Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Teaching is another way of talking the talk but not walking the walk. Libs can hide away in their cushy campus life and never have to make it in the corporate/business world. They have a full support 'audience' of impressionable kids whom they influence daily.
I'm going to share this link with some of my friends who are teachers. It speaks to the problem many of them have with students not respecting teachers, classroom rules, etc. When we adults have attitudes like this towards education and teachers, its going to influence our kids.
Add up their path to becoming a professor (PhD or Higher):
The years they went to university.
The years post graduate - Masters.
The years it takes for someone to earn a PhD.
The years post-doctorate.
Can be anywhere from (8 to 12++ years in total)
They've only been around the same kind of people. Those who ponder their chosen subjects, their papers, their research, their social networks.
Very insular, very sheltered, very myopic.
They come into the world armed for liberal battle to impart "their world view" on everyone because they have the letters after their names and believe that gives them latitude to "profess" to the world what should be.
They have been sheltered from the storms of reality which could give them a more realistic view of what is happening in the world.
They are too permissive, too experimental, have too lofty ideas.
That's my take on it.
The very same could be said for those positions which attract more conservative people. All people are insular to a degree and tend to congregate among those who share like minded attitudes.
Such vitriol for education and teachers on this thread. This is a very sad statement by people and really makes me think this is at the root of disrespectful, snowflake children who can't handle being told what to do by teachers...
I'm seeing a lot of posts about "liberals" not living in the "real world." It's interesting, because this sort of confirms my concern about a cultural problem in the United States. The "real world" thanks to neoliberalism has been turned into the private sector. You're worth is purely measured in your capacity to make money, usually for someone else. This is also why college has been turned into a jobs training program.
Ironically, many of the very "liberal" professors (who would reject the label given they know what the word "liberal" actually refers to) probably oppose the way college is taught the most. The real problem in academia is the apathetic professors, neoliberal apologists, and postmodernists who are destroying the integrity of university. The people complaining about liberal academia would probably find these professors the most tolerable, with the exception of the postmodernists.
Liberal arts are for people that don't really have to work and make a living wage so you're dealing with a lot of out of touch people. If I didn't care about money I would go to school for something in the liberal arts. The liberal arts are the "fun" degrees but not the degrees that pay well in the real world.
If you have the luxury to go to school for the history of Mesoamerican basketweaving then you're clearly out of touch with most of the world that doesn't have the luxury to do that.
This all transfers to their theories and ideas about the world so what you get is a lot of stuff that doesn't work well in the real world. It just sounds good on paper while they're sitting around sipping an 8 dollar latte with their pinky in the air.
No matter how successful and admired you are in the private sector--even in highly technical fields--it is almost impossible to switch careers and become a teacher. It is designed that way: teacher's unions want career teachers to get the jobs, with no competition from those who didn't spend their careers in the Ivory Tower. Consequently, most professors spent their careers as teachers in public schools.
Government pays teachers, and it pays them extremely well for the hours they work (don't try to argue that they can volunteer extra time: in the cutthroat private sector you "volunteer" every waking second of your life). Benefits & time off for teachers are far more generous than found in the private sector, and they even get pensions! When you get an incredible deal, you tend to think EVERYONE got a similar deal--so of course everyone should be happy to send half their income back to Big Government to do all those great things it does.
Some Professors have the self-awareness to feel guilty that they got so much money, and benefits, and a financially secure retirement, all for working part-time with summers and school vacations off. Unfortunately, they assuage their guilt by supporting high taxes for those workers who have to put in stressful 80-hour weeks, 52 weeks a year, for the salary of long-term teacher (but not the benefits or pension).
It is no secret that politicians (of both Parties) use the public education system to push the ultra-liberal Progressive Agenda, which keeps the Political Ruling Class (and their Puppet Masters) in wealth and power, and the Working Class too busy working to think/complain/revolt. It makes perfect sense to brainwash the next generation early--something Catholic and other religious schools learned long ago. Teachers who could see beyond the brainwashing generally can't stand the sacrifice of intellectual honesty for a decade or more, which weeds out those with insight or intellectual rigor.
The massive intrusion of the Federal Government into the public school system has been a top-down, systematic sociological experiment that brainwashes children (and in the process, teachers) to not only accept, but also to actively promote and defend ultra-liberal ideals. Such brainwashing even extends to re-writing American History to the point that most citizens believe the United States always practiced open-door immigration--when in fact our nation strictly limited immigration until 1965.
Liberal arts are for people that don't really have to work and make a living wage so you're dealing with a lot of out of touch people. If I didn't care about money I would go to school for something in the liberal arts. The liberal arts are the "fun" degrees but not the degrees that pay well in the real world.
If you have the luxury to go to school for the history of Mesoamerican basketweaving then you're clearly out of touch with most of the world that doesn't have the luxury to do that.
This all transfers to their theories and ideas about the world so what you get is a lot of stuff that doesn't work well in the real world. It just sounds good on paper while they're sitting around sipping an 8 dollar latte with their pinky in the air.
That's just an issue of the reason university exists, which is to receive a liberal education, clashing with perceived reason university exists, which is to get a job. You even describe not conforming to the latter as not being in the real world as if you're value as an individual is determined purely by their contribution to the free market. Ironically, this capitalist ideal probably wouldn't exist without academia. Adam Smith was the original theorist behind capitalist economics, and he spent his whole life in academia. Degrees weren't really a thing back then, but had they been, he's have received a liberal arts degree (in philosophy). And are you to tell me his contributions were minor? Was he not a member of the "real world?"
Studying humanities is very valuable. It may seem detached from realty to study ancient Mesoamerican art, but art does reflect a cultures values. If you study Renaissance art, you could probably describe the politics of the Renaissance at least almost as well as someone who actually just studies the politics of the time. Understanding a culture's history can explain how it got to where it is today. Knowing history is incredibly valuable. As the saying goes, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We can smirk all we want as a historians inability to enter the private sector, but maybe they're value becomes more obvious when they study economic history and it just so happens that the conditions we're currently in resemble conditions that happened right before the great depression. Maybe they'd have some advice for us in that scenario that's a little more valuable than someone who got a degree so they could be an executive at a bank?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
