SCARCE STUDENTS = SICKLY STANDARDS

When I applied for college there were 3 applicants for every opening. The result was tough standards. For instance, to become a junior, every sophomore was required to pass the "Junior Standing Test." It measured our knowledge of the required core subjects taken during the first two years. 

Fail to pass the test, you could not become a junior. To attain that you had to retake the test until you passed. If you dropped out instead, t3 applicants were ready to take your place. This did wonders for standards.

Imagine administrators instituting a Junior Standing Test these days. More likely we'll find Polar Bears roaming the rain forest. Indeed, today's acute shortage of applicants causes far too many colleges to either fold, or trash meaningful standards and at least  flirt with a new guiding principle : "The customer is always right."

A new breed of professor multiplies this deterioration. These "woke," Neo-Marxist, true believers not only tolerate the absence of acceptable standards, they promote it. As a matter of fact, they reject the very idea or rigor, piously proclaiming to be still another form of oppression. While they're at it they also denounce reason and logic as "white" ways of knowing. Valuing a "right" answer also is out for them. They even throw Socrates in the hopper as just another white, male, chauvinist. In fact, these  "progressive" professors even scorn the  Enlightenment, as well as the whole of Western culture. Instead they assert that no culture is better than any other. So, for them at least, the culture of, say, Canada is no better than that of North Korea. Unless, of course, theymust decide in which culture they want to spend the remainder of their life..

If these Neo-marxist true believers kept this nonsense to themselves it might be tolerable. But, like true believers everywhere, they yearn to impose their beliefs on others. So their lectures quickly turn into sermons that rival the Bible pounding of Billy Graham. The trouble with that is, evangelization is most decidedly NOT their job. Professors communicate settled knowledge, pose intelligent questions, and lead penetrating discussions. In short, they teach. These new breed academics preach, then preach some more. 

They sermonize endlessly about the evils of capitalism and the West while simultaneously vitiating instructional quality, consigning competing scholarship to the dust bin and awarding passing grades willy nilly.And  they are selling their goofy gospel to impressionable students. They teach their classes with the same objectivity as Dr. Goebbels brought to the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. They are, in effect, Neo-Marxist missionaries promoting a profane, destructive, illogical and self-loathing faith. But their academic permissivenes keeps behinds in sea. And that wins administrative approval!

Yes, a distressing number of college administrators add more combustibles to this academic dumpster fire in order to retain as many tuition paying customers as possible. Preoccupied with meager enrollment and vanishing tuition revenue, they slyly promote slack standards and academic dereliction of duty under a variety of disguises. Their stated goals vary. But their actual goal is always the same? Keep seats filled. 

The worst of these policy makers even urge professors to "become the student's friend." Professors certainly owe each and every student fairness, courtesy and quality instruction. But they also have a non-negotiable obligation to sort the academic wheat from the chaff. That's why professors must NOT become a student's friend unless and until they are no longer responsible for grading them.  

I even know of a college president who recently required professors to conduct "whole life," not just academic, counseling. Besides scheduling classes and the like, they now had to inquire into each student's personal life. They were to ask things like: "Are you sleeping well?" "Are you suffering from digestive issues?" "Are you anxious?" "Is there recent trauma in your life?" Beside referring them to the Counseling Center, what is a professor supposed to do when such disturbances are revealed? Awarding a passing grade for failing work is one likely remedy. Plus, in this environment, students plainly see that fake traumas might pay off. Whining could well get them a passing grade for failing work. And, from a tuition starved administrator's point of view, that might well be good enough. 

Professors also have a big stake in keeping seats full. That's why they too are cutting corners. Especially when they teach a poorly subscribed major, lack tenure and years of service. For them it's no students, no job. For instance, I recall a professor of a meagerly attended Russian program pacing anxiously outside his classroom door ten of so minutes after class was supposed to begin. He would glance at his watch, then look up and down the hall, hoping a latecomer or two might supplement his sparse attendance. Of course those who did attend could probably count on a passing grade. 

No one wants an ignorant,  stupid, lazy or otherwise incompetent individual building our bridges, doing our taxes, teaching our children, performing our surgeries, and so forth. But disappearing higher education quality control makes such incompetents ever more likely. 

No Whining

Professors are not qualified to pry into student's personal lives. Besides, focusing on limitations and difficulties, rather than strengths and possibilities, undermines young people's resilience. Shit just happens. And it happens to everybody. So it is very unwise to encourage students to wallow in them. And let's not forget these new breed woke "progressives" have redefined a broad range of normal stressors and perturbances as traumatic. For instance, minor slights, even unintended ones, have been transformed into "micro aggressions."

Far better to urge them to suck it up and get on with life.  Emphasizing grievances and personal difficulties fosters whining, surrender, self pity, blaming others, looking for excuses. Every one of which undermines their human potential.

