Sunday, December 02, 2007

Resident Evil Revisited

John Derbyshire demonstrates the precipitous decline in our august educational establishments with two quotes.

[University training] is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. —John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1852

Citizens capable of contributing to the development of a sustainable society must first develop empathy. This empathy will be developed through an advanced awareness of oppression and inequity that exists at a local and national level. Students will become aware of inequities, examine why these inequities exist, understand the concept of institutionalized privilege, and recognize systematized oppression (e.g. individual, institutional, and societal). Students will also examine forms of oppression related to specific social identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, SES, religion, and age) and will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems that support this oppression. By having this knowledge, students can then learn how to change these systems and other systems which impact equity of resources. —University of Delaware, Residence Life: Competencies: Narritive [sic] 2, 2007
You may remember the affair of the evil Resident Assistants of Delaware University. Derbyshire has more, including extracts from the RA training manual. Read it all.

5 comments:

Hazar Nesimi said...

Where are you finding these quotes? Please let me know... Sounds like a copy from a Soviet textbook on US, where all these guys on student exchange exchange program in Moscow back in 1968? I saw a really funny Italian comedy from 70s lampooning the left - it was sooo hilarious. Being Pro-american, you still have to admit Italians make (made) better comedy than all US ones ...

Vanny said...

Italians are hilarious, I have been lucky enough to make a few Italian friends while on an exchange program in Paris. Their sense of humour is very entertaining, what was the title of this comedy?

NoolaBeulah said...

The full story is here and they link to the original documents.

Except for the parodies of their own film or TV conventions, I've never liked American comedy much. I find it too mechanical - you see them winding up to a joke, which is then delivered, applause is waited for, then we prepare for the next joke. English comedy, the best of it, is much more about character. The Italian humour I like is the wry stuff of having to accept life as it is with all its injustice. Unfortunately, because I hardly ever watched TV there and rarely went to the cinema, I don't know of any really good examples to tell you about. But I would like to know the name of that film you mentioned. I'll see if I can hire it on Amazon.

Hazar Nesimi said...

This is better than comedy!

The university also instructed RAs to ask intrusive personal questions during one-on-one sessions, including “When did you discover your sexual identity?” A student who responded, “That is none of your damn business,” was, according to the university’s own materials, written up—along with the student’s name and room number—as having one of the “wors[t] one-on-one” sessions.

NoolaBeulah said...

You can see why they say that the Left lost the economic war, but won the cultural one. This is Soviet New Man stuff - remaking humanity "They want to make people ... better. And I don't hold with that" - Mal in Serenity. It is sickening and, you're right, comic.