<p>“Consider yourself the EMPLOYER. You are HIRING a school to EDUCATE YOUR SON. You are INTERVIEWING THEM.”</p>
<p>excellent advice…thanks</p>
<p>geeps20, I don’t know how conservative your son is, but don’t rule out too many colleges based on what people say here. I know people who went to Williams College that were quite happy there, and they weren’t idealogues. I think they were fairly centrist. The student body at Dartmouth College is farther to the right politically than most ivies. The LACs which are the biggest problem in terms of being extreme in pushing their political views are some of the women’s colleges, but those aren’t relevant to your son.</p>
<p>The fact is that their is no way to keep non-liberals out of the prestigious schools, because the selection criteria are largely grades/recs/awards. I think with most of these schools, you may have pockets of extremism which are avoidable. Or you may have to write carefully in one class if you get a rigidly idealogue prof. You can tell pretty quickly whether you are dealing with a liberal prof who values abstract reasoning and rigorous argument or a liberal prof that only cares that you arrive at the same views he has and that views everything through the lens of his/her particular issue. </p>
<p>BTW, I know many people that went to top 10 schools, and they were all far more centrist (meaning more right-leaning) than the people on CC. Don’t let CC scare you off.</p>
<p>There is a difference between having one’s views tested and living in a hostile environment.
I can’t imagine why professors are given such latitude to forward their own political opinions. I wouldn’t take it from an employer- completely out-of-bounds.
And lets face it. An employee is a stronger position vis a vis an employer than a student is with a professor. The employee has a stated value by virtue of the compensation she receives. The student to a tenured professor is someone to be paid in phony money called grades.
Shut up and teach. Or get into politics for a living. There’s some honesty in that.</p>
<p>Life is a perception. But that perception determines how you react and confront the world. To have the attitude that the school works for you instead of the other way around, is empowering YOU to take charge of your educational future. There’s a lot of negative attitudes around. Even on the forums. Maybe some see the glass as half full. Some see the glass as half empty. OTHERS see JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF WATER; the GLASS just happens to be the wrong size. take control of your future. Respect others for their opinions, but DON’T compromise yours. Each day of your life, you will have new experiences and new knowledge presented to you. Your opinions, norms, values, etc… will continue to be modified. This is natural and the way it should be. It’s called growing up. When people don’t want to hear other’s opinions, but continue to force their views on others, they aren’t growing. The ONLY person that should change your opinions or position on anything in life, is YOU. Don’t let people bully you into their viewpoint. Listen to them; debate them; disagree with them; agree with them; etc… Then YOU ANALYZE the information and YOU choose how it goes. Don’t let someone else tell you “The way it is”. But also always be open enough to hear/see the other points of view. You don’t want to be one of those closed minded people that isn’t growing. You will meet professors who’s ego is so far up their butt that they wouldn’t know the truth if it hit them in the head. They think because they are the teacher and you are the student, that they are better than you. Or SMARTER. They aren’t. They’re idiots. Just play to their ego. Let them “FEEL” important. But you control your future. Not some professor. And you’ll know which professor is which. The ones who have actual EXPERIENCE. Who have worked in the REAL WORLD. Then you’ll see the ones who have been in the sterile environment of academia their whole life. These people aren’t worth anything. But, you will meet people that you have to work with in life just like them. Use this opportunity to learn how to deal with egotistical idiots.</p>
<p>I stopped reading when geeps said stem cell funding was not of interest. I have to believe the entire premise of the thead is false. If you are defining “conservative” as in “where can my son go to get a prestigious business degree without having to think or be challenged” then I honestly don’t know…Babson maybe? They do not pretend to be life changing. </p>
<p>Or is it your own fear that is driving this flurry of posts, in other words "where will my son be safe and not get derailed from pursuing the most lucrative undergraduate degree?</p>
<p>Because even the conservative schools are hazardous–DD went to a conservative school to study science and ended up (because of those pesky core requirements so beloved to conservatives) doing a 180 and majoring in theology. </p>
<p>Be careful what you wish for–you just might get it.</p>
<p>Mombot; are you saying then that only liberals know how to think or are willing to be challenged? I hope not. Because that is a very common attitude among many liberals. If a conservative tries to get certain liberals to see a point of view, some liberals will just cop an attitude and say that they aren’t going to waste their time. That the conservative doesn’t know what their talking about. However; if the liberal wants the conservative to see their point of view; and they don’t agree with what they say, then the liberal says the conservative is closed minded, ignorant, and unwilling to expand their mind. So I hope that isn’t what you meant by what you said. I’d hate to think you were that shallow and pompous.</p>
<p>what point of view was the OP trying to get across? as mombat points out, there was an underlying premise that widespread abuse of power exists in academe. but, when asked repeatedly to provide examples, he’s the one that kept saying it was a waste of time talking to us libs. that’s pretty clear.</p>
<p>afadad, I do believe that liberals are more inclined to be challenged intellectually and consider s broader range possibilities when thinking critically. Just consider conservative vs liberal religious belief. Conservative belief required a strict literal interpretation of scripture while liberal belief encourages understanding of ancient texts in context of our current knowledge unavailable to the original writers. The Genesis creation stories(yep there are 2) makes no literal sense in the context of modern geological science. Consider the difference between the Muslim taliban vs their Suffi bretheren.</p>
<p>“I do believe that liberals are more inclined to be challenged intellectually”</p>
<p>Un-frickin-believable. </p>
<p>You can’t actually believe that?</p>
<p>Words can’t do justice to the arrogance and elitism of a statement like that.</p>
<p>And they say <em>conservatives</em> are closed minded, or backward, or whatever.</p>
