Mugtoe
Cuddly Puppy
Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18155 |
Diversity On Campus (Heather MacDonald column)
I've been having fun this evening reading this lady's stuff at the Manhattan Institute's website , but a couple of things just made my right wings flutter in the chill Minnesota night air.
quote:
If university bureaucrats were truly interested in unifying their campuses, they could try a radical experiment: immerse students in the rigorous study of great works of literature, art, and philosophy, the achievements of science and math, and the history of nations, period. Stop harping on racism and sexism and the "challenges" of overcoming difference. Assume that students actually have the capacity to make friends without the intercession of counselors and diversity deans.
Such a daring experiment will never happen, however. Too many administrative and faculty salaries depend on keeping difference awareness at full boil. Dartmouth, for example, employs separate, full-time advisers to Latino/Latina; Asian and Asian-American; African-American; and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. Such balkanized advising implies that Asian and black students, for example, don't share the ordinary problems faced by college students--homesickness, loony roommates, or academic overload--but instead need separate counselors who specialize in ethnicity. No wonder the college has convened a "Committee on Civil Discourse," chaired, predictably, by the director of equal opportunity and affirmative action. The committee will "maintain facilitator programs that encourage student interactions"--just what you'd expect in a world where Latino and black students allegedly need color-coded advisers. In such a world, students also need an army of "facilitators" to carry messages across the color and ethnicity line.
hear, hear! My sister would think I'd gone over to the dark side, I'm sure.
quote:
A bigot could not have engineered a better policy for segregating the races than admitting one race with lower academic skills than the other. The alleged "beneficiaries" of that policy usually start blaming the institution for their feelings of inadequacy and retreat behind a defensive wall. Meanwhile, students admitted under competitive admissions standards see their minority peers not performing as well but sometimes getting special treatment. The administration will then chalk up any resulting tensions to white racism and order up more sensitivity training.
Such a system has one purpose only: to stoke the egos of college administrators and faculty with the fuel of moral righteousness. Architects of academic double standards believe that their liberal paternalism is all that stands between abused minorities and a racist society. As for the recipients of that paternalism, nothing could be crueler.
I'm sure Dad would agree with her, and that few others here likely would. But I still hold that Chinwe Achebe and Arundhati Roy aren't worth pimples on DeVere's literary ass, and teaching them to the exclusion of Shakespeare rather than in addition to it is just plain dumb.
__________________
quote:
Originally posted by magnolia
never waste a hardon, trust a fart or pass up a breath mint when offered.
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
![[new thread]](/images/vb/button_newthread_off.png "Post New Thread")
![[post reply]](/images/vb/button_newreply_off.png "Post A Reply")
12-02-2004 04:29 AM
