Older students and the liberal arts

[FinancialWorld]

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. -Adolf Hitler

Very true.

I think the state basically owns the youth today. Look who elected Obama, it was a lot of college age students (partially). Also, I will say that Obama is not the root of our problems, he is the result from years of American socialization. The educated masses (or shall I say functionally illiterate masses) have been brought up on this cool aid system of socialism. Its not a conspiracy, its just an organized group of people that have heavily influenced the educational system and now every area of our lives.

Thank goodness I've had my education outside of the cookie cutter system so that I can logically find my own answers and not rely upon others for an opinion. I'm allowed to THINK and express what I think with others in an educated manner .

[PonyGirl93]

OK people, I'm in favor of homeschooling, thinking for yourself, etc etc., but this whole übermensch thing is just ridiculous. Homeschoolers are not inherently better, nor does being taught to think for yourself mean that you are not going to ever fall into a trap. I think that a lot of homeschooling people, in trying to teach their kids to think for themselves, only succeed in making them think exactly like them. Not all kids that went to public school are mindless drones. Homeschoolers are not the saviours of the universe, in fact there are a lot of really serious issues with the entire mindset of the generation (narcissism, anyone?)

</end of rant>

[FinancialWorld]

OK people, I'm in favor of homeschooling, thinking for yourself, etc etc., but this whole übermensch thing is just ridiculous. Homeschoolers are not inherently better, nor does being taught to think for yourself mean that you are not going to ever fall into a trap. I think that a lot of homeschooling people, in trying to teach their kids to think for themselves, only succeed in making them think exactly like them. Not all kids that went to public school are mindless drones. Homeschoolers are not the saviours of the universe, in fact there are a lot of really serious issues with the entire mindset of the generation (narcissism, anyone?)

</end of rant>

I agree, and I didn't mean to make it sound the other way. But homeschoolers do tend to outscore public schoolers by 2.5x (I don't know if I'm in that crowd :o ), and are usually above their grade level. OK, I'm stopping now because I've now switched the subject matter of this thread. Sorry :o

[Scholar Interrupted]

Yes, I've ranted on this from time to time (personally leaning heavily to the right). In a few cases, I just flat out did the assignment withough argument. In 3 cases I had trouble. Case 1 was as a student in TESC's Management of Stress and Tension class. I don't know why, but that was one of the more liberal courses I took! In one chapter I remember them being very anti-marriage (I'm happily married 18 years) and I questioned this position in our forum. If memory serves, the author was an unmarried person (WTH?) but the teacher totally zoned right in on me and point by point attacked my perspective. I let it go, pulled a high A and moved on with my life. In case 2 it was a a Contemporary Social Issues course. It was taught by 3 lefties (a NOW board member, an openly gay man, and a female who was clearly left but not nearly as vocal to our class). Anyway, we had to write an essay using the prompt (paraphrasing from memory) "Explain the ways in which President Bush has ruined our country" lol. Uh, excuse me? I handled that very politically, picking on a tiny thing and just going with it- it didn't matter, I wasn't going to change their mind and it wasn't going to be shared with the student body. But the third case was in a philosophy class. My paper was being graded by a 20-something teaching assistant, and for some reason my first assignment sent her into a tizzy. It wasn't even a heavy issue hilarious but her critique of my essay was LONGER than my essay. lol, I knew I had to drop- I wasn't going to play along. I did write a short letter to the dept, but I'm sure it got nowhere since no one even followed up or acknowledged my email.

My perspective, is that I'm a 40 year old woman who knows who she is. Yes, I have a world view like everyone else that could always be expanded, but I'm not searching to learn about the world in the way a young person is. My children, while I like to see them explore the issues of our world, need to skip the crap. In my opinion, the social sciences are worth CLEPping because it's a roll of the dice. (and that's what my degree is in!) It's not a case of seeing the world, knowing both sides, expanding your mind blah blah blah. I TEACH my kids to think, argue and challenge. However, there are social science teachers who have absolutely NO INTEREST in discussing both sides, probing your thought process and showing you a new idea-they are only interested in evangelizing and selling their kool-aid. The student who disagrees is called out and the grade suffers. Some aspects of earning a degree can be such a waste of time and money and brain space.

I plan to use teachers as little a possible- that's both in our homeschool and extending to college. My kids don't need their information filtered. I, however, find it amusing now that my grade doesn't hang in the balance. When you are in it, however, it's a desperately frustrating situation to keep your mouth shut.

Jennifer, your experiences confirm some of my worst fears about B&M classes. I'm so glad I didn't take any when I decided to go back to school! I would have a hard enough time having my work graded by any 20-something, let alone one without a clue.

