In a Baltimore Sun OpEd (requires free registration) today, Northwestern law professor Steven Lubet offers what has become the conventional liberal wisdom about the lack of conservatives on campus: tough noogies.
That’s, of course, not exactly what he said. What he said is that conservatives are hypocritical
since they usually deny that disproportionate statistics can be taken as proof of discrimination. When it comes to employment discrimination or affirmative action, conservatives will blithely insist that the absence of minorities (in a work force or student body) simply means that there were too few “qualified applicants.” And don’t bother talking to them about a “glass ceiling” or “mommy track” that impedes women’s careers. That’s not discrimination, they say, it’s “self-selection.”
That “blithely” may be rhetorically excessive, but, O.K., let’s grant Lubet his Gotcha! point. Now let’s score the predictable Gotcha! point for the good guys by pointing out the equally clear hypocrisy on Lubet’s side: liberals see “disproportionate statistics” as proof of discrimination everywhere except on campus:
Perhaps fewer conservatives than liberals are willing to endure the many years of poverty-stricken graduate study necessary to qualify for a faculty position. Perhaps conservatives are smarter than liberals, and recognize that graduate school is a poor investment, given the scant job opportunities that await new Ph.D.s. Or perhaps studious conservatives are more attracted to the greater financial rewards of industry and commerce.
Beyond the ivy walls, there are many professions that are dominated by Republicans. You will find very few Democrats (and still fewer outright liberals) among the ranks of corporate CEOs, military officers or professional football coaches. Yet no one complains about these imbalances, and conservatives will no doubt explain that the seeming disparities are merely the result of market forces.
Let’s be generous and not give Lubet a hard time — or at least not too hard a time — for his blatantly erroneous claim that “no one complains” about, say, the “underrepresentation” of minority professional football coaches.
Rhetorical digs (“blithely” “don’t bother talking to them”) and errors aside, the fact is this “You’re one!”/”You’re one, too!” is tiresome and boring. I think, however, that Lubet’s LCW (Liberal Conventional Wisdom) is subject to another, more telling criticism than the usual “You’re hypocritical, too!” And that is that the conservative and liberal responses to “disproportionate statistics” are not really parallel at all.
When liberals see statistical disparities, they used to claim “disparate impact” discrimination. Now, in a difference that is more stylistic than substantive, they call for racial preferences to produce “diversity.” I have not studied every nook and cranny of David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, from what I have seen there is no call for preferences or even mild, outreach affirmative action for conservatives. David Horowitz has been as explicit about this as he can, as here:
… because I am a well-known conservative and have published studies of political bias in the hiring of college and university professors, critics have suggested that the Academic Bill of Rights is really a “right-wing plot” to stack faculties with political conservatives by imposing hiring quotas. Indeed, opponents of legislation in Colorado have exploited that fear, writing numerous op-ed pieces about alleged right-wing plans to create affirmative-action programs for conservative professors.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The actual intent of the Academic Bill of Rights is to remove partisan politics from the classroom. The bill that I’m proposing explicitly forbids political hiring or firing: “No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs.” The bill thus protects all faculty members —
‘. Now let’s score the predictable Gotcha! point for the good guys by pointing out the equally clear hypocrisy on Lubet’s side: liberals see “disproportionate statistics” as proof of discrimination everywhere except on campus:’
Of course, the retort is that race and sex are very different than political ideology. For one, the first two are immutable. For two, its really hard to see how they are related to the merits of the positions which they are being hired for.
“There is absolutely nothing in the Academic Bill of Rights about affirmative action for conservatives or any other group or set of ideas. The rights the bill delineates are negative rights, limits on what authorities in the university community and outside it may do.”
If it was for homosexuals they would be called ‘special rights’.
Actus,
You’ve made David Horowitz’s point. Ideology should have nothing to do with the hiring process, and yet you have the academic belief that conservative ideas are academically fraudulent somehow. You’ve got so many academics that say as much; I’m sure John has documented this. This is what Horowitz is talking about. And this is what he wants to eliminate.
‘Ideology should have nothing to do with the hiring process, and yet you have the academic belief that conservative ideas are academically fraudulent somehow’
Oh no. I think you misunderstand. Its not that ideology predetermines academic merit, its that ideology is bound up in how academics is done in way that race and gender isn’t. Never fear, if you’re a conservative, there’s lots of nice corporate funded thinktanks for you to practice at though.
Frankly I think the dearth of conservatives in academe has to do with the general distaste that conservatives have for academe. A distaste exhibited even for their own, conservative, academics.
You are incorrect, actus. I used to teach in academia… in the liberal arts. I have no distaste for academia. I do have a distaste for living in an environment in which I (white, heterosexual and male) am supposed to bow my head in shame for my purported class transgressions. I left because I got fed up with the brow beating.
