Violating basic American rights is not just for governments anymore.
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8 comments:
Do you think the NSA will try to sue them for infringement?
(/bad joke)
This is a chilling reminder of the insidiousness of the educational system. We should be free from any attempts by others to change who we are. Here's a damning quote from the University of Delaware's OWN materials:
Residence Life Educational Priority:
Citizenship- Become an engaged and active citizen by understanding how your thoughts, values, beliefs, and actions affect the people with whom you live and recognize your responsibility to contribute to a sustainable society at a local, national, and global level.
The monsters! Thank God their hate-based re-programming was discovered. Their feeble attempts to hide this stuff on their public website cannot overcome the vigilance of the truly righteous!
That one parent was right: universities should be spending our tax money of pizza parties, not attempts to "turn" our precious sons and daughters into "citizens." Oh, the horror. The HORROR!
From now on, in my mind, there will be only 49 states! Delaware, I banish you and your malicious university from my thoughts!
Just to be clear, my previous comment was sarcasm. Or, depending on your view and in Chris's words, (/bad joke).
;)
I got that you were being sarcastic, but what was your real point? You quote innocuous things from their website to belittle accusations made against things that have been taken down off of the website? Isn't that apples and oranges?
Or is this back to the discussion of the trustworthiness of sources again?
"SARCASM We should be free from any attempts by others to change who we are. /SARCASM"
Actually, I believe we should be free from attempts by people in positions of authority to change who we are. No one, regardless of who they might be, has the right to change someone else. That is the fundamental of liberty, that we are free to be ourselves even if others disagree.
Back to the spirit of our exchange (and not to sarcasm), Chris and Denny, you ask a good question and make a good point.
I followed several of the links provided in the article and by the FIRE group. Some of these links are to the offending documents that have since been removed from the website. With the exception of the documents pertaining to the seminar on racism which did seem extreme, none of the rest of it struck me as particularly problematic.
It very much appears that the article to which Denny linked and the attendant organizations to which that article linked engaged in hysterical reaction to a minor problem. The program in question has the appearance of ill-intent only when viewed out of context and portrayed with emotionally-charged adjectives.
The language of the Delaware documents is clearly informed by the current "assessment" paradigm that has come with the accountability dialogue in this country. The university, in my estimation, was making a good-faith effort to define and measure outcomes. This effort resulted in language that, when taken out of context, could be made to look monstrous. The strength of the statements is right in line with current assessment methodology -- clearly and unambiguously state the desired outcome using active verbs (e.g., "Students will learn to value diversity.").
In the context of assessment, that statement isn't a directive to wipe someone's mind and instill new doctrine, so much as it is a description of the hoped for outcome. The student may be "required" to attend and may be graded based on their understanding of the information, but they are not being forced to become different people. They are being "forced" -- as any student is "forced" to attend class, etc. -- to attend these aspects of the university's "program" for on-campus students. Of course, students are also free to choose a different school. Perhaps a publicly-funded religious school that attempts to indoctrinate students into the joys of a particular religious worldview.
Now, was the program poorly implemented? Yes, it appears that in certain areas, it was. Were some students embarrassed? Probably. Is there some lifetime guarantee that this will never happen? No. Was the university trying to hide a nefarious scheme to liberalize its student body? No. It was acting above board and made some mistakes in its execution.
Does much of the philosophical underpinning of the program smell of "liberalism" in its perjorative sense? Yeah, some of it does. It's hard to argue that diversity is a bad thing or citizenship (and by the way Chris, my chosen quote was FAR FAR more representative of the materials -- at least the several that I viewed -- than the quotes in any of the secondary sources linked to in the article, not to mention the article itself), or that inclusiveness, sustainability, and community, respect for other points of view, or understanding your own personal identity and how it effects how you interact with others -- it's hard to argue that any of that is bad or solely the province of perjorative "liberalism."
Are those ideas sometimes taken to an extreme? As someone in higher education, I think they can be. However, the hysterical nature of the article doesn't do justice to the reality as it appears from the source documents or as it stacks up with my own experience with discussions of programs like Delaware's. I can completely understand and support why the Delaware faculty would review the situation, note the actual weaknesses and errors, correct them, and move on with a stonger, improved program. I don't see anything nefarious in it.
That said, I did notice that Delaware was none too keen on acknowledging the incident. Their "Residence Life In the News" section of their website was bereft of any mention of THIS news bit. In fact, they don't seem to have made news since 2006. These events happened in 2007. Coincidence? My PR/Marketing background says, "No chance."
OK. Thanks for clarifying.
So, in a sense, it is back to the validity of sources discussion.
Yeah, my last comment was, I suppose. The sarcastic comment was really about me having some fun being sarcastic. ;)
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