The EC courses I took actually weren't as left-biased as I had been afraid they might be. There were only a handful of times I held back or diluted my opinions, and I was never exactly positive that I needed to. The essays and assignment questions were always thoughtfully open-ended.

It's just hard to gauge an instructor's political beliefs in a CD-ROM course. In Contemporary Middle East History, for example, all I really had to go on was the fact that my instructor had a Jewish surname (Google had nothing on him!). So I figured he would probably be OK with my pro-Israel leanings. And of course it's even harder to know whether a leftist instructor would really grade lower just because a student's conclusions didn't match his own, since that would be dishonest. At first, I was afraid EC's "holistic" grading rubric for papers might really mean "you get a good grade if we like you," but that never seemed to be the case. (I made an "A" in every course I took.)

I find it encouraging that you got an "A" in a B&M course where you argued with the instructor.

The Bush question is way OTT. I think you handled it perfectly, and I probably would have done the same but gritted my teeth until they cracked. (I'm no Bush fan, but neither am I a victim of Bush Derangement Syndrome.) I don't know how any instructor could claim a question like that aims to do anything other than indoctrinate, since it clearly has only one "correct" answer. It strikes me that a more challenging version of that question might have asked whether the student thought Bush's presidency had been a net positive or negative for the country, and then required fact-based arguments in support of the student's conclusion. So there's also an element of dumbing-down: The question feeds the student half of the correct answer.

I'm glad there are other parents teaching their kids to think and question. I tried to do the same but wonder if I went too far. My 24-year-old won't listen to anyone who tries to talk sense to him -- me included! :willynilly: But that's another story.

[cookderosa]

OK people, I'm in favor of homeschooling, thinking for yourself, etc etc., but this whole übermensch thing is just ridiculous. Homeschoolers are not inherently better, nor does being taught to think for yourself mean that you are not going to ever fall into a trap. I think that a lot of homeschooling people, in trying to teach their kids to think for themselves, only succeed in making them think exactly like them. Not all kids that went to public school are mindless drones. Homeschoolers are not the saviours of the universe, in fact there are a lot of really serious issues with the entire mindset of the generation (narcissism, anyone?)

</end of rant>

>>

I'm not sure if this response was for me, but I want to go on the record as saying I'm not anti-public school, and I'm not pro-homeschool. I'm for the freedom to choose. In my great state of Illinois, we hold that choice very tightly, and I (for better or worse) have the legal right (and I'd argue an ethical and moral one) to raise and educate my children as I see fit. So, yeah, that's going to include table manners and capitalism. hilarious

I graduated from public school, and I'm hardly a mindless drone. Additionally, there are very few homeschooled children in this country, so I don't think they'll be saving the universe anytime soon. What homeschoolers do have, in my OPINION, are parents who -as a lifestyle- are independent thinkers who question authority (obviously!) and those parents can't help but raise children who question authority. *I should say that I think that this gives resilience, so in my earlier post where I strongly suggested CLEPping, it's not to avoid the EXPOSURE to differing points of views- it's to avoid being held hostage to submission to the agenda- a very distinct difference.

Anywhoooo, for our family, homeschooling has never been about the test scores-grade levels-or any of that. Until last year I don't think any of my kids knew their grade, and only 1 has ever taken a standardized test. So, whatever the stats, my kids are not counted in them. I homeschool because I don't delegate well at least not the important things.

[CollegeStudent7]

People need to stop looking at statistics of income versus gender or color of skin and look at individual people.
Of course women make less than men. Its due to biology. I know many many women who went to college, got a job, worked 2-5 years and left for 10 years to raise a family. They are heroes in my opinion. But they do sacrifice earning potential to be the primary care giver.

Also I see women take more responsibility at home and leave meetings at 4:45 pm in order to be able to be home with the kids while their husbands work til 7pm. Its a culture thing. Men typically value achievement at work more than women do and women value forming bonds and relationships more than men. Its what makes us human. Read Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus and you will see that women are different than men.

Plenty of women make more than plenty of men. My boss is a woman and she makes a lot more than I do I am sure of that. Her husband stays at home with the kids and if he went back into the workforce he would make a third of her salary.

Really great point! It all makes sense. I'm a female, myself, and the whole femi-nazi approach annoys the terd outta me.

[OE800_85]

Apologies for earlier, I think I was either drunk or half asleep when I made my previous comments on this thread, as they were way off topic (I had kept reading articles on the site referenced, and forgot which one we were talking about, my bad)

Let's take a moment to look at Socialism, shall we? The hotbed of it, is not where most people think it comes from. Cuba's corrupt and poor, and China's more capitalist than America by a long ways. It's basically EVERY developed Western nation except America. (Western/Northern Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia)

People in these countries:
Pay next to nothing for great education
Have strict employment policies that protect the employee
Get free, high quality medical care
Receive 1 year maternity leave
Have a large middle class that has a say in how their gov't operates
Have much fewer problems with race/gender discrimination

That's not so bad, is it?


