Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach early--for college students. First class is at 8am, and I'm pretty sure that when the Greeks developed their "myths," one of Hercules' original tasks was "Teaching an 8am General Education Requirement." Somehow it got left out of the final draft.
But I get up around 5:30 and read the online papers, the news, and Daily Kos. I came across this in the paper this morning:
Here is the way I believe it works at liberal universities. Some professors require their students to repeat back to them on test papers and in theses what the professors believe. Unless students hate Republicans, revile George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, renounce God, support abortion and gay rights, they can sometimes expect a lower, even a failing grade.
Cal, you're a douchenozzle of the first degree, who hasn't even the faintest idea of what a university is for, much less how one operates.
You see, Cal, out here where teachers work, we do indoctrinate our students. What we teach them to do is to question authority. That authority includes, well, everyone. It includes me, it includes "received widsom," it includes William Buckley, it includes the president. But it doesn't include you, because you're not an authority. We save your stuff for the "how to recognize morons" class.
Around the corner of my hall, though, there is a professor who manages to bring Ronald Reagan into nearly every class he teaches, and students widely believe that the merest mention of St. Ronnie will net them an "A" on any exam.
French Revolution? How would Reagan have handled it?--an "A." Fighting the Nazis?--WWRD? I don't know if this is true or not, but students believe it. He also manages to bash President Clinton at every opportunity.
Take a walk down to the business school, where most are conservative, and where we even have a "BB&T Professor of Capitalism," who is required, by the terms of the donation, to teach Ayn Rand and "Objectivism." Required.
Calbag, what you worry about isn't that we teach our students to be liberal. Plenty of studies show that students come out of college with pretty much the same beliefs as they went in.
What you worry about is that we teach them to think for themselves.
As I tell my students, and this is transcribed from my notes:
My job will be to challenge you intellectually, to get you to think about things. I don't care if you come out of this class believe the same thing as when you came in. I don't care if you've changed your beliefs entirely. Or if you fall somewhere in between. What I care about is that you were challenged to reflect on why you hold those beliefs.
Over the course of this semester you are going to hear things that are new. And things that you already knew about. And you are going to hear things that are bizarre, and that insult you. If that doesn't happen, get your money back because I haven't done my job.
But by the end of it I hope you will have taken everything you see and hear and discuss and think about how it relates to your life.
The quickest route to gaining my respect in this class is to challenge things--me, the text, the sources, whatever. You may be wrong, you may be right. But what I want to see is that you are thinking about an analyzing things.
I know that this is what you really fear, Cal. You don't want students coming out of here thinking hard about things. You want them to be automatons.
Too f-ing bad.
Now, I'm off to teach that librul conspiracy--the Agricultural Revolution in the ancient world. Let the indoctrination of students into the world of "think for yourself" begin.