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<p>Hunt,</p>
<p>You missed the point, being that most intelligent people would want an education that includes a discussion of more than one viewpoint.</p>
<p>Bay, in your examples one is a classroom and one is campus reaction to events? In each case, how should a professor or professors have handled or directed discussion differently? Did your daughter feel comfortable stating her views? In your classroom example, how does the professor incorporate more than one viewpoint? It would be interesting to see the reading list. I don’t guess that is possible. Was this a class reading fiction or non-fiction? If it was a class reading novels by immigrant writers describing their reaction to the American experience (and my kids had some classes like that) how does the professor present another point of view?</p>
<p>adding:
Bay - Thank you for trying to explain it to me:)</p>
<p>
Then why don’t they give a bunch of money to (or found) colleges that are devoted to discussing more than one viewpoint? Or was I right in my first couple of posts in suggesting that what you really favor is making Bowdoin practice affirmative action in favor of conservatives in hiring faculty?</p>
<p>For a more serious answer: I do think that colleges should be presenting multiple points of view in many subjects, including economics, political science, history and others. I’m not convinced that they don’t do so. Anecdotal stories of profs that fail to do this are always countered by anecdotal stories of profs that present multiple views.</p>
<p>But I don’t know exactly how you go about making sure that you have faculty that actually adhere to a variety of views. Where do you draw the line? It’s not entirely facetious to ask whether the biology department should hire evolution-deniers.</p>
<p>Hunt,
I really don’t care whether college professors identify as “liberal” or “conservative.” What I am interested in, is making it known that many professors come across to some (highly intelligent, I will add) students as teaching only one (liberal) perspective on things. If those professors don’t care, then they don’t care, but it seems anti-intellectual to me, to not examine or offer up for discussion, the way many other human beings look at life, even if a prof doesn’t agree with it.</p>
<p>I agree it is all anecdotal, but there are several posters here distressed by what happens on some campuses and I am trying to understand what, exactly, they see as the problem. Bay’s daughters are cynical about their educational experience. They feel themselves to have been oppressed by liberals. Were these universities a worthwhile experience for them or not? What did they want out of a college education that they didn’t get? I am interested in their anecdotal reports.</p>
<p>If it is interesting and valid that conservatives include various viewpoints, why is it impossible that liberals do, too? Why such sensitivity in one direction without the other? That’s the lumping fear of “liberal” some note. </p>
<p>Get to know each other. Not all who value, eg, cross-cultural (subcultural) respect fit some arbitrary mold in other categories. (Same on both sides. My Evangelical friend, deep in the South, votes for liberal candidates when it corresponds to her belief we must care for the needy. She objects to schools banning books. Her daughter is at a big, wicked U in a big wicked NE city- and thriving.)</p>
<p>Most college kids never learn what their professors’ deep and broad personal views are.<br>
Some here rest their position on a fear their kids’ voices will be stifled. Is that so? Or really only a few examples? Same as one could find in any group. Much ado about the feared liberals. Much asuming a liberal prof would not cover multiple perspectives. (How do you get there?)</p>
<p>
I agree that profs shouldn’t do this. I guess I’m just a bit skeptical about how many of them actually do. Of the forty or so professors an undergrad is likely to have in the course of a college education, how often is this really likely to happen? I will agree that it may be more likely to happen at some colleges than others.</p>
<p>I also think one thing that may happen is that conservative students may feel embattled in class discussions with other students, if they are in the small minority. And it depends on the subject, as well. I think you could debate fiscal policy with other students at Yale for ages without anybody calling you names, but it would be a different story if you are in the minority on the issue of same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>Hunt, just adding: the better the intellectual flow at a college, the better received even contrary views are. It can be a kid’s knee-jerk “I won’t entertain another view” that stymies some young college kids. The kid who reads, listens, processes and considers will be valued over the one who can’t reflect. </p>
<p>The “intellectual” advantage, imo, is to the kids who do reflect. Whether it strengthens them as conservatives or as liberals. Knee-jerk, being entrenched, that’s the limitation. Not exposure to contrary views.</p>
<p>alh,
I appreciate your questions, but I do not feel competent to answer them as my Ds would.</p>
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<p>If someone is willing to give an example of a class their student took, where only a liberal point of view was taught, maybe I could understand the objections. I think it is probably necessary to see a course description, reading list, and try to understand the purpose of the course to understand whether the conservative point of view some posters would like to see expressed was valid within the context of that particular course. For example, in the courses where my kids read immigrant writers, is the expectation that the professor should say some may feel the writer is incorrect in her response to her experiences? Assuming fiction is a true account of the experience and the writer’s feelings?</p>
