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The above is just not true. They gave the source of whose quotes those are. That is what quotation marks and in text citations are for!!!
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I think that it's important to provide students with more accurate, unbiased descriptions of different political ideologies so that they can form opinions of their own, without being influenced by one person (the author's, in this case) bias. I don't think it matters that this is a book for social workers. I am surprised that some posters can not see how obvious the bias is here.
I am surprised that someone does not understand what quotation marks are for.
How do you know that the teacher presented the alternative viewpoint? I majored in sociology and took, intro to social work while in college. I have a close family member who is a college professor. I think I have a firm grasp of what college is all about. Thanks.
How do you know the the teacher didn't present same? This is one article, and like all articles that people get so hopped up about here on CD, we don't have enough information to jump to a lot of conclusions.
How do you know the the teacher didn't present same? This is one article, and like all articles that people get so hopped up about here on CD, we don't have enough information to jump to a lot of conclusions.
A lot of posters have jumped to the conclusion that the alternative view point was most likely given. I was asking how they would know that. I'm not hopped up. I am having a discussion.
Also, the academic definition of "conservative" is different than the US political meaning. In an academic sense, there are no true conservatives in the US, the only conservatives that there could be are monarchists. Everyone falls under classical liberalism.
I agree that "Conservatism is the philosophy that individuals are responsible for themselves, [and] government should provide minimal interference in people's lives". However the "change is generally unnecessary" is biased. The most highly esteemed conservative politician of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, saw the Cold War status quo and thought there should be a change. And he facilitated that change, all right.
Other examples of "change" that is approved by the Right involve things that Left Wingers detest, like Wal-Mart lowering consumer prices and tax rates being lowered.
The part that's outlined in green in the photo appears to be a paraphrasing of Popple and Leighninger's anti-Right opinion. Of course, if the textbook only offers summaries of Left Wing field research on what Conservatism is, then it's a biased textbook and therefore a bad textbook.
You are confusing conservatism and the Republican Party/the American Right. Think momentarily about the root of the word conservative. As a high-level view of conservatism, this passage is accurate. There are, of course, complications--but not every text defining conservatism needs to address all shades of conservatism.
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Originally Posted by Hamish Forbes
Professors are also supposed to be able to understand the difference between an opinion and accepted knowledge, and not to use their position to browbeat students with their opinions.
Not really. What this piece (along with your comment) illustrates is how vacuous the study of the humanities has unfortunately become, and why the liberal arts professorate is struggling to stay funded. I am not a member of the NRA, I have never contributed to the Tea Party (and never will), and I have never especially liked Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless, I find the text on exhibit here to be offensive.
You are as confused as the above poster, I believe. This text has nothing to do with the NRA, the Tea Party, or Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. It deals with "small c" conservatism. If we are fairly describing the political parties, we would say that both the Democrats and Republicans promote both conservative and liberal policies and ideals.
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Originally Posted by LauraC
Did you know that Debbie Downer of US History, Howard Zinn, cherry picked the stories he told in his People's History of the United States? The thing is, he says so at the end of the book (paperback) so I have no problem with him. While I wish that "disclaimer" (for lack of a better word) was in the front of the book in an introduction instead of the back if the book, which probably is rarely read, the point is, how often do instructors call that to the attention of their students who think Zinn's book is history gospel about the bad, bad United States?
No instructor needs to call out the "disclaimer," because any student will know that the late Mr. Zinn's analysis of American history differs significantly from the analysis put forth in high school classrooms, the media, and in politics. Any reader will note the differences and be aware of Mr. Zinn's viewpoint. Students are not taking A People's History as "gospel."
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Originally Posted by MissTerri
The definition is clearly biased and has no place in a college textbook.
Proof?
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Originally Posted by NJBest
I think you're going about this all wrong. Professors control what they teach, and students choose who they study under. Every student in this professor's class is expected to know everything about the professor they are going to study under. They shouldn't be signing up for classes blindly. Any decent university has opposing professors available. You have the choice to study under each side. This is not something that is forced upon students. College is not high school.
Universities do not offer "opposing professors" so that students can pick and choose professors who match their ideology. Universities hire professors who are leading thinkers and researchers in their respective fields. They often disagree with one another. But they also use accepted research methods to formulate and support their positions.
