My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Go pick up a copy, but here’s a part:
Unfortunately, most universities have abandoned a small “l” liberal education in favor of a big “L” Liberal education. Instead of offering a broad perspective from diverse perspectives, they offer a narrow perspective from a hyper-orthodox view. Whether the subject is related to global warming, abortion, unions, gun rights, health care policy, or any other important issue, there is only one perspective tolerated on most university campuses – the Liberal viewpoint.
The reason is simple. The vast majority of university faculty members are extremely liberal. For example, consider the political donations of faculty members. The best way to tell what is important to someone is to see where they spend their money. According to Opensecrets.org, 97% of all political donations given by employees of the University of Wisconsin system in the 2020 election cycle so far have gone to Democrats. Only 3% have gone to Republicans.
Lest you think that such lopsided political affiliation is an artifact of the Trump era, the percentage was 98% for Democrats in 2014 and 95% in 2012. To put that in perspective, a student takes about 40 college courses with 40 professors to earn a bachelor’s degree. There is a very good chance that a student attending a University of Wisconsin school might complete their degree without ever having anything but a politically liberal professor. In some majors, it is a virtual certainty that a student will never hear anything but a liberal perspective.
And you know this – how? Direct experience of what is taught in classrooms at UW schools?
And in what context would these “important issues” arise in university classes? And in what proportion to – well, everything else taught in university courses?
Let’s ask the Wiki:
Awww, little Jiffy didn’t understand what Owen typed. Poor kiddo.
Owen is spot on.
Universities have become cultish education camps designed to indoctrinate Marxism, via climate change, and tear down this nation by teaching kids to detest America.
“Liberally educated people are skeptical of their own traditions; they are trained to think for themselves rather than conform to higher authorities”.
Exactly!! Just take a look at the so-called conservatives that regularly condemn the “liberals” here on this site. They are firmly committed to the party/church/cult line of thinking and are unwilling or unable to change. Hidebound by tradition, fable, rumor, and fiction, they persist on denying scientific and historical fact in order to defend their position; head planted firmly in the sand, feet in the bronze age.
Great job, jjf !
Wow, k proved our point almost immediately. We are hitting a nerve !
Actually Nord,
You prove the point with your constant demand for me to renounce Creation. You see me as a heretic to your Evolution cult. You have brought it up at least 15 times on non-related threads…mostly when you are getting smacked, badly, on underlying thread argument.
You are local cult bishop of climate change cabal and get incensed when anyone says this is the 40th, Marxist, end of the world, doomsday cult, power grab since the 60s.
Look in mirror.
I can claim objective, absolute truth.
Best you can claim is: “scientists” that change their mind about the weather constantly.
I’m all ears, Jason. Explain what I missed.
>They are firmly committed to the party/church/cult line of thinking and are unwilling or unable to change. Hidebound by tradition, fable, rumor, and fiction, they persist on denying scientific and historical fact in order to defend their position; head planted firmly in the sand, feet in the bronze age.
Didn’t you just take someone else to task for not “keeping it classy”? You just can’t help yourself can you. I know you’ll come back with “Well you did it first” childish trope. But we know, everyone reading your comments knows.
>Explain what I missed.
Everything. It’s a simple concept, so I know you won’t be able to. Just keep going off on tangents and introducing FUD, we have come to expect it now.
Jason, I bet a doughnut I’ve read more of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in the original Latin than you have, and more Friedman, Rothbard, Sowell, Hayek, Rand, and more … well, everything, I bet. I’ve bet I’ve had more college courses in art, music, politics, science, history and technology.
Heck, when I was at UW-Madison, I was even invited to speak to conservative students on the topic of running conservative student newspapers at the University of Chicago.
So who doesn’t understand what “liberal education” might mean, even from Owen’s dog-whistling?
Teachers have a hard enough time getting the students to do what’s asked in the syllabus and learn what’s taught for the course, than to spend extra time indoctrinating them in their personal political beliefs.
