Academic Groupthink
Cross posted from Crusader Rabbit
http://crusader-rabbit.blogspot.com/2008/06/flattering-consensus.html
"NeoNeocon highlights an article by Crispin Sartwell in the LA Times, titled The Smog of Academic Consensus. In it, Sartwell notes the overwhelming political bias among faculty, especially in the humanities, and points to its self-reinforcing nature.
And because there’s a consensus, there is precious little self-examination; a slant that we all share becomes invisible… Academic consensus is a particularly irritating variety of groupthink. First of all, the fact that everyone agrees and everyone has a doctorate leads to the occasionally explicit idea that all intelligent people think the same thing - that no one could disagree with, say, Obama-ism, without being an idiot… [A] professor has been educated, often for a decade or more, by the very institutions that harbor this unanimity. Every new generation of professors has been steeped in an atmosphere in which the authorities all agree and in which they associate agreement with intelligence - and with degrees, jobs, tenure and so on. If you’ve been taught that conservatives are evil idiots, then conservatism itself justifies a decision not to hire or tenure one. Every new leftist minted by graduate programs is an act of self-praise, a confirmation of the intelligence of the professors."
David Thompson
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College students aren't educated, they are indoctrinated. This wasn't always the case. Up until the late 1970's Universities and Colleges taught students. Then the hippies got tenure, and all Hell broke loose.
ReplyDeleteInstead of educating the next generation, they indoctrinated them into the liberal mindset. Whoa to a graduate student who didn't follow the party line. Now the next generation of the indoctrinated are coming of age. And again they will corrupt a new generation of students. That is until someone stops them.
Thank you Findalis, great comments, as usual.
ReplyDeleteOne of my best friends has just been promoted to assistant dean of a respectable New England college -- and he's a conservative! So maybe there's a little bit of hope.
Not much, but a little --