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Originally Posted by R_Cowgirl
OK - so one of the "tests" of a theory, opinion or philosophy is to substitute the opposite issue or point of view into the subject matter at hand and see if it's still acceptable, unbiased, and passes intellectual muster . Anyone who was lucky enough to go to good schools went through Debate classes that forced us to do that very thing. After we had successfully argued a point of view, our instructors would say, "Take the opposite viewpoint and convince me it is true."
This is why - up until the mid 90's -- we had policies in our media requiring equal time for differing points of view. We no longer have that. The people who think THAT is going in our universities need to go back and visit a few classes. I just did and came away shaking my head. The OP's text is very similar to the bias being pushed in many of the Common Core curricula today. Both Democrat and Republican teachers are fighting it because of a bias that experienced educators find disconcerting.
So - don't shoot the messenger -- let's play WHAT IF...
What if the following paragraph were in that schoolbook? Would all those defending the rights of the professors and the text to say what the OP printed still defend the right of the colleges and universities to use such blatant bias?
Mind you - I'm not saying I buy into all of the above. But it isn't a whole lot different or more insulting than the paragraph on Conservatives. As Anatole France said during the French Revolution, "If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still foolish." Just because the source in that textbook is used "all the time" by Social Work courses, doesn't make it a good source. It isn't all that helpful or useful if it's divisive and causing impressionable college kids to hate 50% of the country.
I'd much rather see sources that help us understand each other rather than ones that pour more judgment and hate on opposite points of view.
At the end of the day, we only know life by our own experiences and exposure. Everyone is doing the best they know how at the time. We all grow and change as our information sources change. The kids we have in college today are some of the most sheltered and inexperienced we have seen in a very long time. It's imperative that the education they are mortgaging their grandchildren's future for is effective, intelligent and as fair and balanced as possible. The OP's post shows that isn't happening. As a parent, I'm pissed that 4 very expensive educations included those kinds of textbooks.
That is not a "test" of a theory, opinion or philosophy at all. Even if it were, your replacement is far from the opposite of the selected text. Your replacement is not a definition of "small l" liberalism, which is a political philosophy distinct from the American Left and the Democratic Party.
The policies you are mentioning requiring equal time are unlawful restrictions on free speech. They would be equally unlawful if they were imposed upon university professors, as well. You are also conflating conservatism with the American Right, and that is incorrect.
Unlike some commentators, I do believe that college students can think. That is why they are in college. It is also important to note that the text makes no value judgment about conservatism. It simply describes the political philosophy at a high level. If your children were sheltered and inexperienced when they went to college, then I don't know why you blame colleges for asking them to think and learn.
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Originally Posted by Chemistry_Guy
I am a science professor and I know how college learning is supposed to work. However, some fields in the humanities are so dominated by a left wing ideology that there is no resolution of conflicting approaches to a discipline. It is a closed loop. All of the hiring and firing of faculty as well as peer review of publications and grants is done by left leaning thinkers and they stifle any deviance to their accepted politics.
I believe that the political center of humanities faculty is several standard deviations left of the country as a whole and this is a big problem, especially if the outcome of their work is used to influence policy in any way. In disciplines where political ideology is mostly irrelevant (natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, medicine, finance, etc) there is plenty of ideological diversity. Once all of the "authority figures" in a given discipline subscribe to the same ideology, the diversity of ideas disappears and the quality and integrity of the research suffers.
I occasionally judge graduate poster sessions where students from a wide variety of disciplines present their research. I generally see interesting research from many disciplines, but I have noticed that the lowest quality research comes from groups that have a political agenda. Whether it is inappropriate lobbying for alternative energy policy changes by chemists or a social work study recommending an increase in welfare spending, any research that prescriptively claims to be able to tell the world how it should be run is most likely garbage.
What is troubling is that using research as cheerleading a for cause is accepted, or at least tolerated, if it a liberal cause, while it is called out as garbage (as it should be) when it is inappropriately tied to a conservative cause. I want to keep the politics out, and I believe most other chemists do as well. I am disappointed that many of my colleagues in humanities disciplines do not feel the same way.
I would expect better from a university professor. Do you believe that academic faculty should be subject to political examination to determine whether they are fit for tenure? Did your department chair ask who you voted for in the last election before deciding whether you were worthy of a position on faculty? Perhaps professors should be hired and tenured for the quality of their research.
