<p>Can’t let this pass without comment. I had some dealings with Elizabeth Warren in her previous professorship, at Penn, and knew a number of people, on the faculty there and in the bankruptcy bar, who had a lot of dealings with her. First, she was a total star, and instantly recognized as such by some people with pretty high intellectual standards. (One of my bankruptcy friends had a brother who won a Nobel Prize, and neither of the siblings suffered fools gladly. My friend was very, very impressed by Warren, and that was not his usual reaction to newly-minted academics.) Second, no one had any idea she had any Cherokee connection, including the colleagues who hired her. She was poached by Harvard because she was a first-rate young bankruptcy scholar, period.</p>
<p>I am not saying anything about her politics, by the way. At the time, she was not engaged in politics at all, and I completely understand if people don’t like her current political positions. But this affirmative-action-at-Harvard smear is the worst sort of far-right out-and-out lie.</p>
That’s basically right. Thomas Jefferson was a prime example–he thought Christianity would wither away in the light of reason, and he made his own version of the Bible by snipping out all the supernatural elements. I always think of that when I hear about how the Founding Fathers established a Christian nation. Not exactly.</p>
<p>Some of the folks who complain the loudest about multiculturalism in the schools are themselves evidence that some schools are not doing a good job of teaching American history.</p>
<p>Except you aren’t getting it. Most or all of the Deists came from a Protestant background, and the movement is solidly part of the intellectual history of Anglo-American Protestantism, and Protestantism in general, with its focus on an individual relationship between a person and the Biblical text. You don’t generally find Deist movements in Spain, Italy, Russia, India, or the Islamic world. There are elements of it in some Jewish movements, but only those that developed in northern Germany and the U.S., i.e., Protestant cultures, and were explicitly concerned with reconciling Jewish practice with the values of Jews who were assimilated into the dominant culture. Traditional Judaism had completely different strategies for dealing with doubts about the supernatural.</p>
<p>Again, I am not arguing that Deism may not be attractive to non-Christians. But historically, culturally, intellectually it was an Anglo-American Protestant movement (with a few French and Germans), and you essentially have to be a white Protestant (or blinded by white Protestant culture) not to recognize that.</p>
<p>Included in OP’s findings, at least as presented in the related wsj article, was that while multiculturism permeated the curriculum, American history offerings were limited:</p>
Bowdoin is not a high school. Also, the statement about courses offered is untrue, as a brief look at the history department’s website shows. (Although the course topics are pretty specific.)</p>
<p>What does this mean? Only high schools should require education in American History? My major university required at least one course in American History. Are you saying that was unusual?</p>
<p>Oh, come on! “The college has ‘no curricular requirements that center on the American founding or the history of the nation’”? Give me a break! There may be a college or two somewhere that has such a requirement – St. John’s, where curricular requirements cover about 80% of the curriculum, probably West Point, and I assume some of the Liberties and Oral Robertses – but you would have a hard time finding more than a handful. And it’s not like that topic isn’t covered (and covered, and covered) in K-12 curriculums across the country. In fact, I doubt the Klingenstein crowd would be terribly happy with what professional historians would do with “the American founding” on a college level, compared to the pabulum their ideological soul-mates enforce in high schools.</p>
<p>(Cross-posted with Hunt and Bay, obviously. Yes, Bay, that was unusual then, and probably more so now.)</p>
<p>I will say that looking at Bowdoin’s course offerings, it is more multi-culti than many other colleges. I compared their english offerings in the spring semester to Yale’s for example, and even correcting for the larger number courses at Yale, a higher percentage of Bowdoin’s were what I would call multicultural. So, if you don’t like that, don’t go to Bowdoin, and don’t give it money.</p>
<p>@Hunt-I think that whether Jefferson was a Deist or a Christian is still up for debate. Both sides seem to have their points to help prove their side.</p>
<p>I think at some state universities, there are still significant survey course requirements. For example, at Oklahoma University (chosen at random), all students must take an American History survey course. The history major has various different tracks, many of which, as I read it, don’t require additional US history: [OU</a> Department of History -](<a href=“http://www.ou.edu/cas/history/baundergrad.html]OU”>http://www.ou.edu/cas/history/baundergrad.html)
At the more selective colleges, it’s much less common for very broad survey courses to be required, perhaps because virtually all of the students have AP courses. (This is actually something that I sometimes criticize when I look at my kids’ course offerings–I think they could use more introductory surveys in subjects that they would not want to major in, like econ for example.) Also at Oklahoma, for another example, English majors must take a pair of broad survey courses (either World, European, or American literature from then until now). At Yale, English majors must take a pair of courses on a selected set of English poets, not a broad survey.</p>
<p>@Hunt-I believe I have read that he made that Bible for Native Americans (thinking that they would be more accepting of that version of the Bible), not necessarily for his own personal use.</p>
<p>Add me to the group that could read poetsheart all day long.</p>
<p>There could be great value in great US history courses. And there is, at many colleges. But face the fact that there is a loss in many survey classes, which rush to cover highlights for a student body not versed in comp politics, philosophy or more. The level of discussion here is based on interest and knowledge accumulated over time.</p>
<p>(It also strikes me that CC threads of this sort are uniquely American, with the diversity of experience and opinion and great desire to argue it out. Disagreement may be common in many cultures. Do they all have this sort of venue?)</p>
<p>I didn’t say Bowdoin students were ignorant. I was commenting in general about past posts and any possible future posts that might criticize someone else’s knowledge of American history. If all we are expected to know is what we learned in K-12, then thats it. Some of us didn’t live in the US for all of K-12, just pointing that out.</p>
<p>Is a 5 in AP US History required for admission to Bowdoin? I know it is not required for Yale.</p>
Well, possibly to some extent (that was part of its title), but it was never used for that purpose, but rather for his own use. When you look at Jefferson’s own words, it is virtually impossible to make him into a believing Christian. At best, he thought Christianity offered a good moral system. This fact is troubling to many (often for political reasons), which is why so many far-fetched efforts are made to redeem Jefferson.</p>
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Not required. But I’ll bet most of them have it; and those that don’t have a 4.</p>