Whats It Really Like In The Academy - Road to the Middle Class

WE´VE ALL HEARD the horror stories about the intellectual left-wing terrorism in the nation´s universities, but still wonder: Is it really like that? Writer Steve Salerno has just left the academy after a sojourn teaching magazine journalism, and he should know.

What is it really like? It´s more sad that bad, with minds stuck in the past and mindless protection of the status quo. Money graf:

Contrary to popular opinion, a surprising degree of free speech flourishes on today’s campuses. Trouble is... Faculty have few qualms about socio-political evangelism — which, put more bluntly, means they’re not sheepish about bullying any skeptical students into submission. I met a number of professors in political science, history, and the so-called “diversity disciplines” who upheld their private beliefs as empirical truths. Therefore, they felt entitled to grade based at least in part on the degree to which a given student accepted their wisdom. (After all, students who oppose affirmative action or U.S. “imperialism” can’t be thinking very clearly, can they?) The spirit of open inquiry that scholars like to tout in their self-congratulatory journals simply did not exist on the campuses where I worked. A student who tilted right, or failed to tilt visibly left, invited academic reprisals.

If I were an academic, I´d be worried. Not because I feared that some day evil Republicans would come and take my job away and put a stop to all this, but because this sort of in-bred producer cartel is death to creativity and life, and it is a short ride to irrelevance.

For over two hundred years, people everywhere have accepted that a youth spent in formal education is the sine quo non of a productive life. But is it? Books like The Power of Productivity by William W. Lewis suggest that education may be a lot less important than we imagine. Illiterate Mexican construction workers in Houston are still four times as productive as illiterate Brazilian construction workers in Sao Paolo.

Suppose we reduced education to the basic work of literacy and numeracy and put kids to work instead of institutionalizing them from K thru whenever? We could, you know. The reason we have laws against child labor is that adults don´t want to have to compete against children. And if we pruned the education system we could save, out of the total education bill of $750 billion... well what? $250 billion? $500 billion? And, that wouldn´t be the full extent of the savings. The kids would be working for a living, paying taxes, and all.

And best of all, we wouldn´t have as many Angry Left professors eating their heads off on our dime.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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