Monday, December 8, 2008
Political indoctrination in the universities? Don't be silly: A study claiming that the views of liberal professors don't influence their students deserves a big, red "F." Read it all, but here's a snip:
In the interests of scholarship, though, the instructor would feel duty-bound to inform her charges about the nefariousness of the Bush administration -- just as "facts" and background, mind you -- along with the long litany of criminal acts and attitudes of the West, particularly the United States. All that she would say in this vein, whether in the context of history or literature, would be backed up by the "factual" support in textbooks.
So when students participate in the "studies" cited in the New York Times article and are asked on a questionnaire whether their teachers attempt to impose their ideology, they will probably say no. Asked whether they are vulnerable to persuasion by professors' political views, today's college student, steeped in self-esteem and flattery about his abilities as a "critical thinker," is, of course, going to say that he came to his political views on his own, on the strength of the evidence before him and the critical powers of his own mind.
And this is the kind of interviewee a student reporter for the University of South Carolina's Daily Trojan will quote for a concluding salvo to a syndicated article about "the results of studies ... [that] refute the belief held by many conservatives that liberal college professors politically indoctrinate their students." Freshman Christopher James's assertion that "kids are way too smart to let themselves be swayed in one direction or the other" adds to the chorus of self-evident truth from desk seats in campuses across the country...
If I had a dime for every time I heard something along these lines...'Oh, the kids are way to smart to fall for that...' Yeah, right. Manipulators get excited when they hear students with this attitude. It makes their fangs water. This is perfect:
...As anyone who has dealt with the four-year-old who insists "I know how to do it!" understands, arrogance is inversely proportional to age...
Take a look at http://algorithmics.bu.edu/twiki/bin/view/EK131_08/EK131_fall08/Team1Public to see how easily people can be manipulated.
The most dangerous manipulators are those who subtly and consistently introduce bias, all the while proclaiming the need for fairness and balance.
Reminds me of Penn and Teller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
or the Man Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmKWp4OPoUM
Self-congratulatory academic bullshit; shocked, I'm shocked ...
It's no coincidence that it was Rorty who emphasized that "socialization goes all the way down." He had in mind a variety of things, but they included a broad-scale, socializing, indoctrinating, so-called "progressive" process and vision. Rorty was a smart guy and it's far too simplistic and convenient to say he was thinking merely along Pavlovian lines, but as a terse and admittedly glib and pejorative expression, that would capture a great deal, an essence, of what he had in mind nonetheless, in terms of that future oriented vision; very much reminiscent of or dovetailing with a Gramscian-styled subversion.
Of course all that can be counter-critiqued if it's not rightly conceived, but there is an essence captured there nonetheless.
Rorty was wrong, it doesn't go "all the way down," but he was close enough for govt. work.
“Hayek was – more than half a century ago, which means before the current prevalence of electronic media – aware of the enormous power of intellectuals to shape public opinion and warned us that “it is merely a question of time until the views held by the intellectuals become the governing force of politics”. This is as valid today as it was when he wrote it. The question is what kind of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some respect, very understandable preferences for some of them. They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige. They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator." President of the Czeck Republic, Václav Klaus
http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=wFYl3mgsTzI6