Over the years here longtime visitors have read me refer to the “institutionalization” of leftist epistemology as the social catalyst in an attack on the foundational tenets of classical liberalism (and so on our country itself) — beginning with certain kernel assumptions about how language functions to determine meaning in an interpretative exchange, and moving on to critiques of the lynchpins of leftist academic thought, from Said’s Orientalism (whose foundational assertions lead inexorably to the idea of truth as a function of power, identity, and authenticity), to Benjamin’s historiocity (as a tool in deconstructing Enlightenment epistemology), to the “diversity” movement (whose Orwellian upshot is to demonize true diversity and true tolerance, and replace them with an entirely superficial idea of diversity, and an idea of tolerance that promotes only that speech approved by the leftists who set the parameters for what comes to count as a socially allowable utterance).
But no amount of theoretical investigation can illuminate the insidious nature of the problem quite so well as a concrete instance of such leftist insinuation into the mechanisms of our epistemological transference.
So, then. Go.
Mr. Johnson just seems like an all around neat guy.
Greetings:
Groupthink is an insidious and dangerous phenomenon. Back during my days in the federal bureaucracy, I modified a bit of previous folk wisdom to more accurately describe my then immediate situation. To wit, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is toast.”
I was confused about what the hell a “disposition” was in this context. From here:
Strange how these progressives are opposed to the cleansing action of sunlight. Thank heaven there are a few KC Johnsons out there in academia.
The correct lessons to take from the Duke Lacrosse thing were that our criminal justice system gives too much leeway to prosecutors and that all humans are innocent until legally proven guilty.
More here. Just unpacking the term. Educators have their own foreign language.
It’s irritating.
Used in a sentence: A Tea Partier has the wrong disposition to be a teacher.
“Educators have their own foreign language. “
– Talking in code amongst the conspiratorial group has always been a mainstay of any well run conspiracy.
– The Leftist program is well documented. The question now that needs addressing is by what means do we bring it and its nefarious goals to the public forum, and then how do we root it out and safeguard against a recurrence.
– I’ve seen no specific ways and means for remedial action. So far it would seem that this seditious activity has proven quite durable and resistant to elimination.
The correct lessons to take from the Duke Lacrosse thing were that our criminal justice system gives too much leeway to prosecutors and that all humans are innocent until legally proven guilty.
Nothing about the fact that Duke employs, at a minimum, 88 progressives who hate them some due process?
Heh. Yeah, I’d say that’s part of the lesson.
They’re determined to ensure that the next generation is committed to the long march through the institutions.
Here’s a novel thought. How about being more concerned that teachers focus on transmitting the subject matter to their charges; instead of every course reflecting the social justice ideology let’s let math class focus on, well, math, similarly english on english, history on factual history etc…
Focusing on indoctrinating our children in the tenets of identity politics, multi-cultutalism, transnationalism, and social justice, instead of, you know, educating them, is why we have such terrible test scores coming from public school attendees; and why our society has been effectively dumbed down.
Save the social justice courses for college, keep it in the humanities department, and make sure the course name actually reflects the same’s content.
Strange how these progressives are opposed to the cleansing action of sunlight. Thank heaven there are a few KC Johnsons out there in academia.
Just as free speech is for me and not for thee, so the cleansing action of sunlight is for thee and not for me.
/progg
[…] October 2010 in Cognitive Dissonance Goldstein at PW points us to yet another example of leftoid academia’s enforcement of groupthink under the heading of “diversity”. […]
AJB: K. C. Johnson spent thousands of his own dollars, doing legwork for his Durham In Wonderland blog’s expose’ of Nifong AND the little stalins on the faculty at Duke. And yet the latter were still casting themselves as victims, in the aftermath.
Longer version of those two sentences here.
Sock puppeting isn’t nice, whoever you are. Furthermore, in order to be effective it’s gotta be credible.
The real AJB would have cut-and-pasted something to the effect that the correct lessons to take from the Duke lacrosse thing were that the White Oppressive Establishment victimizes dark-skinned people and closes ranks to ensure that the oppressors are never taken to task for it.
