A Message from Dick Rowland:
We asked our friend George Leef of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy to do an exposé on his take on the strange-sounding college courses we keep hearing about. He did. His thought appears below.
Dick Rowland, President
dick@grassrootinstitute.org
Can You Spot the Fake College Course?
By George Leef
 What follows are descriptions of four college courses. Three of them are real courses and one is not. Can you identify the fake?
A. The Adultery Novel. Students will read a series of 19th and 20th century works about adultery and watch several films about adultery. They will apply critical approaches to place adultery in its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of the family as a social and economic institution, and feminist work on the construction of gender.
B. Queer Musicology. This course explores how sexual difference and complex gender identities in music and among musicians have incited productive consternation during the 1990s. Music under consideration will include works by Franz Schubert, Holly Near, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, and Pussy Tourette.
C. Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism. This course will spark critical thinking on these questions: What is whiteness? How is it related to racism? What are the legal frameworks of whiteness? How is whiteness enacted in everyday practice? And how does whiteness impact the lives of both whites and people of color?
D. Foodways, Heteronormativity, and Hungry Women in Chicana Lesbian Writing. This course will analyze foodways in recent Chicana lesbian literature, examining writings that illustrate the cultural endurance of heteronormative constructions of gender even as they demonstrate how these beliefs are disrupted, destabilized, and transformed in queer literary kitchens.
Give up? The correct answer is D. The first three courses are all included in a recent Young America's Foundation publication, "The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses. The fake is not a course – at least not yet. Rather, it’s taken from the abstract of an academic journal article written by a professor at the University of Oklahoma. Since professors love to teach courses that are built around their particular research and writing interests, perhaps in a few years students at the U of O will be able to take such a course.
If you went back fifty years or more, you wouldn’t find courses like those. College courses used to center around bodies of knowledge, but today virtually any smidgen of life will do -- provided that a professor has the nerve to importune his superiors in the department to make the case to the administration that a new course he envisions would be “cutting-edge” and help to generate intellectual “excitement.” Narrow, trendy courses dealing with increasingly esoteric subjects have been springing up in college catalogues like mushrooms after a rainy spell.
Does that matter?
Indeed, it does matter, for two reasons. First, and most important, such courses don’t give students what they need. Many studies have found that American college students are woefully weak in basic skills and knowledge. Many of them read and write poorly, and know little about our history, our political institutions, and our economy. It may be exciting for professors to talk about provocative, heavily theorized and conjectural topics dealing with the social construction of this and that, but undergraduate classes are not the place for that. It’s as if a golf pro with a group of beginners said, “Now, observe how with a few swing changes, you can hit the power fade.” The beginners just need to learn how to hit the ball. The power fade can come much later for those who master the fundamentals. Professors who want to talk about their ideas are free to do so in books and journal articles aimed at their peers – such as the “queer food ways” article – but it just isn’t the right stuff for undergraduates.
Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein, commenting on these courses, wrote, “College is a unique period in peoples’ lives, and most of them will never have the chance to study great ideas, events, and art works ever again. It’s a shame to waste it on pseudo-provocative stuff.” Precisely.
A second reason is cost. When colleges and universities allow their catalogues to be filled with courses that embody avant-garde theories rather than bodies of knowledge, more professors have to be hired. One reason why college so expensive as it is that at many institutions, personnel costs are inflated by the presence on the faculty of professors who teach only a few of these bizarre courses.
The phrase “less is more” is one that’s frequently nonsensical, but it actually may apply in American higher education, in that institutions which operate on a small budget and can’t afford to set out a huge smorgasbord of courses before their students may be doing them a big favor. In a study I did in 2003 on the general education curriculum of the schools in the UNC system, I found that it was the smallest institutions that appeared to offer their students the soundest, best-rounded educational experience. The modest state institutions and private colleges that don’t have large endowments may make up what they lack in glitz and glamour with a curriculum that is blessedly free of frivolous courses.
Faculty members sometimes defend their offspring by arguing that these courses promote “critical thinking.” In truth, every course should do that. The trouble with these courses is that students often just have to nod in agreement with the professor’s opinions. If colleges and universities want critical thinking, they should require a course in logic. “Queer Musicology” isn’t apt to accomplish much in that regard.
Candace de Russy says about these courses are “more evidence of the egregious neglect of trustees and administrators of their responsibility to establish academic priorities and standards - which they continue to abandon to the whims of self-interested and politicized faculty.”
Saying “no” to faculty requests for new courses, majors, and programs is clearly something that many administrators have trouble doing. To keep a lid on college costs and to give their students a more useful educational experience, they need to start.
George Leef is vice president for research for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Carroll College (Waukesha, WI) and a Juris Doctor from Duke University School of Law. He was a Vice President of the John Locke Foundation until the Pope Center became independent in 2003. Prior to joining the Locke Foundation, he was president of Patrick Henry Associates, a consulting firm in Michigan dedicated to assisting others in advocating free markets, minimal government, private property and individual rights. He has served as book review editor of The Freeman, an educational free market magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education, since 1997, and has published numerous articles in The Freeman, Reason, The Free Market, Cato Journal, The Detroit News, Independent Review, and Regulation.
This comment is republished with the permission of the Pope
Center.
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IN THE NEWS - HIGHLIGHTED COMMENTARIES
Grassroot Institute is regularly featured in news articles and broadcasts around the state. Here is a sample of some of our recent articles, research stories, and other articles of interest.
Native Hawaiian: “Birthright” Suspect
By Jere Krishel
Grassroot Perspective - January 17, 2007
In a January 12th response to a January 9th article I wrote in The Honolulu Advertiser, the leaders of OHA claimed, "Native Hawaiians are the indigenous people of Hawai'i, and have the right to thrive in their ancient homeland." I find this sentiment frightening in its consequences, contrary to the ideas of freedom, and based on false premises.
Click here to see more.
Honolulu Taxpayers Want to Vote on Taxes
By Paul Smith & Robert Kessler
Grassroot Perspective - January 11, 2007
Hawaii Business [November 2006] “Editors Desktop” quotes Ron Taketa of the Hawaii Carpenter’s Union as saying that the main problem of recruitment of qualified workers for the construction trades is the influx of Generation Y who are described as self-confident and into instant gratification. He says that is due to parenting and a system that teaches to the test.
Click here to see more.
FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Opportunity for Young Adults:
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii created the Fresh Perspective column exclusively to publish the work of high school and college students. In addition to work appearing on GRIH’s website, their work is also submitted to Hawaii Reporter. Submissions are welcome from any interested young adult, and we will publish work that is clearly written and grammatically sound. For earlier Fresh Perspectives please click here. The latest is above.
Contact: roz@grassrootinstitute.org for more info. |
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Read what others have written or add your own thoughts. Click here for more blogs.
UPCOMING EVENTS
All of the Institute’s events, research publication dates and speaking engagements are available on our website.
“The Power of Choice: The Life and Ideas of Milton Friedman” will be broadcast on KHET/11 & KMEB/10, Monday, 1/29/07 @ 10:00 PM.
Pacific Rim Conference May 23 – 25, 2007
GRIH is helping the State Policy Network (SPN) host a regional conference of their group held at the Sheraton Waikiki. It is being joined by Pacific Rim nation policy makers and think tanks. More details soon.
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