Tuesday, May 02, 2017

COLLEGE EDUCATION: A 4-YRAR VACATION

Starting with the 70s, America’s colleges and universities have undergone a dramatic downturn in the quality of education

By Howie Katz

Big Jolly Politics
May 1, 2017

At one time our universities were recognized throughout the world for their excellence. Students from other countries eagerly came here to attend our colleges and universities. They still do, but unless they attend schools like MIT and Caltech, they would have been better off going to a prestigious university back home.

It was during and as a result of the Vietnam War that America’s colleges and universities began a downward spiral. Anti-war protests on college campuses empowered Marxist and other far-left professors. And those professors were more interested in indoctrinating students than in giving them the education their parents paid for.

Let me give you a Houston area example. In 1970, I left the faculty of Sam Houston State University to take over the law enforcement programs at College of the Mainland in Texas City. It took me only a month to realize that the college should have been named College of the Disneyland.

Except for a short interval, history professor Larry Smith was the de facto president of the college. He was one of several avowed Marxists on the faculty. In 1983 Smith handpicked music teacher Larry Stanley to be the college’s president. Until he retired in 2000, Stanley made no major decisions without the explicit advice and approval of Smith.

The college’s Marxist professors were imbedded in the Social Sciences department which offered courses in government (political science) and history, two courses required for an AA Degree. What the students got instead of government and history was a good dose of anti-Americanism.

While the nation’s colleges and universities may not be controlled by Marxists to the extend College of the Mainland was, they are influenced by their far-left faculty members. Worthless degrees are now offered in Women’s Studies; Gender Studies; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Studies; African-American Studies, etc.

Here are some course offerings:

“Queer Marriage, Hate Crimes, and Will and Grace” at Dartmouth

“Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee” at Harvard

“Politicizing Beyoncé” at Rutgers

“Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame” at the University of South Carolina

“Kayne vs. Everybody” at Georgia State University

“Demystifying the Hipster” at Tufts University

“The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media” at Skidmore College

“The Science of Harry Potter” at Frostburg State University

“Philosophy and Star Trek” at Georgetown University

Is nonsense such as that what Mom and Dad had in mind when they send their kids off to college?

Try getting a job with degrees in Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Studies, African-American Studies, etc.

Ann Coulter was a guest on Sunday’s ABC This Week. She talked about how the far-left has taken over our colleges and universities and how higher education has been degraded. Coulter said attending college is a “4-year vacation.”

Attending college is a 4-year vacation? It’s sad, but I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
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ADDENDUM: I should clear something up about College of the Mainland which opened its doors in 1967. Its first president was obsessed with catering to the blacks living in the college district as a means of atoning for the sins of his great-grandfather who was an Alabama slaveholder. The next president, unfortunately, suffered from a brain tumor. It was when he left that Larry Smith became de facto president of the college.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The millennials' are eating this stuff up with soup spoons. They still live at home at 30 and have never held a serious job in their life. The children of this country's greatest generation were molded by the Vietnam protests. Our leaders allowed this to happen in what some call a war for profit.

The Vietnam police action is very much to blame. Everyone knew it was wrong. The greatest generation's children were very vocal about it and their protests finally brought this country to it's knees. Kent State was the turning point when our own children were murdered in an effort to silence them. Their choices were, either be privileged and get a college deferment or die in the jungles of Vietnam. Nearly 60,000 of them died in a losing police action because it wasn't important enough to be a war. Our college campuses just provided the soapbox.

bob walsh said...

Actually the philosophy of star trek might be kind of interesting.

BarkGrowlBite said...

Anon

Whether our participation in the Viet Nam War was wrong or not, our returning soldiers and Marines did not deserve to be spit at and denounced as baby killers.

And those shameful anti-war protests gave rise to the drug culture, the sexual revolution, anti-Americanism and other ills that have cursed America ever since, including the sad state of education.