You are ignoring the obvious. Particularly in the liberal arts, adherence to the group think of very leftist politics (far outside the electorate’s view even of what is appropriately leftist) is the price of admission. Someday, someone will find a way to effectively fight this through lawsuit.
I hope my former employers pay big time. And I think that it is very snotty of you to comment so blithely about the ambitions of others. How is it you are in on this information about people’s private desires and motivations?
Answer: You’re making it up because it serves your theory.
No good conservative advocates a quota system for conservatives in academia, or any type of “affirmative action.” I don’t care that all my professors are liberal. I care if they are impartial and that they at least grant that there is reason behind arguments they may disagree with. But largely, this is not how it works. By virtue of making a conservative argument, your argument is inherently flawed in the eyes of most academics. And that’s a problem, especially when a lot of academics cling to very radical ideas much more suitable to the Russian mainstream than the American mainstream.
Case in point. In most argumentative, philisophical papers I’ve written at UVa I tend to include either or both of the following elements:
1) All moral good derives from God and/or His laws
2) The free market most often works the best
And for those ready to call me a “right-winger”, this is not a fair description. If I mention God it is out of necessity – think Thomas Jefferson and not Jerry Falwell. For example, on a paper about Frankenstein I discussed Genesis and the whole thing about God creating Man in his image, and Frankenstein’s monster as a gross aboration of this idea. I went on to argue that Frankenstenstein’s monster lacked a soul, which accounts for his various misdeeds in the book. I got an A- on the paper. The teacher that gave me the grade I would describe as slightly left of center. I actually discussed politics with this professor and she was very open and curtious with me, even with ideas she obviously disagreed with me on. She was the model of how a teacher should behave in grading and in general with regards to sometimes contraversial topics.
Now I tell you about this so you can see in contrast another teacher I had for a politics class I was taking (the previous course I discussed was the first half of a 4th year thesis class for engineers.) One of the papers I wrote for the course was about Camus, the “absurdist.” Riddled through my paper about his ideas were clearly biased comments that my TA put in that reflected her ideas on Camus and ignored any of the points I made in my paper. The paper was about whether or not Camus’ absurdism could make a “real person” with defference to the ideas of Plato and our own. I argued that Plato acknowledges objective morals which Camus largely rejects. She actually wrote in the paper that discussion of morals was “outside the topic.” She went on to write several inflammatory statements in the margins. For example, when I claimed that Camus is a nihilist, and that Plato rejects nihilism, with ample citation, she wrote “Nihilist? This is a silly argument.” While this point certainly is arguable, many people have called Camus a nihilist. Cutting to the end of the story, the point is that the paper’s comments didn’t even closely resemble the other teacher’s comments on my papers. While the first professor wrote constructive comments about how my points might be made stronger (and even included comments like “good point”), the other teacher wrote oppositional, argumentative comments which were not written to help me but rather written to argue with me about my ideas. And oh, I got a C on my Camus paper, which, if you’re not aware, is understood to be the lowest grade you can get in a class like that, unless of course you wrote at a third grade level.
This is bias, my friends. And this is what we want to stop.
actus:
Of course, the retort is that race and sex are very different than political ideology. For one, the first two are immutable. For two, its really hard to see how they are related to the merits of the positions which they are being hired for.
So, anyone concerned about conservatives being underrepresented should counsel them to 1) become liberals, and immediately not be underrepresented any more; or 2) apply for jobs in departments where ideology could not plausibly be a qualification, as it presumably can be in the arts and social sciences.
Its not that ideology predetermines academic merit, its that ideology is bound up in how academics is done in way that race and gender isn’t.
So, actus, you would agree me that it is never justified to insist on hiring a black to teach black history, a Latino to teach immigration history, a woman to teach women’s history, etc.?
One minor point for you, actus — the disparity argument is not the only one we use. We can document the explicit use of ideology and/or religion in the hiring process as grounds for rejeting a candidate — even in fields where politics and religion are irrelevant.
You know, like a couple of years back when a Notre Dame assistant coach was rejected by a university president because his religious beliefs were not sufficiently diverse for the liberal campus.
‘You are incorrect, actus. I used to teach in academia… in the liberal arts. I have no distaste for academia.’
I don’t claim to account for every specific instance, but when even Our Leader introduces people with PhD’s as being competent despite such PhD’s, you can imagine how it makes PhD’s feel in general about conservatives.
Sorry that you felt guilty.
‘So, anyone concerned about conservatives being underrepresented should counsel them to 1) become liberals, and immediately not be underrepresented any more; or 2) apply for jobs in departments where ideology could not plausibly be a qualification, as it presumably can be in the arts and social sciences.’
