Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 7:51am

Indoctrination Not Education

 

 

One of the more ironic developments during the past half century has been the transformation of most colleges and universities from places of learning into citadels of indoctrination.  Examples abound.  Here is a recent one:

An Ohio State University (OSU) class has apparently determined another fundamental difference between Christians and atheists: their IQ points.

An online quiz from the school’s Psychology 1100 class, provided to Campus Reform via tip, asked students to pick which scenario they found most likely given that “Theo has an IQ of 100 and Aine has an IQ of 125.”

The correct answer? “Aine is an atheist, while Theo is a Christian.”

Go here to Campus Reform to read the rest.  Back in the eighties, a few years before his death, I attended a lecture by Allan Bloom.  This was about a year after the publication of his The Closing of the American Mind.  In the Q&A after his lecture he was asked if courses on ethics could combat the relativism which was dominant among students.  He was not hopeful and said with the current professoriate such courses would largely become tools of indoctrination.   He used abortion as an example and said that he had often seen the topic discussed in classrooms and had never observed even one such discussion where the transparent purpose was not to convince students that having an abortion was a an ethical thing to do.  Bloom was personally a “liberal” in many of his political beliefs, but he was also an old fashioned professor dedicated to teaching, and he well understood the difference between that honorable activity and indoctrination, which teaches students only to repeat the bromides and platitudes of the powers that be in their society.

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, July 27, AD 2014 3:03pm

Two observations

1. Tom Wolfe’s view that the press corps is largely made up of men who were clocked on the school playground and want revenge.

2. Barry Allan Shain’s assessment (unpublished) that faculty are largely made up of people who, as youths, were less affluent than the students they teach and not as socially adept as the students they teach.

Both men offered that these formative experiences are important vectors, if not dominant vectors, in explaining the politics of these occupational groups.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Sunday, July 27, AD 2014 5:44pm

I noticed this when I was at Kent State in the 1980s. Much of the KSU faculty I encountered was a bunch of leftists. Given what happened there in May 1970 I expected that.

The Leftists thoroughly permeate the educational bureaucratic monster that engufs billions of taxpayer dollars and indoctrinates children.

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Sunday, July 27, AD 2014 9:30pm

Professors and upperclassmen in the STEM departments are often amused by the innumeracy of people in the Psych department, especially their profs and TAs. The Psychos are doubly incompetent at statistics.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Monday, July 28, AD 2014 4:11am

Micha Elyi

I have met two Fields Medallists (both French) and, as it happens, one was a practising Catholic and the other an orthodox Jew. One has no way of knowing, of course, but I would imagine their IQs were pretty considerable

Mary De Voe
Monday, July 28, AD 2014 10:19am

Education is teaching persons how to think, not what to think. A thinking person wants to know how an individual can stand as an example for an entire group of his peers. Teachers are entrusted with minor children who have not achieved emancipation, children, who must be taught how to challenge the status quo, or civilization will go backwards to the invention of the wheel.
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When adults have not been taught how to think, they cannot appreciate freedom, they remain children, uninformed.

Pat
Pat
Tuesday, July 29, AD 2014 10:03am

“The Mortal Storm”, a movie from 1940 depicting 1933 Germany, is about half over as I post this comment. There is human interest involving transformations of friends of youth, a professor at work, and the changes in family life.

Education has now become a product of political party, union, and lobbying to, in the bottom line, generate solid income for them.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Wednesday, July 30, AD 2014 11:39am

“Education has now become a product of political party, union, and lobbying to, in the bottom line, generate solid income for them.”

Income and CONTROL for them. Emphasize the word control.

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