Now here is food for thought, compiled by www.academia.org
THE DIRTY DOZEN
America's Worst College Courses
As the school year begins, Accuracy in Academia releases its Dirty Dozen worst college courses in America. After surveying the course catalogs of America's top schools, Accuracy in Academia has found an extensive array of classes that range from the frivolous to the politically motivated. As the new millennium approaches, professors continue to cling to the same tired, politically correct themes that they've been pushing for years.
* Oberlin College's Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare seeks to engage in "critiques, resistant readings, and reinterpretations" of the Bard. It seems Shakespeare is only worth reading when he is transformed by campus feminists. This course promises to "emphasize how gender must be understood in relation to history, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and other significant social categories."
* Berkeley's Lesbian and Gay Detective Fiction "will give the students and instructor an excuse to spend time during a busy semester reading and discussing a pile of detective novels." Students will examine how "the outlaw sexuality of the protagonists plays out against the outlaw activities of the antagonists."
* Bucknell's Green Utopias introduces students to "literary utopias and the cultural writings of various ecological movements offering alternative concepts to the increasing destruction of nature." Greenpeace would be proud.
* Women, Gender Identity, and Ethnicity at U. of Northern Arizona will discuss "important women's issues," such as "witches" and "fairy tales." What better way to prepare for the workforce than to learn how to construct a "mini Welfare budget" and role play as a single mother and have it go towards 10% of your grade? Exploitation of women in rock videos and advertising will be explored as well.
* Star Trek and Religion at Indiana promises to go beyond just a bunch of Trekkies sitting around admiring Captain Kirk and Bones. It discusses how religion is portrayed on Star Trek and delves into the writings of "critics who hope for the demise of religion," and those who believe "religion can be re-imagined in mystical or cosmic terms." Purists beware! The course studies Next Generation and Voyager, in addition to the original series.
* Is Black Marxism any different from plain old Marxism? This black studies course at UC-Santa Barbara teaches so. Although Marx had very little to say about sociology, anthropology, black studies (he often used the "n" word and expressed hatred toward blacks), literature, etc., Marxist academics hell bent on preaching his failed ideas inject his "ism" into most academic fields - even when it has no relevance.
* Gender, Jocks, and Justice: Title IX and American Education is an offering from Dartmouth's women's studies program. Predictably, the course description reveals it as advocacy masking itself as education. "Is female accomplishment in sport a direct threat to men?" the course asks.
* In Issues in Afro-American Development. Politics, Economics, and Development: Affirmative Action at Michigan, the instructor works to "develop the language to articulate affirmative action as a right and not a benefit" at this school currently being sued for racial discrimination against whites. Black conservatives like Ward Connerly and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will be exposed as "two major figures against affirmative action," not as leaders for equality under the law. "In addition Proposition 209 (the initiative that eliminated preferences in California's university system) will be discussed as an important watershed in the anti-civil rights movement." The anti-civil rights movement?
* Penn's Feminist Revisions of Fairy Tales and Myths "addresses feminist critiques and rewritings of patriarchal mythologies." Everything from the "nuclear family to the Disney film industry" is assailed as "infantilizing" women and "erasing her sexuality."
* Gay and Lesbian Perspectives in Pop Music at UCLA focuses on "lesbians, gay men, and members of other sexual minorities as creators, performers, and audience members." Accuracy in Academia recommends this course to students who have no career aspirations and enjoy classes devoid of intellectual challenges.
* White Racism at UConn-What better way to promote racial harmony than to blanket a whole group with the accusation of universal racism? White racism, the course claims, is "the central and enduring social principle" on which modern societies are organized.
* Amid growing political fervor over whether the census should actually count everybody, as is required by the Constitution, or employ statistical sampling, as liberal politicians have demanded, Counting Everybody: Census 2000 at USC takes a decidedly partisan tone. The course complains that "Congress is demonstrating that the national census is ultimately about politics" because it has decided to adhere to the Constitution. "For the first time in history," the course declares, "the "Census Bureau may be prevented from incorporating the best available statistical methods" and labels the yet to be taken count, a "failed census".
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Thought for the Day:
"Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse."
(Adlai Stevenson)