Rigor and student responsibility are what makes higher education "higher?" That is why earning a legitimate diploma requires students to perform at a relatively high level. Not just pay tuition. So it's a professor's non-negotiable duty to enforce high standards. When they fail to do so, diplomas become more and more worthless. Counterfeit might be a better word. This is a key reason why college degrees are losing credibility. And as the new breed professors extend their influence, these degrees grow increasingly valueless.

And here's one more thing to keep in mind. There are increasing numbers of female professors. And research reveals a strong gender bias in student's reaction to females that enforce high standards. The reaction is hypercritical. Students generally expect females to be more solicitous and sympathetic. Motherly, if you will. So female professors have to have more guts to enforce high standards. How many actually have that? I suspect it isn't very many. Especially considering the general lack of backup from tuition starved administrators.

Sorting and Grading

Sorting and grading college students is very unappealing. Nevertheless, it is an absolutely vital responsibility. "Woke" professors are prone to evade that duty. I even know one individual who says he simply cannot fail anyone.  "I wouldn't be able to sleep at night!" he says. (This same individual has male genitalia, but sometimes wears dresses to work.) Such dereliction of duty should cost this ersatz "professor" his job. Instead, his permissiveness improves his "course" evaluations and helps him win both promotion and tenure. 

Such dereliction of duty is tolerated, even encouraged, because administrators are more concerned about decreasing enrollment and unbalanced balance sheets than they are about quality education. Imagine suggesting to any of them, for example, that the school start requiring students to pass a final. summative test before granting them a diploma. Prepare to give the CPR!. It's bad enough that some uncooperative professors still require students to study and attend class.

What has come to be called "political correctness" is at the heart of this malignant nonsense. And many academics are self-righteous converts to this faith. In fact, some go to astonishing lengths to equalize everyone in a world where everyone is NOT equal in either ability or effort. Their loathing for the Western culture that separates them from Isis style barbarism is also remarkable. For instance, they assert with invincible assurance, that reason and logic are “white" and therefore bogus. So too are "objectivity" and" rationality," There's no need to require that sort of thing from students or oneself. Even getting the right answer, is a "racist" aspect of "white identity culture," They declare, "it's time to decolonize the curriculum!" In other words, it;'s time trash the most accomplished culture in human history --  Western culture.

Yet this new breed even asserts, with a straight face mind you, that no culture is better than any other. So the culture of Isis is equal to the culture of, let’s say, France.  Of course if all cultures are equal, then no religion would be better than any other. Now let's imagine these de-colonizers making such a claim in a theocratic Muslim society, Iran for instance, or in the ISIS controlled region of the Muslim world. They would quickly be imprisoned; possibly even put to death. And so far as female professors who hold all cultures covalent are concerned, they are particularly dense. That's because they are endorsing cultures in which men routinely subjugate women an systematically deprive them of their most fundamental human rights. It’s titanicaly stupid for any woman to claim cultures are equal to Western culture.( Unless, of course, it's OK for other women to be subjugated, so long as they are not.)

Winning Souls to Silliness

In this wacky world these folks inhabit, individual responsibility has virtually disappeared. Child molesters, for instance, are no longer perverted pederasts. They merely are "minor attracted persons." Worse, these academic preach their faith as objective truth to naive adolescents. And since many adolescents long for simple answers to complex questions, they win souls to this silliness. 

This quasi-religious indoctrination even emboldens some students to inquire into the political reliability of all their professors, searching for signs of damnable heresy. Should one of them even mention, say, David Hume, they noisily demand the offending devil be purged. After all, it is their faith conviction that the world is in the clutches of an all-powerful, neo-colonial white male hegemony that smothers all that is just, good, true and beautiful. And administrators, intensely preoccupied with balancing the budget and preserving their well-paying jobs, cower in the face of such outrageous student conduct, consign academic freedom and intellectual rigor to the dust bin and even pretend they too are true believers in this blighted orthodoxy when they're merely fellow travelers.

 

The "Woke" and Chairman Mao

For some time now “students” have become converts of thought-police professors. And they subsequently patrol the campus looking to be offended. They are, in effect, inquisitors, junior grade. Instead of using college to create themselves, they let political evangelists do it for them. To "convert them” so to speak. And as converts, they eagerly find any contravening researched knowledge so offensive, emotionally troubling and dangerously heretical that it must be expunged.

What disappears in all of this is individual student agency and responsibility. They've been taught to evade all that. To believe that it is never they who fail to think, who refuse to listen, who rule out being in the wrong. It is always the "other." That's who is to blame! It's not hard to see how poisonous this is. 

In truth, "woke" culture is little more than a watered down version of Mao's "cultural revolution." Professors aren't being beaten, imprisoned, or murdered as they were in Mao's China. But they are subjected to name-calling, public ridicule, administrative muzzling, censorship and job loss. 