I think they should concern themselves with not equating it to race and gender discrimination, because they’re not the same.
I wonder what it would add to this debate to know about the representation of conservatives is the less obviously ideological spheres, such as the sciences.
‘So, actus, you would agree me that it is never justified to insist on hiring a black to teach black history, a Latino to teach immigration history, a woman to teach women’s history, etc.?’
Only if your goal is gender or ethnic diversity.
‘You know, like a couple of years back when a Notre Dame assistant coach was rejected by a university president because his religious beliefs were not sufficiently diverse for the liberal campus.’
Somehow I don’t think coaching is very indicative of academe. Or even a part of it. But I may have a different opinion of what academe is than conservatives.
Actus-
You miss the point. It is literally impossible for political ideology to be inexorably bound to acadame. In the “fact” based courses (i.e. math, science, finance/econ, etc.) ones conservative or liberal leanings will not influence the outcome of 2+2 (the math doesn’t change). And, in other, interprative courses, ones interpretation of the material (history, political science, english, etc) is no more or less valid than any other interpretation of the material. Does the fact that in the epilogue to The Tempest I think Propsero is talking to God rather than the audience make me any less qualified to talk about Shakespeare than my professor from UVa, who drafted many an email attempting to convince me otherwise? If that is the case, shouldn’t all those government and history professors who openly advocated communism during the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s (and some who still do) should be barred from the profession because their insistance that a communist regime is superior has been proven 100% wrong by history?
Having a multitude of interpretations in these courses is even more important than having a “diverse faculty” as is currently defined because it encourages and inspires active and vigorous debate. I’m sure that my Shakespeare professor thought about some aspects of the Tempest and solidified her understanding of it while refuting my assertion that Properso was making up with God, as I’m sure that the free-market capitalists and liberal democracy advocats better understood and articulated their positions over the years while discussing issues with the Communist sympathizers.
Additionally, just because one person holds the popular thought about a given subject, doesn’t necessarily make that opinion correct. Think about how many people were convinced that the earth was flat and that it was the center of the universe, before others came along with a different interpretation of the data and ended up proving them wrong. If you were transplanted to the middle of Utah wouldn’t you think that you’re political opinions were still correct, despite their lack of acceptance by the local population?
If America’s universities are supposed to be great couldrons of thought and enlightened debate, why are you attempting to defend a status quo that inherently undermines that ideal?
There is a difference between the more politically loaded disciplines and less political disciplines (Although I fail to see how economics isn’t ideological). Specifically, Dan Klein’s research has shown that there’s a political imbalance across academia, but that it is especially strong in the social sciences and humanities — where the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is about 20:1.
In theory, this could still be a function of self-selection and other innocent measures, but I’m inclined to think that some part of the variance is explained by bias. There are two ways this could work. First, people may be disturbed by the political implications and assumptions of research. Second, politics is the default small talk among academics so it comes up continuously at meals and other casual time. Basically, Juan Cole has his head up his ass if he thinks search committee’s have no way of knowing a candidate’s politics.
On the one hand, I should acknowledge that this didn’t keep me from getting offers that were commensurate with my credentials, if not a little better. On the other hand, I saw my search as my chance to get a job not my chance to prove a point about bias, so (without lying) I did my best to pass. My experience was that there are many plausible points at which ideological discrimination could occur, but that a sufficently meek conservative can dodge them.
None of this is to suggest that I support a crackdown on academic political bias — the cure would probably be worse than the disease.
‘If America’s universities are supposed to be great couldrons of thought and enlightened debate, why are you attempting to defend a status quo that inherently undermines that ideal?’
Oh I don’t defend it. I think the conservative disdain for academic thought, which causes fewer conservatives to go into academe, is abhorrent and ought to end.
Oh I don’t defend it. I think the conservative disdain for academic thought, which causes fewer conservatives to go into academe, is abhorrent and ought to end
Actus, that is such a sophomoric comment. Somehow my distain for academic thought (whatever that is) hasn
Actually, I find the discussion of ideas to be more civil and productive when discussing with conservatives. I do not see the emotion-based personal attacks that seem to be de rigeur among liberals; one can have a true Socratic argument, and even switch sides during the discussion, then remain friends and colleagues afterward. I have rarely if ever experienced that degree of open-mindedness from liberals; I have personally experienced it to be at its worst in academia. Therefore, because I do not find emotional browbeating or deliberate personal antagonism appealing, I avoid these kinds of people and the places they frequent such as universities.
