Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Academic Brainwashing
......................The Rules:
Avoid the following at all costs:
1. Ethnic “Ghetto” Departments – Some departments are simply fronts for the sort of liberal indoctrination that is such a ridiculous affront to academic standards. They were typically created not as a genuine scholarly pursuit, but to appease some liberal interest that wanted to perpetuate itself by thrusting its views upon fresh student minds. These nefarious departments include the Center for Afro-American & African Studies, Women’s Studies, American Culture, Cultural Anthropology, Chicano Studies and others.
Not only does the wise student skip over these departments when pursuing the course guide, he also carefully crosschecks his choices to make sure that none of his selections happen to be cross listed in these attempts to pass off ideology as scholarship.
The reason these courses are typically poor excuses for education is that they only present one side of their subject matter. For example, if you take a class on the industrial revolution in the women’s study department, you won’t learn much about the industrial revolution, but you’ll learn a whole lot about what modern feminist do.
2. RCGS – Admittedly, race, culture, gender, and sexuality actually do play important roles in some aspects of life. Unfortunately, this role typically isn’t large enough to rationalize a four-credit class on it. Yet this doesn’t stop some of our professors from reading into each of these issues on everything from Greek linguistic structure to physical chemistry. If you take a class with one of these in the course description, expect to hear how whatever the course is about would benefit if it went through some severe sensitivity training.
3. Liberal Buzzwords – Certain terms are particularly chic in liberal circles and if they show up in your course descriptions, you can prepare yourself for some major liberal bias. Here’s a quick look at what words the liberal and trendy are using: imperialism, social inequality, environmental inequality, racism, sexism, womanhood, labor, race identities, cultural identities, social justice, social construction of identity, environmental justice, fair trade, queer theory, feminism, gender roles, heterocentrism, colonialism, and any other –isms I might have left out..........................