Worse, this politically correct zealotry that provokes a right-wing backlash that also threatens academic freedom, but from the opposite direction.  And guess who's caught in the middle?  

Conclusion

Of course DEI is tangled up in all of this as one breed of “woke” professors continue to try to combat racism with racism, prejudice with more prejudice, inequality with more inequality, etc. Yes, Trump and his MAGA republicans are busily expunging D.E.I. from government. Corporate giants are also backing away. But  in academe “wokeness," performative virtue and identity politics remain firmly in place. Actual, as well as fellow traveling, true believers still successfully denounce non-conforming colleagues as homophobic, racist, reactionaries. They often even can block articles they deem 'heretical' from being published in professional journals. This is why professors willing to risk being labeled a heretic are as proportionaltely scarce as collegiate applicants.

Yes, in higher education, the "woke" religion remains firmly in place. And the zealotry of its true believers remains undiminished. In consequence the intellectual and marketplace worth of a "higher education, "especially in non-STEM areas, is loosing value. What employer wants a blindly fanatic, judgmental college graduate, who knows little, can do less, and promises to be nothing but trouble?

 

In the final analysis, wokeness is having the same devitalizing impact on U.S. academic life that Marxism-Leninism had in the Soviet Union. And because it is coupled with the growing collegiate enrollment crisis, its impact is especially virulent. 

Worse, this quasi-religious zealotry and intellectual vacuity,  continues to coin new so-called "scholars" who substitute faith for reason and conviction for evidence. And they busily churn out ever more of the sort of pseudo-scholar evangelists who threaten higher education's very future. 

WHY ARE PROFESSORS BEING NEUTERED?

 

I've worked as a day laborer, janitor, night watchman, store clerk, barber’s apprentice, Army officer, seventh-grade teacher and, for forty-six years, professor. and author. I was married for over half a century until my wife was torn from my side by Parkinson's Disease. Together we raised two children to happy, productive adulthood. Yet despite this lifetime of experiences and years of advanced study, I still was required to submit to anonymous "course" evaluations by callow, sometimes astonishingly ignorant, undergraduates each and every semester . 

The Barber's Cat

Had I been told to evaluate my professors when I was an undergraduate, I would have thought someone had taken leave of their senses. We were obviously green, relatively ignorant kids under the tutelage of full-scale adults who had accomplished and knew far more than we did. Clearly, it was their job to do the evaluating, not ours.

Perhaps I knew my place better than most because of apprenticing in my Dad’s barbershop. It was in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Then one of the largest railroad centers in the world. Consequently the barbershop was chiefly populated by no-nonsense railroaders who performed dangerous, complicated, highly skilled jobs for the  P.R.R. Then the "standard railroad of the world." Many were also veterans of W.W.II and/or Korea. 

In this very grown up world I quickly learned to keep my juvenile opinions to myself. Once I did chance an opinion, only to have a case-hardened customer remark my remark was worthy of the barber's cat. When I asked what that meant, he said, "Full of piss and wind." Everyone found that very funny. I was humbled, and thereafter kept my opinions to myself.

Now let's look at these so-called "course" evaluations. In imposing them our Provost claimed they would help the administration better appraise course effectiveness. Previous administrations (dating back well over a century) had largely relied on rumors and word of mouth. Now "the university" could get a much more accurate picture. 

Faculty were simultaneously assured that these "course" evaluation would support fairer tenure and promotion decisions. This despite their title suggesting they were meant to evaluate courses, not professors.  

Near as I can tell, throughout history higher ed students were not invited to take the measure of their betters. Evidently it was thought that at their stage of development, most students were incapable of fair, mature, accurate appraisals — especially if they'd earned a bad grade. 

Frankly, I think these evaluations have more to do with collegiate finance than anything else. When a school suffers a shortage of applicants, which ours did at the time, management naturally focuses on attendance and resultant cash flow. And improving that requires involves keeping the "customer" satisfied. And what keeps too many collegiate "customers" satisfied is a maximized grade for minimal effort. Generous. even irresponsible, grading also can boost a professor's "course" evaluation scores. So it's a corrupt win-win situation. But what is lost is fairness for the students who put in real effort, and the value of both diplomas in general and s quality education.

Anonymous Denunciation

Our "course" evaluations were anonymous. Students were instructed not to sign their name. This shield of anonymity increased the probability students would use the evaluation for paying back tough professors. "Give me a "D'" will you? I'll fix you!" That encouraged students to down-grade professors who required diligence and the discomfort of serious thought. 

Of course students had no doubt who was grading them. We professors could only guess which student said what. We might have learned something useful had we been able to identify respondents. But, given anonymity, one never knew if a bad evaluation was retribution from some class-cutting dullard or important information from a student whose opinion matters. 

