University:As the new millennium settled in, calls for his termination were like swallows returning to Capistrano…
17 Replies to “What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?”
There’s no room for a Conservative within the professoriate of the modern University. The halls of higher learning must be an environment free from even one dissenting faculty member in order for the purity of the post modern nihilism to be administered to the students unfettered. Otherwise, someone from within the institution might bring up the emperor’s nakedness.
The halls of higher learning must be an environment free from even one dissenting faculty member in order for the purity of the post modern nihilism to be administered to the students unfettered. Otherwise, someone from within the institution might bring up the emperor’s nakedness.
Yup. See my comments below.
I know all about that sort of thing from my time at Armpit College.
Most of my students were fresh out of high school and it was, apparently, my duty to ensure that my courses would be exactly the same. I wasn’t supposed to required them to address me as “Sir” or “Dr. Rupertslander” because that would “intimidate” them. I was supposed to make their “learning experience” easy and “positive”. Oh, forget about teaching the material like it should have been taught.
In other words, my courses were supposed to be play school for young adults. It didn’t take long before the kiddies wanted my head on a platter because I expected them to earn their rewards, just like I did when I was their age. Being like a drill sergeant, which I was accused of at one time or another, was forbidden.
That was because I really didn’t have any students after my first few years there. Instead, I had “customers”, so I was beholden to whatever they wanted, rather than expecting them to behave like responsible and mature adults, which they would have to be if they wanted to get and keep a job in the real world.
I spent a lot of years bucking the system because I knew the “student as customer” malarkey was just that. Because of my resistance, I got into a lot of trouble and I made a few enemies there because I called the whole ideology into question.
One day, I looked at my investment portfolio and asked myself why I was still putting up with that abuse. I clearly wasn’t going to change the system and I’m sure that I was blacklisted by certain people. So, I handed in my resignation soon after that and walked out of the place with my marbles and integrity still intact.
However, it took me 2 years to get rid of the mental and physical stress I acquired while I was there.
Naturally I have an easy style with students and, later, engineers in my program. I encouraged them to address me by my first name rather than “Dr. OB”. But that was just personal relationship, it did not change the professional relationship.
I am proud of what I did with the Mickey Mouse remedial geometry class. I had a , horrendous drop rate of something like 30%, but the students who stuck it out really did learn geometry.
As an example, the classroom was used by another geometry class with another professor the hour before my class. One day all the students in that class wanted to stay past time because they needed more time for a test. Eventually they had to leave, and left the test questions behind. It was supposedly “closed book”, but since the first question listed several equations and asked which was the law of sines, it was the same as giving the equations away. And the test was nothing more than plugging in numbers into the equations thus provided. Suffice to say, one of my students looked at the test, and stood there answering the whole test in five minutes, before my class commenced. He was incredulous at how easy it was. He asked, OB, does that mean I get an A? I replied that I supposed it would, if he were in that other class. But we’ll see how he would do with my tests. I am glad to say they did earn an A. My students learned way beyond the sine and cosine relationships of angles and legs in the right triangle. They learned how to triangulate, and apply it to everyday activities. In the beginning, I handed out a sheet of problems. They asked me when the answers were due. I said they are not homework, just fun problems that they will come to be able to do as the semester goes on. They looked at me like I was crazy. But by the end of the semester they have all looked at the problems, and came to me to find out how to solve those they couldn’t do. By that time, they all loved how I taught the class, because they realized they were actually learning something useful. But the math department hated me because of the drop rate, and they’d rather I kept the customers instead of teaching. And they stop contracting my physics department to teach those mickey mouse courses. So the physics department hated me, and I left. And not just that school. I left academia for industry.
For several of my courses, I offered tutorial sessions, mainly because I got the impression that the students wanted them.
For the first two or three weeks, they were well attended, but the numbers soon dropped off. After about 2 months, nobody bothered showing up and I then cancelled them because I had better things to do with my time.
