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June 7, 2003 [feather]
Freethinking frosh report

Reader Bob Whaley sends this letter reporting on his daughter's first year in college:


Some months ago I wrote you about my college freshman daughter's first collision with academia's political correctness policies. My daughter has now completed her freshman year and claims to have had a very good educational and social experience, in spite of several minor run-ins with the PC police. There is one such episode I wanted to share with you for its simple, yet shameless, absurdity. My daughter and I had a good laugh about it on our way home for summer break.

As part of my daughter's social science requirement she took a course from the Woman's Studies curriculum last semester, I think partly out of curiosity and to verify or quash dad's opinion of this group. What my daughter encountered was a radical female instructor preaching on the evils of men and men-dominated culture who then, had the audacity to demand that her students complete the post-course assessment in a manner complimentary to the instructor's "fairness" and "open-mindedness" concerning gender issues. Failure to comply, to paraphrase the instructor, "would be an unwarranted stain on an otherwise stellar career", or something to that effect. My daughter rightly disobeyed, so we are now waiting to see if her grade was affected.

I've suggested to my daughter that if the worst happens, a public "letter to the editor" recounting the professor's practice might be in order - not that I hold out much hope that such a bigot would be susceptible to public humiliation.

My daughter's freshman year has indeed been enlightening, as much to me as to her.


I replied to Bob asking how the story turned out. From his response:

As to the implied threat, it appears to have been a bit more hot air erupting from our Woman Studies guide. My daughter says that she received the final grade she was expecting she would, so the experience turned out to be a harmless if not useful learning experience. I am proud of my daughter's self-confidence and ability to think for herself; ironically, something many parents hope will be fostered as part of their children's college experience.

There is a line of argument that says the pedagogical absurdity of so many politicized, therapized, or otherwise over-routinized college courses does not brainwash students (as the folks at NoIndoctrination.org would have it), but rather stimulates them to clarify their values and to refuse the petty manipulations of teachers like the one described above. This line of argument suggests that ultimately the efforts of college teachers to make their students conform to their political and behavioral orthodoxy will be self-defeating and self-correcting. This is a utopian argument, of course, and a disturbingly conservative one (conservative in the literal sense of preaching inaction). I don't buy it myself, and neither, obviously, do organizations like FIRE. But it has a definite appeal nonetheless, one that lies largely in its willingness to credit undergrads with the ability to think for themselves and to act on principle even when doing so may cost them. Stories like this one lend support to that all-too rare image of the undergraduate as an independent, principled adult who knows her rights and her mind. In an era when higher education is increasingly in the business of infantilizing students, of using speech codes and sensitivity training to teach them to think like censors, followers, and victims, such stories, as insignificant as they may initially seem, can do a great deal of good. They provide examples of how to refuse--with dignity and with grace--the attempts to manipulate conscience that so frequently stand in for free and unfettered inquiry on campus. If we want things to change, we need such examples.

Thanks, Bob, for taking the time to write, and all best to your daughter.

UPDATE: Another father writes in with this:


Along the same lines as Bob Whaley, I got fed up with my daughter's wailing about PC in her high school, so I told her to start a blog, Lone Dissenter. I, immodestly, think she does a good job. And while the posts are slowing down now that the school year is over, it should be interesting to hear what she has to say in the fall as a senior.

She does indeed do a good job. Here's her inaugural post:

Welcome to The Lone Dissenter. I am a sixteen year old high school student in northern California. The climate is balmy, the study pace is frantic, and the politics are liberal. Excessively so, in fact. I hear so many remarkably stupid comments in one day that I thought, hey, why not keep these recorded somewhere? The result is this.

Posts will be sporadic, depending solely on when the idiotarians decide to make themselves known. The names are changed, but the events are true to the word. Perhaps not to the word, exactly, but as far as memory will serve. The cast will be predictably vague. You may see some people come back again and again, you may see some only once. It all depends on what they do.

What more can I say? Sit back. Relax. Remember what it was like to be in high school. You're sixteen. The government is the man, communism is a pretty good idea, and the only thing you aren't entitled to is foreign countries.


What great dads there are out there--and what great daughters. Thanks for writing.
posted on June 7, 2003 9:24 AM