A particularly humiliating finale topped off this process. When distributing evaluations old the last day of class, we professors were instructed to make no comments whatsoever. We were to just the evaluations without comment, then leave the room.  Students were to place their completed evaluations on the front desk. These were to be collected by the last student finishing, sealed in the provided envelope, and delivered to the department secretary. Only she had the necessary security clearance. Professors were not to touch them. Clearly, we weren't to be trusted.

Excommunication

The collected evaluations were perused by a succession of administrators; then returned to the examinee. He or she then were to review them, benefit from the feedback, bind them for future reference, and record summative statistics on a spreadsheet. The later would prove critical in any future tenure or promotion hearings. 

A "Tenure and Promotion Committee" conducted the inquisition that determined a candidate's fate. Chaired by the Provost, this critical committee was staffed by highly domesticated faculty appointed by a "Committee on Committees." Should a candidate for tenure or promotion have weak statistics, or should the Provost jesuitically hint disapproval, the candidacy was doomed. The professor being examined was not permitted to appear at his or her own inquisition. Representation was provided by his or her Department Chair.

I once asked the  Chair of the Committee on Committees why, in spite of my years of satisfactory service, I had never been selected to serve on this critical committee. With a straight face she explained I was considered "insufficiently attentive to administrative intent." This woman, by the way, was exquisitely sensitive to it. Consequently, shortly afte this conversation she was appointed our new Dean of Arts and Sciences.

Note that professors are typically denied any opportunity to evaluate their chair, their dean, their provost, or  their president. I once asked our new Dean, the same lady with remarkable sensitivity to administrative intent, if faculty would be afforded the opportunity to grade her and her superiors? I stressed that professors were obviously better qualified to evaluate administrators than immature. inexperienced, often ignorant,youngsters were their professors. Looking surprised and a bit stuffy, she muttered that this would be decided at some future date. That date, of course, turned out to be never. 

Administrators know  that allowing professors to evaluate them will result in their disempowerment just as "course" evaluations disempower their faculty. Moreover, at least at my college, professors were expressly forbidden from initiating any communications with members of the board of trustees. In this way, administrators they effectively banned any evaluation that would do what "course" evaluations already do to faculty. That is, cut the ground from under their feet.

A Final Word 

"Course" evaluations disempower professors. They were introduced during a time of student scarcity to weaken academic standards in order to keep bodies in seats and balance the budget. In the short run, this tactic works. In the long run, it is the road to ruin,

Enough said.  

HUMBUG ABOUT SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE?

 

Sixteen years ago an editorial in the New York Times promised that in schools of the future: "students will use free internet applications to complete their classroom assignments on school-issued laptops that also substitute for text books," "educators will track students' academic growth with sophisticated software that allows them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level, "parents will use instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress."

In a few schools all of this has been realized and more besides. But in many others a fundamental limitation is nullifying it all. What is this limitation? It's the kids, their parents, and the world they're growing up in. 

Youngsters still have to buy into schooling before technology can even begin to transform their schooling. And kids with all sorts of education-stultifying problems weren't buying into schooling before the advent of digital technology, aren't buying into it now despite the promise, and won't buy into it in the future. Similarly their parents have to be capable of at least mediocre parental performance. Many aren't. And, lastly, the neighborhood surrounding every school seeps in and greatly influences the educational process. regardless of the technology employed. 

This is especially true of schools that most urgently require transformation. Schools in our inner cities. Technology hasn't and won't transform these schools. They haven't become more successful delivering instruction. They aren't doing better communicating with parents or fostering their interest. And, with rare exceptions, they remain the same educational wastelands they were before the advent of the digital age.

Here is a brief tale that illustrates the point. A teacher I know well was trying to teach in a Philadelphia inner city middle school that was, indeed, technologically impoverished. Through some miracle one solitary classroom was equipped with brand new computers at every desk. One morning while classes were changing, two adolescent boys began chasing one another around the computer rich classroom. Soon they were leaping from one desktop to another, trampling keyboards and kicking over computers. Perhaps the boys had that intent before they even started chasing. We'll never know. In any event they wrecked utter havoc. There was no money to replace or repair the damage. The computerized classroom was defunct before its promise was even beginning to be realized. Why? Non technological problems triumphed. 

The two vandals were never positively identified, much less dealt with. Disorder was so rife in this school that this particular destruction just blended into the chaos. Whatever promise the new computers offered was lost to all. Students could not, as the Times article promised, "use free internet applications to complete their classroom assignments" had they even wanted to. Worse still, kids who actually wanted to complete their assignments were in relatively short supply. On nice days as many as a third of the youngsters were either hours late reporting for class, or failed to show up at all. And if a youngster did complete assignments they often attracted unwelcome attention from their worst classmate.