<p>Also, not all of us are interested in all areas of study. That is sort of the point of shopping periods for classes imho.</p>
<p>“Hunt, You missed the point …”</p>
<p>Wow, that would be a first. I may have to start a thread “Hunt misses point … can dementia be setting in?” I will admit that Hunt has um, well, a unique way of presenting things. (I’m STILL laughing over his tongue-in-cheek description of the Lynchburg region as “Metropolis.”) Missing points? Not so much.</p>
<p>A sticking point for me in these sorts of discussions is an undertone of “My views are inarguably correct, so if you don’t agree with me you must be wrong.” The basis for any sound philosophy is consideration that individual tenets of that philosophy may be suspect. What was it Socrates said about the unexamined life?</p>
<p>Relevant article from the NYT about professors being left-leaning:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html?_r=0[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html?_r=0</a></p>
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<p>Surprising from the graph that physicians & natural scientists that are not professors are more right-leaning than the population average.</p>
<p>^ Paraphrasing that paragon of conservative thought Richard Mourdock “when liberals end up as Professors, well that’s something God intended.”</p>
<p>In the 1960s college campuses, swelled by the large baby-boom generation, became a staging ground for radical leftist social and political movements, further moving the academy away from conservatism. There’s some typecasting for y’all.</p>
<p>Don’t take classes simply because the title sounds sexy. Read the description and think. Do the work and raise your freaking hand if you want to question the viewpoint presented. Be able to support your own position. Don’t expect a pat on the head for simply having a view. If you need an environment where your beliefs are less likely to be challenged, find that college. This is being reduced to onesie examples. A class or two, a prof or two.</p>
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<p>My D is currently in a film-studies class at Wellesley that is *extremely left-leaning, almost to the point of parody. A woman who was shown on stage singing was “dehumanized” because she was only shown from the waist up – as if there weren’t other examples of men singing in films and shown from the waist up. Everything was from the point of view of those big, bad, evil white men film directors – as if there were no African American film directors, no female film directors, etc. Luckily it’s just a distribution course for her, but nonetheless. It is a bit much at times. But she hasn’t had that problem in more traditional courses – economics, political science, history – where, although there will always be some bias, the discussions stick to the facts.</p>
<p>And conservatives are against raising the minimum wage, which also discourages people to work because even if they get a job, they still live in poverty. When your hard work gets you nowhere, why would you work hard? Again, get off your high horse and stop claiming that conservatives support “hard work” and liberals are lazy. Come on.</p>
<p>Edit: I don’t think the quote worked…</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl I don’t think you’re giving an accurate portrayal of what might be discussed in that course. I’d be flabbergasted if all the professor did was rant using poor examples like that to support their view. Also it’s pretty common knowledge that white men are far overrepresented in film in both acting and directing roles. If the class analyzed the underpinnings for that fact then it would be a good class that would teach students about the social reasons behind the inherent biases in such industries and how certain productions might highlight these biases.</p>
<p>I can give examples, both from my own experience and that of my kids, of professors who had a strong point of view that impacted on classwork, sometimes negatively. This wasn’t necessarily political, though–my daughter had a writing teacher who really only liked writing that was similar in approach to her own. As long as this experience is the exception, I don’t think it’s so terrible to learn how to deal with this.</p>
<p>Professors are likely to have some sort of preference, no matter the subject, but it doesn’t make the course worthless nor the professor a poor teacher. I had a high school world history teacher who put on his glasses whenever he was giving his personal opinion or belief, and he’d not wear them when he was teaching “from the book”. It helped clarify things for the class.</p>
<p>People tend to have a point of view about things they know well and understand thoroughly, not to mention things to which they are devoting their lives. Honestly, I wouldn’t have much respect for a professor who didn’t have some point of view about what he or she was teaching.</p>
<p>Of course, most of the time, those “points of view” don’t have anything to do with conventional politics, so no one fulminates about them in threads like this. They may often be intensely political, however, within the particular field or discipline. And sometimes the academic politics and general-population politics line up awkwardly. </p>
<p>In literary studies, for example, in the 1980s “deconstructionists” faced off against “historicists”. If all you knew were those labels, you would probably assume the deconstructionists were the left-wingers and the historicists the conservatives, but you would be wrong, at least in terms of conventional politics.</p>