December 16, 2002
Re-education at Georgia State
At NoIndoctrination.org, a student posts an unfavorable review of Georgia State's Sociology 1160, "Introduction to Social Problems":
When [the professor] was explaining a subject, she would only present one point of view (hers) as the "correct" opinion. When she did bring up an alternative point of view, it was with a nod and a wink. Well, just for example's sake, on the first day of class, the professor (who was British) made fun of President Bush, lamented the Bourgeoisie, praised Marx, said that workers should own the means of production (but did not admit that the stock market is for that purpose), and said the only way the problems of the masses are ever solved are through "Revolution", which she wrote emphatically and in very large letters on the board.
This particular student was unusually cagey, and tested his hunch that the professor was more interested in rewarding certain viewpoints than in helping students develop their own takes on the material:
...we had to write "response papers" about four topics of discussion. I did an experiment. I wrote two papers rather poorly, but regurgitating what she had said in class. I got an A on those. The two that I wrote well but from my own point of view, I got a C on. She said that the papers showed I wasn't "learning." In fact, in the syllabus, she stated that we would need to show we were "learning" in order to get good marks. My experiments proved that in order to "learn" you had to say, "well, before this class I thought ---. Now that I have learned better, I think ---." Very 1984. Very scary.
Very 1984 indeed.
UPDATE: David Foster has a thoughtful post on NoIndoctrination.org at Photon Courier. Foster speculates convincingly that there is a strong correlation between the expansion of the professoriate since the 1960s and the increasing substitution of indoctrination for education:
It's much easier to denounce "oppression" than to really analyze the thought of Karl Marks and, say, Friedrich Hayek.I've previously speculated that the vast expansion of higher education has swept into the ranks of academia a number of people who aren't really that interested in or qualified for the intellectual life (much as the great proliferation of public companies in the late '90s brought many people into CEO roles who arguably weren't up to the job.) If this speculation is true, then perhaps many of these people focus on indoctrination rather than education partly for the simple reason that Lewis suggests--it's easier.
It's not just that it's easier. It's also that a growing number of professors and teachers can't tell the difference between educating their students and indoctrinating them.
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