Politically Correct Education

Elizabeth Kantor wrote in the Boston Globe about how researchers from the University of Connecticut interviewed 14,000 undergraduates at 50 colleges across the nation and determined that seniors know less about American history and government than entering freshmen.

In these 50 schools, students spend 4 years with professors who no longer teach English Literature, the classics, or any of the other pillars of Western civilization. If modern college students study "dead white men" such as Homer, Lincoln, and Shakespeare at all, it's to expose and condemn their patriarchal oppression, racism, and imperialism. Professors ignore Shakespeare's beautiful language and his insights into human nature, and teach instead that Macbeth promoted the domestication of women. They replace Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, and John Milton with Erica Jong, comic books, or "queer theory." By graduation, the students have learned only that everything that happened before they were born was either irrelevant or wrong.

These dumbed down students may eventually become our corporate leaders, our prominent businessmen, even our senators and congressmen. And, worse yet, they will raise the next generation of children. They think they are smart, but they are totally ignorant of the knowledge of the ages.

You can read Ms Kantor's article here: Unlearning Literature

So if you or your children are in the process of selecting a college, take a close look at the course descriptions. Select a school that still teaches the beauty and wisdom in Shelley's sonnet, Ozymandias. Choose a college where both the exploits and the mistakes of Odysseus, Beowulf, and King Lear are analyzed. Avoid the colleges where the beauty and wisdom of the classics have been replaced by self-serving politically correct drivel. We owe it to our children and to the future of our society.

Elizabeth Kantor is the author of a book titled, The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. It may well be worth reading.