So far as teachers being able to "track student's academic growth with sophisticated software that allows them to better tailor lessons and assignments to each youngster's achievement level," that's not just impossible now, it will be in the future — at least at the secondary level. Teachers there are trying to teach upwards of 150 kids spread over five different periods, each with 30 or so kids. Keeping track of all 150 is impossible now and will be in the future. In fact, it will remain impossible so long as we organize public education on a factory-like, mass production basis in order to make it affordable. And we're not about to stop that economizing because tax payers, particularly those without school-age children, are already fed up with school taxes.

When it comes to "parents using instant messaging to chat with teachers about their child's progress," that pipe dream requires their parents to have the necessary technology, interest, sobriety, time and freedom from the thousand and one problems that poverty, broken homes, drug addiction, alcoholism and imprisonment brings. Good luck with that!

What is one to make of all this? That schools and school kids do NOT exist in a vacuum. The world surrounding the school intrudes into each classroom, mirroring the situations in which the school is submerged. IF those situations are dysfunctional so far as schooling is concerned, no amount of technological innovation is going to save that school from the consequences. If the school is submerged in a neighborhood of affluence, safety and functional families technological innovations only widen the gap.  

 

For more detailed realistic considerations of educational issues such as this, visit newfoundations.com AND/OR newfoundations.net

THE LIMITS OF INDOCTRINATION: of nuns and "woke" professors

"I just tuned them out."

A worried Israeli émigré  to America once told me that her daughter’s Modern Middle East History professor — Jewish, but very woke — consistently condemned Israel. The mother worried that her daughter, born and raised in Israel, would come to despise the land of her birth. 

I opined that most students of college age long ago learned to discount disagreeable instruction. For instance, I know a woman who experienced 8 years of  relentless Catholic schooling conducted by 1950's era take-no-prisoners nuns. Nevertheless, she remained largely ignorant and disregardful of Catholic doctrine." 

I asked how she preserved her ignorance, given years of indoctrination. She explained that when she questioned what was being taught, she was either ignored or reproached. Ultimately,  lacking any adequate explanations, she quit listening. "I just tuned them out!" she said. Hence her triumphant ignorance of the "one true faith."

Pressed for details, the woman specifically recalled being taught it was a grave sin to save the life of the mother if it required sacrificing the life of her unborn child. Discomforted, she asked what if the mother had other children and a husband who loved and needed her? Her query was met with reproach. She found such a response totally unacceptable. She also remembered being taught that babies are born infected with original sin. She reasoned this is totally wrong-headed when babies are obviously totally innocent. By this time, though, she did not object. Butshe was more determined than ever not to listen.

 

This is one way indoctrination falls flat. Done ham-handedly, it not only fails. but it can even provoke obdurate opposition. For instance, when I was ten or eleven I asked my Sunday school teacher what happens when people die without ever hearing of Jesus? (I was thinking of very remote areas, like New Guinea.) She replied matter-of-factly, "They go to hell." I said that that wasn't fair. She responded by quoting John 14:6 in which Jesus reportedly says: “No man cometh unto the father but by me.” 

I said that this still seemed unfair. She replied, coldly this time, that fairness had nothing to do with it. Adding crossly: “This is not a debating society. If you are unhappy with God's word, perhaps you shouldn't be here.” 

I decided she was right. My usual Sunday school offering, 50 cents, bought 10 pinball games, not counting free games I won, at a near-bye corner store. Subsequently I played Sabbath pinball for several weeks. Then my mother found out. I thought I was in serious trouble. But when she heard what had happened, she granted absolution. Evidently she too thought it unfair for anyone to burn for eternity in hell on an ignorance rap. Eventually we both quit going to that church. Indoctrination can backfire. 

Professors, teachers, parents and the general public tend to overestimate the durability and effectiveness of instruction. In my 46 years as a professor I taught thousands of undergraduates; and I was repeatedly astonished by how little of what they had previously “learned” they actually remembered. Many of them, for instance, found it impossible to simply convert their raw test score, say, 39 correct out of 50, to a percentage. Yet they'd ""learned" that in middle school. Similarly, most could not identify the combatants in World Wars I or II. Only a handful knew the decade of the Great Depression. Many could not find China on an outline map. One thought that France was our northern neighbor because, “people speak French up there.” Another opined that Heinrich Himmler must be the chap who invented that life saving maneuver for people choking on food. 

That famed lifesaver, Heinrich Himmler

These kids were college sophomores who easily mastered complex social media applications and identified every single Kardashian. Yet most of them demonstrated little applicable knowledge of what is typically taught in school. 

Worse, transforming these "students" instrumental interest in merely passing tests into an intrinsic interest in knowledge itself was very difficult. At times it seemed like trying to make a dog happy by manually wagging its tail. 

In my experience undergraduates are not easily influenced by a biased lecturer. Unless the content of the lecture fulfills one or another of the psychological needs adolescents typically have.  In fact, they are seldom influenced into long-term maturity by most instruction.