And what exactly is it about non-conservative beliefs that magically sink in and are absorbed once heard, if spoken? Why would the students change their minds?
“Jason, I bet a doughnut I’ve read more of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in the original Latin than you have, and more Friedman, Rothbard, Sowell, Hayek, Rand, and more … well, everything, I bet. I’ve bet I’ve had more college courses in art, music, politics, science, history and technology.”
And yet you are not as smart as the average bear.
>Jason, I bet a doughnut I’ve read more of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in the original Latin than you have, and more Friedman, Rothbard, Sowell, Hayek, Rand, and more … well, everything, I bet. I’ve bet I’ve had more college courses in art, music, politics, science, history and technology.
Good for you. Based on your interactions here with me, you’re still a drooling idiot void of original thought. Not a thing you have said in the past years ehre have impressed me much.
Enjoy your increased feelings of self worth after that verbal vomit… if you want more help, I suggest you reach out – 1-800-273-8255 is there for you.
“Owen’s dog whistling”?
I love whenever someone exposes a huge problem with the total, utter, intolerance of liberalism, it is dismissed as “dog-whistling”.
The screaming of “religion”, “bigotry”, “racism” or “dog whistling” to dismiss the, most often conservative, point is part of the evil PC cancer of America.
k:
I have never, repeat, never asked you to renounce your religion. I have asked you to be more curious, more tolerant, and more accepting of scientific discoveries. I have always said that you are free to practice whatever religion you choose. You are once again making up a false narrative to make yourself feel more in control.
And no, I’m not in a cult or a cabal, nor am I a bishop or a marxist. Again, you made that all up. Is dishonesty your 11th commandment?
So, using your absolute truth; How old is the earth? And what leads you to believe that?
And no, I have never made that claim. You are lying again.
j:
That was a pretty classy and smart comment by yours truly. I’m glad you recognized it for the astute observation that it was.
And note; I didn’t call anyone any names, make fun of their parents, ethnicity, education, IQ, appearance, disabilities, military service, etc. Maybe you and others should try that.
And there goes Pathological Liar Le Roi trying to deflect the issue again.
Note to Pathological Liar Le Roi, it’s a boring subject.
Ask yourself a question, Kevin. What does Owen’s “liberal education” include and what does it exclude, and why?
Well, being skeptical is a good thing, unless you’re skeptical of TRUTH, which is the default setting for Lefties. Often, their skepticism moves to “DENIAL” and here you have LeeeeeeeeeeeeeeRoy!!
FWIW, you may think that British Poetry is a topic which will not easily bear radical-Left lecture time. You would be wrong! UW-Whitewater students are subjected to Lefty political BS while reading Donne.
See, ‘having nothing to do with it’ is no bar to committed Lefty jagwad professors.
I went to UW-Madison in the late 1990s. I took a class in religious studies, which was pretty conservative.
I took a class in weather before the climate change hoax started and that was pretty straight forward.
The rest of the classes was a bunch of liberal professors spouting their view points and I spouted my conservative view points, which was fine except for 1 professor who failed without cause. I appealed and won.
Later I took classes up at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc and I learned more my in speciality, special education, in two years, than I learned at 5 years at UW-Madison.
Uh oh, last month at kirche kaffeeklatsch Dad29 heard from a friend whose granddaughter went to UW-W a few years ago and the professor (or TA?) said A Thing that did not sound like it came from Fox News, Therefore Bad!
Go on, Dad! Tell us who it was, and what they said, and why it caused granddaughter to forever believe the Bad Thing, as opposed to remembering the details of The Dream of the Rood for the mid-term.
Mar, I think you meant “The rest of the classes were a bunch of liberal professors spouting their view points.” You should’ve done more listening than spouting.
The Imaginative Jiffster creates a scenario wholly alien to the actual situation, but Wiki’d one Old English poem in an attempt to impress the masses.
Pass.
