. Bad science is in no one's interest.But that same education establishment has erected a vast sex-ed structure whose foundations are based on bad science and reckless propaganda. (Not just Kinsey, but also works like Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa.) This, apparently, is OK.
Apart from the sex-ed industry, apart from the active interest (in large part toward developing a customer base) of such groups as Planned Parenthood, the necessity for teachers to instruct children about sex has become an article of faith among educators. Although my memories are vague, I recall at least two movies that I saw in my youth dealing with small towns accepting the modern awareness that children shouldn't learn about sex in traditional ways — the mild mannered teacher as the guide to a more sexually enlightened future.
As the National Education Association Health Information Network (NEA HIN) puts it on its 2004 Sexual Health Fact Sheet (PDF):
The Association recognizes that sensitive sex education can be a positive force in promoting physical, mental, emotional, and social health and that the public school must assume an increasingly important role in providing the instruction. ... Students want more information about sexuality than their parents typically provide, including how to handle pressure to have sex and how to know when they are ready.
The fact sheet also advises school systems to follow the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (PDF). Among "the specific information young people need to learn" between the ages of five and eight is that "Masturbation should be done in a private place." This brings to mind a great point from Craig Henry's post:
Very few high school students will ever "use" Darwinian theory in the real world. But teen-age hormones ensure that the "lessons" kids learn (or don't learn or aren't taught) about sex, marriage, and promiscuity matter a great deal.
Perhaps it wouldn't be irrational to wonder why the sex ed. establishment is so keen to give its "useful" information to children for whom teen-age hormones seem as far away as a diploma.
Ah, Ward Churchill. As much as I studiously avoid participating in the mass declaration of opinions in these rounds of topical jocundity — quick, everybody stake some ground! — there is a practical strategy to suggest. Rather than encouraging censorship through firing, those outraged that Churchill must be permitted to perpetuate the professional scam that is his professorial career should emulate another of the campus Left's favorite "remedies": extortion.
Offering two personal anecdotes concerning the political atmosphere in which American professors ply their trade, Rocco DiPippi suggests the same:
Firing Churchill, would only contribute to the squelching of the free exchange of ideas in the university setting. His firing would accomplish exactly what the left has been doing for years with its campus "speech codes" and "hate-speech" rules, that is silence opposing points of view.The proper approach to countering anti-American hate-mongers like Churchill, is to pressure universities into hiring some more conservative teachers, who'll be more than willing to challenge those who hold beliefs similar to Churchill's. Better yet, force public universities into adopting a "politically blind" method of hiring.
In addition, teachers of all political stripes, should be forbidden from airing their personal political beliefs to their students during class time, when they've been hired to teach math or art or history or science or even political science. This should be part of every teachers employment contract.
I'd be wary of writing too explicit restrictions on subject matter into contracts. Furthermore, since I agree that ideological diversity among professors is a critical aspect of higher education, and since there's much disparity to correct, I would actively oppose "politically blind" hiring. But the first idea is a good one. Particularly at the University of Colorado, the school administration ought to face demands that more conservative professors be hired; creating a "conservative chair" in Churchill's department would be a nice touch.
Edward Achorn addresses the risky topic of the deal offered to Providence's teachers:
I happen to believe that good teachers, particularly in urban districts such as Providence, should be very well rewarded. I am proud of the big investment Rhode Islanders make in public education.But, like a growing number of Rhode Islanders, I find it hard to ignore the poor return that Rhode Island gets on that investment. I hate to see children trapped in bad schools that never get better. I am troubled that reforms get shouted down by teachers acting like members of a mob, that the unions block efforts to hold teachers accountable, that an obsession with benefits far more lavish than those enjoyed by most of the taxpayers who must fund them is more important than, say, exposing children to art and music.
As Achorn implies, there's hope for this individual problem with Rhode Island's public sector because the costs in Providence spread to other towns across the state in which the teachers union doesn't have the same degree of leverage. But the same problem exists elsewhere. Read through the pay and perks that Achorn lists, and you'll get a sense of why older teachers are staying put and why those positions that do open are quickly filled through nepotism and politics. (Why, in short, my wife couldn't find a job.)
