Defund Academia

Deflect with snide remarks, if you wish. It will not solve the horrible track record, waste, corruption, racism, and religious bigotry that is systemic within academia.

 

Long on opinion; short on facts.

 

Nice summation of virtually EVERYTHING the OP posts.

 

Yes. Quite a few, in fact, but I'm old and school was different then.

I stand by my post. If conservatives want academia to change, they need to do it from within the system. I'm tired of hearing the whining from people who don't have the courage of their convictions, at least not to the extent required to take on a difficult, low-paying, and often thankless job.

 

@usfan The Far Left members here will attempt to ridicule you into silence because ridicule and criticism defended as "free speech" is, as you well know, the strategy. Liberals will back up the Far Left in opposition to your opinion because you are a conservative.

Marxist theory grew into Cultural Marxism on college campuses years ago when only 20% of professors in the Sociology Departments were self-proclaimed Marxists. They successfully expanded the "_______ Studies" departments, where the blank is "Women's", "Gender", "Grievance", and a host of "______ Studies" where you can fill the blank with an "oppressed" race. "Oppressed" by the white man and by default, by America itself. Those few departments taught college students Critical Theory over rational theories from The Enlightenment. Now those college students are teaching "standardized curriculum" in our public schools which relies more on emotion than on science and reason. "What do you feel like today, Jimmy? A boy or a girl? Whatever you think is reality." Biology is a social construct now, not open to discussion of empirical evidence.

The Far Left knows what they are doing and the Liberals won't believe you or me, because "Conservatives don't know what they are talking about". That is a neo-scientific fact of emotion. No intellectual debate allowed.

Fortunately, some very Liberal and even Socialist-leaning college professors are speaking out, now that they are being labelled "bigots", "racists" and "conservatives" and the mob is trying, sometimes successfully, to have Liberal professors fired and de-legitimized, or "cancelled". This will teach the future generation of academics not to dissent and stay silent. Liberal professors are starting to speak with growing alarm about the squashing of free speech on their campuses and the infiltration of all the sciences by these Critical Theorists to the "new truth" that "Emotion > Reason".

I applaud you for your awareness, but I fear our words fall on deaf ears. Personally, I am watching the stand being taken by the Liberals who are "in the know" and wish them success in their battle to maintain real free speech in this country. The Far Left will not listen to conservatives. If the Far Left will also not listen to the Liberals, this country is indeed doomed.

 

You two need to get a room where you can share your absurd extremist rightwing conspiracy theories without any "nasty lib'ruls" exposing them to the ridicule they deserve.

 

You are as free to speak your opinion here, as are we. Your suggestion to "get a room" suggests that dissenting opinions go some place where they cannot be heard. Yet, this forum is a "safe space" for the free exchange of ideas, unlike today's college campuses, and increasingly, in today's corporations. You must understand that freedom of speech ends when it effectively demands "silence or else" where the "else" is the cost a person's career and livelihood. You may be cancelled some day, and I expect you will not be rolling of the floor laughing about it.

 

I was responding to what YOU posted here...

Furthermore if you don't realize that what you and the OP are posting are just DEBUNKED conspiracy drivel than that is NOT my problem and yes, those conspiracies do deserve to be RIDICULED.

If you want to AVOID your conspiracies being exposed to their well deserved ridicule then I recommend that you make use of the FORUM that is specifically DESIGNATED for your conspiracies. You can find it in the basement where it belongs.

And since you MISSED the OBVIOUS it is the OP that is ADVOCATING that educators be "silenced" and you were being his cheerleader when it came to silencing them so it doesn't look like you have much room to talk when it comes to flinging around accusations.

Have a nice day!

 

The problem with the current education model is that federal funding is being used to subsidize an employer's certification of competent employees. The goal of the current model of education isn't to learn skills, it's to obtain certification for employment. All that needs to happen to solve the problem is for employers to develop their own certification process. Technology makes it easy for them to do so, and it is already happening. The less they rely on degrees as a barrier to hiring, the more schools will have to focus on actually educating students.

 

I agreed with the OP on the current existential dangers facing the country which is directly related to the education the most recent generation or two of our children have been exposed.

I did not speak to, not do I agree with every thought the OP proposed as a solution. For instance, it is federally "standardized" education which is part of what got us into this mess, so "standardized education" is not the solution in my opinion, though we certainly do need to improve our efforts to regain our competitiveness in basic reading, writing, math and "real" science. I am very much in favor of giving parents and option of private charter schools and would be fine with defunding federalized education and returning public education to local and state oversight. If the elites send their children to private schools to prevent the warping of young minds currently being done in public schools, then all citizens need an affordable option to get a better, private education for their own children.

Further, it is the very freedom allowed in America which will tolerate intolerant and authoritarian Postmodern and Neo-Marxist thoughts to have a voice. People have a right to have fringe and anarchist ideals in this country. They do not have a right to act on those ideals and take over the only education system available to parents and children. No particular ideology should dominate education. We simply need more alternatives to public schooling where parents can essentially vote by putting their children in public school or in an alternative educational option. Simply put, public schooling should not have a monopoly on education when parents strongly disagree with the "standardized curriculum".

 

Here is the punchline. It has to do with leftist political propaganda. Where are all of the evil and violent White nationalists that the Left keeps trying to keep the nation terrified of? All we ever see are violent and racist leftists burning up entire sections of cities; and yet those violent people are typically supported by the Dem Party and its leadership and especially by academia while they claim that White nationalists are everywhere and are violent and are racists. So where are they?

