RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/our-woefully-politicized-education-schools/

A book that happened to catch my attention long before I was working in the field of higher-ed policy was Rita Kramer’s 1991 Ed School Follies. In it, she showed how many of America’s schools of education — the training grounds for future teachers — had been overrun with leftist ideology. And how do things stand 28 years later?

No better and probably worse is the answer.

The Martin Center’s Jay Schalin has just written a study on the politicization of ed schools and he discusses it in today’s article.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/20/12-craziest-college-classes-america-subsidized-tax-dollars/

It’s a common understanding that America’s colleges and universities are thick with leftist professors, administrators, and young progressives-in-training who pay through the nose for a “higher” education. But what exactly makes up an education today? As someone who’s been on dozens of embattled liberal campuses in the last two years, I’m still surprised by the absurd courses offered at the institutions people around the world consider to be elite.

Yes, the situation on campus is worse than most people think: Classes teach students about “Unsettling Whiteness” and “Latinx Sexual Dissidence.” Karl Marx and his failed ideas are propped up by aging academics who believe their socialist hell should be imposed on us all. The free market is written off as the flawed experiment of cisgendered white men.

It’s no wonder figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rocketed straight out of liberal institutions and onto the national stage with proposals like the Green New Deal—they’re doing exactly as they were taught. The courses listed in “Comedy & Tragedy,” a report we compile annually at Young America’s Foundation, provide a lens through which recent campus controversies may be better understood.

Deplatforming conservatives, student riots in response to guest speakers, safe spaces, and therapy alpacas are all inspired by the intersectional, victim-obsessed curriculum taught to the rising generation. A list of the 12 most bizarre and politically correct courses, presented with their original descriptions, is below. The full report is available here.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/colleges-universities-left-wing-bubbles-failing-students/

They can go through their entire education without coming across a principled, non-left viewpoint.

In late January 2019, Kenneth Mayer, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin, drew the attention of a Republican state legislator for language in his syllabus that described Trump as “a president who gleefully flouts the norms of governing and presidential behavior.” His supporters see this as “not a bug, but a feature,” the professor wrote in his syllabus, adding, “To others, he is a spectacularly unqualified and catastrophically unfit egomaniac.” In response, the campus issued a statement supporting Mayer, stating that he “leaves his political opinions at the classroom door and asks his students to do the same.” Regardless of one’s views of the current administration, it is difficult to support the claim that Mayer’s opinions stayed at the door, given that they’re embedded in the course syllabus. Professor Mayer’s endorsement of a singular political perspective in the classroom points to a larger problem that plays out more broadly and has serious implications.

We can trace the current level of political polarization to multiple sources, but, whatever the causes, we could arguably reduce polarization by increasing our ability to see issues from perspectives other than our own. Given its potential to bridge divides, nurturing this ability should be a high priority. And yet, this is neglected in one of the places where it could do the most good: the college classroom.

https://quillette.com/2019/02/10/public-

Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth. Aside from a few lemons who were notable for their rarity, the majority of teachers I worked with for nine years in New York City’s public school system were dedicated, talented professionals. Before joining the system I was mystified by the schools’ abysmal results. I too assumed there must be something wrong with the teaching. This could not have been farther from the truth.

Teaching French and Italian in NYC high schools I finally figured out why this was, although it took some time, because the real reason was so antithetical to the prevailing mindset. I worked at three very different high schools over the years, spanning a fairly representative sample. That was a while ago now, but the system has not improved since, as the fundamental problem has not been acknowledged, let alone addressed. It would not be hard, or expensive, to fix.

Washington Irving High School, 2001–2004

My NYC teaching career began a few days before September 11, 2001 at Washington Irving High School. It was a short honeymoon period; the classes watched skeptically as I introduced them to a method of teaching French using virtually no English. Although the students weren’t particularly engaged, they remained respectful. During first period on that awful day there was a horrendous split-second noise. A plane flew right overhead a mere moment before it blasted into the north tower of the World Trade Center. At break time word was spreading among the staff. Both towers were hit and one had already come down. When I went to my next class I told the students what had happened. There was an eruption of rejoicing at the news. Many students clapped and whooped their approval, some getting out of their seats to do a sort of victory dance. It was an eye-opener, and indicative of what was to come.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272797/slippery-slope-speech-suppression-cuny-david-seidemann

Reprinted from jamesgmartin.center.

Public universities morally should and legally must uphold free speech. Unfortunately, the university where I’ve taught for 43 years has a very bad record, and matters are getting worse.

The City University of New York (CUNY) has a long history of speech suppression, as a sampling of legal cases at its various campus units reveals. For example, in 2007, a federal appeals court ruled that the College of Staten Island’s president violated students’ First Amendment rights when she nullified a student election; in a 2017 court settlement, Queens College administrators agreed to reverse their arbitrary decision to deny official recognition of a pro-life group litigation.

The administration of Brooklyn College has been particularly aggressive in suppressing speech. This is illustrated in a series of court cases involving students who were attempting to stop the college from collecting a mandatory fee in support of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), an off-campus, liberal lobbying group.

In 1996, the college arbitrarily canceled a referendum on the issue. A New York court ordered it reinstated. In 1997, the college blocked a similar referendum based on the (risible) claim that the students running it had libeled NYPIRG in a campaign poster by portraying the group as a rat. The college agreed to rescind that decision in a federal court stipulation. In 1998, the college refused to allow students to even start petitioning for a referendum, but a federal court ordered the college to permit petitioning. In 2001, the college refused to allow students all the allowed time for petitioning. That too was reversed in a federal court stipulation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/diversity-delusions-at-north-carolina-11549829141?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s

Harvard isn’t the only university defending its discriminatory admissions policies in court. Its nonprofit adversary, Students for Fair Admissions, filed a similar complaint against the University of North Carolina in 2014. UNC’s initial defense, submitted last month, is a case study in the willful ignorance underlying the racial-preference regime in higher education. Above all, schools like Harvard and UNC have deliberately ignored the negative effects of preferences on their supposed beneficiaries.

UNC told the court it needs to employ racial double standards in admissions because “certain classes, fields, or areas of campus” lack black and Hispanic students. Though UNC didn’t elaborate, the subjects deficient in underrepresented minorities undoubtedly include science, technology, engineering and math—the so-called STEM fields.

UNC has it backward: Racial preferences aren’t the solution to black and Hispanic underrepresentation in STEM, they are a cause of it. Admitting students with academic qualifications significantly below those of their peers puts them at a disadvantage, whatever their race. Students who are catapulted by preferences into schools for which they are academically mismatched struggle to keep up in classrooms where the teaching is pitched above their level of preparation. Studies have shown that African-American and Hispanic freshmen in preference-practicing schools who intend to major in STEM switch into softer majors at a high rate once they realize their fellow students are much better prepared to do the work. Had those students enrolled in schools that matched their level of preparation, they would be more likely to graduate with a STEM degree.