How things have changed...

John Ray wonders when American universities started going downhill.

STOP THE ROT

There is no question that leftist views have infiltrated our colleges and universities. But what most people may not know, is just how far left the pendulum has swung. Ben Shapiro is a recent graduate from UCLA. He is also the youngest syndicated columnist in the United States. What he says has crept into American universities is astonishing. Sharpiro said, "You go on campus, you pick up the campus newspaper and see editorials comparing Ariel Sharon to Adolf Eichmann. And then you walk outside class and you see the Muslim Student Association handing out pamphlets actively fundraising for Hamas and Hezbollah, and you figure, boy, I better do something about this." <snip> So how did our colleges and universities become havens for anti-American thought and rhetoric? Some say the Leftist agenda that is running rampant today got its roots in the 1960s. The radicals of the Sixties Revolution are the same men and women at the head of our educational institutions and are in charge of shaping the minds of our young people today.

When I was still in school, one of my teachers sounded off on the "radical college kids" who insisted on being taught only those things that were "relevant". And they wanted to be the ones to decide what was "relevant".

Sometime in the sixties, it seems the inmates took over the asylum.

Stripped of the connotations these words have to mental health, that statement is exactly correct. The original meaning of "asylum" is "shelter". People who come to the US "seeking asylum" are not trying to get themselves institutionalized. They want shelter.

A school is a shelter, within which learning and practice occur.

When I was in college, some of my fellow students took umbrage at the use of the phrase, "When you get into the real world," or any variant that implied college was not the real world. (Frankly, I did too, more because my friends were doing it, than because I'd thought about it.)

But college is not the real world. It's a place where you can learn things, and try out new skills and new ideas. With very few exceptions, you are shielded from the consequences of failure. After all, you can always retake the course next year.

And the term that is properly applied to those living inside a shelter is "inmates".

Some time in the sixties, it somehow became unfashionable for anyone to claim to have more knowledge, experience, or wisdom than anyone else. In particular, it was unfashionable for professors to claim to know better than students do. The fashionable egalitarian belief took hold among college professors and administrators, and as beliefs so often do, this belief caused people to behave in certain ways. In particular, when the inmates decided to take over the asylum, the staff stood aside and let them.

So far, the hard sciences have resisted, mainly because hard sciences are hard, with sharp edges. If you try to do something against the laws of physics or chemistry, the system has a way of biting you in the rear end. Hot glass has a way of reminding you that "hot glass" is more than just an arbitrary social construct.