Sunday, May 13, 2007

Deranged attempt to pass the buck for negligence

Look at this quote today from a newspaper in Indiana about a cheating scandal at the Indiana University Dental School in which nine students were kicked out of school and 16 were suspended and 21 more were reprimanded. That means that 46 students out of a student body of 95 were involved in the cheating - more than half of IU's dental school.

So what do the academics who are teaching these students have to say for such a high rate of cheating in their institutions? They blame George Bush, of course. Here's what Dr. Anne Koerber, associate professor of dentistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an expert in dental education had to say: "When you have persons in high places who clearly lie about what's happening with weapons of mass destruction... I think the general public gets the idea that anything that makes money is what's right."

Students cheat on a dental college test and the reason is Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction? You can argue about WMD all you want, and even after you reject everything that George Tenet has said and Bob Woodward and Bush himself - as well as the heads of foreign intel services - but when you blame cheating dentists on George Bush it shows you have come off the rails.

What this shows to me is that the left lie machine is very good. People do actually believe everything - everything - is Bush's fault. And I think if they would kill our enemies abroad as effectively as they kill political opponents at home, this country would be much better off.

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What I have been taught in college

Today I finished my third year of college. This time next year I will graduate with a degree in history in secondary education. What have I learned over the past 3 years? Well, I'll tell you.

* I've learned that Iran isn't a big threat to Israel or the United States, and that it's all right for them to have nuclear bombs simply because we do. It's only fair. I've learned terrorism is overrated, and that it really isn't a big threat. Bush, on the other hand, uses the same tactics as Hitler and is just as evil and dangerous.

* Universal health care will be successful in America if the mean, evil conservatives would just allow the ideal to prosper. Cuba has full health care coverage and 100% literacy. We should model ourselves after them. Fidel is just a good idealist and if it weren't for the embargo they would be a success.

* Of course, Bush lied, people died. Bush, Cheney and his lackeys went into Iraq for oil and disregarded the fact that that every federal department and the international community knew he didn't have them. He created terrorism, 9/11 was an inside job, and he is profiting off the death of US soldiers, who are rapists and murderers anyway.

* The US is a torturing nation, and we treat prisoners so inhumanely. Never mind the beheading of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl; we are the ones who are barbarians. The only reason why the terrorists did that is because we torture. It was their way of responding. We should understand their grievances.

* I've learned the media is a mouthpiece of the Bush administration. Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and Murdoch are the biggest threat to the airwaves. PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, and NPR are all on the lap of the neo-cons.

* Global warming is 100% real and it is Bush's fault that it has gotten this bad. The air sucks, the water is no better than drinking dirt, and polar bears are dying off faster than the ice caps.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of what I have learned over the past 3 years in academia. These people who live in the prism of liberalism, which don't see anything but their sick isolated worldview. God forbid you have a different opinion; you are some kind of criminal.

If you believe in God you're a delinquent, but if you believe in Marx you are noble. If you believe in conservatism you're on the fringe, but if you're a liberal you are just what is. If you say the word terrorist you're an Islamophobe, but if you say freedom fighter you're being courageous.

I thought liberals were supposed to be open minded and tolerant. I see more and more each day that it is not the case. So long as academia indoctrinates students in to believing socialism, neo-liberalism, and Marxism is all right and should be tolerated, I am nervous for the future of this country. These people sieve power so to indoctrinate and we need a conservative movement to let them know they are wrong, and radical anything is never justifiable.

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The Idea of a University

"Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life." John Henry Newman

When considering university reform, it is important to keep in mind what the purpose of a university is so that we may know how far we have strayed from it and what we can do to return to it.

During the Dark Age following the barbarian invasions that toppled the Roman Empire, monasteries served as the centers of culture. They were kept in a loose affiliation with each other through the Church's structure and traveling Irish monks. These monasteries served as centers of learning where monks would study and preserve manuscripts, mostly consisting of the Bible and writings of the Church Fathers.

The ninth-century Frankish king Charlemagne sought to educate the largely illiterate clergy in his kingdom. This revival in learning spawned an interest in scholarship for its own sake. Latin classics and the Latin language were studied once again. Charlemagne established learning centers in every monastery and cathedral. Intellectual growth in Europe developed from these schools. The tenth century saw the collection of a number of classical works and new manuscripts into libraries. The Crusades brought the re-conquest of Iberia and Southern Italy, which gained for European scholars access to classical manuscripts lost to Christendom for centuries. New learning caused a revival of Roman jurisprudence, which spurred further interest in learning.

Those who could read and write were restricted almost entirely to the clergy. Thus the new cathedral schools, replacing monastic ones, attracted students who came to study for the priesthood. Through the eleventh century, students sought teachers to instruct them. The twelfth century saw the establishment of what could be considered the first universities. Instead of the school following the teacher and students gathering where one could instruct them, the teacher followed the school and moved to an institution where other scholars and students had congregated.

In a town there might be a number of different schools for different disciplines, such as medicine and law. These schools formed guilds with other schools of the same discipline and developed standards requisite for teachers. In the early thirteenth century, schools in Paris and Bologna were recognized as bodies of scholars and they gained legal standing as a universitaset societas magistrorum discipulorumque ("a learned society or society of masters and scholars") from both the king and the Pope. The present form of the university finds its origin in these societies.

Dorothy Sayers described a university education during the Middle Ages in "The Lost Tools of Learning", a 1947 lecture delivered at Oxford University. The curriculum was composed of the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The Trivium, the first part of the learning process, was divided into three categories to be mastered successively: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Sayers describes them thusly: "The student would then be required to write and to defend an essay. He should be able to speak clearly and intelligently and defend his position against heckling and intense questioning. The goal was to provide the student with the tools of learning, that when he encountered new knowledge and situations, he would be able to understand the problem and devise a solution. The Quadrivium consisted of subjects learned with the skills provided by the Trivium."

In The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman describes the purpose of a university as a liberal education, the acquisition of knowledge. He defines an educated mind thusly: "something intellectual, something which grasps what it perceives through the senses; something which takes a view of things; which sees more than the senses convey; which reasons upon what it sees, and while it sees; which invests it with an idea." This requires the medieval conception of the Trivium for the tools of learning, and the Quadrivium for the content.

Practical reasons for acquiring knowledge and becoming an educated mind are obvious. But, as Russell Kirk said, the university should not be a place to learn simple practicalities "as a means to material ends." It should exist as "an intellectual means to an ethical end", to impart to the student virtue, the skills of the Trivium, and the knowledge of the Quadrivium. Ultimately the goal of this education should be ethical, that the student acquires a sense of "right reason, humane inclinations, and sound taste"-ultimately that the student may be made a gentleman. I think it's quite reasonable to say our universities are failing in this regard.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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