Also, I think people are dramatizing a bit when they say a professor will fail them for not coinciding with their beliefs, I call bullshit on that, anyone who acts in such a way should not be a teacher. If that happened, i'm sure there would be bigger scandals and even legal recourse against the schools, and it'd be huge news.

This thread reminded me of an interesting person in Chinese History, Lu Xun. He was a writer in the 20s/30s who spoke out about how messed up China was, how horrible the decline has been, how the nation was just crumbling, and how people were just living in denial about it. His writings were strong enough to incite people to do something, and bring about change. I'm not implying that America is in this state now, but to look at your own nation critically is doing it a favor. The thing that annoys me most is when people make criticisms and they label them "anti-american." I mean, these people love the country most, they're exposing problems that others ignore.

[dcan]

This article from Town Hall (full disclosure: I'm not a liberal) got me thinking. The article lists a few questions and answers from a recent sociology exam, and the questions bear an obvious and significant anti-US bias. Those of you on the left may believe the bias is justified. But I don't think anyone could deny that the bias is there and the questions are not designed to elicit original thought by the student.

I have a real problem with this article. First, I like Walter Williams -- and LOVE Thomas Sowell, his books are incredible! But this entire bit about the sociology test sounds like BS to me. Someone "coincidentally" finds a test that is "coincidentally" scored at 100%, and it "coincidentally" completely supports your ideological viewpoint and shows your opposition to be the evil, dirty, underhanded bastards you always said they were. And "coincidentally" there is no source attribution, out of "fear of retribution" -- which just happens to be the same fear you whip up in your own followers!

Naaah, I'd really like Snopes to research this one.

I think this country is phenomenal in many ways, but I also think there is much deserved criticism. Capitalism is great, but corporate welfare and corporate domination is destructive. We have immense freedom, and a police system that just might beat you within an inch of your life if you dare videotape them. We believe myths about our nation promoting democracy while we support oppressive dictatorships. Not saying that isn't sometimes necessary, but lying about it aids the evil.

Left and Right are false dichotomies in America. What the Right calls "The Left" is really "slightly less Right" when considered against the true Left/Right divide in the rest of the world. America's "Left" still engages in foreign wars for dubious reasons, supports corporations and special interests over We The People, and generally doesn't give a rat's @ss about anything but maintaining power. Just like "the other side" they "oppose" and then go play golf with.

[cookderosa]

Also, I think people are dramatizing a bit when they say a professor will fail them for not coinciding with their beliefs, I call bullshit on that, anyone who acts in such a way should not be a teacher. If that happened, i'm sure there would be bigger scandals and even legal recourse against the schools, and it'd be huge news..

You're wrong. ? Sorry, I don't know what else to add.

[Scholar Interrupted]

[...]

Let's take a moment to look at Socialism, shall we? The hotbed of it, is not where most people think it comes from. Cuba's corrupt and poor, and China's more capitalist than America by a long ways. It's basically EVERY developed Western nation except America. (Western/Northern Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia)

People in these countries:
Pay next to nothing for great education
Have strict employment policies that protect the employee
Get free, high quality medical care
Receive 1 year maternity leave
Have a large middle class that has a say in how their gov't operates
Have much fewer problems with race/gender discrimination

That's not so bad, is it?


Also, I think people are dramatizing a bit when they say a professor will fail them for not coinciding with their beliefs, I call bullshit on that, anyone who acts in such a way should not be a teacher. If that happened, i'm sure there would be bigger scandals and even legal recourse against the schools, and it'd be huge news.

[...]

Do you really believe there are no college professors who would fail a student for disagreeing with them? Sure, any teacher who does such a thing should not be a teacher, and there are plenty of left-leaning professors who do grade with integrity. But anyone who understands academic tenure knows they are not required to grade with integrity and thus, a certain percentage of them won't.

Do you follow international news? Did you know that Europe is having an even harder time than we are economically? And did you know that this is largely because they have spent all their money on social programs while creating legal environments that are hostile to job-creating businesses? Did you know that Americans subsidize "free" European health care, and that this is on top of crippling taxes the Europeans themselves pay for that "free" care? And why is it that everyone looks to America to solve problems that affect European interests much more than they affect American interests (e.g., Iran and Libya)? It's because the Europeans can't afford to have both their cherished social programs and robust defenses, so they rely on us to bail them out of every jam they find themselves in.