Tuesday, January 25, 2005
FrontPage magazine.com :: Freshman Indoctrination At Ball State by Brett Mock
FrontPage magazine.com :: Freshman Indoctrination At Ball State by Brett Mock
It would be interesting to know how much time is spent discussing the other side(s) of the issues involved. I only wish we could have a required reading list for freshmen.
Freshman Indoctrination At Ball State
By Brett Mock
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 25, 2005
Like many other universities, Indiana’s Ball State has a program of required reading for incoming freshman. Called the “Freshman Connections Program,” it requires all new students at Ball State – some 5,000 per year -- to read an assigned book called a “common reader.” This is the first taste that students get of a university sponsored text, and it is the only text that the university itself – as opposed to individual professors – will assign as required reading for students.
The Freshman Connections Program at Ball State has been in existence for eight years. In all those years it has never required a conservative text, but in the last two it has required consecutive readings from the radical left. Books like these might be an opportunity to stimulate intellectual debate. Unfortunately, the Freshman Connections Program fails to facilitate an environment through which such learning and discourse could take place.
For the incoming class in the fall of 2003, Ball State assigned Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickled and Dimed. Ehrenreich is an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America who contradicts all evidence that America is an upwardly mobile society with unparalleled opportunities for the working poor. She condemns the market system and America’s defense policies and in favor of lifting sanctions against Cuba’s Communist dictatorship. She labels U.S. sanctions “criminal” but has no similarly harsh criticisms for Cuba’s Communist dictator who has bankrupted his country and turned it into an island prison.
In the fall of 2004, Ball State followed the Ehrenreich selection with Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, which is yet another attack on the free market system.
It would be interesting to know how much time is spent discussing the other side(s) of the issues involved. I only wish we could have a required reading list for freshmen.
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It's interesting that these are classified as liberal texts per se. I'd think of them as muckraking, but not necessarily liberal, but then it might be because it seems to me there is no good conservative answer to them. Good conservatives AFAIK don't approve of the huge amounts of farm subsidies that make the Fast Food Nation possible, nor do they support the corporate subsidies and monopolies that make Wal-mart so profitable. Are there any conservative writers presently addressing the side effects of our economic value system?
If you want to look for comparable writers, wouldn't you have to go to the Michelle Malkins? But we can't, because her research is crap!
Maybe they should all read Tom Wolfe's latest ...
If you want to look for comparable writers, wouldn't you have to go to the Michelle Malkins? But we can't, because her research is crap!
Maybe they should all read Tom Wolfe's latest ...
Good ideas in the above comment. Any text can be used effectively if the discussion about them includes a more in-depth discussion of the issues they raise but also points out the various viewpoints on that issue and helps students develop their own ideas about the world around them. I would just be interested to know about the discussion that surrounds the texts listed in the article . . . ..
The Ehrenreich and Schlosser books are two of the most remarkable non fiction titles of recent years. Students at Ball State do not need to read conservative commentary...most of them come from conservative backgrounds. They need to think more broadly, and these books can help do that by challenging assumptions. Many students at today's universities, even elite ones, come to "get" an education "credential" and thus expect the kind of "banking education" that Paulo Freire criticized. They won't think unless prodded.
I am sure the faculty committee that picked these books believed that it would help to open the minds of students, much as the idea to have freshmen read a book on the Koran at Carolina a while back.
All IMHO, Kelly, good posting and commentary.
I am sure the faculty committee that picked these books believed that it would help to open the minds of students, much as the idea to have freshmen read a book on the Koran at Carolina a while back.
All IMHO, Kelly, good posting and commentary.
I agree that many of our students, especially in the Midwest and South, come from conservative homes but that does not mean they understand or know much about the intellectual underpinnings of conservativism (or liberalism over time) or the history of conservatism. Even on my own campus, the pendulum has swung too far in one direction. Our primary goal needs to be to get students to think for themselves and come up with their own conclusions - not their parents and not ours but their own. Students are more likely to open their minds to new ideas if they better understand the diversity on both sides of the spectrum and openly debate it without feeling like they are only allowed to agree with individual professors in order to preserve their grade. In other words, I agree with AG that we want to open their minds but we want to open them in all kinds of directions. :-)
I would go a bit further and argue that, if you define conservative values as going deeper than free markets, both those texts have the potential of reinforcing ideas about social cohesion and responsibility, interdependence, the importance of removing structural barriers to individual achievement, non-coercive markets. There are places where radical liberal and conservative actually converge, and these texts might well prove a valuable source of CONFUSION about easy political labels.
I really would be interested in hearing how the texts are discussed at Ball State . . . . Jonathon's point about labels that are too easy is excellent.
I realize now it doesn't look like the comments in the article are separated from my observation in what appears to be the last paragraph in the article. I'll see if I can fix that. I love the discussion that's taking place so maybe I should make that mistake more often (one of the browsers I'm on won't do block quotes on blogger . .. )
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I realize now it doesn't look like the comments in the article are separated from my observation in what appears to be the last paragraph in the article. I'll see if I can fix that. I love the discussion that's taking place so maybe I should make that mistake more often (one of the browsers I'm on won't do block quotes on blogger . .. )
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