Towards the end of my time at Armpit College, I stopped. If the students thought they could get away with putting so little effort into learning the material and they thought they could insult me for my offer to assist them with it, they didn’t need them. If they were having difficulties with my course, they were on their own and they each had to take the initiative.
I was last a student in 1980. It is appalling how badly they all have degraded since. RIP Mike.
I enrolled in part-time University studies as a mature student in 2006 and it was a learning experience in many ways. Half the students in my courses didn’t belong there and they would always come to me for help, i.e. do their work for them. I butted heads with Marxist TAs, half my age, who had no life experience outside academia. If they didn’t show up for Tutorial, there was a good chance they were at the Occupy protests in the city. The worst one of the lot, who spewed his shite-hole, Marxist ideology to a room full of nodding idiots is now on the Sunshine List. No surprise.
RIP.
Mike’s passing was a surprise, having read his work for some time and knowing he was a younger man, well, not much can be said.
Its rock-solid irony that the tyranny of the majority brings about the oppression of minorities.
When the Ignorant, the Petty, the Vindictive and the Coward are all empowered you get cancel culture and a whole lot more.
Governments, NGO’s and Big Biz have all joined the hunt/expulsion.
If it leads to an “own goal” they’re alright with that.
It will get worse before it gets better.
Sadly, that’s what the educational system has become. I first encountered it when I started teaching more than 30 years ago.
Thank God I did my university almost 50 years ago, today I’d be thrown out in the first week.
“Hold a church service. Call it a protest against Satan.”
This was Mike Adams’ last known tweet (from June; he re-tweeted others into mid-July).
One could do worse for an epitaph.
Pray that the Lord grant Mike eternal rest and humble those who greeted his passing with rejoicing.
Used to read Adams columns at Townhall.
He would aggravate the socialists at the university with his buying of hand guns, making fun of those that thought they were men women and other such prevailing bullshit.
There’s no room for a Conservative within the professoriate of the modern University. The halls of higher learning must be an environment free from even one dissenting faculty member in order for the purity of the post modern nihilism to be administered to the students unfettered. Otherwise, someone from within the institution might bring up the emperor’s nakedness.
The halls of higher learning must be an environment free from even one dissenting faculty member in order for the purity of the post modern nihilism to be administered to the students unfettered. Otherwise, someone from within the institution might bring up the emperor’s nakedness.
Yup. See my comments below.
I know all about that sort of thing from my time at Armpit College.
Most of my students were fresh out of high school and it was, apparently, my duty to ensure that my courses would be exactly the same. I wasn’t supposed to required them to address me as “Sir” or “Dr. Rupertslander” because that would “intimidate” them. I was supposed to make their “learning experience” easy and “positive”. Oh, forget about teaching the material like it should have been taught.
In other words, my courses were supposed to be play school for young adults. It didn’t take long before the kiddies wanted my head on a platter because I expected them to earn their rewards, just like I did when I was their age. Being like a drill sergeant, which I was accused of at one time or another, was forbidden.
That was because I really didn’t have any students after my first few years there. Instead, I had “customers”, so I was beholden to whatever they wanted, rather than expecting them to behave like responsible and mature adults, which they would have to be if they wanted to get and keep a job in the real world.
I spent a lot of years bucking the system because I knew the “student as customer” malarkey was just that. Because of my resistance, I got into a lot of trouble and I made a few enemies there because I called the whole ideology into question.
One day, I looked at my investment portfolio and asked myself why I was still putting up with that abuse. I clearly wasn’t going to change the system and I’m sure that I was blacklisted by certain people. So, I handed in my resignation soon after that and walked out of the place with my marbles and integrity still intact.
However, it took me 2 years to get rid of the mental and physical stress I acquired while I was there.
Naturally I have an easy style with students and, later, engineers in my program. I encouraged them to address me by my first name rather than “Dr. OB”. But that was just personal relationship, it did not change the professional relationship.
I am proud of what I did with the Mickey Mouse remedial geometry class. I had a , horrendous drop rate of something like 30%, but the students who stuck it out really did learn geometry.