It has not been demonstrated that there will ever be a school that can teach general subjects and not establish religion, when funded by government. How can a school teach history, and leave religion out of account, and apart from evaluative considerations? Unless an example be given, all government schools are seen to be unconstitutional here. Then, also the entire leftist superstructure falls away; it has no non-aggressional base to sustain itself. The left feeds on aggression in the field of ideas, and dies without the money that is taken by aggression. So long as the governments schools remain, though, the left can say; ‘we are the learned, and we say communism is ideal’. No rational arguments can dissuade them; no extremes of mass murder can keep them from following out the effects of aggression in cultural affairs.
‘But, then again, I teach computer science where it is kind of hard to inject politics into the subject matter.’
What kind of statistics are there on political affiliations in the sciences? i’d love to see those.
Again, I don’t claim to explain every individual’s acts, just aggregates.
Again, I don’t claim to explain every individual’s acts, just aggregates.
In other words, you stereotype people. I thought that was verboten in liberal circles.
actus,
here are the klein figures. one of his studies looks at a broad set of fields, but only at berkeley and stanford. the other study looks at only the social sciences, but does so using a representative sample.
http://lsb.scu.edu/~dklein/Voter/default.htm
enjoy.
“Sorry that you felt guilty.”
Pretty asinine comment, actus.
Affirmative action was created, to some degree, to counter what was purported to be an animus against blacks. This animus, often referred to as “institutional racism” was supposed to be debilitating because of the effect it had on the psyche and emotions of blacks.
So, actus, you respond to me with a snide comment that living on a daily basis in an environment in which it is permissible to attack me because I am white, male and hetero, is of little consequence.
I’ve met your kind plenty. So, the message is blacks count and I don’t. Creating an environment in which blacks feel comfortable is important. I’m supposed to just buck it up and face the daily accusations of class privilege. In your opinion, are blacks emotionally fragile in a way that whites are not?
I don’t think the reality of this argument is of any importance to you. What is important to you is your halo. I hope you lose your job to a black as a result of the quota system. In fact, I suggest that you quit your job so that one of those emotionally fragile blacks in need of a boost to their self-esteem have a better opportunity. You don’t really need the job.
‘In other words, you stereotype people. I thought that was verboten in liberal circles.’
No I don’t stereotype, because I don’t go from a general perception to a judgement of an individual. I go from a general perception to a judgement of a trend, which still leaves plenty of reasons why an individual does or does not fit that trend. Stereotyping would be if I claimed to be able to judge individuals from the general trend.
‘here are the klein figures. one of his studies looks at a broad set of fields, but only at berkeley and stanford’
Why leave out Catholic U, Brigham Young and Bob Jones?
‘So, actus, you respond to me with a snide comment that living on a daily basis in an environment in which it is permissible to attack me because I am white, male and hetero, is of little consequence.’
I said I was sorry.
actus,
I think the conservative disdain for academic thought, which causes fewer conservatives to go into academe, is abhorrent and ought to end.
You know, this sort of thing really irritates me. My undergraduate and graduate degrees were from UC/Berkeley (in wildly different fields), and the primary reason I didn’t continue in academia was that I discovered that I had really very little talent for teaching. But UCB absolutely was a hostile environment for conservative students, especially in the humanities and especially at the graduate level. One learned rather quickly to keep one’s mouth shut, or be prepared for a long and nasty argument. (With the predictable result that all the visible conservatives on campus were people who enjoyed long and nasty arguments — which in turn made it hard for more polite conservatives to, shall we say, “come out.”)
By the way, a determined science professor can politicize science lectures if he wants to. The professor who taught my freshman physics class devoted one lecture slot to showing Carl Sagan’s film about nuclear winter. He also honored a called strike in support of UC’s divesting itself from South Africa, and devoted the lecture time to a class discussion about South Africa. When the strike was extended from that Friday to the following Monday, he was about to launch another SA discussion, but a student shouted out that he’d rather learn some physics. Prof. then called a vote: SA or physics? I am happy to say that physics won, and the guy had to teach.
Why leave out Catholic U, Brigham Young and Bob Jones?
Possibly because he was confining himself to top-tier schools? Or to the best schools in one limited geographical location? Or even because no study can cover literally everything? Silly question.
‘Possibly because he was confining himself to top-tier schools? Or to the best schools in one limited geographical location? Or even because no study can cover literally everything? Silly question.’
I don’t think its that silly to pick out schools, at least one of which is virtually synonimous with pupolar perceptions of left academy and ignore others which would be the opposite. Sorry. A statisticians answer to not being able to cover everything would be random sampling.
I think the conservative disdain for academic thought, which causes fewer conservatives to go into academe, is abhorrent and ought to end.
Stereotype: a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment
No I don’t stereotype, because I don’t go from a general perception to a judgement of an individual.
So if you were to say that Blacks are lazy then according to you that wouldn
Michelle, I feel for you. My undergraduate school was Columbia, so I didn’t have it too much better than you.
