Virginia Postrel has a column about Harvard’s bizarre PC loyalty oath:
Course registration versus niceness; success versus compassion; “attainment” versus kindness. Something is missing from all these dichotomies, and that something is the life of the mind.
Where in the list of ranked values are curiosity, discovery, reason, inquiry, skepticism or truth? (Were these values even options?) Where is critical thinking? No wonder the pledge talks about “attainment.” Attainment equals study cards and good grades — a transcript to enable the student to move on to the next stage. Attainment isn’t learning, questioning or criticizing. It’s getting your ticket punched.
Just one more sign of the decline of the academy, as costs continue to rise.
A humanities professor says, “You can’t get them to argue easily…
My daughter read the para text-ed me a comment. Being a recent college grad, she noted;
“We argued about everything they said below the desk on our phones, we also dis them when we disagreed. But never to their face. We needed the grade.”
Inadvertently the schools are creating secret groups of dissent on campus that never really speak, though they are in constant communication. I love it.
Samizdat.
One of the professors I had who was Harvard educated would tell a story that emphasized that it isn’t always what you know but who you know.
She said that teachers would often use similar tests from year to year adding some new questions but also pulling from a pool of past questions. The teachers didn’t think it was cheating if students obtained past tests to “study” from. So the most successful students were the ones who had in their social network people with the most past tests to study from.
Harvard’s motto is, of course, Veritas. But that’s obsolete now, I guess.
Students who text below the table during class discussions and don’t argue their views are rude and cowardly. I wouldn’t congratulate them for this behavior.