Rotela, a devout Mormon, ran afoul of the university after he refused to participate in a classroom assignment that involved writing the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper – and then stomping on it.
The university initially defended the Christ-bashing lesson which is included textbook titled, “Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach, 5th Edition.”
h/t PeterJ
NUTS….
Let’s see them burn the Koran.
Begs the question: how would the university and the media reacted had it been “Mohammed” or “Obama” written on those pieces of paper?
There is a simple solution.
The good professor, now that mocking Jesus has been banned, should just substitute another Religous symbol for the stomping.
I’d suggest they use Mohammed, became the devout followers of the Religion of Peace would never, ever turn violent and do any harm to the good Professor.
There, simple solution to this complex problem.
Just trying to help.
OK — but since when does an exercise like that meet any reasonable academic standard for a university course? Not only is it a demonstration of academic groupthink, it’s a symptom of dumbing down like few I’ve ever seen. I presume it was a second year course, to have been that sophomoric. Ba-dum.
Mr. Rotela has a legitimate beef about the indoctrination element in the exercise, but why should he (or anyone) want credit for a course whose premises are as moronic as that one? The humanities and social “sciences”, as currently taught, are likely one day to collapse under the weight of their own worthlessness.
Christian bashing has become in vogue at universities. Christians, by and large, take it and move on. This emboldens bashers to keep bashing as they forge ahead with their agenda to secularize society.
A parallel can be drawn with American influence in the world – especially in the middle-east. Obama’s rediculous policy of leading from behind has weakened America which has emboldened terrorists and despotic heads of state to further the agenda of Islam.
America had an awesome chance to change the direction it has taken since 2008 but opted to re-elect the campaigner/liar/tax-and-spender/cover-upper/droner-murderer in chief.
I concur with Jim Whyte. This is just another example of courses that shouldn’t be given at universities. I don’t see how passing this would improve one’s capabilities for getting a job.
As Howard University is a “historically black college” in Washington DC, I wonder how it would have worked out if it were a white professor and the stomping was on Martin Luther King’s name, or Heaven forbid, Pres. Obama? Methinks the shit would be flying in a different direction.
How about if they wrote Bill Mahr’s name on one paper then wrote Michael Moore on another, then light one paper on fire, and use it to burn the other. Not sure there would be any educational value in this exercise, but I bet it would feel good.
I note La Shaidle dissents at http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2013/03/26/comedy-for-the-de/
With great respect, I offer this rejoinder. Yes, it’s supposed to make people aware of their taboos. But the point appears to be that “success” in the exercise means rising above that taboo and realizing that it’s just ink on a piece of paper, and it doesn’t matter what you do to it (a point we sometimes make around here about burning a Koran, etc.). Jesus has had worse happen to Him than just having his name trodden on; remember that this Friday. He also seems to have come out of that ordeal pretty well. Remember that this Sunday.
So the instructor was not so much missing the point of the exercise as making its point — that until you can break the taboo, you’re not acting with intellectual freedom. Well, lah-dee-dah, aren’t WE enlightened.
And yes, it definitely is a crude way to get students to confront their inhibitions. My earlier comment is that getting them to confront their inhibitions is not a terribly valuable exercise, pedagogically speakin’. They could be l’arnin’ theirselves some math or howta write good. Instead, they’re in this sealed po-mo box of symbols and feelings and contexts and role-playing exercises. Dumbing doesn’t get much downer than that.
Which I think is one of the reasons La Shaidle sometimes says university is a waste of time and money.
I’m left wondering what university degree discipline would demand a graduate know how to show contempt/bigotry for the belief systems of 70% of Americans (particularly those of Hispanic background)? Certainly nothing in demand by the career market. Is this another course in cultural Marxism with a pseudo science title? That seems to be the only explanation as only invasive Marxism seeks to destroy the spiritual loyalties of the individual and replace it with dogmatic obedience to the state.
Personally I think the retaliation and cover up by the University is more telling of despotism than the insanity of a course assignment that instills religious bigotry. The university officers behind such rank injustice should face indictment or at least civil action.
It would have been interesting to have seen the reaction if the student wrote “Obama” instead of “Jesus”, and then stompted on it…
When it is the word ‘Gore’ being stomped on we will all know environMENTAL religion has met the same fate.
The realization of being conned usually leads to hate.
Sorta like that ‘Hel1 has no fury’ thing.
That a Mormon, whose faith does not teach that Jesus Christ is the only Son of God (unless they’ve made a u-turn somewhere), said No! in a secular school is more than encouraging. Regardless of what the professor says, if he would not have put another name or symbol on the paper and instruct his pupils to take the same action, then he was targeting what he thought was a harmless few in the class. Not much of a lesson to my dim thinking, except by the student coming forward (which is courageous in itself) and the discussion that is now going on, I’d say it will be a success after all, and way outside the classroom.