I also think it is hilarious that you believe that political ideology is irrelevant in the natural sciences, medicine, and finance.
I am interested in how you, as a "science professor" are qualified to judge chemistry and social work research.
Should the political scientists keep the politics out? Perhaps the economists should avoid study of macroeconomics because it is too political. And we might as well get the biologists out of evolution.
If you can't deal with interpreting competing viewpoints then you don't belong in college. Instead of playing "gotcha" and getting the attention of the conservative blogosphere, the student should have worked on a well thought out and researched rebuttal. It's called critical thinking and is what higher education is based on. The textbook did its job if it spurred thought and discussion on the topic.
Are they offered competing viewpoints though ?
The answer to that is in the article.
How do you know that the teacher presented the alternative viewpoint? I majored in sociology and took, intro to social work while in college. I have a close family member who is a college professor. I think I have a firm grasp of what college is all about. Thanks.
We can only hope that colleges provide a college education. If the professor is only using a single source to teach his/her class, then students aren't getting a college education. That fault falls on the students for selecting the school just as much as it does on the school for selecting the professor.
I also think it is hilarious that you believe that political ideology is irrelevant in the natural sciences, medicine, and finance.
I am interested in how you, as a "science professor" are qualified to judge chemistry and social work research.
Should the political scientists keep the politics out? Perhaps the economists should avoid study of macroeconomics because it is too political. And we might as well get the biologists out of evolution.
1. You do not need to subscribe to any particular ideology to have a successful science, medical, or finance career. If you were to read the publications of the most influential chemists of the generation you would have no idea as to who identifies as a liberal and who identifies as a conservative. The right wing wackjobs that deny evolution aren't scientists, they are fanatics.
2. I am as qualified to judge poster sessions as any of the other faculty who are asked to evaluate research presentations. Someone has to do it, and my experience is broader than most. I wear more hats than just a professor of chemistry. I can tell the difference between research that is legitimate and that which is pandering to an agenda.
3. It is funny that you chose to bring up political science and economics, as those are two of the few humanities disciplines where there is actually healthy disagreement and debate. One can make a career subscribing to different theories of economics or political science, although in the case of political science you will be limited to certain regions of the country if you happen to lean right.
Personally my politics tend to fall left of center for the country as a whole, but not as far left as the left wing of academia. I have noticed that the more fanatical someone is to an ideology, the less reasonable they are on practical issues. Right wing nuts deserve every last bit of ridicule that they get, yet left wing nuts get a pass. In the past few years, I have heard colleagues suggest some pretty absurd things. A literature professor said, at an assembly, that chemists should not teach basic science to environmental science majors because we poison the earth while the goal of the major was to save it. I also had a women's studies professor tell me that I should not teach the names of scientific laws, principles, concepts, etc. because they are mostly named after men who earned their reputations in an era when women were kept out of science. She even suggested alternative names for Avogadro's number, the Boltzmann constant, Boyle's law, and others. Another faculty member suggested that willingness to carpool was a metric that should be considered for faculty merit pay and promotion.
You are as confused as the above poster, I believe. This text has nothing to do with the NRA, the Tea Party, or Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. It deals with "small c" conservatism. If we are fairly describing the political parties, we would say that both the Democrats and Republicans promote both conservative and liberal policies and ideals.
It would help ypur argument if you would read more carefully before spouting off with your opininons. Note that I was responding to the following:
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Originally Posted by citylove101
What is shocking about the fact that a college course/textbook/professor has an opinion? They're supposed to have opinions. And all of them won't be popular. This is not grade school. At the college level students are expected to be able to crticially think about what they're taught and what they've read, and be able to present an alternative that can be supported by evidence if they disagree.
This is, at its heart, just more conservative whining and hand-wringing that everybody in academia isn't a right winger, that someplace, somewhere, kids are being exposed to people who aren't a card-carrying members of the NRA, contributors to the Tea Party, or have lighted shirnes to Ronald Reagen in the corner of their living room. They need to get over it.
Are they offered competing viewpoints though ?
The answer to that is in the article.
Having competing viewpoints spoon fed to students does not foster critical thinking skills. Again, the student should have researched an alternate viewpoint and offered it to the class.
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