Regards,
Ric
In the preparing future faculty course I took there was a boat of leftist claptrap about diversity and inclusiveness. We spent half the time on that, it seemed. I was a very vocal opponent to it. I think others felt the same but were afraid to say anything.
According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognise “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.”
Which proves and explains why the instructors with the favored “disposition” are so fucking stupid.
31 to 0 is pretty telling – Here, we’re going to smack down someone outside the department for questioning the orthodoxy. Would you like to sign this letter? Or perhaps you also question the orthodoxy?
Would you like to sign this letter? Or perhaps you also question the orthodoxy?
We know where you work. If you want to call your particular field of the soft sciences “work”.
My little brudder is in a teaching program in MN of all places and he’s almost as staunch as me plus he’s a lifeydoodle and I keep expecting him to get in trouble but he just grits his teeth a lot. I think he gets a break cause he’s charming and he’s switching careers from evil big pharma and they think it’s all noble and shit.
any well-run conspiracy
Not a conspiracy: a bandwagon. Conspiracies rely on keeping a small cadre of headstrong individuals in line. There’s much risk of schism and dissolution.
A bandwagon OTOH, has the inexorable power of an avalanche that not even the instigators can control. But they know where to set the charges; they know where the slope is the steepest; they know their target lies placid and vulnerable at the foot of the mountain. That is enough.
11B40, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind
“Josef K., the Integrity Committee would like a word with you…”
What an un-understandable paragraph that is. Oy vey!
The system of “disposition” has been around for a long time under different names. It operates in other areas too. It selects for those to advance and those marked for disposal. It is how the “ruling class” reproduces itself and sustains it’s power.
This also on a quite similar topic.
Then there’s the already-in-place assumption and policy that no one who smokes–a custom of centuries standing on this continent, that will continue even should tobacco be outlawed–is fit to be a teacher. No one noticed that happening, because almost everyone approved, leaving themselves vulnerable to their own persecution, should something they hold dear become the target of the governing classes. Why not ban pleasure travel, for instance? The electorate has already conceded the principle.
I do it to prune readership.
In fact, it’s fairly simple to read. Here, try it this way:
Over the years here longtime visitors have read me refer to the “institutionalization” of leftist epistemology as the social catalyst in an attack on the foundational tenets of classical liberalism (and so on our country itself)
[a discussion that begins] with certain kernel assumptions about how language functions to determine meaning in an interpretative exchange,
[moves] on to critiques of the lynchpins of leftist academic thought, from
*Said’s Orientalism (whose foundational assertions lead inexorably to the idea of truth as a function of power, identity, and authenticity),
*to Benjamin’s historiocity (as a tool in deconstructing Enlightenment epistemology),
*to the “diversity” movement (whose Orwellian upshot is to demonize true diversity and true tolerance, and replace them with an entirely superficial idea of diversity, and an idea of tolerance that promotes only that speech approved by the leftists who set the parameters for what comes to count as a socially allowable utterance).
***
I’d try a diagram, but my skill set prohibits it.
Of course, it’s completely understandable. With that being the case, perhaps what you meant to say was, “Thinking is too hard for me to pursue.”
“What an un-understandable paragraph that is.”
Must have been made by one of the Gumby brothers of Monty Python fame; idiots who ran around constantly excaiming, “My Brain Hurts!”
Try reading the first sentence of the first paragraph out loud in one breath.
(No, I don’t sound the words out as I read them. It’s merely a convenient rule of thumb for sentence length. At least it wasn’t in German, where you have to wait until the end to get to the verb.)
Why would you do that? You can take breaths at commas and m-dashes. But if you’d like, here: ;;;;….
Use as needed.
Jesus.
I seriously hate people.
It’s merely a convenient rule of thumb for sentence length.
And?
Nothing wrong with Jeff’s lengthy sentences. If you can’t parse ’em, you’re on the wrong blog.
I’m finding something that I don’t understand. Why does the link in the words “yesterdays post” in this post from August 19th 2006 link to this 2010 post? I suspect time travel is involved and we are all zombies.
That’s probably the best case scenario.
Try reading the first sentence of the first paragraph out loud in one breath.
Did you pass out? Mark, a good rule of thumb for you would be not to comment! Convenient? YMMV!