Why aren't THEY violently rioting if there are so many of them and they are so evil? It's because they are mostly just a Saul Alinsky style political fable, a useful tool of the political Left; the political Left which in fact is doing AND promoting all of the political violence in this nation. Violence supported by leftist academia and leftist politicians and the media outlets owing political loyalty . . . to . . . the . . . Left.

 

Even the still thinking Left is gagging on the neo-Fascist tactics of AntiFa/BLM.

"More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement."
HARPERS, A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, July 7, 2020.
https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

 

Fellow conspiracy believers!

Got it!

Are you totally UNAWARE that it is STANDARDIZED education that enables OTHER nations to BEAT us when it comes to educating our children?

Sure seems that way given the content of your posts.

Which already EXIST so why are you beating a dead horse?

Good grief!

We already HAVE "local and state oversight" in PUBLIC schools!

Are you also UNAWARE that there are over 13,000 school districts nationwide which ALL have OVERSIGHT of their local PUBLIC schools?

Needless to say that you are probably also UNAWARE that there is virtually ZERO oversight by LOCAL authorities of PRIVATE charter schools.

https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/19671/

What makes it an "affordable option"?

Stealing TAXPAYER dollars to SUBSIDIZE the wealthy sending their kids to PRIVATE schools which charge more than lower class people can afford even WITH the taxpayer subsidies?

That is WHY we have a SECULAR form of government.

It is only the PARANOIA of those who HATE public schools who fallaciously allege that there is some IMAGINARY "marxist ideology" among all public school teachers NATIONWIDE.

In simple terms public schooling DOES NOT have ANY "monopoly on education"!

 

Why don’t they lynch anymore is what you mean to ask.

The answer is the federal government told states to stop allowing lynching. This was in the 1930s and helps to explain the transition to blacks people rioting against racism. They were in the same political party. It’s really about local and state support. Think why Cliven Bundy didn’t turn violent. Local officials didn’t want to start fighting, neither did the state, so the federal government backed off. When the bird sanctuary sit in started the state and federal government were aligned, so arrests were made. Now if you want to ask about terrorism? That’s just a simple number games. There are more right wing domestic terrorists in the US.

 

So why hasn't Betsy deVos done anything to change it? All I've seen her do is play a shell game with funding, and no actual work on the problems you suggest exist. Why aren't you holding those at the top accountable?

 

I did not bring up lynching. That was something that a leftist did because said leftist was disturbed over the fact that it's ONLY the political Left being violent and destroying huge sections of cities -- fully endorsed by the Dem Party's leadership and its media outlets. So the question remains, where is this leftist boogy man, the EVIL and VIOLENT White Nationalist? Gasp! Nowhere to be found.

All the nation sees are violent leftists . . . being . . . violent leftists. Yet academia gives violent leftists an absolute free pass while it promotes the idea that White Nationalists are the violent ones and area terrible threat to this nation. Violent leftists? Permanent free pass!

 

Very ironic..

So, if i claimed 'systemic racism!' In the police, and called for defunding, you'd delete that, too? And infract me?

..the hypocrisy and double standards from progressive indoctrinees is mind boggling...

 

The FBI disagrees with your assessment of domestic terrorist groups.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/confronting-white-supremacy

"Individuals adhering to racially motivated violent extremism ideology have been responsible for the most lethal incidents among domestic terrorists in recent years, and the FBI assesses the threat of violence and lethality posed by racially motivated violent extremists will continue."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out...ates#Domestic_violent_extremist_organizations

 

That same FBI under Obama took the known to be politically corrupt Southern Poverty Law Center's biased leftist political propaganda pronouncements regarding all Right of Center organizations as absolute gospel and -- of course -- utterly ignored the rise and careful nurturing of violent leftist ANTIFA by the Dem Party's leadership and its operatives.

 

The American Experiment has already been destroyed - in part for some of the reasons you suggest but - you miss out on some of the major reasons and forget to include complicity on the Red side.

 

I received my first infraction a week ago. It doesn't matter that I didn't intend the offense that was taken, and I accepted it and thanked the mods for their heads up. If someone feels that this isn't an open forum, then I would have thought they'd want no part in it. I know I wouldn't participate in a place that I felt exercised overt censorship.

 

Lol you’re calling lynching done by leftists? Sweetie this was one of the big way white people would riot. This is ridiculous. Like if you’re not getting this basic idea here that riots take many different forms, then I’m not going to educate you. Some of the earliest riots was literally Christmas. It was more of an old world tradition though, but we had similar riots to that in the past.

In terms of white nationalist groups? PF has a couple of threads talking about how “militias” will steer antifa, blm, or some other boogeyman away. You’ve already seen them. Or we can think of it more broadly. Why would you riot when you’re fixing the vote to favor your side? There’s no electoral incentive to riot.

 

The ideal solution:

Government out of education.

Here's why..
1. It inevitably becomes a public funded Indoctrination scheme. No matter how noble and altruistic it begins.
2. It is a magnet for do-nothing scoundrels, looking for a way to live without working.
3. Public sector employees and their unions (another practice that should end), are inherently conflicts of interest, with elected officials beholden to their donations.
4. Open markets are best for EVERYTHING ELSE, why not let free trade run education?
5. Parents and the individual child are responsible for their own lives and futures, as they should be.
6. Waste and corruption always accompany govt run programs.