The underlying conservati/liberati philosophies of various professors has been given some sharp sunshine lately. Inquiries have surfaced about which profs/schools are too much of one and not the other. This has apparently led to a new genre of publishing for parents and students who wish to even more precisely target Universities which carry their own affiliations/ affinities and exclude their opposites.
One of the first forays into a new kind of ‘choice’ in university education, curriculum, professorial political philosophies to match a young person’s politics…is this book…
Choosing the Right College: 2008-2009: The Whole Truth about America’s Top Schools (Choosing the Right College) is a 1000 page paperback by John Zmirak who has edited two books previously about how to choose a college by the politic/ideology of professors and what some would think of as a classical or Great Books curriculum. His previous books are endorsed by Thomas Sowell and Phyllis Shlafly and Laura Schlessinger.
The publicity for the book reads:
“The guide also provides specific advice on which professors to seek out—and which courses and departments to avoid.
“As an exclusive feature, Choosing the Right College advises students which courses they should take at each school to provide themselves with a true core curriculum. This unique build-your-own-core feature is one more reason that Choosing the Right College has become the most valuable and trusted college guide on the market for students seeking a genuine liberal education.
There’s a bit of a clang there, between previous endorsers and the idea of ‘liberal’ education, but I ordered the book. I thought it’d give an interesting snapshot of our current culture changes in higher ed. perhaps… and, at least one man’s ideas about how to categorize it all. I’ll let you know.
In the meantime, I’m wondering about choosing teachers by their personal or public politics and philosophies. I can see how that would be useful if one were studying one’s own affiliated religion, for instance. I know this sounds odd, but I wish I could have known some of my grade school teachers’ philosophies before the fact… I wish there’d been a book about that… so we could have stayed away from the slappers and hitters. Well, not that there was a choice with 65 kids crammed into classes and not enough teachers to go around. But at least we’d have known what to expect.
Some people seem to still think a broad education is best; across many philosophies, many subjects from not just two ends, but from all ends…radiating like spokes instead of two ends of a straight line…or meandering all over creation, for that matter.
Some think higher education should be narrower and deeper. I’ve been to Brigham Young, for instance, and seen the relevance of education in medicine all the way to singing, all carrying an underlying religious philosophy as well as dogma. Most of the students have a deep ethic they are trying to live. It seems useful and good.
But, also quite different from the fissioning stew I found at Berkeley where there are anachronisms; people and ideas that seem as though captured in amber; no less thoughtful, but a fervent underlying philosophy and dogma, as well. Carthage College where I taught as visiting professor a little while ago has what I would call a quietude rather than what some might call conservatism; and an underlying religiosity also.
Yet the students and faculty there are lively, thoughtful and very dedicated. Carthage was memorable too, for random groups of young men ‘poetry bombed’ me on the sidewalks, reciting spontaneous and amazing poems, then abruptly turning and running for class. The spirit was alive there.
University is such a smorgasbord, no matter which college I’ve visited. The only ones I’ve been to where there was not a vivid hunger for learning, was where professors were dispirited, usually because of what’s called M&M, money and management issues in admin. But, otherwise, frankly? Many of us would consider it privilege to be at university to learn and test so much up close, instead of via armchair computer, each day.
But, still, this idea of choosing university by one’s own politics… I don’t know… A million years ago, lucky to be in Georgia O’Keeffe’s company, I didn’t know then, or now, what her politic was… just that she showed me how to see the violet lights in the air over the Pedernal, and how river rocks (piled on her window sills) ought not be painted gray or black, but a jumble of tiniest specks of red, green, blue and white…embedded in the entire scale of gray tones.
Too, when I studied meteorology with Robert Gardner, I had no idea what he believed politically, just that he rowed us across a small lake during a storm to show us how a storm rocks the water in the bowl of the lake bed (he was 84 at the time, I was, a million years ago, in my early 20s and terrified. But he wasn’t…). He also showed how isotopes danced inside ‘dead rock.’ Politics just never came up. For me, only wonder came.
Politics was far away when we were qualifying for conceal/carry. All I know was the Russian firearm I’d pulled to test with, spit two inches of fire from its barrel every squeeze, its handgrip was loosey goosey, and dropping a clip and replacing with lightning speed, was done while having an NRA instructor screaming like a DI at us in full red-faced bellow. I didn’t ask if he belonged to DNC or GOP … I was just trying to get out of there with my skirt still dry.
Do we learn by studying more in the stream we already know, or what we are challenged by? Or both? Do we learn despite a professional’s or professor’s religious or political beliefs? If we can learn from true experts, do they care, really, what our philosophies as learners are?
I’ve heard many, and lived some horror stories, with profs screeching at students calling them names and pouring on some hissyfit of scorn, I guess to demonstrate how much of a big guy the prof is, and how insignificant the student is. And I don’t know if that’s an issue of philosophy, or rather one of psychological issues about power and sort of permanent p.o-edness.
I wonder too if there aren’t time to learn even from rough teachers. Had a few of those too. Learned anyway. Even though their screed got in the way of free flow.
Some would say learning, and choice of where and from whom to learn, depends on a student’s actual goals, short term, but especially long term…not just in skills, career, but for many, personhood as well.
Would marking universities by ‘kind’ cause more bickering and sliming amongst the students from each kind, more than already goes on in public discourse? Is marketing a school by ‘politic’ more directly, yet to come? Would having schools designated as liberal or conservative oriented be good for our country?
I don’t know for certain. I keep returning to some kind of ground that’s more dirt than ivory tower. Out where I live, a wrangler wouldn’t care about an ag. guy’s politics. Just whether he or she knew cattle. Seems too: if we were nearly dying, we wouldn’t care whether doc was GOP or DNC educated or certified, nor whether he was from BYU, WFU Med or Johns Hopkins… just a good doc who values the life force and will do all he or she can to keep us on earth.
I’m not completely sure, but living this many decades, I think I’ve already seen the movie of people divided into ‘parts’ and ‘pieces.’ But, maybe the book of same or similar will be different. I’ll let you know. Give me a couple weeks.
And, for you who are parents who are sending your kids to college, just this: keep the basement printing press rolling. One year at college now can cost the price of an entire ranch level house in 1985 dollars. And the outrageous cost of college is a whole other story for another time.
h/t: M. Malkin