He chose a revered time on the church calendar to teach his lesson and some of the Christians in North America, who are half-asleep most of the time, might be given cause to think hard on Good Friday: would I have denied Him before the angry throng?
If so, the cowardly professor has made a big contribution to the church this Easter.
Not to worry. The black guy still on the DemoncRATS plantation,was defending this like the eco-cultists defend cAGW,so it must be alright,right??
Darn.re my 12:01…that would be Juan”the One” Williams. More caffeine,please.
Mr. Rotela should sue Florida Atlantic University to get his tuition back, and go find a good engineering school.
This confirms my belief that universities should be dynamited! There is no education being passed on. Just socialist indoctrination. Churning out morons who can’t, nor want, to hold down a job. They will make great useful idiots.
The Republican Party wants to legislate a taboo — prohibit burning the US flag.
I am so glad that I never attended university. Todays professors are a thick as a brick and if clues were shoes most of them would be bear foot. Those pricks should be fired and let them get a real job. Professors can do things like that to young folks but most thinking adults would tell him to get stuffed!!!!!
In other, not unrelated news: US student loan debt is approaching one TRILLION dollars. (pinky beside mouth.) Headline at Drudge today, banks wrote off $three billion in bad student debt in the first two months of the year.
Just given that raw data alone, I’d say the time of universities offering idiotic courses where you write “Jesus” on a piece of paper then step on it is rapidly coming to a close.
Going to be a whole lot of over-credentialed under-experienced Lefties out of a job when that bubble pops.
“Jesus has had worse happen to Him than just having his name trodden on”
True, but by non-believers.
Believers are supposed to have fidelity at a spiritual level.
-pneuma/psyche/soma-
Denying Christ, which is what that exercise was about at the spiritual(pneuma) level, is not an option for those who don’t want Christ to deny them before the Father.
Matthew 10:33
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
In summation, that university course exercise was a renunciation which no true believer could commit.
“…so glad that I never attended university. Todays professors are a thick as a brick and if clues were shoes most of them would be bear foot.”
It would indeed have been a waste of time. Today’s professors wouldn’t notice that you wrote bear foot where you meant barefoot.
What, pray tell, does this “exercise” have to do with anything resembling learning?
I think they’ve given up on legislating that bit of secular blasphemy law for about 8-9 years now. You must admit that such a law would mean nothing to the patriotic dissenting perfectionist who wished to burn the flag as political speech, and would prevent nothing the patriotic non-dissenting gradualist would wish to do anyway.
The student might have found such a make-work fluff class was necessary as “general ed requirement” or out of major elective in order to graduate and get the credential certifying him as educated indoctrinated.
I wonder what would have occurred had this student written the name of the professor on the paper instead? Or as many religious figures’ names as he could think of?
As for the opposite of diversity, it resembles a bag of M&M’s.
A rainbow of color outside, same pernicious dogma inside.
No diversity where it counts.
all those mexicans named Jesus (haysoos) should be pi$$ed off!!!!
So, tens of thousands marched in protest….no, eh?
Okay, thousands of alumni sending back their degrees in protoest…not yet?
Hundreds of students withdrawing from the program…not even?
Whats that? Just a few dozen old farts like me writing about it.
So, just like Muslim prayers in public schools and sex-ed for 7 year-olds – it’s not really much of a problem then, is it?
I think they’ve given up on legislating that bit of secular blasphemy law for about 8-9 years now.
From the Republican Party Platform 2012:
“By whatever legislative method is most feasible, Old Glory should be given legal protection against desecration.”
http://www.gop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012GOPPlatform.pdf
The American right is okay if the Quran is burnt, because that’s free speech. However, their respect for free speech disappears if the flag is burnt.
What did the damn fool student expect taking a course like that? At a nothing university too. Send him a copy of Aaron Clarey’s “Worthless”.
Students, having received no education in grade school or high school, or from their
mothers and fathers, and having never developed any self-respect, are easy prey for these charlatans of “higher education”.
What should not have happened is for Mr. Rotela to be punished so. No one would dream of doing this to Mohammad. It wasn’t so much as a taboo-busting exercise as it was a group-think one, in my opinion.
And yes, Jesus did have worse things done to Him.
As to whether the authors of text should have used some other example, maybe. But I think their use of “Jesus” shows their bias is FOR Christianity, not against, and that they assumed “most” students would be Christian and feel the same.
