“Universities do more harm than good now…”
— Dr. Jordan Peterson
I’ve previously explained that my experience as a law school professor lead me to advise my grandchildren not to attend college.
“Modern American undergrad universities are academic Potemkin villages. Non-science college curricula have been dumbed down to near uselessness, replaced by ‘woke’ indoctrination artificially sustained by grade inflation. Professors typically tell students what to think… and reinforce it with biased grading. Intellectual curiosity, free thinking, and free speech are virtually non-existent. Enstupidation is endemic.”
Spend some time perusing YouTube and you will find ample evidence of that enstupidation among college students. Many of them know very little about the philosophical origins of our form of self-government – or the basics of how our government works. How is that possible?
As exhibit ‘A’ I give you a letter co-signed by 677 professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill declaring their opposition to a proposed state law requiring “students to earn three credit hours of instruction in American History or American Government in order to graduate”.
The professors claim requiring the teaching of such subjects “substitutes ideological force-feeding for the intellectual expertise of faculty”.
Contemporary American university professors complaining about “ideological force-feeding” is the ultimate in hypocrisy. All they do is force-feed their own warped ideology to students under the guise of “higher education”.
These UNC professors are offended by the idea of the people who pay their salaries demanding they actually do what their paid to do — educate rather than indoctrinate. How dare the rabble question their intellectual superiors!
In his book, Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell explains in detail the fallacy of what the UNC professors refer to as the “intellectual expertise of faculty”. In short, Sowell explains that academics in general lack common sense and compensate by “looking for an opportunity to be clever.”
Those professors are employees of a public institution funded by the legislature comprised of representatives elected by the taxpayers. Their job is to educate the children of those taxpayers. The fact the professors issued this letter attests to the limits of their’ self-professed “intellectual expertise” and lack of common sense — while trying to sound clever.
North Carolina taxpayers are so dissatisfied with the results of the education provided by the state universities they find it necessary to enact a law to compel professors to do the job for which they are being paid. That the professors apparently don’t understand they are accountable to the citizens who pay their salaries raises the question of whether they are even qualified to teach such subjects.
A companion law the North Carolina legislature is considering would abolish tenure for university professors — which would strip them of their arbitrary, and apparently undeserved, job security. Sounds like the North Carolina university system needs to tell those 677 disgruntled employees not to let the door hit them in the ass on their way out.
It was convenient for those 677 professors to identify themselves by signing that letter. They saw an opportunity to sound clever — while demonstrating a lack of common sense.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.