Mike Adams's Townhall columns are often simultaneously disturbing and refreshing in the way in which they offer a conservative's inside view of academia. In the current column, he reacts to having been chided for making some of his fellow professors "uncomfortable" by discussing his political views:
When it first hit me that while in the office I could no longer talk about gay rights, feminism, religion, Darwinism, affirmative action, or any issue I discuss in my column, I was outraged. In fact, I got so mad that I raised my voice before storming out of my superior’s office. I never thought that the right of each university employee to feel comfortable at all times would ever actually be enforced against me here in the workplace (a.k.a., the public university).But after I thought about it for a while, my anger turned to elation. Surely, the power to trump the First Amendment rights of others in response to "discomfort" is available to all employees, not just a select few. Since that must be the case (because our public university is committed to equality), I decided to make a list of every situation I had encountered at UNC-Wilmington where I felt "uncomfortable."
Even as he exposes the vapid laziness that the tenure culture can engender, Adams makes a case for it. The overarching threat of an ideological homogeneity can squelch the will to stand in opposition to it enough without the added cudgel of possible unemployment.
One grimace-worthy response is to actually pursue with all seriousness the return of like for like that Adams humorously feigns. Generally, I'm an idealist on such things, believing that the tool snatched from those who abused it can be a too-tempting possession. Glenn Reynolds, however, makes a good point regarding the leveraging of "hostile environment" legislation to protect the very group that was meant to be restrained by it (i.e., white, male Christians):
I don't approve of such things, but there's no better way to put an end to this asinine speech-suppressing body of law than to start enforcing it evenhandledly.
The danger is still too great, I'd say, that we'll discover that the craven gutterswumps who pushed for the legislation in the first place have long since transferred their devotion from the intention to the mechanism and are perfectly happy to leave the laws in place.
... if they decide to go to Yale. Simply unconscionable.
If you've got some time to spare this week, the must-reading assignment is Edward Feser's two part musing on what makes academics so liberal. Christians oughtn't be surprised at the conclusion, although it's worth the effort to see how Feser gets there:
Sin can cloud the mind of any man. In most, the result is a bad character and a bad conscience. But with an intellectual, given his greater powers of imagination and rationalization, it can generate an entire worldview. For though intellectuals are not always to be trusted where first principles are concerned, they are, unlike non-intellectuals, remarkably proficient at drawing out consistently the implications of such principles.
Can the tide be changed? I'm not sure. But of course, the only reason to despair at the inevitable outcome of the "sheer lunacy" of the intellectuals is if you believe their premises. Rejecting those premises, one finds victory even in defeat.
Interesting how sin works.
Some academics at Amherst have made it clear that they are incapable of winning reasoned discussion about the issues of the day.
When Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at Amherst next week, we will not be in attendance. We will neither ask questions nor debate Justice Scalia because we believe that the liberal ideals of constructive disagreement and debate only work when both sides act upon these ideals in good faith. We will not offer a tacit endorsement of this man’s presence on campus.
In other words, the professorial signatories don't believe that they can state their case with sufficient clarity to overcome Scalia's conservatism... in ideological territory friendly to the professors. Somehow the statement that the academics "will stay away" reads like more of a promise than a threat.
(Memo to academics: When you grandstand through such a letter, it might be best to avoid putting such names as "Nasser Hussain" at the very beginning of the list. I know nothing of the professor, but surely such bright folks as yourselves can see how the syllables and their associations in the geopolitical realm will evoke snickers.)
It would be wrong to take much — anything, really — seriously about a recent editorial in the University of Rhode Island student paper, "Civil union, gay marriage has no place in political arena." However, this part still has me shaking my head the day after reading it, so I thought I'd share my amazement at the apparent miseducation:
While the topic often seems to make candidates uncomfortable, the question should not be one of legality but in reality, not a question at all. The United States is a country founded upon a wealth of freedoms and it is a contradiction to that foundation to allow politicians to decide on an issue of love and companionship. ...As the Vermont Supreme Court passed the burden onto the state legislature, gay couples received a slap in the face. Politicians aren't attempting to work for the benefit of the people they are supposed to be serving, but instead merely appeasing them in order to make it through the next election.
Well, maybe the young editorialist's "miseducation" has less to do with how our government is supposed to work than how socialist liberals are supposed to disguise their thinking.
Damn those representatives for declining to dictate the unadulterated truth to their constituents and choosing, instead, to represent their views. It's a good thing there are judges to straighen out this foolish quirk of democracy!
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 |