CA: Foothills Prof Silences Liberal

At Frontpagemag.org: Silencing Dissent at Foothill College

This is an interesting article to ponder. The author, Michael Wiesner, is a self-described liberal who writes about hiw own treatment in classroom censorship, grade punishment and the likewise treatment of a minority in support of the US Constitution but treated ill by a liberal professor.

I'm tempted to roll my eyes; but only because I've seen what comes out of Foothills College vis a vis "teachers". No thank you.

But a larger question comes into play: Garbage in, garbage out -- regarding what goes on in the classroom. Meaning, if a teacher demands you learn XYZ, write a paper about XYZ, and you the student write about PQR -- is this censorship?

My children had liberal professors at the colleges. And my children were commanded to write abject "pro-liberal" papers by their teachers.

It was a thorny issue.

So, I commanded my children to learn the dialectics of Marxism. While, my children never did directly support the Marxist position in their papers, a lot of words spun in specific ways permitted my children to preserve their own views while yet satisfying the subliminal requirements of the course as laid out by the instructor. In sum, they got okay grades. Meaning, because they fulfilled elements of the requirements, their papers were not put into the D categories. I taught my children also to research a great deal -- finding not only articles and papers which supported their own positions, but that to the opposite extreme, and those in the middle. Those articles in the "middle" were very useful.

Mind you -- this I requested, only after going through a gazillion incidences of "teacher intimidation, grade punishment".

More I think on it, something funny with Mr. Weisner's story. I haven't put my finger on it yet.