Machan's Musings - Teacher Watch!
by Tibor R. Machan
Here is my imaginary scenario: A black student alumni organization hears that some teachers are making racist remarks-advancing racist theories and conclusions-in, say, a sociology course. But they have no proof, so they offer to pay a student to take the risk of wearing a wire in class to make sure the report is accurate. Turns out it is and the teacher is caught on tape doing just what he had been suspected of doing, advancing racist theories in his class.
It is doubtful that anyone but the racist professor would complain too much about this. Indeed, comparable cases can be found in the history of higher education over the last several decades.
Here is a recent actual scenario: A conservative student alumni organization at UCLA, the Bruin Alumni Association, offers to pay some students to monitor teachers for their Left wing bias in their classes. (My own children attending college have reported this to me from several classes both in California and in Alabama. And after 40 years in higher education I have, of course, run across it myself.) But this kind of action is protested as a "witch hunt."
Perhaps this is simply the usual "depends whose ox is being gored" situation. If racists are the target, it is legitimate to be concerned. But if people who routinely diss capitalism and America, then it is fine, a matter of academic freedom.
Well, you cannot have it both ways. If, say, the Southern Poverty Center can get bent out of shape at the slightest suggestion of racism in a college history course-for example, the professor defends the ante-bellum South's position in the American "war between the states," as such folks like to call it-this is going to gain much support. Such a stance is going to be widely condemned as academic malpractice, plain and simple, and the dismissal of the teacher will be demanded by many in the academy itself.
But when a professor announces to her class, as one of them did in my younger daughter's class, that "I am ashamed to be living in the United States of America" after the US invaded Iraq, and makes it clear to everyone that she is a Marxist (and, on top of it, is a guest worker in the country, not a citizen), well then complaining about this counts as opposing academic freedom.
The now pervasive group mentality in America has generated many instances-one recently in Colorado-when ideologically motivated academics are invoking principles in support of their academic freedom when they are accused of malpractice-of using the classroom as a platform for their ideology, not as a place where teaching is carried out. At the same time they have no compunction about charging those whose views they have contempt for with the exact same thing.
We have, in short, what amounts to a turf fight going on-neither side seems to have a very serious interest in professional ethics, only in getting to spout their position to what amounts in most cases a captive audience of young men and women.
But what else do you expect when the bulk of the academy is in the hands of government? These are, after all, state schools attended by most students at low or no cost. These students are ripe, anyway, to absorb the preaching of Left Wing professors who proclaim in their classes, without allowing anyone to object, that a country the president of which champions
lowering taxes is as low as a country can get since it, among other things, threatens "free" or low cost public education. And Right Wing professors naturally feel out of the running and would like to wrest for themselves some of the power possessed by the Left.
This is not unlike when religious groups in some countries resort to violent struggle to gain control of the public square. Where there is no separation of church and state, that is what is most natural. And the same is true wherever there is no separation of state and education-different factions in the educational community, with their various agendas for propagating their take on various topics to their captive audiences, are eager to wrest control of the class room.
Nor is all this unlike the skirmishes about whether Darwinian evolutionary (or natural selection) theory or Intelligent Design (or creationism) will be taught in the public-for which read "government" -schools throughout the nation. There, too, we have a virtual monopoly and the various sides would love to get into the driver's seat to call the shots.
The answer that no mainstream commentator considers, and no mainstream forum lets discussed, is that education and government should not mix. Then, at least, a widespread competition among different types of schools, with their various agendas, will enable parents and students to decided what they want to learn and no one faction will run the show.
Just think of it as comparable to the magazines we subscribe to-the government has nothing to do with this and the situation is quite satisfactory, thank you.
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