Even though I taught in the engineering department of a major university, I still do not have a lot of trust in the "academic community". You know this is where we send our kids and where we spend much of our life's savings. If there is some question of whether these people can be trusted with the minds of our most precious possession, we should get to the bottom of it. You may think this is the strangest Blog to come out of me so far, but wait.
What I have noticed about the academic community is that once one of their group finds a "bone" they all want to get in on it and they never seem to be able to let the "bone" go. This is how dogs operate and it is not all that much different with our college and university professors. I think if we would refer to them as teachers rather than professors, the size of the heads might be restored to normal. I think the best way to get an understanding of the academic community is to review a few examples of how they operate and then see if we can get into their minds.
I mentioned this one before, but it is still a good example. For many years all colleges and universities required everyone to learn Latin. If you look back at all the hours that were spent on learning this one language, it would amount to more mind work than it took to invent the atomic bomb or go to the moon. Think of all the waste of time and energy learning Latin all those years? That is not counting all the cost. I think it was no more than a "jobs" program for washed up teachers. Exactly what caused the academic community to drop the Latin requirement, I am not sure, but I am very glad that most have dropped it. Now, that is just one.
I mentioned this one before too. "New math", now we all remember that one. I was too old for "new math", but my kids got a taste of it. Who dropped this "bone" into the academic community? I have researched it and can't find its "mother". Strange how now no one wants to claim it. Even though it had no basis, it would not die with in the academic community. I still know of old teachers who bought into it and still want to defend it. Am I starting to build my case? In a prior Blog, I showed how this one act by our academic community almost killed science and math in the USA. We still have not recovered. Graduations of engineers reached their peak in 1986 and have been going down ever since. That timing is very close to the introduction of "new math".
How about the famous psychologist, Sigman Fraud? He was a good old Jew boy and thus was welcomed into the academic community with open arms. Here again, the academic community had another "bone" to chew on and they did for over a 100 years. When we now look back on Sigman's theories, we find that they have almost zero basis yet the academic community made our kids learn this material. I covered this before too. When we send our kids off to colleges and universities, we do not prepare them to stand up to the strange and many times wrong statements of their "professors". To get a passing grade they have to chew on this same "bone". Once they have pretended long enough, the "bone" seems to taste good to them. This is the problem.
Since the professors have almost total control of what coursed are required for most of our kids to take, they have control of their minds right from the first day. I think that economics is one of the best examples. Economics is not something that was invented in any university, it is a product of thousands of years of human development. It is somewhat like bees in a bee hive. The queen does not tell the worker bees what to do, yet the hive seems to work very efficiently. Same for ants and us humans. Now exactly how the bees, ants and us humans operate as a society is complex, very complex. Along comes an economist about 100 years ago who claims that he has figured it all out. This looks like a new "bone". The academic community pounces on this new "bone" and adopts it as one of their own. For the next 100 years the academic community runs around showing this new "bone" to everyone and requiring our kids to accept their teachings or they will not pass their class and will bring shame on their families. You know what happened. It has been 100 years and yet the academic community can not turn lose of that "bone" even when every thing in the world points to the fact that it is totally wrong? Who are these professors anyway?
I'm not out yet. Wasn't it about 100 years ago when this Jewish guy living in England came up with the communist idea? Looks like a "bone" for the academic community to me. This new "bone" was so sweet tasting that the academic community went right out and tried to give the "bone" to everyone (literally). It did not take long to prove in the real world that this "bone" was poison, yet the academic community still to this day wants us all to take a bite off this "bone". I don't know about you, but I know when some thing is rotten and this "bone" is rotten.
These were just a few examples of where the academic community has failed us. I know that in the Jewish tradition, they always say, "Screw me once, your fault. Screw me twice, my fault". Isn't this what we have with much of our academic community? Now the academic community is made of at least two groups, those who actually teach something and those who only indoctrinate. The ones who actually teach something are the math and sciences and these have declined as a percentage of what our kids are taking in college while the indoctrination type classes have significantly increased. It is serious. You can laugh at what I have had to say, but when you look in the mirror and are honest about the situation, you know I am right. The problem, like the Jewish saying, what are we going to do about it? We have been screwed by the academic community pure and simple.
