Opinion Article in Wall Street Journal Documents How California Colleges are Indoctrinating Students – Except It Doesn’t

There is no There There

Peter Berkowitz writes on the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal about the horror in California.  It seems the colleges and universities in that state are indoctrinating students and Mr. Berkowitz is going to tell us how they do it.  First those he argues that the education itself is highly deficient.

Numerous studies of both the UC system and of higher education nationwide demonstrate that students who graduate from college are increasingly ignorant of history and literature. They are unfamiliar with the principles of American constitutional government. And they are bereft of the skills necessary to comprehend serious books and effectively marshal evidence and argument in written work.

which raises the question of how students that stupid can be indoctrinated with anything. 

But here’s some proof.

For example, Democrats outnumbered Republicans four to one on University of California, Berkeley, professional school faculties; in the social sciences the ratio was approximately 21 to one.

The same 2005 study revealed that the Berkeley sociology department faculty was home to 17 Democrats and no Republicans. The political science department included 28 Democrats and two Republicans. The English department had 29 Democrats and one Republican; and the history department had 31 Democrats and one Republican.

Okay, how does one get from the fact that faculty are largely Democrats, for obvious reasons, to indoctrination.  Oh here it is, when Conservatives are on a faculty they use that position to indoctrinate students with Conservatism, so they naturally assume that everyone else does the same thing.  But college faculty doesn't indoctrinate just because they belong to one political party over the other.

It is hard to imagine the geology department indoctrinating students in discussions of continental plates, or the microbiology faculty claiming that good bacteria are liberals and bad bacteria are Republicans.  So we need to look further into the article for something like ‘evidence’ to support the charge of indoctrination.

Well there is this

The mission statements of the Women's Studies program at UCLA prejudges the issues by declaring that it proceeds from "the perspectives of those whose participation has been traditionally distorted, omitted, neglected, or denied." And the Critical Race Studies program at the UCLA School of law announces that its aim is to "transform racial justice advocacy."

but that is pretty much meaningless drivel.  Ok, let’s try this

Last year the leadership of AAUP officially endorsed the Occupy Wall Street
movement.

Well that is pretty not damning, the AAUP is a union, what did you expect.  And no, supporting any political cause does not unquestionably translate into advocating that cause in the classroom.    But what about this

a recent study by UCLA's prestigious Higher Education Research Institute found that more faculty now believe that they should teach their students to be agents of social change than believe that it is important to teach them the classics of Western civilization."

Of course, social change is not necessarily what Democrats exclusively want to do.  Rick Santorum, for example, a Conservative that surely Mr. Berkowitz would approve of,  has a campaign that is based on promoting about as radical a set of social changes as one could find. 

It is pretty obvious that despite writing on higher education Mr. Berkowitz does not have more than a fifth grade diploma, because at that level people don’t know they have to actually come up with data and evidence to support an accusation.  So here is some help for Mr. Berkowitz, because he obviously cannot do what he wants to do on his own. 

Real Evidence of  Indoctrination in Higher Education:

1. English 372 – Literature of East Asia

This course does not contain an assignment of a single U. S. historical or contemporary writer.  However many Chinese tracts are featured in the course.  The obvious purpose of this course is to infuse Communism into the student conciousness.

2. Religion 415 – Evolution of Middle Eastern Religions

This course includes Islam in the same group as Christianity and Judaism as religions that originated in the middle east.  In doing so it implicitly indoctrinates students and forces them to consider that there are religions other than Christianity.

3. Library Science 213 -  Classification Systems

This course divides publications into fiction and non-fiction, with Conservatives writings being classified in the fiction section.

4. Women’s Studies 337 – The Evolution of Women’s Roles in Pre-History

Do we even have to say it?

     5.  Botany 425 - Plant Reproduction Systems

Examines plants that have both male and female reproductive systems in the same plant.  Oh the horror!

Well, there you have it, proof positive that liberals have infiltrated colleges and universities and indoctrinated students into believing all the falsehoods of liberalism.  Right.