No doubt that in some precincts of some universities the best that has been thought and written, to paraphrase Matthew Arnold, is still being taught by scholars who love the life of the mind and love teaching the great ideas and works of western civilization. In some campus alcoves the free exchange of ideas is still encouraged and vigorous debate and disagreement is relished, but one wonders how long these archipelagos of learning can survive, especially in the humanities, given the current climate in many of our institutions of higher learning.
Traditionally, courses in logic, mathematics and physics trained students to think clearly. History, literature and politics taught students that the world didn't come into being on their birthday and that there's much to be gained from studying the experience of those who went before.
Alas, Gone are the days when university students could expect as a matter of course to be immersed in Aristotle, Shakespeare, Milton, Kant and other dead white males in order to imbibe their wisdom and learn from their errors.
Thinking clearly is unfortunately dismissed as an artifact of white supremacy, and the disparity in the racial composition of students in courses like logic, math and physics is "proof" that these courses are inherently racist. Moreover, the only history, literature and politics that matter today in some departments at some schools are those which highlight the history of racial and gender oppression.
Students nowadays can expect to be taught all about trigger warnings, microaggressions, safe spaces, transgender, cisgender, critical theory, their "right" not to be exposed to speech they find hurtful or insulting, their "right" not to be offended or made uncomfortable, their "right" not to be confronted with ideas that challenge their own fervently, if often inchoately, held orthodoxies, their "right" not to be disagreed with, the need to intimidate and suppress those who dissent, and the evils of privilege, patriarchy, and other horrors of our corrupt and evil society.
As a consequence it sometimes seems, as philosopher J. Budziszewski puts it in his book Written on the Heart, that the educated in some ways know less than the completely uneducated.
This video, via Hot Air, takes a satirical look at the sad state of affairs that prevails in at least some of our contemporary universities.
Trigger warning: Some progressives may be offended by having their postmodern pedagogical eccentricities skewered:
