Erin O’Connor has several terrific posts (here, here, and here) about politicized propaganda posing as academic courses academic departments being reduced to nests of advocacy.
Read them all.
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O’Connor’s blog touches on an interesting point — that AA’s most destructive effect has been it’s effect on Academia. AA has chnaged the rules. Education is no longer about thinking and seeking the truth. It’s about propaganda.
This might dove-tail on a point that is often discussed — that the proportion of men in higher education is shrinking. I’d like to see some statistics about the make-up of specialty schools, such as Computer Schools. What might be happening is that men can no longer stomach what O’Connor has documented, and they are moving to specialty schools which are actually closer to the original goal of higher education than are Universities.
John, not denying there’s some bad teaching out there (both in design and execution), but O’Connor’s posts don’t seem to me to meet the standards laid out by Tim Burke recently for evaluating courses. Would be interested in your thoughts on his post.
“O’Connor’s posts don’t seem to me to meet the standards laid out by Tim Burke recently for evaluating courses”
We had all better stop posting then. Who among us when we post informally meets statistical and scientific standards sufficient to get our posts published in a professional journal?
As for the content of the course descriptions, on what basis should we take them for anything other than what they explicitly state?
I think I agree with Federal Dog, at least insofar as I care anything about the validity of course descriptions (which isn’t very far). I took a quick look at the Burke post, and I think it is a nice legal-brief attack on critics of academic propaganda. With regard to Erin’s posts, however, I regard Burke’s analysis about the way I would a very impressive criminal defense of a guilty client.
Erin’s position, I’m sure, is not that courses should be free of political content (a red herring/straw man against which Burke tilts very effectively) but that professors should not indoctrinate, should present opposing views and evidence, and should not require any particular political conclusions. Her posts made a strong case that the courses she described did not meet those standards.
I agree with (your summary of) Erin’s position. I don’t think the comment of a single student is representative of the teaching and learning that goes on in a course.
For a continuation of Burke’s critiques that incorporates responses to his criticisms, check this out.