I have many problems with higher ed, which may seem strange since I work there. I do not think that a college degree is a panacea, especially when my father employs electricians who earn more than I do. College degrees give you options, but all too often the classrooms at these colleges are filled with people of disparate and deprecative ideas. We package our children and send them off to be inculcated, indoctrinated and inoculated with vile and virulent visions rather than the virtues we teach them at home. We even pay huge sums for this privilege. By and large the faculty at most institutions contribute, even if unwittingly, to the degradation of civilization. Although it was not always this way and not all institutions or professors fit this mold, far too many, the lion's share in point of fact, are there because it's a way to validate their views by propagandizing your children to things you probably find detestable.
Many students gravitate to the professors as preferable exemplars of principle and knowledge. Most students resent and reject their parents but will accept the invitation to join the invisible army that constitutes the coalition of the mutable mind. Particularly when these new voices encourage and validate the rebellious ideas of the teenage mind, the students glam onto the counterculture efforts of faculty and concrete their rebellion as they become adults. Even now that I am a professor, I hear about students who love to hang out with that "one cool professor who will go out drinking with us", and I think at least one student last term actually fantasized about and expected that I might invite her over and sleep with her because that's what people in Vegas do. I tell them that if they want validation they need to go to the mall and shop and get the store to stamp their parking stub.
Curriculum celebrates counterculture.
I read rags as a student. We read about licentiousness and lasciviousness. We read about misogyny and misanthropy. We read books that glorified codependency as if it were synonymous with love. We read books that bastardized words to be the worst denotation possible, and they taught us that there was virtue in wickedness, that piracy was the right course. I felt dirty on the inside and out to be forced to critically think about books I am loathe to admit I read and that I would never own. We spoke often of these courses as our forced foray into the Wicked Traditions of our fathers which are not correct. Every student, even those of my own Faith, was forced through these core classes, and some of them were converted by the persistent proselytizing push. I survived the WT core because I went into the course striving to glean something positive from those books. Most students are passive learners, facilitating the efforts of fundamentalist faculty to fill their brains with aberrant and abhorrent imagery.
Students just left high school and continue to live in fear of being different, of being left out, of being seen as having things in common with their stupid parents. They fall victim to a slieu of misanthropic logical fallacies that proclaim that the ends justify the means or that there is no point to life. If it feels good do it. You only live once, so live it up. You're missing out if you don't avail yourself of everyone who offers to put out. Don't be a Puritan. I read Tuesday that a class at UPenn (an ivy league school) entitled "Wasting Time on the Internet" encourages and rewards students for watching porn. What in thunder? How does this make us a better people?
Faculty exalts multiculturalism over virtue
A large preponderance of seminars and continued learning opportunities afforded faculty have to do with encouraging a diverse population of students rather than diversity in thought. Curriculum and syllabi endorse conformity of ideas but variance of background over everything else. Students transfer into my section sometimes because I am literate in English, and I was hired because everyone else to whom they offered the job said no. Before I transferred into chemistry, I was the token white male. It's as if it's better to be diverse than to be virtuous, better to have good demographical statistics than to have good quality students and faculty. To accomplish this, we are surreptitiously encouraged to coddle underperforming students of protected classes even if they are overrepresented. I have been called to account for poor marks when students accuse me of racism. Other professors report that consistency matters most, that students are taught it's never good to be better than others.
They balkanize us so that we're divided and easier to defeat. The Left used to claim they sought a society in which we are judged by the content of our character. Now they draw attention to phenotypical demographics that separate us. Like Voldemort, they know we're less of a threat if we feel like we're alone. In order to accomplish this, they prey upon white guilt, as if any class, particularly the white barbarians of the north, has a monopoly on wickedness when reality shows anything but. Ignoring and ignorant of history, they act as if and talk as if everything evil comes from the Nords, the Germans, and the Celts, and as if everything praiseworthy comes out of Africa and Asia. They look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, and so they do. In other parts of the human race, they look for the good and invent it when they cannot find it. I thought we were supposed to evaluate people on character rather than melanin, testosterone, linguistics, wealth, etc.
Administrators advocate political correctness
Media, politicians, and the "ignoble intelligent elite" among us deal in distractions. They cry foul about the scandals of the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia while they ignore members of the Klan in Congress, perverts in the White House, and other criminals in high office. Every week, there is a new sensational story, only to keep us from paying attention to the man behind the curtain, but then when its utility fades, they forget about the Malaysian airliner and all of the other momentary sensations to focus on things that advance their agenda. When you bring any of the pertinent issues to light, they assault your character rather than the argument or topic itself. Just yesterday, I was assaulted with responses to my tweets that accused me of smoking crack, being a bigot, ad infinitum, but none of them pointed me to evidence or counterarguments besides assuming I'm an idiot.
No matter the problem in the world, somehow according to them, it's America's fault. They draw attention to our flaws. Krister Stendahl once said that most people see the virtues in their own opinions and paint their opponents in caricature. This kind of strawman argument paints every member of any group as a miscreant if ever one does anything even remotely bad. Every time there is a shooting, they look for "right wing propaganda" in his belongings. When there is a sexual scandal, they look for evidence of Christianity. When marriages fail, they point out that homosexuals love too. Wednesday's scandal at Cannes must infuriate them that it wasn't a homosexual couple. These efforts are meant to stifle dissent and disagreement, to prevent offense to the offensive. Feelings matter more than truth. They ignore facts and evidence that counter their agenda. They know they are right, and they are not interested in any ideas and opinions unless they echo their own, like the Pope's climate advisor who worships Gaia not God. It calls to mind a scene from a famous movie I have never seen: "You want answers? I want the truth. You can't handle the truth." Rather than justice, injustice is the order of the day. Rather than establishing virtue, they make immoral laws with illogical consequences. Since the law is necessary for justice, they make things lawful as a way to legitimate them and outlaw other things to make them passe. I reject this kind of emotional outcry in the name of the law. Aristotle taught me that the law is reason free from passion. As I've been saying for years, "I don't do P.C. I'm a Mac."
In my teaching, I respected the Old Guard and modeled my teaching style after their example. These were the teachers who, by and large, I respected and from whom I learned and with whom I would deign communicate today. Most of them are gone. In their stead, the new crop of tenured professors come from the counterculture of the 1960s and fit the sobriquet to a "t" that "those who can't, teach". They would fail everywhere else. Here they shine because they have captive audiences who eagerly pay exorbitant sums to participate in the fall of civilized society. A few of us try to pass on what the old guard gave us, but in many cases, we can hardly stem the tide of negative pressure that overturned the equilibrium upholding traditions of civil society. I will probably never be tenured. I will not sell my soul for a job, and I'm ok with that. I will not teach you to think as I do. I will however teach you how to think.
Every semester in my general chemistry courses, I stress the importance of accuracy and precision. You see, people make decisions based on the information that you provide them, and if you do your honest duty to ensure that your data is reliable, you help society advance. Far too many professors want to advance THEIR agenda regardless of its utility, veracity, reliability, or consistency. These spurious characters in higher education pollute the minds of our children with their aberrant and abhorrent ideals, often riddled with licentiousness and lasciviousness. We give the next generation information of questionable veracity and then ask them to build something worthy with subpar materials. Higher Education prepares people for the future. The kind of future being built may vary from the one you think we are building.
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