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| Nature is full of magnificent creatures |
How exactly do they do that? I appreciate you mentioning this, as MIT has been on my radar screen for a while because of their media lab. | |||
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| Oh stewardess, I speak jive.  |
They "did it" by that terribly devious tactic of exposing people to alternative answers and perspectives. By exposing them to more than one type of person. By fostering discussion, secularism, and other tactics. Terrible, eh? It's amazing anyone escapes their clutches. (eyeroll) Many universities obviously lean Left, but no one is literally brainwashed, not even figuratively. Ultimately it falls upon the shoulders of the student anyway, not the school. I could be air dropped info North Korea tomorrow and still wouldn't like it 20yrs later. | |||
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| Mired in the Fog of Lucidity |
Things are not trending well with the younger generations. This article was posted here last week. As unpleasant as it is to read, the author may not be too far off with many of his points. https://www.americanthinker.co...ms_to_end_times.html | |||
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| Little ray of sunshine  |
As Churchill noted, young people tend to lean left and fall for feel-good politics, too while moving to the right as they get older. Sure, universities influence students. That goes without saying. But they don't "turn" people, much as some think they can. As for the original subject, that can be put down to less familiarity with Old Wooden Teeth. Some of that is due to schooling. Some of it is also due to the fact that some millenials only remember one or two presidents, so they take on an inflated sense of importance. Obama happened in their lifetime. Washington is ancient history. They are wrong, of course, but the mistake isn't hard to understand. It is similar to the reason that if you ask people to name great books, they will list books they have read and liked, and not better books that pre-date them. So, "Eat Pray Love" makes great books lists, and "Moby Dick" is left off. The fish is mute, expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything. | |||
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Member |
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Communism is a Global Movement hence Globalism must be Communistic in its intents. ************* MAGA | |||
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Mensch |
I used to be a young idealist liberal. I grew up & disavowed that shit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Yidn, shreibt un fershreibt" "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind." -Bomber Harris | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
That's part of it, of course. It's like the apple Eve gave to Adam in the garden. The fruit of knowledge. You too can be like God... And MIT is very good at telling its' students that they are god-like. They ridicule God, on a daily basis, in mostly small ways but it has a cumulative effect. Don't get me wrong, you learn a lot at a place like MIT, but it takes a very strong, secure individual to escape that place with your faith in tact.
I mostly agree. Each student will make his/her own choices. But... there's a big difference in the environment between the University of Dallas, Claremont, University of Tulsa or even USNA on one hand and MIT on the other. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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| You can't go home again  |
I often think that the only saving Grace with these people being able to vote is at the same time they're also to lazy to. --------------------------------------- Life Member NRA “If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve." - Lao Tzu | |||
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| Little ray of sunshine |
Agreed. My kids may be lucky they aren't as smart or as diligent as yours, because they weren't exposed to as much leftism at Texas Tech. It may be geography as much as anything. If you lie down with dogs . . . The fish is mute, expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything. | |||
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| My other Sig is a Steyr.  |
You think that someday they would try to figure out who will have to eventually pay for all of the 'free' shit? | |||
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| Conservative Behind Enemy Lines  |
There are several things you fail to recognize. First, you are extremely incorrect in your claim that Schools foster discussion. They absolutely DO NOT. There is a doctrine in the vast majority of schools of higher learning, and any doctrine that runs against "THE" doctrine is dealt with mercilessly. Example: Ask any student at any main-stream university about the group of people who refer to themselves as Conservatives, and most likely, you will hear anti-Conservative beliefs that make no sense whatsoever. Then, if you ask the kid where he got those ideas about Conservatives, he'll become agitated. This shows two things: 1.) They have been indoctrinated (yes - indoctrinated) to hate Conservatives. 