I doubt my 46-years of experience with academic amnesia and disinterest is unusual. In fact I’ll wager student ignorance of past instruction is quite commonplace. This is precisely why university administrators would rather fight rabid pit bulls barehanded than require undergraduates to pass a core subjects knowledge test as a condition for a degree. Merely mentioning such a procedure puts most of these educational "leaders" at risk of a myocardial infarction.

How is any of this pertinent to our émigré mother’s worries? Well, given the perishable nature of most school taught knowledge, it is unlikely that this politically correct pedagogue is going to convert her Israeli-born daughter to an anti-Israel stance. To be sure, his impassioned denunciations of Israel will probably motivate at least some students to admire Hamas. When in a mob they may enthusiastically shout "From the river to the sea!" But, even then, they are unlikely to be able to identify either body of water or to hold on to that view when it's no longer a popular way to look righteous. 

Yasser Arafat

Is it proper for professors to conduct class in a one-sided manner? Not when the issue is multi-faceted. But it’s not like these students are living in regimes where only one point of view prevails. And it is only in societies where just one point of view is permitted and all others silenced under penalty of death or imprisonment that indoctrination is likely to succeed in the long term.

Yes, it has become true that one-sidedness does prevail in some college departments where "woke" has become the official religion. In fact in some colleges the administration actually tolerates, even endorses, this new dogma. Whenever this  atmosphere prevails and competing voices are silenced, our Israeli expatriate mother should start worrying. So should the rest of us.

 

PROGRAMMATIC DEFINITIONS ARE TRECHEROUS: here's why

 

Here is a classic programmatic definition: "Abortion is murder." Why? Because if you accept the definition, you necessarily accept the program of action that goes with it. What program of action? Redefining induced abortion as an act of murder. It is NOT murder anywhere in America. Not even in states where abortion is outlawed after a certain term of pregnancy. 

"Abortion is murder" does not mirror ordinary usage. As evidence let's look at the two key words, "abortion" and "murder." The Medical Dictionary explicitly defines abortion as: termination of pregnancy before the fetus is viable. In the medical sense, this term and the term miscarriage both refer to the termination of pregnancy before the fetus is capable of survival outside the uterus. The term abortion is more commonly used as a synonym for induced abortion, the deliberate interruption of pregnancy as opposed to miscarriage, which connotes a spontaneous or natural loss of the fetus. 

The Oxford Dictionary of English defines "murder" as: the unlawful premeditated killing of a human being by another. Of course, then, for abortion to be murder a fetus has to be thought of as a human being. But among theologians there is substantial disagreement on that matter.  Even the early church fathers thought that it was more wrong to abort a fully formed fetus than one that wasn't.  

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Pope Francis declared abortion to be a "crime" even though in the United States, and in other Western nations, it isn't. So the Pope's definition is programmatic. If we accept the Pope's definition, we embrace the Roman Catholic program of action that is embedded in it. Redefining abortion as the capital crime of murder. 

Clearly the Pope's definition violates ordinary usage. Abortion is not a crime, at least not until a certain duration of pregnancy has passed. Nor do polls evidence a majority of Americans agree with the Pope that it is an "absolute evil." The Pope's violation of ordinary usage - and popular consensus - is what makes his definition programmatic. And that istroublesome because this linguistic maneuver delegitimizes debate and stifles discussion. 

Accept the Pope's definition and we need not wonder if a girl who has been raped by her father should have the option of abortion. If she and/or her mother choose that course of action, no matter how desperately they choose it, she/they are, by the Pope's definition are murderers who have chosen an "absolute evil." And, according to the Pope, this would be true even if the abortion were performed before the embryo was still and embryo - much less capable of independent survival outside the womb.

The practical force of programmatic definitions is that their acceptance has consequences far exceeding mere linguistic preference. Accept Pope Francis's definition, for example, and there is no room for argument or contrary evidence. The choice has been made for us. 

A handy, though by no means infallible, method of identifying programmatic definitions is the presence of adjectives such as “true “ or “real.” For example, "A true conservative is one who ...". You can fill in the rest. But those who offer programmatic definitions do not necessarily intend to deceive or slip us a linguistic Mickey. They might well believe that the meaning they propose is the only “true” or “right” one. 

Sincerity and good intentions, however, are not enough. To avoid being programmatic, definitions must mirror ordinary usage, stand against contrary evidence and surmount informed disagreement. Mere assertion will not do.

SCARCE ENROLLMENT = VANISHING STANDARDS

When I was admitted to college there were 3 qualified applicants for every opening. The result was a set of rigorous standards. For instance, finishing sophomores were required to take a summative "Junior Standing Test." It measured knowledge of the required core subject taken during the first two years. One had to pass  to become a junior. Fail the first time and you had to retake it until you passed. Imagine an administrator instituting such a test today. Finding a polar bear in the rain fores is more likely. Why? Because today's acute shortage of applicants causes many college presidents to at least flirt with the standard: "The customer is always right."

