Schools in America Now Becoming More Insane Than North Korea

[LevelUP]

A North Korean defector described her experience at an ivy league college Columbia University as more insane than living in North Korea.  

https://nypost.com/2021/06/14/north-kore...s-schools/

https://www.insider.com/north-korea-defe...ime-2021-6

[Life Long Learning]

American colleges often are just propaganda!

[cerich67]

Extreme far left or right driven schools have agenda over academics. There are plenty of both that cater to our increasingly divided society.

I would no more wish to attend a religion/faith based university than I would a extreme left progressive one. The reality however is that going to one that aligns with your circles as far as politics is more likely to lead to career success in many cases than not. Live in deep south bible belt and you are white, get a degree at something like Liberty and you will be well accepted in that society, live in new York in Manhattan and you will be accepted if you have a progressive school pedigree.

That is the reality of where we are as a society today.

[LevelUP]

Extreme far left or right driven schools have agenda over academics. There are plenty of both that cater to our increasingly divided society.

I would no more wish to attend a religion/faith based university than I would a extreme left progressive one. The reality however is that going to one that aligns with your circles as far as politics is more likely to lead to career success in many cases than not. Live in deep south bible belt and you are white, get a degree at something like Liberty and you will be well accepted in that society, live in new York in Manhattan and you will be accepted if you have a progressive school pedigree.

That is the reality of where we are as a society today.

Good point that things can become authoritarian on both the right and left sides.  Liberty College seems like it oversteps its bounds when they are regulating student conduct outside the classroom.  

I remember some colleges suspending kids from school for posting legal gun pictures on social media or in one case just "liking" someone else's gun photo.

Social media you have to be careful because something that is perfectly acceptable today might not be 5-10yrs from now and someone might hold it against you.  Employers are now checking social media before they hire people.

[Johann]

Extreme far left or right driven schools have agenda over academics. There are plenty of both that cater to our increasingly divided society.

I would no more wish to attend a religion/faith based university than I would a extreme left progressive one. The reality however is that going to one that aligns with your circles as far as politics is more likely to lead to career success in many cases than not. Live in deep south bible belt and you are white, get a degree at something like Liberty and you will be well accepted in that society, live in new York in Manhattan and you will be accepted if you have a progressive school pedigree.

That is the reality of where we are as a society today.

Good point that things can become authoritarian on both the right and left sides.  Liberty College seems like it oversteps its bounds when they are regulating student conduct outside the classroom.  

I remember some colleges suspending kids from school for posting legal gun pictures on social media or in one case just "liking" someone else's gun photo.

Social media you have to be careful because something that is perfectly acceptable today might not be 5-10yrs from now and someone might hold it against you.  Employers are now checking social media before they hire people.

Anybody can check your social media. Or your KIDS social media. ANYBODY. With or without a valid reason. That's why I've been on the Internet since 1993 and I don't HAVE any social media. This is NOT recent news.

[wow]

One person's opinion does not make a thing true, but it is great for reinforcing existing beliefs. If you already believe that the American education system is oppressively liberal, then this article helps to bolster your belief. If you don't believe that, a lot of what she says will come across as a result of gaps in cultural knowledge and communication.

[Kal Di]

There's some insanity at some American universities, but it's more noticeable when you're an on-campus student. For online students, I don't think it's as nearly noticeable. Also, it's largely dependent on the university's history, which may reveal their political biases.

With all of that being said, I'd still pick an American university over one in North Korea any day.

[LevelUP]

One person's opinion does not make a thing true, but it is great for reinforcing existing beliefs. If you already believe that the American education system is oppressively liberal, then this article helps to bolster your belief. If you don't believe that, a lot of what she says will come across as a result of gaps in cultural knowledge and communication.

When she left North Korea, this woman had a choice of being sold as a sex slave in China at the age of 13 or risk her chances of starving to death in North Korea. Out of desperation, she chose to be sold and had to walk across a desert in Asia to get to freedom finally.

She knows what propaganda is and certainly knows what REAL oppression is.  

People today don't understand what communism is.  They think it's some utopia where everyone's equal, and everyone makes fair wages.  The reality is communism is modern-day slavery, where the state acts like one big corporation that controls every aspect of your life while paying you just barely enough to eat.  In a communist system, there are many classes of people with no control over what class you are put in.

[dfrecore]

One person's opinion does not make a thing true, but it is great for reinforcing existing beliefs. If you already believe that the American education system is oppressively liberal, then this article helps to bolster your belief. If you don't believe that, a lot of what she says will come across as a result of gaps in cultural knowledge and communication.

I listened to her on Jordan Peterson's podcast - she practically made him cry when she said that she learned nothing at Columbia except to keep her mouth shut and play to the teachers.  She couldn't come up with a single instructor in 4 years that she felt was even decent at imparting knowledge.  She said it was 100% propaganda and woke crap. She said she felt as imprisoned here as in North Korea.