2.) The civil rules of debate have not been taught to today's students. They don't even know that the very moment they interrupt the other person in their debate, they automatically lose the debate, which is a cardinal rule of civilized debate. Instead, the moment they realize you're not supportive of "the narrative," you become unworthy of their civility. Second, you are an adult. You have lived long enough to realize what is really true versus what you would like to be true. This realization is sometimes never learned, despite the person's chronological age. You are not easily impressed by someone solely because of their title. In fact, I imagine you are like me in that you start off by being suspicious of anyone who claims to be brilliant on a given subject. Peer pressure is very powerful, but with kids between 15 and 25, peer pressure is at its zenith. So, you have this "Professor" who is the only adult in the class room, and he/she's so self-assured and smug in his/her views because he/she is NEVER challenged. More people are followers than are leaders, so the followers believe every word the professor says as if it's the Gospel, which adds peer pressure to the equation. Folks like the professor have screwed with the textbooks so that the present day text books are nothing like the ones we grew up with. I'm not exaggerating when I say I believe the majority of college students today know next to nothing about George Washington. You'd be lucky if one of the more intelligent ones flippantly said, "Wasn't he the first president of the USA?" But, even that kid would conclude that since he was a leader in the nation 'way back then,' he was an evil White supremacist, etc. I think you maybe don't realize how bad our nation's schools have become. They are in the process of brewing a revolution by lying to the students, omitting anything that contradicts their views, censoring, bullying, any other manner with which to convince their students that this country needs to be overthrown. This is what's being taught to them in their schools, then for entertainment, they watch Hollywood productions. I don't think I even have to go into how anti-America Hollywood is. Of all the enemies the American citizen faces, the Democrat Party is the very worst. | |||
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| Muzzle flash aficionado  |
No, I quite believe it. The failure of our public schools to teach both American History and Civics is abysmal and we are seeing the results now. flashguy Texan by choice, not accident of birth | |||
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| Little ray of sunshine |
May I ask how many university classrooms you have been in over the last 10 years? How many university textbooks have you read in that period of time? I have the feeling you are supporting the narrative you have been indoctrinated to believe about universities. I acknowledge that universities lean left as a group. And some lean hard left. But some lean pretty hard right, for all that matter. The picture you paint is the worst of it, and is not a description of universities on average. The fish is mute, expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything. | |||
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Too clever by half |
I think you are off the mark on this one, jhe888. I have a 17 year old in school, private school, and have to contend with leftist ideology actively being taught in school. And, kids are smart enough to know they really can't challenge the professor's "facts" if they want a decent grade. So, they go along, all of them. I have witnessed designated "safe" spaces, seen photos of Castro taped to the Spanish teacher's wall, and listened to her Ecology teacher wax about anthropomorphic climate change at parents night. It's bad, and this is a religious affiliated school. As bad as it sounds, it's way better than public school here. "We have a system that increasingly taxes work, and increasingly subsidizes non-work" - Milton Friedman | |||
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| Member |
^^^^^^^^^^ I'm thinking the same thing. I don't know how these millennials are going to survive when the rest of us die? Good Riddance, they may ultimately cause the demise of our great nation? | |||
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Oriental Redneck |
Found this article, fwiw, Professors and Politics: What the Research Says. By Scott Jaschik February 27, 2017 When Betsy DeVos on Thursday accused liberal faculty members of trying to force their views on students, the new education secretary infuriated many professors -- and won praise from some conservatives. Most faculty members who weighed in on social media denied the indoctrination and unfairness charges. While not disputing her assertion that they are more likely than others to be liberal, they said it was unfair to say that this meant they were indoctrinating anyone. Many conservatives who applauded DeVos said their personal experiences (or those of their children, nieces, nephews, etc.) showed she was correct. For all the back-and-forth of traded anecdotes, there is research on these subjects -- in peer-reviewed articles, books published by scholarly presses and so forth. And most of these studies reach a consensus. Yes, professors lean left (although with some caveats). But much of the research says conservative students and faculty members are not only surviving but thriving in academe -- free of indoctrination if not the periodic frustrations. Further, the research casts doubt on the idea that the ideological tilt of faculty members is because of discrimination. Notably, some of this research has been produced by conservative scholars. DeVos is not the only one to raise the issue recently. A