By the way, a determined science professor can politicize science lectures if he wants to.
You are right. However, if one sticks to the subject matter of the course it is more difficult to make a political statement. The Carl Sagan nuclear winter scenario is at best peripherally related to an undergraduate course in physics and of course South Africa has no relationship to physics at all. Thankfully my physics professors stuck to teaching physic during class time.
actus, you do realize that Stanford has the Hoover Institution in its midst, right? Doesn’t even that count as balance of a sort?
But anyway, this is one study. It’s flawed in any number of ways, if I can trust the media coverage of it; for one thing, it works from voter-registration records, and there are any number of people way to the right of the CA Democratic Party who are still registered Democrats (like, er, me), so that the number of “conservatives” is probably understated.
I found this on Powerline and it fits in perfectly with this discussion.
Notwithstanding his brilliant academic background, the younger Pipes now works entirely outside the academic world. He writes:
I have the simple politics of a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic. My viewpoint is not congenial with institutions of higher learning.
‘Actus, you are incorrigible. You are unable to admit when you are in error.’
Dictionary.com’s second definition gets to where I was going. But I can see how you might think that i fit under its first definition. The question would be if I was overly simplified or formulaic. I don’t think its any more formulaic than saying that liberals believe XYZ or that whats good for the conservative goose is also good for the liberal gander. Those require that I make general statements about what the goose and gander, metaphorically, are.
As to saying that blacks are lazy, I don’t think its as controversial to posit that right wingers disdain intellectualism. We see the latter in our president, and its proudly hailed all across right winger blogs. I don’t think blacks take to lazyness in the same way.
This is way more fun than blogging.
actus,
I don’t think it[‘]s [as] controversial to posit that right wingers disdain intellectualism. We see the latter in our president, and its proudly hailed all across right winger blogs.
actus, if you hear of a campaign to toughen math or history or English standards in the public schools, do you assume those Leftists are at it again? If someone wants to install a core curriculum in a public university, do you take it to be another Lefty initiative on behalf of the intellectual life? If someone speaks up on behalf of the teaching of Latin, is your first thought “Pesky liberals”?
Seriously, now. Where is the liberal campaign for learning for its own sake? So far as my own experience goes, the dominant liberal position on childhood education is to ditch subjects that aren’t “practical” — you know, stuff like algebra, and European history, and English literature. There are people who want to ditch even memorization of multiplication tables, because, hey, we have calculators, right? These people are not “conservatives.”
Michelle, actus was almost right. Actually, it is pseudo-intellectuals that conservatives have a disdain for. And there are an awful lot of those people on the left.
I have recently read a number of articles where liberals claim that the reason there are so few conservatives in academia is that liberals are smarter than conservatives. I wonder if liberals would still agree with that statement if we replaced the word liberals with whites and the word conservatives with blacks?
Of course the idea that conservatives are dumb and liberals are smart is what has permeated the political landscape for al least the last25 years. How could Ronald Reagan win the presidency when he is just a dumb actor? How could Bush win when he is just plain dumb? Actually, it is to our advantage to not disabuse them of this notion (not that we could). By actually believing that they are smarter, liberals keep on underestimating conservatives and losing. By the way, isn
“So far as my own experience goes, the dominant liberal position on childhood education is to ditch subjects that aren’t “practical”
actus,
Intellectualism and basic education are different things. I would have a hard time showing that memorization was very intellectual. I never did well at memorizing the math tables and went on to become a math major at university.
OK, I left myself open to that one, by mentioning the multplication tables alongside other subjects more pertinent to my point. The fact remains that one cohort is arguing that young people ought to know history and classic literature and math and science and know them well, and another cohort thinks anything not “relevant” (evidently meaning “not directly conducive to getting a job”) is a waste of time. You can attach ideological labels to the two positions as you like; but I guarantee you that the first position is generally perceived as “conservative.”
There are cries of dismay every time a survey of elite college students reveals that most of them can’t place the US Civil War in the correct half-century, but they come ordinarily from conservatives.
We teach our own history badly; teaching of European history is a complete disaster. I know pretty well all I know of European history because I tried to learn it, long after high school. As for literature, I had a decent smattering of it throughout high school, but that was more than twenty years ago, and I think things have only gotten worse.
“The fact remains that one cohort is arguing that young people ought to know history and classic literature and math and science and know them well, and another cohort thinks anything not “relevant” (evidently meaning “not directly conducive to getting a job”) is a waste of time.”
I don’t know about that. Bush argues that the solution for late age unemployment is to go to community college. Not a liberal arts education. I also disagree on the arguement that algebra is not relevant to job-seeking. Maybe I’m mistaken, but most math reform movements are trying to take math into a purer and more abstract form of problem solving. We can argue about which method properly teaches problem solving, but you’re not going to get very far by saying that math reform is about getting people to not learn algebra and learn job-skills instead.
