Thursday, September 29, 2005

Articles like this...

... Are why I subscribe to "The Weekly Standard".

The Left University

Today nearly 70 percent of the 18-to-24 age cohort attends college in one form or another, and more than 80 percent of high school graduates do so. College attendance has become a near universal rite of passage for youngsters in our society, and a requirement for entry into the world of middle-class employment.

When this year's freshmen enter the academic world, they will encounter a bizarre universe in which big-time athletics, business education, and rigorous science programs operate under the umbrella of institutions that define themselves in terms of left-wing ideology. This is especially true of the 100 or so elite public and private institutions that are able to select their students from among a multitude of applicants seeking entry, and true also of the humanities and social science departments that define the political and social meaning of the academic enterprise. These students will enter the world of what we may call the left university.

The ideology of the left university is both anti-American and anticapitalist. The left university, according to its self-understanding, is devoted to the exposure of the oppression of the various groups that have been the West's victims--women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, and others that have been officially designated as oppressed groups--and

to those groups' representation. This is the so-called "diversity" ideology to which every academic dean, provost, and president must pledge obedience and devotion.

As it happens, the contemporary university is diverse only as a matter of definition and ideology, but not in practice or reality.


Go, read, be enlightened.

Never forget that the state of Americas schools, from Kindegarten to post doctoral programs, is a deliberate effort, running since the 1890s, doubled and redoubled in the '20s and '30s, and then redoubled again in the '50s and '60s; to turn all of America into a "scientific socialist" state ruled by "academic experts" who believe only they know what is best for everyone.

They have only truly succeeded in our educational system; where many would I'm sure be quite thrilled to be addressed as "Comrade Academician" instead of "Professor Smith".

John Dewey was the most influentual force in the creation and structuring of our modern "german model" of public education; from Kindegarten to the research universities, lifted straight from the statist german system (at times socialist, at times fascist, but always authoritarian). His most telling quote? "You can't make a good socialist out of an individual". You might be interested in knowing that there are HUNDREDS of public schools in the country named after that vile man.

Here is another Dewey quote:
"From a social standpoint, dependence denotes a power rather than a weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always a danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone-an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remedial suffering in the world."
This philosophy forms the very core of the socialist welfare state ideal. Individualsim is bad, both for society, and for the individual; because it reduces his connection to society; and reduces societies value as a whole. The individual is not an asset to society, but a threat to it.

If reading the works of this man, who essentially created modern public education as an experiement in social engineering, doesn't anger you (even if you are a liberal or other leftist); are you really paying attention?