state senator in Iowa has introduced a bill to require that no professor or instructor be hired by a public university if his or her most recent party affiliation would “cause the percentage of the faculty belonging to one political party to exceed by 10 percent” the percentage of the faculty belonging to the other dominant party. The bill, like the DeVos speech, has angered many professors. Are Professors More Liberal Than the Public at Large? The most complete study of the politics of professors is 10 years old. The study is unusual among such research efforts in that it included community college faculty members (who are left out of many such analyses) and looked at age and positions on social issues. The study's age may be a disadvantage, but it also followed a presidential election (George W. Bush's successful re-election bid vs. John Kerry) in which the incumbent was ridiculed by many campus activists. The study was called "The Social and Political Views of American Professors" and it was based on a survey of 1,417 full-time faculty members. Among the key findings: - Faculty members were more likely to categorize themselves as moderate (46.1 percent) than liberal (44.1 percent). Conservatives trailed at 9.2 percent. - Faculty members, when examined by sector, differed widely. At community colleges, 19 percent of faculty members called themselves conservatives, and only 37.1 percent said they were liberals. Liberal arts college faculty members were most likely to identify as liberal (61 percent, compared to only 3.9 percent as conservatives). - When it came to voting, professors (even in the humanities) were not a monolith, with 15 percent in the humanities saying they had voted for President Bush in his re-election bid. Bush won just under a third of the vote in business and just over a third in computer science and engineering. And Bush won a narrow majority of votes from faculty members in the health sciences. - The professors approaching their emeritus years were significantly to the left of those coming into academe. Among those aged 50-64, 17.2 percent identified themselves as left activists, while only 1.3 percent of those aged 26-35 did so. - On social issues, professors had strong views in support of gay rights and abortion rights, and most believed Bush misled the nation about Iraq. But professors were split on affirmative action. Some criticized the study for not viewing any imbalances in political attitudes as troubling, while others defended the study and said it challenged the notion that everyone in academe was liberal and voted for Democrats (or Ralph Nader). The study was conducted by Neil Gross, then at Harvard University and now at Colby College, and Solon Simmons, of George Mason University. What Have Other Studies Found? Research since the 2007 study largely confirms the idea that faculty members at four-year colleges and universities (the focus of these studies) lean left. But here, too, studies find differences when looking at different groups. A 2016 study published in Econ Journal Watch considered voter registration of faculty members in selected social science disciplines (and history) at 40 leading American universities. The study found a ration of 11.5 Democrats for every Republican in these departments, but with wide variation. In economics, the ratio was 4.5 to one, while in history the ratio was 33.5 to one. Another 2016 analysis of faculty members at four-year colleges and universities found that political leanings of faculty members are lopsided, but far more lopsided in New England. The analysis, based on 2014 data, found that nationally, colleges and universities had a six to one ratio of liberal to conservative professors. In New England, the figure was 28 to one. The study was by Samuel J. Abrams, a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Abrams, a self-described conservative, said he views that New England ratio as problematic. At the same time, he said he believes faculty members encourage students to consider many views, and that his career -- tenure at Sarah Lawrence, not known for its many conservatives -- suggests that right-leaning academics are hired and succeed in academe. Other studies focus on educational attainment. These studies tend to find liberalism more likely embraced among those with at least some graduate education -- a group that includes professors but also many others. A 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found that among those with graduate education of some form, 31 percent hold consistently liberal positions based on an analysis of their opinions about the role and performance of government, social issues, the environment and other topics. Another 23 percent hold mostly liberal positions. Only 10 percent hold consistently conservative positions, and 17 percent hold mostly conservative positions. Since 1994, the share of those with graduate education holding consistently liberal positions has increased substantially, the study found. Does the Academy Shut Out Conservatives? So if academe is lopsidedly liberal, does this demonstrate that search committees must be discriminating against candidates they perceive as conservative? There are some anecdotes that suggest cases of discrimination. In her book Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity and Faculty Gatekeeping (Harvard University Press), Julie R. Posselt, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, was able to watch elite graduate program deliberations on admissions. In