Coyote Blog

Some professors are arguing about online education.  I will not comment on that particular topic right now, though it sounds a bit like two apatosauruses arguing about whether they should be worried about the comet they just saw.

I did, however, want to comment on this, from an SJSU professor to a Harvard professor, I assume pushing back on online course work designed by Harvard.  Emphasis added.

what kind of message are we sending our students if we tell them that they should best learn what justice is by listening to the reflections of the largely white student population from a privileged institution like Harvard? Our very diverse students gain far more when their own experience is central to the course and when they are learning from our own very diverse faculty, who bring their varied perspectives to the content of courses that bear on social justice…

having our students read a variety of texts, perhaps including your own, is far superior to having them listen to your lectures. This is especially important for a digital generation that reads far too little. If we can do something as educators we would like to increase literacy, not decrease it…the thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary — something out of a dystopian novel…

I would have said that teaching social justice at all and requiring students to take it at many universities was something out of a dystopian novel.  In fact, the whole concept of social justice, wherein it is justified that certain groups can use the coercive force of government to get whatever they may fancy merely by declaring that there is a right to it (e.g. health care), actually underlies a number of dystopian novels.

Postscript #1:  If find it hilarious that the SJSU rejects Harvard-created course materials because they are the product of white privilege.  I cannot speak to Harvard undergrad, but my son is at Amherst which could certainly be lumped into the same category (any college named after an early proponent of biological warfare against Native Americans has to be up there in the white privilege category).  My son actually gave up his earlier plan to study history when he looked at the course catalog.  It was impossible to simply study, say, the political and economic history of Western Europe.  All the courses are such things as "the role of women in the development of Paraguayan aboriginal rights."

Postscript #2:  I don't have the larger context for this letter but it strikes me the professor is stuck in the typical leftist technocratic top-down and centralized single mandated approach to anything.  Why is it that online courses would end up with no viewpoint or content competition?  The Internet has increased the access of most people to a diversity of ideas that go beyond what they got in the morning fish-wrap and from Uncle Walter on TV.  Why would it have the opposite effect in education?  Or perhaps that is what the professor is worried about, a loss of control of the education message by the current academic elite, to be feared in the same way the Left hates Fox News.

OK, Uncle Walter no longer does much for CBS other than act as their sort of hood ornament, but his statement on Larry King, via Drudge, is even wackier than Dan Rather:

Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape.

Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN.

Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

Um, right. I am sure Bin Laden is sitting in his spider hole waiting to do everything the Bush Administration asks him to do. And, if Bin Laden is in custody, why would Bush use that fact only to generate this tape, and not just trumpet to the world that the US has, in fact, captured Bin Laden, which would have far more impact. It is incredible to see Cronkite saying things that Michael Moore might even think twice about. And, to have Larry King just let it slide - no followup question or anything, as if Cronkite's statement was the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

UPDATE:

It was pretty funny to watch Dan Rather last night during the election coverage. Brokaw at the end of the evening looked like he was going to cry, but Dan really lost it a couple of times. He really lost all pretense to objectivity. I wish I had a transcript. It would be hilarious to put up a montage of video clips from network anchors from 7PM EST (when exit polls were signaling a big Kerry win) and midnight when it was pretty clear Bush would win. I know the differences in body language and demeanor would be startling, and would go well beyond what is explainable just from being tired.