Geoff —
Those old links don’t work. I was using a different blog software back then. You have to go back and try the archives. Those old links, because they aren’t recognized, will merely take you back to the homepage.
Mark is a good guy.
But for Chrissakes, I’ve slept maybe 7 hours over the last 4 days, and I’m still finding a way to keep the blog active. Cut me some slack, will you?
Of course, we all wonder why Jeff doesn’t manually go back and fix all the old links (plus straightening out the special characters).
I myself will withhold funds until he steps to it.
Thank you.
Nice sentences in 2006 too.
Re: that 2006 post Geoff linked, note that I talk about cynical pragmatism and locate it in certain people who would NEVER call themselves progressive.
I told you: my critiques of, eg., Patterico, were not personal. I’ve been entirely consistent on the point since this blog began. Frey is just of the type to see in a principled critique a vendetta of some kind.
Wasn’t the case.
– I’d still like to see some concrete approaches to delimiting this egregious activity in academia. Something that is doable on a widespread, but at the same time, local community level that doesn’t take an act of Congress, even were it that we had a firm idea of who Congress is any more.
– Intolerance of sentence length….
Lexiconal Bigotry!”
– Here’s a first cut possibility. How about Conservative institutions using the media to advertise openly.
“We teach the Classics, we don’t teach propaganda”
or
“A liberal education without the big “L”…”
or
“We teach moderation in all things.”
– Let the community and the competitive market do the police work.
The small university where I am employed was recently given a nice grant to put together a day-long conference on suicide prevention – which I helped plan. We pulled in as many big guns as we could and used our own psychology faculty to fill in the blanks.
At one of the break-out sessions I almost retched aloud when “social justice” and “diversity” were included as crucial components of “shalom” and suicide prevention. I was waiting for them to include global warming and Keynesian economics in the mix. Good lord, do these people have any original thoughts anymore?
“….do these people have any original thoughts anymore?”
– Probably not since Karl.
I’d still like to see some concrete approaches to delimiting this egregious activity in academia.
There’s nothing to be done with the current crew. Even if you laid down the law and set up strict rules, they’d spend the rest of their time bitterly subverting the rules.
Furthermore, you take away their propaganda, and they have nothing left to say; take away their little power games, an they have nothing left to do.
We can only set up parallel institutions and hope that they’re strong enough to hold their own, or even crowd out the old guard.
But they’re like weeds, people: no matter how nice your edibles and ornamentals are, they’ll just keep cropping back up over and over.
CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
sarah p smiles
I agree completely. Academia has been subverted beyond all recognition, the free exchange of ideas is nonexistent, and brainless groupthink (ironically called “critical thinking”) is dominant. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
Jeff – I went 11 days without sleep trying to solve my problems. Give yourself a break and take sleep whenever your mind offers it to you. Lack of sleep changes your mind without permission.
I too couldn’t understand why Said was being taught, but to try and understand him brings on madness.
newsrouter – any pictures of sarah miles and kris kristofferson?
Anyway, how do I write for Occidental college?
Geez, you people are out of step with the times. It’s “differentiated instruction” now, folks. Learn it. Live it.
Well, at least until the next big brain comes along to tell us all how to really really teach.
I hate eduocational seminars. That was a whole day out of my life I’ll never get back.
“educational”
Creative spelling is still not encouraged.
i’m in the first grade
and i’m late but i have an apple for u!
[sunshine!]
learn me?
then when ur on your rocking chair
smoking ur stuff
u can rock back/ and tell urself ur special
dang me- dang meput me on a hope rope and challenge me..
[barney- the purple dinosour say- one and one is two
one and 5 are two= two and a two by four makes me fierce/ and less purple]
going doggerel
Nan – you are oh so wrong. Creative thinking is not allowed.
Nan – Can you work on my differentiated transmition? It is a bitch.
pdbuttons – may need your help. How can I tell a cable company to F*off. but not in those words. They sold my credit info and my Dad has alzhiemers and is very cross when he misses his shows. I love your insults, and I hope you like mine — but this is too much. Jeff – you have another fifty coming to you.
How about we get back to actually teaching the children how to LEARN, rather than the PurityOfEssense claptrap of how to THINK. Concentrate on those actual skills they are being paid to teach – addition/subtraction, reading/writing, and what happens when you don’t bother to look before you leap.