A new breed of professor also thrives and reproduces in this permissive environment. These 'professors' not only fail to impose rigor, they decry the very concept. Rigor, they piously proclaim, is a form of oppression. Worse, reason and logic are merely "white" ways of knowing. Arriving at the "right" answer is also out.  Even Socrates is finished. He is, according to these enlightened individuals, just another white, male, SYS, chauvinistic, oppressor. So, I guess the Socratic method, a time-honored, logic-based method of teaching and learning, must now be useless.  (Of course, my last sentence exemplifies the argumentum ad hominem fallacy. But  since logic is merely a white way of knowing, I guess we can ignore fallacious reasoning.)

This new breed of enlightened professors even declares the enlightenment and Western culture are also out. How come? Because, they preach, no culture is better than any other. This new breed of professor's lives would be at risk if they lived in this culture and failed to agree that the People's Republic's cultural practices are without equal anywhere in the world. Yet, according to these benighted individuals, the culture of, say, Canada, is no better than the culture of North Korea where you must enthusiastically agree that a porcine homicidal runt is  superior to every other human being on the face of the earth. 

Taken together, this new breed of professor's  assertions castrate instructional quality, consign scholarship to the dust bin, spit on our Western heritage and dramatically devalue academic credentials in the process. Nevertheless, they sell their goofy gospel to impressionable students with evangelical intensity. 

Evangelization of any kind is a NOT a professor's proper job. Real professors pose intelligent questions, communicate settled knowledge and lead penetrating discussions. In short, they teach, not preach. These ersatz professors  preach, then preach some more. This new breed are, in effect, true believers selling a profane, destructive and illogical faith as gospel to impressionable teens. 

Making matters worse, a distressing number of college administrators add fuel to this academic dumpster fire in order to retain tuition paying customers. Preoccupied with meager enrollment and vanishing tuition revenue, they slyly promote academic dereliction of duty under a variety of guises. For instance, deciding attendance is now optional in the name of promoting freedom. The unstated goal? To keep seats filled." 

Similarly, the worst of college presidents now urge professors to "become the student's friend." Professors should NOT be a student's friend. Yes, they owe students fairness, courtesy and quality instruction. But they also have crucial obligations to society as a whole , such as sorting the academic wheat from the chaff. And don't imagine for a moment that this is unimportant. Do you want an ignorant and/or lazy person to build the bridges you cross, do your taxes, teach your kids, perform your surgery? Of course not. Yet friendship compromises the professorial selection process that maximizes the probability of competence. 

I also know of a college President who requires professors to engage in "whole life" counseling. Mere academic counseling, is incomplete he proclaims. You student should also be your friends. And you should inquire into personal things like: "Are you sleeping well?" "Do you have digestive issues?" "Are you anxious?" "Is there trauma in your life?"   Other than sending them to the Counseling Center, what can a professor do about a student's personal difficulties? Award an unearned higher grade seems the most likely remedy. And that has the added advantage of keeping seats filled. Professors are not qualified to pry into student's personal lives. They aren't trained mental health professionals. Besides, focusing life's difficulties undermines young people's resilience. In the real world, bad things happen to all of us. Far better for students to be encouraged to suck it up and get on with life.  Emphasizing grievances and personal difficulties encourages whining, capitulation, feeling sorry for one's self, blaming others, looking for excuses. All of that is destructive of human potential.  

Also let's not forget that these new breed "progressives" have redefined a broad range of normal stressors and perturbances as traumatic. For instance, minor slights, even unintended ones, have morphed into "micro aggressions." In this whinging atmosphere students can't help but see the advantage in making up traumas. These days intense whining just might get them a passing grade for failing work.

Rigor and student responsibility are what makes higher education "higher?" That means in order to earn a legitimate diploma, students must have performed at a high level. And it's a professor's non-negotiable duty to apply that standard. When they fail to do so diplomas become bogus. Counterfeit might be a better word. This is a key reason why current college degrees are losing value and becoming less attractive. Their possession is growing more and more valueless,

Here's something else to keep in mind. There are an increasing number of female professors. And research reveals strong gender bias in student's reaction to females who enforce high standards. Students often expect them to be more solicitous. more sympathetic, motherly, if you will. That means female professors require more courage to enforce meaningful standards. How many of them have that courage? Especially when they consider the lack of backup from tuition starved administrators?

Sorting and Grading

Sorting and grading college students is unappealing. Nevertheless, it is a vital responsibility. "Woke" professors are prone to evade that duty. I even know one individual who says he will not fail anyone.  "I wouldn't be able to sleep at night!" he says. (This same individual has male genitalia, but sometimes wears dresses to work.) Such dereliction of duty should cost this ersatz "professor" his job. Instead, his permissiveness improves his "course" evaluations and helps him win both promotion and tenure. 

