http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-e-firester/liberal-academia-and-my-struggle-for-survival/
Kudos to Firester, but, alas, by the time they get to college students are fully indoctrinated. And, it starts in grade school. Teachers call Republicans “dumb”….Reagan “insignificant compared to Obama”….and books that demean Christianity and Judaism but teach that Islam a “peaceful religion”….and “nationalism akin to fascism.” This occurs in the public schools as well as tony and expensive private schools where the faculty is comprised almost entirely of ignorant and biased leftists…..rsk
When Stephen Hawking decided to boycott Israel earlier this year based on the opinions of academics like Noam Chomsky I was astonished. How can it be that one of the smartest people in the world can hold such a dumb view? It turns out that this is quite common. As I began to teach at Queens College (City University of New York), I have seen firsthand how this can be.
It has often been said that there is no cure for stupid, while ignorance is easily treated through education. What happens when educators willfully steer their ships in an ignorant direction? It seems that many academic ships are sailing in this direction. I happened to board one myself recently.
I began teaching “Introduction to Political Science” (PoliSci 101) at Queens College as a Graduate Teaching Fellow this semester. As I am new, I was given a “mentor” whose syllabus I essentially mirrored. After a brief review of the content I got a sense of what textbooks are being used in the practice of college-level teaching. I researched syllabi elsewhere to get some more ideas. It seems that what is being assigned at Queens College is not all that different from what professors assign elsewhere.
When I looked a little deeper into the material I was assigning I began to notice what I could only say is institutionalized liberal bias. As a Ph.D. student who has sat through some of the most virulent professorial liberal rants, I knew it was quite common. (In the past I had attended numerous schools, mostly in New York; they include State University of New York Orange, the City University of New York that included study at Brooklyn College, Hunter College, City College and the Graduate Center). I swore that my pedagogical style would be centered on the presentation of opposing viewpoints and not descend into the sort of demagoguery that thrives on sycophant head bobbing.
In reviewing some of the chapters of the “textbook” I was requiring students to read I saw a clear socialist trend. When I think of a textbook a few adjectives come to mind. It should be a technical guide on concepts. It should be dispassionate and devoid of fiery ideology. Well, that isn’t quite how it works.