one case she describes in the book, an applicant to a top linguistics Ph.D. program was a student at a small religious college unknown to some committee members but whose values were questioned by others. “Right-wing religious fundamentalists,” one committee member said of the college, while another said, to much laughter, that the college was “supported by the Koch brothers.” The committee then spent more time discussing details of the applicant's GRE scores and background -- high GRE scores, homeschooled -- than it did with some other candidates. The chair of the committee said, “I would like to beat that college out of her,” and, to laughter from committee members, asked, “You don't think she's a nutcase?” At the end of this discussion, the committee moved the applicant ahead to the next round but rejected her there. Posselt did not write that this was typical of the reviews she saw, but graduate admissions tend to be decentralized and hard to monitor. One national experiment, by Gross of Colby College; Ethan Fosse, a graduate student at Harvard University; and Joseph Ma, an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia, employed a "secret shopper" approach to look for political bias -- and didn't find it. Posing as undergraduates getting ready to apply to doctoral programs, they sent email messages to graduate program directors in top sociology, political science, economics, history and English departments. The inquiries were similar in describing their academic preparation, their undergraduate institutions and their interest in applying. Some of the emails made no mention of politics, but some mentioned having previously worked on either the Obama or McCain presidential campaigns. The researchers then had independent (and politically mixed) observers rate the responses from the graduate directors on frequency, timing of replies, information provided, emotional warmth and enthusiasm. In a few cases, the researchers found "traces" of a political impact, but "no statistically or substantively significant evidence of bias." These findings have generally been used to suggest that professors' political lopsidedness reflects self-selection (much like the way those in finance may be more conservative than the public at large). Gross and Fosse, and Catherine Cheng, a graduate student at the time, contributed to a 2010 book, Diversity in American Higher Education: Toward a More Comprehensive Approach (Routledge), that built on the theory of self-selection. Their research suggested that academics tend to form their views on politics early in life and tend to have certain characteristics (aside from being academics) that are associated with political liberalism. They argued that 43 percent of the political gap can be explained because professors are more likely than others: - To have high levels of educational attainment. - To experience a disparity between their levels of educational attainment and income. - To be either Jewish, nonreligious or a member of a faith that is not theologically conservative Protestant. - To have a high tolerance for controversial ideas. Yet more evidence for the self-selection theory comes from a 2007 study, "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates," by the husband-and-wife social science team of Matthew Woessner of Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg and April Kelly-Woessner of Elizabethtown College. Woessner and Kelly-Woessner based their findings on analysis they did from national surveys of freshmen and seniors conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. They found that in both choices of majors and in personal values, conservatives seem to be taking themselves off the track for academic careers well before graduate school. The authors did not find evidence of statistically significant differences in grades or measures of academic performance, so most of the report is based on the premise that interests and experiences are at play, not aptitude. For starters, the paper finds that conservatives are much more likely to pick majors in professional fields -- areas that tend to put students on the fast track for an M.B.A. (or for a job) more than a Ph.D. Only 9 percent of students on the far left and 18 percent of liberals major in professional fields, compared to 33 percent of conservatives and 37 percent of those who identify as being on the far right. Further, the study finds that not only (as has been reported many times previously) do students who identify as liberal outnumber those who identify as conservative, but that those who are liberal are much more likely to consider a Ph.D. The UCLA survey of seniors found that only 13 percent of all students were considering a Ph.D. But the numbers were significantly higher for those on the left (24 percent of the far left and 18 percent of liberals) than on the right (11 percent of the far right and 9 percent of conservatives). Does Political Imbalance Make Life Difficult for Conservative Students? DeVos and others suggest that the liberal dominance must make life difficult for students who have other political views of the world. Again, the evidence suggests a much more nuanced reality, and one in which many conservative students thrive. A 2012 book widely cited for covering these topics is Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives (Princeton University Press), by Amy J. Binder, professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and Kate Wood, then a doctoral candidate in the UCSD