The exercise is supposed to demonstrate that “most” people “will not, or at least hesitate to” perform an act against common [figures of] respect, or some such. Then ask why.
Now the student, a Moslem, did not perform the act. Fine (Islam does not regard Jesus as part of God, but does recognise him as a prophet of Allah, so such an act is contrary to [some] of Islam). What is then supposed to happen is to ask the student “why?” for either doing the act or NOT doing the act.
Apparently (the story does not say) either
1. the professor was insisting he perform the act after the student refused, which is not only objectionable but also against what the exercise says to do
or
2. the student accompanied ORIGINAL (as opposed to second after #1 above) “No” with threats and objectionable language
or
3. the administration, rather than trying to keep things to one, the other, or both saying “Sorry, I misunderstood and over-reacted” decided to get all zero-tolerance stupid and stupid.
I go with #3, but could well be wrong.
More on this story. Looks like the University is doubling down.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/university-files-charges-against-student-who-refused-to-stomp-on-jesus.html
The exercise did demonstrate that people associate an image or a name of a person with the actual physical person. To be effective this exercise should have involved writing the words “Jesus”, “Mohammed”, “Obama” and the name of each student on a piece of paper and having other people stomp on it.
Someone who understands that stepping on a persons name doesn’t equate to actually stepping on a person understands the difference between a map and the territory. Korzybski’s General Semantics spend a huge amount of verbiage to bring across this point. Given the outrage over the exercise, one can safely say that both the university and student involved haven’t a clue of the importance of “the map is not the territory”.
One of the ways that Korzybski proposed to eliminate such thinking from human discourse was to replace English with English-prime (E’) in which use of any uncritical assignment words were forbidden unless the result of the assignment operation was valid. Thus “1 plus 1 is 2” belongs to the class of valid statements and “he is a communist” belongs to the class of invalid statements. Thus, when one communicates in E’, one cannot use the word “is”, or any other word which has the same logical effect as using “is”. Writing and speaking in E’ allows one to be much more direct and logical in a similar manner that banning the “GoTo” statement from high level programming languages has required programmers to focus on casting a problem into a form where program flow occurs from top to bottom without branches which cause unpredictable behavior. Being the author of much spaghetti code in my younger days, structured programming has improved my programming productivity.
In general, primitive peoples confuse the name of an object with the object itself. Thus, a stone-age religion such as islam has not yet made the distinction between the name of the prophet and the teachings of Mohammed. In E’ one cannot make such a logical error. One should expect violent behavior in individuals who cannot make a distinction between a symbol for an idea and the meme which comprises the idea. A law to prohibit burning American flags has a level of stupidity similar to muslims rioting when one uses a Koran as toilet paper.
A strong relationship exists between certain symbols and emotions and what has amazed me over the years is how upset people get over the swastika. The swastika, an ancient Indian symbol which Hitler appropriated, seems to be sufficient grounds for people to experience negative emotions toward a visual representation of it. I happen to like the swastika because of its shape and symmetry, and one piece of artwork, a mandala figure of considerable complexity, I did brought out comments of “that’s really neat” when I showed it to people and then negative comments when I pointed out the swastika that was at the center of the mandala.
Likely the understanding of emotional reactions to symbols is beyond the comprehension of the university which has a course which will elicit strong emotional reactions (and the importance of those emotional reactions constitutes one of the primary lessons in the course) and then penalizes students who experience the emotional reactions. Likely the professor has no idea of the process involved either as the emotional reaction of the student to the exercise would have been analyzed and educational benefit thus obtained in a properly taught course on General Semantics.
Great insight, but the end result is that the student learns nothing except that he/she has a aversion to being forced into a situation that goes against everything he/she believes in. Those aversions are built into every student in that class whether it’s stomping on Jesus, spiders, Mohammad or wet turds. There’s nothing to learn or anything that will be useful in the future.
Still more on this story. I think the University is starting to feel the heat.
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_s_palm_beach_county/boca_raton/florida-atlantic-university-jesus-stomping-case-gov-rick-scott-upset-over-deandre-poole-class
What would they grade him IF he hoofed the nutty perfessor in the slats?
I’d go for A+
peterj, being able to control ones involuntary reactions is something to be practiced. Heinlein at times reads like pure Korzybski and a similar experiment to this was described in Revolt in 2100 and there’s a heavy influence of Korzybski in Beyond this Horizon.
peterj, being able to control ones involuntary reactions is something to be practiced. Heinlein at times reads like pure Korzybski and a similar experiment to this was described in Revolt in 2100 and there’s a heavy influence of Korzybski in Beyond this Horizon.