An entirely different arguement is whether something is relevant to intellectual development. I don’t think latin is there anymore. At least, I think there are better uses of time.
One area that liberals are fighting for rigor is when they struggle to safeguard the scientific method from the theocratic attacks of creationists.
Well actus,we finally found something on which we can agree. Creationism has no place in a science curriculum because it has nothing to do with science. Creationism tries to make use of the language of science without making use of the scientific method. Creationism is simply a ploy to get a particular religious belief taught in the public schools.
I am glad to see that you support the proper teaching of science in the schools. So I guess you would also agree with me that environmentalism should not be taught in the public schools because it is being taught not as a science, but as a religion, albeit a pagan religion. When the students are taught to worship Gaia, that is no different from being taught to worship any other deity, and it clearly has no place in a science curriculum.
“So I guess you would also agree with me that environmentalism should not be taught in the public schools because it is being taught not as a science, but as a religion, albeit a pagan religion. When the students are taught to worship Gaia, that is no different from being taught to worship any other deity, and it clearly has no place in a science curriculum.”
What schools are teaching earth worship?
What schools are teaching earth worship?
All of the public schools. They have a big celebration on Earth Day where the students worship mother Earth.
actus,
Most “math reform movements” I know of are deeply suspicious of abstraction and friendly towards “real-world” problems. I don’t think the current batch of reformers are tremendously keen on Euclidean-style proof, for example. If you know of reforms that do tend towards abstract thinking, I’d love to hear of them. Frankly, I always found the abstract parts of math to be the fun ones, but YMMV.
As for Latin — well, if you think the study of Classical texts and of ancient civilizations is “irrelevant to intellectual development,” then you have a lot of company, though it’s an odd line for you to take. Weren’t you just saying that it was conservatives who disdained the academic ethos, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake?
Personally, I would have loved to learn Latin — and I would have found it useful, too, later on, when it came to learning other languages. You can learn to write grammatically in English by reading a lot of good writing and having your errors corrected; but for learning grammar in a foreign language it helps to have had a good early grounding in the mechanics of a language with a complex grammar, and I didn’t have that. It made tackling German rather more difficult than it need have been ;-)
“All of the public schools. They have a big celebration on Earth Day where the students worship mother Earth.”
Or do they just get taught that we should preserve it? Or do you think there’s no difference between that and ‘worship’.
“Most “math reform movements” I know of are deeply suspicious of abstraction and friendly towards “real-world” problems”
Nothing wrong with real world problems. I think they’re motivated to pick these over memorization because we know they’re better at teaching abstraction. I would help if i had a url.
“As for Latin
actus,
But the choice I’m talking about isn’t “memorization” vs. “real-world problems”; it’s “abstract skills” vs. “real-world problems.” To wit, if you’re unlikely to use a skill somewhere in the “real world,” there’s almost certainly someone who wants it out of the curriculum. Multiplication, as I said, is in disfavor, because all the kids have calculators. I read not long ago about a proposal to ditch fractions for the same reason: we live in a decimal world, apparently, so no point learning to deal with those pesky denominators. &c.
As to the bit about academe, well, there are differences between education and academic studies.
Well, of course there are. But if the people advocating the early teaching of skills essential to certain fields of academic study turn out to be mostly conservative, doesn’t that say something about conservatives’ receptivity towards academic study?
And I repeat that every alarum I’ve heard about the woeful state of education in this country, every cry of dismay I’ve heard when the latest survey of college students reveals that they can’t reliably place the Civil War in the correct half-century, every call I’ve heard for tougher standards or stricter graduation requirements, has come from the rightward half of the American political spectrum. And a lot of the learning involved is not “relevant” in the ordinary sense. Knowing that we had a Civil War is “relevant,” but exactly when it happened? I think any number of “educational reformers” would class that as soul-destroyinmg “rote memorization,” yes? But you can’t get a sense of American history at all if you don’t have an idea of the time-scales involved.
It is, to say no more, odd that, if conservatives simply disdain academe as you say, they appear to be the ones most anxious to get the tools necessary for pursuing an academic career into kids’ heads before they hit college. You really can’t enter college with your head entirely empty of history or literature or music or art and expect to be able to learn enough in four years to go on to graduate work in any of those fields.
“But if the people advocating the early teaching of skills essential to certain fields of academic study turn out to be mostly conservative, doesn’t that say something about conservatives’ receptivity towards academic study?”
I don’t think memorizing multiplication tables is a part necessary to math study. I’m terrible at arithmetic and managed to get a degree in math.