sociology department. The book is based on extensive interviews with self-identified conservative students and other research conducted at two institutions (which the authors don't identify, but describe as liberal). Some students at both institutions had complaints. Conservative female students, for example, said they felt judged by peers who were shocked at their desire for a family and not just a career. And some students said they felt marginalized. But the students said that attending the colleges they did was a positive experience and helped shape their -- conservative -- political identities. The students said they wouldn't want to change institutions. "There was this sense that being in an environment they perceived to be overwhelmingly liberal did challenge them, but in ways that were positive and beneficial for them,” Wood said in a 2012 interview. “It made them clarify values and ideas about different issues or about what being a conservative means.” Woessner of Penn State, who describes himself as a conservative, has also written about how other studies he and his wife have done show that students are aware that their professors have various views, but that students don't change to conform. Writing that "students aren't sponges," Woessner explains, "Whereas some disciplines, such as political science, often shun partisan advocacy, many fields, including sociology, ethnic studies and social work, openly advocate a distinct ideological worldview. If these and similar studies are correct, it suggests that student beliefs are surprisingly resilient. For every one student who is actively recruited to a leftist political cause, a vast majority complete their education with their values largely intact." And what of students who do complain of political bias? A study published last year, in the journal Teaching in Higher Education, surveyed undergraduates at two unnamed institutions -- one in the United States and one in Australia (where allegations of professorial political bias are also much discussed). The study asked undergraduates a series of questions about their perceptions of bias, and also of other qualities. The study found that students with certain characteristics -- a sense of entitlement and an orientation to focus on grades -- are much more likely than other students to perceive their instructors as being biased. The study was by Darren L. Linvill, assistant professor of communication studies at Clemson University, and Will Grant, a lecturer in the Center for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University. Can Professors on the Right Succeed? A recent book based on interviews with conservative professors and a national survey both suggest that faculty members who are Republicans are succeeding and finding happiness in academic careers. The book, Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University (Oxford University Press), was written by Jon A. Shields, an associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, and Joshua M. Dunn Sr., an associate professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Government and the Individual at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The authors interviewed 153 conservative professors in the humanities and social sciences on 84 campuses. Some complained of discrimination based on politics, but not of careers being ended. One productive sociologist was voted down for tenure by his colleagues and dean, only to have the vote reversed by a provost -- due in part to some liberal colleagues who cried foul at the process. Conservative scholars also complained that some journals seemed to reject views that were inconsistent with liberal thinking. But the book's bottom line is that conservative professors are succeeding and happy in academe -- and that there is not a wall of liberal academics blocking their way. A study published by the Social Science Research Network and written by Abrams, the Sarah Lawrence/Hoover institution scholar, suggests that conservative scholars are happy in academe. The study included this question to a national sample of faculty members: “If you were to begin your career again, would you still want to be a college professor?” The results showed that most professors answered in the affirmative. But while 56 percent of liberal professors did so, 66 percent of conservative professors did so. The result, Abrams wrote, suggests that conservative professors are aware they are in the political minority on campus, and are also content in their careers. Q | |||
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| Member |
I have two millenial daughters. Both have postgraduate degrees and one teaches graduate level courses as an adjunct. Neither of them think like most millenials. I guess I got lucky. I will admit that they did not teach much in the way of history or geography. | |||
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| Staring back from the abyss  |
Fire up another bowl.  ________________________________________________________ "Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton. | |||
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| Member |
Black History Month and Chinese Immersion Programs in my towns public grade schools for years. Always wondered how these are allowed in public schools? They start brainwashing them young. "You can take your pistol and stick it so far up your ass, the muzzle of it is visible when you cough." | |||
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