>Pass.
Good call, I’ll start doing that as well with the mouth breathing lefties who troll us as well.
I can see all the liberal cult members are in total denial about the problem.
Wow.
The zeal of the liberal cult is incredible.
dud:
How are you going to know something is the “truth” unless you have something to compare it with? I surely won’t take claims made on this site like “the earth is 6000 years old”, or the president saying that the Brits had airports during the Revolutionary War (or any of his other 16000+ incorrect statements) without being skeptical of those absurd statements and making an informed decision for myself. Or are you so gullible and rooted in your confirmation bias as to take everything as “truth”. I prefer to pursue curiosity and, therefor, truth.
You’re all dodging the issue.
So Owen says we need a more classically liberal education, and that the Democrat professors are somehow magically super-powerful and that although they’ve struggled their entire careers to get this year’s crop to absorb the course material, that on top of the subject matter they’ve taken more precious class time to spout their liberal nonsense talking points, and that somehow the innocent children are absorbing that without issue.
So the solution is… more conservative teachers? Well, why isn’t the marketplace supplying that, if that’s what the students or their paying parents really want? And it’s Bad if the liberal teachers are spouting their nonsense, but it would be Good if the conservative teachers spout their counter-nonsense? And somehow, again, against centuries of evidence to the contrary, suddenly the youth will become properly conservative because of that?
And Dad29 = you’re the one who floats the anecdote that some English lit professor at UW-W said something Bad. What did they say? How did you hear about it?
Libs,
When we get to the point where truth of biological gender is denied to the point where people get ostracized for believing in science of biological sex….that is a wackadoo climate culture.
Liberal,and Liberty: Both from the same root word and origin, the Latin word “Liber”, meaning “free”.
That must really stick in your craw, right k?
And no one will chide Kevin for topic drift.
Pass
“So Owen says we need a more classically liberal education, and that the Democrat professors are somehow magically super-powerful and that although they’ve struggled their entire careers to get this year’s crop to absorb the course material, that on top of the subject matter they’ve taken more precious class time to spout their liberal nonsense talking points, and that somehow the innocent children are absorbing that without issue.” Many, not all professors bring out in their syllabus and the books that are the students are mandated to read, including professors who force you to buy the books the professor writes.
Nobody suggested otherwise. Truth is verifiable.
Jiffster: pass.
Prerequisite understanding: no one has the right to be wrong; thus “free” to do what is right. This will trip up Lefties who confuse “liberal” with “license.”
“So the solution is… more conservative teachers? Well, why isn’t the marketplace supplying that, if that’s what the students or their paying parents really want?”
Who hires the professors and grant tenure? The liberal professors. You think they want to hire someone who will criticize their life’s work? Someone who is philosophically different than them?
You think professors really care what parents think? Of course not.
“Nobody suggested otherwise”
But you did, “unless you’re skeptical of TRUTH”.
Nord, modern day liberals want to be called “progressives” to reflect their evil authoritarian ideas.
Modern day liberals reflect no truth in the root of the word…it goes hand in hand with their rejection of absolute truth. So even word meanings are destroyed by the cancer of PC liberalism.
You can’t acknowledge that because you reject simple truth.
Mar, requiring you to read a challenging book causes you to change your mind?
jjf, who said the books were challenging? Forcing students to buy the professor’s or their colleagues books was them lining their own pockets.
I have no problem reading challenging books.
But let me ask you this…if you, as a student, liberal or conservative, questioned the professor about a book he wrote and told him you strongly disagreed with them, what kind of grade do you think you would get from them?
Mar, as any teacher will tell you, that conversation or debate wouldn’t matter. Your tests and assignments matter.
Do you think a conservative professor would show a bias in their grading against the half of the class that might be more lefty than themselves?
Yah, sorry, I thought that you could apprehend “Truth.” My bad.
Careful everyone, he’s using his Capital Letters again! There’s a Hidden Meaning!