Such dereliction of duty is tolerated, even encouraged because administrators are far more concerned about decreasing enrollment and unbalanced balance sheets than they are about quality education. For instance, imagine suggesting to any of them that the school require students to pass a final test before granting them a diploma. I think it might give them a coronary. It's bad enough some uncooperative professors still require students to study.

Political correctness is at the heart of this malignant nonsense. And many academics are self-righteous converts.to this faith. In fact, some go to astonishing lengths to actualize it. For instance, they assert with invincible assurance, that reason and logic are "white." So too are "objectivity" and" rationality," So there's no need to require that sort of thing. Even getting the right answer, is simply "racist" aspect of "white identity culture," They claim "it's time to decolonize the curriculum!" 

They even assert, with a straight face, mind you, that all cultures are equal. If that were true, then no religion ise better than any other. Religion, after all, is a central feature of culture. Now imagine these decolonizers made such a claim in a number of theocratic societies, Iran for instance, or ISIS controlled areas of the Arab world. They would be imprisoned; possibly even put to death. And female professors who hold that all cultures covalent are particularly opaque. They are, in effect, endorsing cultures in which males routinely subjugate them and deprive them of their most fundamental human rights. That's singularly stupid. Unless, of course, it's alright for other women to be subjugated so long as they are not.

Winning Souls to Silliness

In this wacky world these folks inhabit individual responsibility has virtually disappeared. Child molesters, for instance, are no longer pederasts. They merely are "minor attracted persons." Worse, these academic evangelicals preach their faith as objective truth to naive adolescents. Since many adolescents long for simple answers to complex questions, they win souls to this silliness. 

This quasi-religious indoctrination even emboldens some students to inquire into the nature of their professors, searching for signs of damnable heresy. Should one of the professoriate even mention, say, David Hume, they demand the offending devil be purged. These so-called students are half-baked Torquemada's, stifling academic freedom and demanding "right thinking" from all and sundry. In the service of "truth," of course.

Meanwhile administrators, intensely preoccupied with balancing the budget and preserving their well-paying jobs, cower in the face of outrageous student conduct, consign academic freedom and intellectual rigor to the dust bin and even pretend they too are true believers in this new, blighted orthodoxy.

 

The "Woke" and Chairman Mao

Nowadays "students" are patrolling the collegiate world eagerly looking to be offended. They usually are the converts of thought-police professors. Think of them as inquisitors, junior grade. Instead of using college to create themselves, they let others do it for them. To "convert them," so to speak. And as converts, they find researched knowledge offensive, emotionally troubling and heretical whenever it violates their faith conviction that the world is in the clutches of an all-powerful, neo-colonial white male hegemony. 

What disappears in all of this is individual student agency. They've been taught to believe that it isn't they who fail to actually think, who refuse to listen, but the "other."! That's who is always to blame! It's not hard to see how poisonous such an attitude is. 

To tell the truth, this "woke" culture is really a watered down version of Mao's "cultural revolution." Professors aren't being beaten, imprisoned, or murdered as they were in Mao's China. But they are being subjected to name-calling, public ridicule, administrative muzzling, censorship and job loss. Worse still, this politically correct zealotry has provoked a right-wing backlash that also threatens academic freedom from the opposite direction.  And guess who's caught in the middle?  

Conclusion

Of course DEI is utterly tangled up in all of this as many still seek to combat racism with racism, prejudice with still more prejudice, inequality with more inequality, etc. Yes, Trump and his MAGA republicans are busily expunging D.E.I. from government and corporate giants are also backing away. But "wokeness," performative virtue and identity politics remain firmly in place in academe. Actual, as well as ersatz, 'true believers' still successfully denounce non-conforming colleagues as homophobic, racist, reactionaries. They even are often able to block publications they deem 'heretical' in professional journals. This is why professors willing to risk being labeled a heretic are about as scarce as collegiate applicants.

So in higher education, the "woke" religion remains firmly in place. And the zealotry of its true believers remains undiminished. In consequence the intellectual and marketplace worth of a "higher education, "especially in non-STEM areas, is loosing value. What employer wants a blindly fanatic, judgmental college graduate, who knows little, can do less, and promises to be nothing but trouble? 

In the final analysis, "wokeness" is having the same devitalizing impact on U.S. academic life, that Marxism-Leninism had in the Soviet Union. And because it is coupled with the growing collegiate enrollment crisis, its impact is especially virulent. Worse, this quasi-religious zealotry and intellectual vacuity,  continues to coin new so-called "scholars" who substitute faith for reason and conviction for evidence. And they busily churn out even more of the sort of pseudo-scholar evangelists who threaten higher education's very future.

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