Truth, Not What Universities Teach

[oldfart]

When my kid comes home from school I want her to be able to explain how she solved a math problem or parsed a sentence. I don't want to hear that republicans want kids to die or want dirty air and dirty water. It's not just the universities. Their brainwashing starts in kindergarten.

One of the purposes of elementary school was to teach love of country and patriotism. To this end history was bent to achieve this purpose. Would you be against bending history to achieve those purposes today? Should students be taught the truth as best we know it or should schools bend the truth to create better citizens and maybe a better America?

Good point.

Personally I think that teaching children anything false is a bad idea. So most of the slant in early education comes from sins of omission. We don't talk much about slavery or race relations, or American wars fought for less than noble purposes. All of the Founding Fathers were saints (except the ones we don't talk about). Society is held together with a series of socially useful myths.

But if our objective is to produce thoughtful and knowledgeable citizens, at some point we must supplement those myths with a more realistic look at our history and institutions. College is too late for this, as not everyone will go to college. We don't do much of it in high school, because it would be politically unpopular. I think it should start in middle school and expand each year thereafter.

SPAM WARNING. I'm fond of the "Lies my Teacher Told Me" series by Jim Loewen, who is now retired and needs the royalties. Please buy his books, they are also good reads.

 

[daveman]

"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."
-- Thomas Sowell

 

[DGS49]

The narrative of History is not as clear as we would want it to be. The best example is the American Civil War, and the President who led "us" through it (none of my ancestors was on this continent in 1860-64).

Was it fought to free the slaves? One could argue very forcefully that it was not.

Was Lincoln an abolitionist? Hell no. How many Americans are aware that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free anyone, and even if it had, it left the slaves in four states alone, not even purporting to free them.

Did the seceding states have a constitutional right to secede? Probably. But the Union could not survive without the tarriffs coming from Southern trade.

In my opinion, grade school and high school students should be taught the "conventional wisdom" of history. When they get to college they can read different opinions and start to draw their own conclusions.

 

[itfitzme]

There is a certain kind of "equality" taught in the universities.
And it's bogus.

Does the fact that one can find similarities suggest that the items are the same? Does the fact that there are different cultures mean that all of them are equally worthy, or successful?
Both science, and society, seem to have generalized that view.
Such is postmodernism, and secularization.





1. "Lying deep in [Thomas Henry] Huxley's personality and acting as foundation for his views on educational reform was an aesthetic principle: the design of unity in diversity. His research on board H. M. S. Rattlesnake manifested the search for (or imposition upon) unity among the various animals netted and examined: among Ascideans (e. g. sea-squirts), Cephalopoda (e.g., squids and snails), and, of signal importance, his discovery of parallels between adult jellyfish and embryonic vertebrates. Later, he devoted himself to the revelation of unity among diverse mammals, e.g., apes and human beings." The Huxley File § 12 Unity in Diversity




2. The term 'university' is thought to be a composite of the words 'unity' and 'diversity.' When one attends a university, he/she is supposed to be guided in the quest to find unity in diversity- namely how the diverse fields of knowledge, e.g.,. the arts, philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics, etc., fit together in a unified picture of life. Not the case.
The modern university has not only abandoned this challenge....but has reversed it.

3. Instead of universities, we now have pluraversities, strange institutions that deem every viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous, just as valid as any other.
Of course, there is one exception: religion. It is the one viewpoint that is considered intolerant and bigoted on most college campuses.
Geisler and Turek, "...Faith to be an Atheist," p. 19.






4. When confronted with the dogma of Left, be aware of self-defeating statements...those that fail to meet their own standards. An example would be the ubiquitous 'there is no real truth, no absolutes.' Really? In that case the statement defeats itself, and cannot be true. It's like someone saying 'I can't speak a word of English'....in English.

a. Our postmodern culture is rife with such statements like 'all truth is relative'....which must be relatively false. Imagine college professors offering as truth, 'there is no truth.'

b. "There are no absolutes'....are you absolutely certain of that? "It's true for you, but not for me"...Is that statement true just for you, or is it true for everyone? Try saying that to the police, or your bank teller, or the IRS.
Geisler and Turek, Op.Cit.


c. The roots of postmodernism can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other.
Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity. The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles."
Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"






5. If we do not teach right and wrong...what shall we expect?
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” C. S. Lewis, "The Abolition of Man, " p.35.



So....all ideas in science are not equally good, nor are all cultures equally good.
Only the simplest folks, with the most perfunctory of insights believe them to be.


Hopefully, graduates will be able to demolish the shackles of relativity and return to the values of our founders.

Yeah, I see you aren't educated.

 

[Old Rocks]

If parents and taxpayers ask their elementary school to teach the world is flat, should the school teach the world is flat? How far should schools go in trying to meet taxpayer's and parent's different ideas of what should be taught?
What about universities?

That's why public schools should be abolished. People shouldn't have to pay for having their kids pumped full of ideas they oppose. With private schools, if you want your kid to be taught that the earth is flat, then you are the only one paying for it.

Well, obviously, school of any sort never made an impression on you.

 

[Old Rocks]

If the universities do not teach the truth, why do we have them? Perhaps universities are only places to store the commies so we can keep an eye on them? If the universities are not a source of truth, what institutions are; our political parties, posters, advertising agencies, religions, what?

Universities exist to indoctrinate your kids with the ideas that support the government's authority to rule us. Any claims to the contrary are simply delusional eyewash.

How the hell would you know? Someone that never made it past the third grade is hardly in any position to state what universities teach.

 

[Old Rocks]

The narrative of History is not as clear as we would want it to be. The best example is the American Civil War, and the President who led "us" through it (none of my ancestors was on this continent in 1860-64).

Was it fought to free the slaves? One could argue very forcefully that it was not.

Was Lincoln an abolitionist? Hell no. How many Americans are aware that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free anyone, and even if it had, it left the slaves in four states alone, not even purporting to free them.

Did the seceding states have a constitutional right to secede? Probably. But the Union could not survive without the tarriffs coming from Southern trade.

In my opinion, grade school and high school students should be taught the "conventional wisdom" of history. When they get to college they can read different opinions and start to draw their own conclusions.

Well, disagree with you, civilaly, on many points. First, in high school, my American History teacher was a full blooded Apache indian. Now he did not state that the history books distorted the conflict between the US and the Native Americans. He merely read the inventory of orchards, sheep, granaries, that Gen. Kit Carson burned during his wars with the Apache and Navajo.

My great-grandfather fought from Fort Donaldson, Shiloh, to New Orleans. On the other side, they settled in New Amsterdam in the mid-1600's, and moved west with the frontier, ending up in the Oregon territory after the Civil War. All of my ancestors fought for the Union, and most believed that the South had no right to secede.

Since the North survived quite well during the Civil War without the tariffs from tobacco and cotton, I would have to say that that premise was faulty.

 

[Unkotare]

We don't do much of it in high school, ....

Yes they do.