Of all the examples given in Education Gone Berserk which could indeed drive you berserk (originally a noun for a wild Norse warrior who fought with frenzy), probably the most ridiculous is the Portland teacher who explained that “the word sandwich is a subtle form of racism in language.” A peanut butter and jelly sandwich could be racist and socially unjust.
How about teaching students how to think logically, how to read and write well, teach them grammar, how to spell, how to do math and percentages without the help of a calculator?
What the hell are they teaching public high school students in Texas?
1. Islam is awesome and the merits of the hijab.
2. Christianity is a cult that parallels the death and resurrection in the story of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead.
3. Communism is awesome while never mentioning the nearly 100 million people who died in the 20th century under various self-described communist regimes around the world.
5. The Boston Tea Party was a terrorist attack
And there was the teacher who encouraged high school girls to dress up in full-length Islamic burqas and then instructed the entire class that Muslim terrorists are actually freedom fighters.
A belated link to Rod Dreher 's Illiberal Education At Columbia
Kyle Dontoh, a student at Columbia University, writes in the campus paper about a ridiculous attempt to stifle free speech in the name of protecting students from having to hear opinions they don’t like.
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According to Dontoh, who supports same-sex marriage, it was a great program:
"The lectures were thoughtful and incisive—so much so that I quickly discarded my original plan of staying for a few sessions before returning to work. The speakers, to a T, were academics who based their arguments and presentations on facts and reason, not on bigotry or prejudice. Only one speaker, author Dawn Eden, made an argument based on religious grounds, and her lecture, “Everything is Tolerated and Nothing is Forgiven,” was about chastity and dealing with the excesses of permissiveness, not about the LGBT community. Only three speakers broached the issue of same-sex relationships, and only two of those three explicitly passed judgment on these relationships.
"Even then, the arguments were made on strictly rational grounds. Lynn Wardle outlined the case for traditional marriage on the notion that the family was the original, fundamental building block of society as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Disagree as I may, this was not the rambling of a bigot. This was a reasoned, principled argument based on a fundamental respect for the LGBT community coupled with a specific interpretation of American history.
"As I listened to the issues—both agreeing and disagreeing at times—I felt a particular sense of excitement, picking up viewpoints I have seldom heard since coming to Columbia."
The reason why there were so many empty seats at the lecture, despite being 'sold-out' is that the Columbia University Democrats bought up all the tickets and thereby essentially denied students the opportunity to hear what others had to say, i.e. what conservatives had to say about the burning hot question of gay marriage.
Posted by Jill Fallon at March 18, 2013 11:48 AM | Permalink