As an example, the classroom was used by another geometry class with another professor the hour before my class. One day all the students in that class wanted to stay past time because they needed more time for a test. Eventually they had to leave, and left the test questions behind. It was supposedly “closed book”, but since the first question listed several equations and asked which was the law of sines, it was the same as giving the equations away. And the test was nothing more than plugging in numbers into the equations thus provided. Suffice to say, one of my students looked at the test, and stood there answering the whole test in five minutes, before my class commenced. He was incredulous at how easy it was. He asked, OB, does that mean I get an A? I replied that I supposed it would, if he were in that other class. But we’ll see how he would do with my tests. I am glad to say they did earn an A. My students learned way beyond the sine and cosine relationships of angles and legs in the right triangle. They learned how to triangulate, and apply it to everyday activities. In the beginning, I handed out a sheet of problems. They asked me when the answers were due. I said they are not homework, just fun problems that they will come to be able to do as the semester goes on. They looked at me like I was crazy. But by the end of the semester they have all looked at the problems, and came to me to find out how to solve those they couldn’t do. By that time, they all loved how I taught the class, because they realized they were actually learning something useful. But the math department hated me because of the drop rate, and they’d rather I kept the customers instead of teaching. And they stop contracting my physics department to teach those mickey mouse courses. So the physics department hated me, and I left. And not just that school. I left academia for industry.
For several of my courses, I offered tutorial sessions, mainly because I got the impression that the students wanted them.
For the first two or three weeks, they were well attended, but the numbers soon dropped off. After about 2 months, nobody bothered showing up and I then cancelled them because I had better things to do with my time.
Towards the end of my time at Armpit College, I stopped. If the students thought they could get away with putting so little effort into learning the material and they thought they could insult me for my offer to assist them with it, they didn’t need them. If they were having difficulties with my course, they were on their own and they each had to take the initiative.
I was last a student in 1980. It is appalling how badly they all have degraded since. RIP Mike.
I enrolled in part-time University studies as a mature student in 2006 and it was a learning experience in many ways. Half the students in my courses didn’t belong there and they would always come to me for help, i.e. do their work for them. I butted heads with Marxist TAs, half my age, who had no life experience outside academia. If they didn’t show up for Tutorial, there was a good chance they were at the Occupy protests in the city. The worst one of the lot, who spewed his shite-hole, Marxist ideology to a room full of nodding idiots is now on the Sunshine List. No surprise.
RIP.
Mike’s passing was a surprise, having read his work for some time and knowing he was a younger man, well, not much can be said.
Its rock-solid irony that the tyranny of the majority brings about the oppression of minorities.
When the Ignorant, the Petty, the Vindictive and the Coward are all empowered you get cancel culture and a whole lot more.
Governments, NGO’s and Big Biz have all joined the hunt/expulsion.
If it leads to an “own goal” they’re alright with that.
It will get worse before it gets better.
Sadly, that’s what the educational system has become. I first encountered it when I started teaching more than 30 years ago.
I was not familiar with Mike Adam’s views. Do I looked him up. Found this, which cuts to the heart of so much that is wrong with our society: https://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2005/07/26/life-and-how-to-live-it-n1188662
Thank God I did my university almost 50 years ago, today I’d be thrown out in the first week.
“Hold a church service. Call it a protest against Satan.”
This was Mike Adams’ last known tweet (from June; he re-tweeted others into mid-July).
One could do worse for an epitaph.
Pray that the Lord grant Mike eternal rest and humble those who greeted his passing with rejoicing.
Used to read Adams columns at Townhall.
He would aggravate the socialists at the university with his buying of hand guns, making fun of those that thought they were men women and other such prevailing bullshit.
There might be some hope for the future if the history students at Oxford continue to ignore what the woke Dons want them to write / regurgitate.
https://www.theweek.co.uk/107626/oxford-university-professors-reveal-sexist-exam-answers
Damn. He was one of the good ones. A must-read whenever I saw his byline.
He will be missed.