Learning german or french or russian would help much more than latin in this area as well.
“every call I’ve heard for tougher standards or stricter graduation requirements, has come from the rightward half of the American political spectrum”
Bill clinton made speeches against ‘social promotion’. Maybe you weren’t listening. The latest study showing the ignorance of american children is usually decried on the left blogs.
We shake our heads as much as you.
Or do they just get taught that we should preserve it? Or do you think there’s no difference between that and ‘worship’.
You are being deliberately obtuse. Did you attempt to destroy the earth when you were a child? I don
actus,
I don’t want the whole argument to get sidetracted in the direction of this minor point, but . . . what the hell is wrong with getting kids to learn multiplication tables, at an age when memorization comes easily to them and they’re generally eager to tackle just about anything that they can feel pride in mastering? I mean, I remember being made to learn the tables through 10 x 10. If you know that 1a = a and that a x b = b x a, there are, what, 45 items to memorize? Kids that have by then memorized the forms and names and sounds of 52 letters (upper- and lowercase) and their order besides can handle that. More than that, they can enjoy learning it. I remember being at last confident about 6 x 9 vs. 7 x 8. Knowing you’ve gotten something right, so securely right that you will never forget it, is powerful. Why, it might even lead you on to learn more stuff.
WRT Latin, as it’s a language I don’t know (apart from being able to “decode” bits of it via analogy with the couple Romance languages that I do, vaguely, know), I can’t say for certain, but I would think that Latin would be the ideal language to learn first alongside English. It has a sufficiently complex grammar that you can get into all the business of cases, declensions, tenses, &c. in the course of learning it, and that’s knowledge that could be transferred readily to the study of any other language, however different. (Whereas the teaching of a “living” language tends to skirt these abstractions to the extent possible and get on to the peculiarities of the particular tongue.) It has a well-known literature with a considerable pedagogical tradition behind it, too.
I think teaching American children German early on would only confuse them; and teaching them a modern Romance language early on would embroil them in its particularities perhaps too much for them to generalize from the experience.
As for Russian, a friend at UCB who was in first-year Russian showed me his textbook, in which there were endless pages of diagrams of boxes above or beside other boxes, moving leftward or rightward or downward or forward or backward relative to other boxes, for all I know rotating relative to other boxes. It seems that Russian has a peculiarly complex system of prepositions and verb-modifiers to denote relative position and motion, and that this is one of the things the students tackle early on. I really think that on the whole it’s better to learn the mechanics and terminology of grammar first, and the peculiarities of (living) languages afterwards. But that’s just a guess from soneone whose education in grammar in English classes was practically zero. (OK, we knew the parts of speech, and a couple of tenses, but that was about it; I never so much as saw the word “dative” until I took German the summer before I entered grad school, and that was after four years of ostensibly thorough instruction in Spanish, culminating in an AP exam.)
Anyway, actus, the point I have been trying to make is that the kinds of secondary-school study that are peculiarly necessary to large swaths of further study in the humanities, the kind that sets people on the path to academic careers — not only Latin, obviously, but European and American history and art and music, the whole big ball’o’wax called (loosely) “Western Culture,” &c. — are something of a conservative obsession. I don’t really see that on the Left (and I do read Lefty blogs; in fact, sometimes I make a positive nuisance of myself at one or two of them). I cannot reconcile this with the idea of conservatives as disdainful of academe, because (as I’ve said repeatedly) a lot of this knowledge is “useless” (= “irrelevant”?) but for the pure pleasure of possessing it. Which is what academe is for.
But, then, there speaks one whose abortive dissertation was on the changes in texture in Joseph Haydn’s string quartets as his audience changed, so I suppose I’m as “irrelevant” as they come, yes?
‘I don’t want the whole argument to get sidetracted in the direction of this minor point, but . . . what the hell is wrong with getting kids to learn multiplication tables, at an age when memorization comes easily to them and they’re generally eager to tackle just about anything that they can feel pride in mastering?’
Its just that there might be better things out there, and overall not much is lost if they don’t do arithmetic by memory.
‘Whereas the teaching of a “living” language tends to skirt these abstractions to the extent possible and get on to the peculiarities of the particular tongue.’
Really? I learned most of my english grammar from french and spanish lessons.
“not only Latin, obviously, but European and American history and art and music, the whole big ball’o’wax called (loosely) “Western Culture,” &c.
actus,
I’d say western culture is well served by studying lots of languages, not just latin.
Well, of course. Where have I ever implied otherwise? All I’m saying is that (1) Latin is invaluable in certain fields of academic study; and (2) people who want to encourage the study of Latin tend to be conservatives (annd those who aren’t tend to be perceived as conservatives).
