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Originally Posted by CorpMediaSux
Education discusision
And it had nothing to do with feminism, the Black Power movement, the Student's up raisings of the 60s
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Yes, the segregation of academia was brought about by the raise of feminism, the Black Power movement, the Student Up Raisings of the 60s, Postmodern intellectual movement and the fear and weakness of the established academia. Much of this was drive by the Postmodern movement taking their partial truths to the extreme which fed into all of the above except the established academia. Students (and a small number of Profs) demanded that they have the opportunity to learn what they want. Feminists demanded women studies. African-Americans demanded Black studies. And the teaching of the humanities, literature, and history were never the same.
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Women's studies was first conceived as an academic rubric apart from other departments in the late 1970s, as the second wave of feminism gained political influence in the academy through student and faculty activism. As an academic discipline, it was modeled on the American studies and ethnic studies (such as Afro-American studies) and Chicano Studies programs that had arisen shortly before it.
Women's studies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Programs and departments of African American studies were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five months strike for black studies at San Francisco State. In February of 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologist Nathan Hare to coordinate the first black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-months strike in the spring of 1969. The creation of programs and departments in Black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures. African American studies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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OK now you’re just going a little bit overboard aren’t you. How did we get to the 1960s civil rights legislation, if we didn’t have a 1960s civil rights movement? You claim America just naturally moves towards more equality. You’re wrong. People have to FIGHT for it. Often they are called “radicals” or “militants” by people like yourself.
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Obviously people had to fight for it. We had a Civil Rights Movement, because enough people (Black and White, Jew and Christian, north, south, east, and west) had awakened to a higher level of consciousness that recognized those who had been marginalized (African-Americans, women, homosexuals) as worthy of not just of respect but of inclusion. If this awakening to a higher level of consciousness had not happened, people could have fought all they wanted and they would have been squashed by the establishment. If the majority of white Americans had not been able to feel with empathy and compassion the blight of African-Americans as they faced down the fire hoses and dogs of Southern sherifs during peaceful protests the Civil Rights legislation would have never passed. Yes, they were called "radical" and "militant" and some of them REAL were radical and militant, but the leaders (MLK) of the movement were neither. MLK did not call for rebellion and the destruction of America. He did not advocate or condone the use of violence to push the cause.
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The feminists demanded that they be allowed to teach their "Women Studies" programs without being under the thumb of the evil patriarchy of evil white men.
So? If you’re not patriarchical, why should that upset you?
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Because these different disciplines have been so segregated
they have suffered from bad scholarship (such as the idea that patriarchy has been the intentional oppression of women by men and that all sex is rape) and
mainstream academia has suffered since it has not integrated the real contributions of women and African-Americans.
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I wrote:The same happened with "Black Studies" and Latino in literature, humanities, and history. Everyone screwed it up.
You’re contradicting yourself. Without black studies movements we would all still be learning only about white male authors and white male history. Those movements forced education to include the contributions of others. Just yesterday you seemed interested in learning more about those other cultures, but you don’t know anything about the social movements that forced higher education to acknowledge the existence of other sub groups within the U.S.
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So you do acknowledge that the segregation of the humanities, literature, and history does have to do with feminism, the Black Power movement, and the Student's Up Raisings of the 60s? Yet, above, you claimed that these social movements had nothing to do with the forced changes in higher education. Who is being contradictory?
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And again. How would you do it?
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It would require integrating the insights and truths from all of these disciplines, while dropping their extreme pronouncements (from women's studies -- all sex is rape, from cultural studies -- there are no absolute universal truths, except for the one I just stated). We need to go back to the original core purpose of a liberal education, while integrating the insights and truths of all of these disciplines. Essentially education needs to be radically restructured from K through 12, and at the undergraduate level. Our graduate, and Ph.D. levels are not as problematic. Since you are in academia it would be easy for you to look at some of the textbooks of fifty or a hundred years ago. Compare the standards then with now. Also when 1st through 12 was first developed on a national level, in many ways it was designed to produce a standardized level of education in a standardized process. I have little problem with the standardized level, but standardizing the process has been shown to be somewhat problematic. Different people learn in different ways, but that does not mean we want, from a social position, different levels of education (barring some handicap).
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Expanding the narrative was not acceptable since then Women Studies would still be under the thumb of the evil patriarchy and Black Studies would still be under the thumb of evil white oppressors
When was the last time you TOOK an American history course at a major university.
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I admit it has been awhile. So, am I just talking out of my ass? Well, that would be physically impossible. My wife has her master's in English Literature and education which she earned 10 years ago, my nephew is in the process of finishing his college degree in History and education, my niece is currently working on her degree in English Literature, and have a few close friends who are in college working towards their own degrees (political science, environmental science, biology, and business management). I also regularly steal their textbooks and read them. Sometimes these are wonderful reads, sometimes they are
give me a break reads. Both my wife and I are voracious readers, reading in a month what most Americans read in a year or two. Both my wife and I strongly believe that an education never ends. Not only is there always more to know, the depth of knowledge is almost infinite.
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I think you’ll find that most courses now do the best job they can expanding the narrative to include alternative voices. Speaking as someone who has been a teaching assistant for freshman American history surveys at a major big ten university, I can say I’m very impressed with the attempts made by professors to tell a particularly integrated narrative.
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Are they integrating the different narratives by marginalizing the common narrative? Do they pooh pooh what your white male students "real history" or do they work at putting it all into the proper perspective?
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Inevitably though, I have white male students who complain that they aren’t learning enough “real” history and why can’t we focus more on “the presidents” and “businessmen who made this country great.” Republicans I might add.
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You will have gotten it right when all students complain regardless of race, sex, creed, or sexual orientation and when all students complain that the course is too demanding.
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In American Lit. 101 class you teach the literature of America.
Which is what? You clearly have no experience putting one of these courses together. You have 13 weeks and in a 101 course that means you’ve got about 300 years of history/lit, to cover.
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Don't try to teach 300 years in 13 weeks. Do it in three sections of 13 weeks each. As I said above, I advocate a radical restructuring of education from K through 12 and the undergraduate level.
end part 1 of Education discussion
tashi deleks,
M