Let them learn, and quit trying to control what they think.
My nephews and nieces are learning just that, but it is because of their parents. They are not homeschooled, but just have parents who go over the basics with them.
i do not insult people
but my presence might offend…
when i have to deal
with cable shops
i play them off each other
and u can always get a deal,,
if ur wily coyote
cuz u gotta stick em
and stick em
and pause
and stick em
u want my bizness..
u want my trust
u want my money-honey?
i just want turner classic movie channel
and maybe espn
and the cute homeless girl that i found
in a cardboard box sitting next to
me on my love seat..
cuz maybe she is cinderella?
her feet don’t stink that bad!
doggerel?
ruff cough ruff
pdbuttons – when does the kidding stop? Do you wish to be a friend, enemy, or neutral? I thought of you as the usual internet goof, quick with the insult, but very good at heart. I apologize if I was in error. Good luck with the hate. It takes you to amazing places. I’ve been to all of them and would never go again. If you get stuck just ask me for help. Happy am I to give to others, especially the lost.
60.Comment by Drumwaster on 10/17 @ 12:46 am #
“How about we get back to actually teaching the children how to LEARN, rather than the PurityOfEssense claptrap of how to THINK. Concentrate on those actual skills they are being paid to teach – addition/subtraction, reading/writing, and what happens when you don’t bother to look before you leap.
Let them learn, and quit trying to control what they think.”
You make the naive assumption that they are really there to teach anything. They are there to indoctrinate. They are there to tell you how to think, but only in the way they want you to think.
After you strip away the lie of good intentions, it’s obvious that indoctrination is their sole reason for existence.
All children have an innate desire to learn. Public schools are instituted to stifle that desire.
So, ultimately the Who was right, in an ironic sense, ‘We don’t need no thought control’
Peter Berkowitz on why liberals don’t understand the Tea Parties. Turns out, they’re ignorant, having got their (un)learning in inadequate schools. Who knew?
Rupe, I think pdb meant ‘When dealing with a cable TV provider, always remind them that your money could well go to DirectTV or that other satellite provider, or even to your local phone company if you’re in one of the areas where they’ve made encroachments to what was once a monopoly. Don’t insult them, because at the level you’re working, customer service, those poor people are of little consequence and can’t make any difference and your petty insults would simply make their lives miserable hells and they might go home and beat their spouses, children or dogs.
Probably you missed a checkbox on a form that would’ve prevented that cable company from selling your info. A little late now, but a formal letter sent to Legal will put an end to that in the future, I’ll warrant.’
As far as translating Cinderella with the slight case of stinkfoot? You’re on your own, kiddo.
You make the naive assumption that they are really there to teach anything.
I make no such assumption, because (if you had actually read what was written) I am endorsing a RETURN to just teaching, rather than your verb “indoctrinate”.
If you think that teachers started out to indoctrinate, I will then question who is being naive. When I was going through school, a single teacher managed to control a classroom of 30+ kids AND managed to teach them all to read, write, and handle numbers without fear or bias. Today, that same teacher needs three teacher’s aides, two lawyers, and a substitute teacher only to have half the class drop out and the rest be unable to read their own diploma.
I say we move back to the basics. You obviously disagree. Poor you.
In edjamacation our ruling elites always get the full measured value of their beloved Keynesian multiplier.
School choice.
Competition in a marketplace where the parent is the customer.
Privatization.
There will no longer be a method of orthodoxical control. Every individual school will employ teachers along whichever criteria it pleases. The vast majority of parents will send their children to schools which produce results in teaching the basic subject material the best, which will drive those primarily concerned with enforcing the correct ‘disposition’ out of business.
Furthermore, I’d say we have to roll back this idea that it takes ‘education’ training to teach, or that teachers should be education majors rather then majors in whatever it is they’re trying to teach.
I’d say that… except I honestly don’t think it’s held by a majority of people anyway. I doubt there’d be much public resistance to a school putting a guy with a doctorate in chemistry in charge of sophomore science class, because he doesn’t have a masters in ‘education’.
That requirement seems to be mostly enforced from the top-down, administratively, without any real support base for the idea at all. Just no major challenge to it, either.
I could be wrong. But I don’t know who it is – besides the education deptartments and the teaching establishments full of their pupils who’ve already cleared the barrier – that thinks education degrees are critical.
Nobody thinks education degrees are critical.
In one of the old “Rabbi does X” mystery stories, Harry Kemelman explains why Jews don’t have much respect for primary teachers: Jews have been nearly 100% literate for some centuries now, and anyone who can read and write can teach a child to do so. Primary teachers thus have the job because other people don’t want to take the time or trouble.
Credentials in “education” are designed to put a barrier between near-infinite supply (most anybody can teach the basics, do they trouble themselves to do so) and finite demand (there are only so many teaching posts available) that will up the perceived value of the work and therefore the wage it can demand. Any modern “educator” will zoom and rotate at the very thought of putting a guy with a doctorate in chemistry in charge of sophomore science class, not because he couldn’t teach it but because he could — thus displacing somebody who couldn’t do the work expected of a PhD in chemistry, and whose only hope of a salary is teaching.
“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” An education credential is a certification that the bearer can’t.
Regards,
Ric
buttons makes the internet better Mr. Rupe and he is diligent and kind to animals and a gentler soul you will not find
It’s no use, I’ve already shunned you.
Pink Floyd were actually the ones who eschewed…
…
[…] for you!In the name of academic freedom, shut the hell up! Jeff Goldstein, smart man that he is, saw this one coming a long time ago.Is Nancy Pelosi toast no matter what happens in November? Well, her own people are running away […]
Linkified, with the first hit as extra irony.
“I’d still like to see some concrete approaches to delimiting this egregious activity in academia.”
We could reduce all their salaries to the median or average compensation in the public sector–whichever is lower. Why not? The academic swarm is always lecturing the rest of us on sacrifice for the public good. Cheap education is a public good, no?
Frankly, only the libraries are worth conserving.
Credentials in “education” are designed to put a barrier between near-infinite supply (most anybody can teach the basics, do they trouble themselves to do so) and finite demand (there are only so many teaching posts available) that will up the perceived value of the
I think you miss, though, one critical aspect. An ironic one. Credentials are what makes teacher’s “a professional.” They’re not just some schlemp teaching your kid. THEY’VE GOT CREDENTIALS. Maybe even an advanced degree. Never mind that education is the easiest major in college (when I was in college, all the basketball players were ed Majors) and that the grad school isn’t terribly rigorous either.
It’s ironic, though, because these teaching “professionals” need to be represented by a union. That’s the thing, I get a laugh about.
Frankly, only the libraries are worth conserving.
Only at the major research univerisities. Your average “state” college lacks the resources (money and shelf space) to build and maintain a first rate collection. What you tend to end up with as a mishmash of outdated materials on the one hand, and trendy, faddish materials on the other. Worst of both worlds really.
It’s ironic, though, because these teaching “professionals” need to be represented by a union. That’s the thing, I get a laugh about.
All the disadvantages of the guild system, with none of the advantages.
What you tend to end up with as a mishmash of outdated materials on the one hand, and trendy, faddish materials on the other. Worst of both worlds really.
Be that as it may, at least you have books that people can read. The books aren’t going to punish you for disagreeing with them, and librarians, as a class, are way better than classroom teachers about encouraging people to find knowledge and wisdom on their own terms.
Give me a mediocre library over a mediocre lecturer every time.
I may have told this story before, but it applies here: when I enrolled in the Physics program, one of the professors who did our freshman orientation said, “This is not an easy program. Look to your left and your right. Of the three of you, only one will graduate from the Physics program. The other two will drop out or transfer.”
Dr. Sunshine may not have been a great salesman, but he was right. The attrition rate in the early 90s for the Physics program was just shy of 70%. A lot of students transferred to Computer Science or Engineering, which emphasized real-world practicality over abstract (and mind-alteringly strange) theory. A handful went the other way, transferring to Mathematics, which emphasized pure abstraction.
But by and large, most transferred to the College of Education, which was the only college in the University that could boast of a negative attrition rate. Funny that they never did boast about that little factoid…
only the libraries are worth conserving
Save the stadia !
…
Et frat parties, tu.