But perhaps your problem is you equate academe with western culture. and THAT is certainly a conservative obsession. Never mind the wars we have to fight in other cultures.
Well, we must distinguish, I think. “Academe” as we know it is a creation of “Western Culture”; but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t involve the study of other cultures. Of course it does. Of course it must. That my own academic field happens to have been European classical music doesn’t mean that I devalue areas of study that aren’t “Western.”
But your little crack about the cultures we have to fight wars in goes back to the whole “relevancy” thing. Studying things in order to make practical use of the knowledge isn’t really the point of academe, is it? It seems to me that the real split is between those who seriously do value “knowledge for its own sake,” and those who value knowledge to the extent it can be made use of, and you can find leftists and conservatives inside the academy and out on both sides of that question — conservatives who think the humanities are by and large a waste of time, leftists for whom any energy not directed towards the increase of “social justice” is a waste of time.
The latter have a tendency to favor the humanities — as a weapon, not as an end in themselves. It is, I imagine, the zeal with which a generation or two of leftist academics pursued themes of racial, sexual, and class oppression in the “Western canon” that’s at the root of what you take to be “conservative disdain for academe.” Well, that and the parallel trend of increasing attention to popular culture. I have been to a conference or two at which the conservative caricature of academe (roughly “if it’s by a Dead White European Male, show how it’s racist, sexist, and/or classist; if it’s disco or 60s rock-concert posters or graffiti or ‘outsider art’ or sitcoms, show that it is in reality exactly as worthy of detailed attention as anything in the ‘canon'”) was not really all that far from the truth. It seems to me that there is less of this than there used to be (a lot less “theory,” too, which was another conservative bugaboo), but there’s still a bunch of it.
“Well, we must distinguish, I think. “Academe” as we know it is a creation of “Western Culture””
Such as the mandarins. But who cares who created it? its what it is now that matters, and your description of education leading to academic studies of ‘western culture’ left out a whole lot worth studying.
‘But your little crack about the cultures we have to fight wars in goes back to the whole “relevancy” thing. Studying things in order to make practical use of the knowledge isn’t really the point of academe, is it’
No, its not the point. But it helps if there is relevancy, because it at least shows that broadening horizons has some impact. Its not a crutch to me, but I realize that others aren’t so enlightened, so there’s really no problem being safe. And it’s not that practical a use to have more sufi poets running around. At least not immediately so.
I’m still keen on finding out about the math reforms you’re poking at.
actus,
[Y]our description of education leading to academic studies of ‘western culture’ left out a whole lot worth studying.
You are misreading me. What I said was that there is research you cannot do without training in certain areas; and that the people insisting on training secondary school students in knowledge that would be useful in academe, but wouldn’t in most jobs, are mostly conservatives. I would hazard that if someone proposed a really rigorous three-year program in Urdu (that is, one not meant to shunt Pakistani refugees away from the rest of the student body, but one meant actually to teach Urdu to kids who don’t already speak it), someone would complain that it was “irrelevant,” and someone else would complain that it was too hard.
Suppose someone proposed that all high school graduates be required to be at least minimally bilingual (language(s) of their choice)? Who do you think would object first? The Left, or the Right?
I’m still keen on finding out about the math reforms you’re poking at.
I am sorry. When you said you could use some URLs some days back, I thought you meant you could use some in your own defense. I didn’t realize you were asking me for them. OK, I’ll post links when I can get to them — it may not be till tomorrow, because I have a project in hand that has to be done in the next hour or two. Sorry.
“Instead, we teach students that the Native Americans were at one with Nature and that they respected and nurtured the environment. That is was the evil white man who came along and destroyed the forests.”
I agree with Richard on this: teaching this is equivalent to establishing religion. It is also very wrong, but the love affair of the intellectual left with the ‘noble savage’ is a long and mentally incestuous one. American Indians – or ‘native Americans’ as the politically correct folks prefer to call them (but not those of us who ARE) – were just as destructive of nature as the white man, albeit on a smaller scale. Villages hunted out a particular area of all game, left huge piles of trash, and moved on to a new area to spoil while knowing that, due to low population, the environment would have time to cleanse itself before the marauding humans returned. ‘Noble savages’? What a joke! While there are sincere beliefs related to nature, they were nowhere near as common or as widely adhered to by the general population as later writers of romances and ‘penny dreadfuls’ would have us believe.
I always get a kick out of how romantic a vision people have of the prehistoric life. Try living like that for a few weeks – hunt your own food, make your own clothes and shelter. I have, and I still have the skills for hunting, gathering, preserving and storing food in the absence of refrigeration, using natural materials from the land. It’s a frigging lot of work, and I daresay that all those intellectuals wouldn’t last a week if they had to actually live like that themselves. I’d love to watch a bunch of them try.