AH, HIGHER EDUCATION – AT 8:37 A.M. ET:   Each year entering college students are given books to read, apparently to let them reach the next level of intellect.  What a farce.  The reading list is designed to make them into attentive little lefties.  No room for dissent.  From RedAlertPolitics: 

After years of criticism that universities and colleges were focusing too much on feelings and social justice, many people hoped that things would start to change. Those hopes appear to be dashed judging from the books incoming college freshman are asked to read over this summer. Most of them are mediocre at best in their writing style and are meant only to encourage liberal indoctrination.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that many of the books assigned to incoming freshman push themes of racial diversity, transitioning genders, social activism, and economic justice.

Books like Just Mercy, Between the World and Me, Make Your Home Among Strangers, Citizen: An American Lyric, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, and Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family are especially popular this year.

Only one conservative author has broken through the pack and is being assigned by universities, J.D. Vance’s bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy, which discusses the crisis afflicting white working class Americans. 

The books are far too contemporary and read like an MTV special on American teenage culture, emphasizing the need to realize the victimhood — the first step in their indoctrination.

None of the reading assigned is based on empirical evidence; colleges could have assigned books like Bowling Alone or Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, which are data driven.

There’s also no historical standard that shows these books will stand any test of time; there’s nothing by Sinclair Lewis, Plato, or George Orwell. Just because those books are old doesn’t mean that they cannot help students understand current events, as the world existed before any of them were born.

COMMENT:  I expect nothing better our contemporary colleges and universities.  For too long we have lived the myth that education is an unalloyed good.  It is not.  It depends on what is taught and who's doing the teaching. 

Guidance counselors report an increasing number of parents who are ruling out certain colleges for their children based on those schools' oppressive, leftist orientation.  That's a good start.  The market, even in education, might work wonders.

July 7, 2017