April 19, 2008
The Leftward Groves Of Academe
First, I will say that I actually tried to post on this yesterday, but the hotel I’m presently staying at in New York, only the second I’ve ever stayed in that featured free Internet access – this one’s being wireless only – has a few kinks in the system.
When I first checked in, it seemed like all was just fine, but I have found that it can’t handle video – a bummer as I’ve tried to watch video at other blogs and, well… I’ve also had a few comments I’ve endeavored to make come up: Internet Explorer cannot display the web page. Likewise, my last endeavor to post this got the infamous “Internet Explorer cannot…” and the post disappeared.
This hotel only has 250 rooms, and when you figure that it’s at nowhere near full occupancy just now (I’ve had no trouble adding nights at the last minute, and parts of the hotel are supposedly closed due to renovation and upgrades – I’ve neither seen nor heard any evidence of this, but that’s the going story), there shouldn’t be so many people connected to the wireless network that it would be overtaxed.
However: The hotel’s wireless network is unsecured, all you have to do is go to “Connect To” and click on their network, and you’re there.
Now, this is smack in the middle of the upper west side, surrounded by apartment buildings. I wonder how many zillion people in the myriad apartments hereabouts are using the hotel’s network for free wireless access.
Somewhere in the management sector of this hotel exists a pinhead who hasn’t figured out that all they have to do is secure the network and supply guests with the access information needed to connect.
So now I’m composing posts in MS Word, then copying and pasting them to my blog. Let ‘em look that up in their Funk & Wagnall’s! If I lose it again, I’ll still have it saved in Word to try again.
At any rate, what caught my attention was this piece of news, which defines an issue that should have constituted a dialogue conducted in the light of public awareness a long time ago, rather than dumbed down by liberal academics and the mainstream media in the interests of covering up the formers’ Marxian practice of indoctrinating our youth into the column of left wing political dogma rather than encouraging them to learn how to think for themselves.
An advanced textbook on American government is drawing criticism from scholars for alleged errors concerning climate change and separation of church and state.
American Government (Houghton Mifflin) and was authored by James Q. Wilson and John J. Dilulio, Jr. Associated Press reports that a New Jersey high school student pointed out apparent errors in the textbook to the Center for Inquiry, which then released a “scathing report.”
Scathing, no less!
Under criticism are statements that cause students to question whether the debate over “global warming” is really over, and whether the issue of “separation of church and state” is being correctly interpreted. Critics also accuse the textbook of having a conservative bias on a number of other issues.
Their actual kvetch, expressed in more honest terms, would be, “Hey! This text book is raining on our parade! If these kids learn to draw their own conclusions rather than accept us as the masters of all they think and all they believe, they might well grow into voting adulthood without views that we endorse, those we demand that the rest of society endorse. This is an outrage!”
The executive director of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI) disagrees with the critics. “I don’t think it’s the job of our public schools to indoctrinate children to tell them what they should believe about global warming,” says Finn Laursen, “but let’s educate them; let’s let them [think] like great minds of the past did, and let’s let them openly discuss the issues. And if we don’t let them know that there are two sides, that discussion won’t happen,” he contends.
The CEAI leader fears that the advanced students are no longer being as academically challenged as they have been in the past and are also being taught one-sided arguments.
“I think that most would agree that we [as a nation] are not as competitive as we once were, and I personally believe that one of the reasons is that our advanced students are not being challenged to higher levels of thinking,” the Christian educator argues. “They’re being given one side of topics, told to memorize that and to believe that — and that does not create great minds, and great thinkers, and problem solvers,” he points out.
Very well put, Mr. Laursen.
Another major cudo is due an official in Arizona.
In Arizona, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has said he will not remove the textbook from schools. Horne is quoted by KTAR.com as saying, “the claims made for conservative bias are very mild compared to the liberal bias that I see in most textbooks.”
Emphasis mine.
I would so like to see this argument find its way into the public domain, wherein the American people can decide whether they want their children to be educated as socialist zombies or as individual thinkers capable of making their own decisions.
While mainstream Democrats are by no means a significant minority in this country, the far left elements that have been steering their party, which includes the portside academics and the liberal media that smoke-screen the actual menace they pose to the future of our society via the indoctrination of our youth, certainly are. The media shapes public opinion, and in this instance, among others, has been quite successful in its dubious endeavors where Democrats who should know better are concerned.
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=810
April 19th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Academia is a metastasized cancer.
I just saw Ben Stein’s “Expelled” in the theater today and it was a great expose on the hostility of scientists to those who question Darwinism by discussing Intelligent Design. It’s well paced, and the ending, with Mr. Stein making Richard Dawkins fumble and stammer out some absurd theory about life on earth being “seeded” by a superior race of “higher beings” made everyone in the theater laugh out loud. Scathing!
I can’t wait till June. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is having a day seminar on “The Crisis in Western Education”, and Bruce Thornton will be there (he writes at Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers). It should be interesting.
I’m having internet problems too. I upgraded to a faster speed, and now everything seems squirrelly.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Atheling –
I have been wanting to see “Expelled”, I have to find out where to do so here in NY while I’m here (I will make time for it, it would be worth sidelining something else).
Liberal responses to the film only make me more anxious to see it.
The left’s formula has always been “censorship over debate”, because they rarely if ever have any tangible evidence to support their agendas. They win their issues by browbeating and propagandizing without ever producing any justifiable or proveable facts, effectually “shouting down” any opposition via their biased media and political allies.
Whether the topic is Intelligent Design, global warming — er, excuse me, “climate change”, since we’ve enjoyed cool weather lately, church & state issues, etc, rather than debate, they discredit, condemn or expel.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Cool weather is right. We had snow on the way to the theater and on the way home! That is just weird. It didn’t stay, but it’s late April, for crying out loud!
True, the Left, as demonstrated by the preachers of “tolerance” at Columbia who assault speakers they don’t agree with, will use bullying and force to silence their opponents.
Liberal fascism. That’s what it is.
April 20th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Atheling –
That’s the thing about liberals: They are the fascists, they censor, they do all they can to smother the truth if it contradicts their agendas, they do all they can to force their minority beliefs on the rest of us as policy, yet they deflect this by calling those who oppose their attempts at heavy handed control fascists.
You had snow on the way to the theater!? That’s an undeniable indication that global warming has struck again, only this time in the guise of climate change! C’mon, Atheling, just look at the science: It’s not supposed to snow in April, right? Right? There’s only one reason why this could occur. We’re producing too much C02, you see, and it’s causing the planet to warm. This warming causes snow and cooler temperatures.
Don’t you understand that basic premise of done deal science? What are you, some kind of neocon racist?
April 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Yeah, everyone was joking about global warming while it was snowing in April!
You know, people throw around the word “neocon” like it’s a pejorative. And I’m not even sure what a neocon is. I mean, I know it stands for “neoconservative”, and I’ve heard the term “paleoconservative”, but I haven’t yet sat down and tried to figure out the difference and where I “fit”. (Having an existential crisis now!)
Speaking of the global warming hoax, I wish Ben would next do a documentary on that!
April 20th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Atheling –
I think the contraction “neocon” is used because it makes right thinkers sound like some variety or other of stone age knuckle draggers.
“Neocon” as opposed to “progressive”.
Kinda’ reminds me of a Mad Magazine bit when I was a kid where they show some scruffy looking guy being caught digging under a fence, and the caption is something like “When people from foreign countries steal American military secrets, we yell that they are using spies“. Then there’s an immaculate, neatly groomed guy in a trench coat with the caption, “When Americans steal foreign military secrets, we say that we are employing intelligence agents“.
Liberals place great store in using labels in place of rational arguments, and they all too often work, the same way repetitive ad campaign slogans do.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Ben Stein: experience in the biological sciences..
played Jr. High Biology teacher in ‘Wonder Years’..
April 20th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
BB:
Stein’s documentary is not about science. It’s about the science community’s and academia’s repression of any questioning of their dogmas.
Big difference.
Before you make an assumption, it’s a good idea to go out and get the facts first. (HINT: GO SEE THE MOVIE).
Otherwise, you’re just being prejudiced.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:48 am
Atheling, of course I’m prejudiced. Were I to sit through ‘Expelled’, I would likely mutter the same perjoratives you would if forced to sit through Farenheit 911.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:03 am
BB:
(Where is Seth?)
There is a difference between Farenheit 9/11 and Expelled.
For one thing, Michael Moore took out of context footage and used it to justify his propaganda.
Ben Stein used contextual footage in his interviews with various scientists.
It is worth watching the last 10 minutes where we see Richard Dawkins fumble and stumble and explain that aliens “seeded” Earth as an explanation how life here started. It’s priceless.
Nevertheless, the rigid and intolerant Darwinists are exposed for their persecution of anyone who does not toe the party line in science and academia, which is supposed to welcome free inquiry! That is the main thrust of the film and the analogy of the Berlin Wall is brilliant.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Atheling, I think Seth is eating something exotic.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:51 am
Lol, well, he’ll have to give us a report on that!
April 21st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
BB –
More like having spent an hour and a half past closing time at a bar here on the upper west side before returning to my hotel (a return I honestly don’t recall, but which is borne out by the very fact that I woke up here in the room a short time ago).
I’ve just poured my second cup of coffee (BTW, I never drink the swill they provide with in-room coffee makers, I always supply my own coffee), and man, do I need it!
Anyway…
The whole point is that the port side of our political equation, not only in schools but in the media and every other public forum as well, does not welcome open debate or any input that contradicts their “established” conclusions.
It’s purely, “These are the facts, done deal.” Dissent is not welcome, no matter how relevant or accurate the facts presented might be.
The anthropogenic global warming myth is a perfect example of this. Hundreds of scientists have debunked it, introducing metric tons of research results, but since the politically and grant money motivated “authorities” and special interest politicians have already declared it a done deal, these dissenting scientists are either kicked out of associations, fired from jobs or simply ignored. The liberal media, who are not scientists by any means, simply shut out any evidence presented that might dispel the AGW myth for purely political reasons.
For my own part, I’ve visited more websites, pro-and-con, than I can remember, and while the dissenting sites present evidence to support their claims, the sites that support the myth never — and I mean never provide any evidence that actually cites a tangible link between anything man does and any climate change of any kind.
Ergo, there is nothing to support AGW claims except unproven opinions.
This is true of all portside positions. If anyone disagrees, shut ‘em down, muzzle ‘em, don’t give ‘em the opportunity to take their opinions to the public.
An outside observer might say, “How very Soviet of them…”
Atheling –
If an overdose of cognac on a foundation of Chimay Ale is exotic, there is indeed something to report.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Seth:
Tch, tch… I thought the rule of thumb was to never mix your poisons!
April 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Atheling –
Now she tells me!
April 21st, 2008 at 4:51 pm
That’s just great. Gotta deal with inebriates now.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:53 am
BB –
You have no idea!!!!
(hic!)
(burp!)