<p>Stunning. Absolutely stunning.</p>
<p>If a conservative tries to get certain liberals to see a point of view,</p>
<p>To which point of view are you referring?</p>
<p>This perhaps?</p>
<p>I’d hate to think you were that shallow and pompous</p>
<p>Labels as catch-all as “liberal” and “conservative” hardly do justice to the variety of positions someone can have on the intellectual-political matrix. I have certainly known committed conservatives who love to be challenged intellectually, and liberals whose minds might just as well be locked shut. Within a university, for the most part – thank heavens! – the tendency of BOTH liberals and conservatives is to welcome intellectual challenge.</p>
<p>But. At the level of gross national politics – which is pretty much the only meaningful referent to “liberal” and “conservative” – for the past 30 years there has been a very strong current of anti-intellectualism on the right. It was a big part of Ronald Reagan’s success vs. Carter and Mondale, of W’s whole leadership style, especially after 9/11, and fundamentally of the McCain/Palin campaign (certainly the Palin part). With the exception of accidental-incumbent Johnson, every Democratic presidential candidate post-Truman has essentially run on his intellectual credentials, and promised a government of wonks, while Republicans have mostly run as people who reject pointy-headed thought for common sense and simple platitudes. (Even when, like Nixon or Dole, they didn’t actually think like that.) And Republican electoral strategy has definitely been to respond to intellectual challenge with anti-intellectual sloganeering. </p>
<p>So it’s not hard to understand why liberals in general may look more intellectual than conservatives in general.</p>
<p>“Democratic presidential candidate post-Truman has essentially run on his intellectual credentials”</p>
<p>meaning talkers over doers. Idealist over pragmatist…</p>
<p>As stated before…in general liberals are idealists who realize how the world should be…conservatives are more practical and realize that we as humans have not evolved to that point yet. </p>
<p>Personally, I’ll take the doer over the thinker</p>
<p>Thank you for post 471.</p>
<p>I understand the answer to my question has to be a generalization, but who do anti-intellectuals look to for authoritative advice on college selection for their children?
Is there a list of criteria set out someplace that I could read?</p>
<p>.in general liberals are idealists who realize how the world should be…conservatives are more practical and realize that we as humans have not evolved to that point yet.</p>
<p>In my experience- liberals are more likely to put money and effort into improving conditions for everyone, whereas conservatives are more likely to put money and effort into what benefits them directly</p>
<p>"In my experience- liberals are more likely to put money and effort into improving conditions for everyone, whereas conservatives are more likely to put money and effort into what benefits them directly’</p>
<p>really? did you know that conservatives give 30% more to charity than liberals?..also donate more blood.</p>
<p>geeps, I meant to respond to that little bit of right-wing sloganeering days ago. It’s completely wrong. Reagan and Bush II, certainly, presented themselves almost completely as idealists: Damn the evidence, damn subtelty, I’m sticking to the Simple Truth. Of course, they didn’t govern that way, exactly, but no one could. They went to great lengths to pretend to govern that way. Most of the Democrats who have been national candidates have been consummate doers, both smart and pragmatic. Stevenson (but of course Eisenhower trumped him on the doer scale). Kennedy, absolutely. Johnson vs. Goldwater was absolutely doer vs. idealist. Humphrey’s doer credentials far outshone Nixon’s. (Nixon, in fact, had done practically nothing prior to becoming President. He was a consummately pragmatic President, but his political message boiled down to Criticism = Treason.) Carter, Dukakis, Clinton were all get-er-done governors, Mondale a truly accomplished legislative leader. W. Bush was in the mode of a doer vs. talker, but at this point his idealistic narrow-mindedness and fear of inconsistency looks like a tragic flaw of colossal dimensions. And his whole original approach to Afghanistan and Iraq was an orgy of idealism vs. practicality.</p>
<p>When I look at the political landscape, it’s hard to find real Republican doers. I’ll give you Bloomberg, Giuliani, and Schwarzenegger, but they are hardly Republicans. Maybe Jindal. In my state, Republicans seem to have no positive agenda other than to do as little as possible and trust that tax cuts, gun ownership, abortion restrictions, the death penalty, and public prayer will usher in a Golden Age. How is that non-idealistic?</p>
<p>The dominant Republican ideologies of our lifetimes have been faith that markets and property rights can solve every problem (unless it involves sex or Our Enemies), and that government is incompetent to accomplish anything except war, discouraging sex outside of marriage, and incarcerating criminals (and that war, discouraging sex, and incarceration are effective ways to solve problems).</p>
<p>It’s ironic that you mention evolution, of course, since “conservatives” seem to be ambivalent about that.</p>
<p>That 30% more to charity number, I believe includes charities that are very close to home, such as one’s own church or school. Liberals do a lot of that, too, but that kind of charitable giving is not any kind of social panacea.</p>
<p>I am currently spending at 8-16+ hours a week, in hands on service- virtually everyone else I have met doing this service ( both educational and environmental) could be described as " liberal". Before this past year I often gave more along the lines of 15 hours a month)</p>
<p>We also give money as well- contrast that with the conservatives I know- who while they may give to political causes ( I do not consider the environment or education a political cause- although conservatives might), tithe to their churches- but do not generally contribute money or time outside of their church community. ( not that all or even most religious people are conservative)</p>
<p>I used to give blood- but since I contracted hep B from a medical visit I have been denied- </p>
<p>I would agree that lower income families including conservatives give a greater % of their income to charities- I know we give more than 10% and our income is much lower than the conservative families we are related to.</p>
<p>( I am also wondering if they took Bill Gates- who is a Republician out of the mix- what the % of giving would be 
)</p>
<p>I never gave a lot of money to charity, but I sure gave a lot of time. I’ve given blood regularly when I could. There have been long periods when my blood was considered suspect because of where I had lived.</p>
<p>love the spin folks…</p>