If you haven't listened to her, you should - it was amazing. Her entire journey.  It's too bad her first chance at a decent life here in the US was this.  I think she's ok now, and living a good life, but her first 4 years were no picnic.  She should have been THRILLED to be somewhere like Columbia, but instead she was disappointed in our education system.  How's that for a North Korean defector and former sex slave?!?  It's unbelievable that this is where we're at.

So yeah, one person's opinion is just that - but her life carries a little more weight since she actually KNOWS what oppression is.  She has lived slavery.  She knows censorship. The fact that she felt it here...that's just awful.  And I believe her too.

[wow]

One person's opinion does not make a thing true, but it is great for reinforcing existing beliefs. If you already believe that the American education system is oppressively liberal, then this article helps to bolster your belief. If you don't believe that, a lot of what she says will come across as a result of gaps in cultural knowledge and communication.

I listened to her on Jordan Peterson's podcast - she practically made him cry when she said that she learned nothing at Columbia except to keep her mouth shut and play to the teachers.  She couldn't come up with a single instructor in 4 years that she felt was even decent at imparting knowledge.  She said it was 100% propaganda and woke crap. She said she felt as imprisoned here as in North Korea.

If you haven't listened to her, you should - it was amazing. Her entire journey.  It's too bad her first chance at a decent life here in the US was this.  I think she's ok now, and living a good life, but her first 4 years were no picnic.  She should have been THRILLED to be somewhere like Columbia, but instead she was disappointed in our education system.  How's that for a North Korean defector and former sex slave?!?  It's unbelievable that this is where we're at.

So yeah, one person's opinion is just that - but her life carries a little more weight since she actually KNOWS what oppression is.  She has lived slavery.  She knows censorship. The fact that she felt it here...that's just awful.  And I believe her too.

One person's opinion does not make a thing true, but it is great for reinforcing existing beliefs. If you already believe that the American education system is oppressively liberal, then this article helps to bolster your belief. If you don't believe that, a lot of what she says will come across as a result of gaps in cultural knowledge and communication.

I listened to her on Jordan Peterson's podcast - she practically made him cry when she said that she learned nothing at Columbia except to keep her mouth shut and play to the teachers.  She couldn't come up with a single instructor in 4 years that she felt was even decent at imparting knowledge.  She said it was 100% propaganda and woke crap. She said she felt as imprisoned here as in North Korea.

If you haven't listened to her, you should - it was amazing. Her entire journey.  It's too bad her first chance at a decent life here in the US was this.  I think she's ok now, and living a good life, but her first 4 years were no picnic.  She should have been THRILLED to be somewhere like Columbia, but instead she was disappointed in our education system.  How's that for a North Korean defector and former sex slave?!?  It's unbelievable that this is where we're at.

So yeah, one person's opinion is just that - but her life carries a little more weight since she actually KNOWS what oppression is.  She has lived slavery.  She knows censorship. The fact that she felt it here...that's just awful.  And I believe her too.

LevelUp's response just reinforces what I wrote, so I don't have anything else to say about that.

Drefcore, i'm not saying she doesn't have any good points. And I have read/heard other parts of her story with interest. (My parents both worked in South Korea near the demilitarized zone right after the war; I hold no soft feelings for North Korea.) I think she is entitled to her opinion, and I actually agree with many of them, including some expressed in the article.

But just like I don't think that you are oppressing me every time you disagree with me, I don't think it's oppression when someone tells her that they dislike Jane Austen because the characters she wrote about benefited from colonialism (I love Jane Austen, by the way). The whole point of a liberal arts education, which is what Columbia University offers, is to be exposed to different perspectives and evaluate them. If you think someone is full of s***, you're supposed to tell them that, and argue why your position is stronger using facts and logic. If you don't feel like arguing with them, that's fine, but them telling you that they disagree with you or them asking you why you feel a certain way is not oppression.

The other thing is, there are quite a few people who have been through a lot of hardship who end up going to Ivy League and liberal arts universities.  I have read about refugees and former child soldiers who have attended them and enjoyed the experience overall. So to form my own opinion, I can't just look at the speaker's biography and say, "Well, what they say must be right because of what they've been through." Because then I would need to agree with all opinions of this individual, the former child soldiers, the refugees from Iran,and so forth. And that would require holding multiple opposing opinions on several points at the same time.

So I've just got to take everything I read with a grain of salt, compare it to other sources and my own experience, and form my opinion that way.

In any case, I thought it was an interesting article, and there are definitely points that she brings up that would be interesting to discuss openly. But usually discussions on this forum about the state of American education turn into battlegrounds of black and white thinking. Which is what my original comment was about.