Brainwashing 101

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

BTW - The Steve Hinckle case was very disturbing. The fact that the administration suggested he see a psychologist for “counseling” just conjured up images of indoctrination camps in China.

[/quote]

The Hinkle case was the only one I had a problem with. Putting up posters with “It’s Time to Leave the Plantation” as the title will obviously be found offensive by some, I don’t care if it’s the title of some book by a black guy. The fact that Hinkle could not understand this meant he was either insensitive to race issues or just a moron. Anyway the university overreacted and handled the situation tactlessly, and they got what they deserved.

62

Neponator,

I think you are confusing things a bit with the “one side” and “conflicting viewpoints”.

Regardless, there are situations, as discussed in the “free speech zones” being discussed elsewhere, where the government can curtail freedom of speech. Rightly or wrongly, this is done at universities in order to create an environment suitable for learning.

If you want to argue they shouldn’t, I’m not the person you need to be arguing with. The fact they have those rules has nothing to do with right vs left, which is the thrust of the film.

See? The issue is one area for discussion, the thrust of the film is another.

63

According to what was presented in the movie anyway. We have no idea how many other situations (if any) this guy might have been involved in, or if he’d invited himself into another meeting or something to spread word of his event while another group he previously annoyed was trying to use the space.

Perhaps they had already been on the wrong side of racial issues before and this poster was easily mistaken as another racial issue.

Perhaps there was no lead in to the situation… but when things seemed whacked, often there are things we aren’t being told.

64

[quote]nephorm wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Instead of being smart and simply taking the damn class and making the “A”, some of these kids are dumb enough to turn minor shit into huge political death matches and then whine about how liberal everything is.

True; as a tutor, I have had to advise students to revise essays to better reflect the teachers’ viewpoints. Magically, the grades improved. Is that selling out? Maybe… but playing the game NOW means setting your own rules in the future.[/quote]

I’m cynical enough to admit that you will be more successful in many situations if you just tell people – professors, bosses, colleagues, etc. – what they want to hear. And that might be the path to, in the future, be in a position where you don’t have to do that anymore.

After all, “It’s only business”, right?

Wrong. Honestly, people are telling each other what they want to hear way too often. One of my favorite quotes of all times is:

"
The most effective way to guarantee Evil succeeds is for Good people to say “it’s only business”
"

One of the reasons I became a scientist and a professor was because I did NOT want to have to tell people what they wanted to hear. Since the beginning, some of the teachers hated me deeply because I never told them what they wanted to hear. I remember, as early as Elementary school – I was 8 years old at the time – having my teacher lash at me because I questioned something she said. I was absolutely right and she was wrong, but that wasn’t the point: I was not allowed to question her.

I have many stories like that growing up, like the time, when I was 11, which I had my Biology teacher give me a B because I disagreed with her understanding of Vitamins (which was basically 50 years out of date). Again, I was right, but was not the point; disagreeing with her was a bad idea. So I took the B but left knowing that I had not sold out.

Over time, what ended up happening is that I ended up being right so often that after a while I was known in the School District among teachers enough that they actually started changing their attitude. My record spoke for itself. By the time I was 15 I actually had teachers apologizing to me when I called a mistake they had made, and in fact when I finished High School I had teachers thanking me for some of my ideas and feedback – even a Math teacher (her nickname was “Concrete Operations”) I had in my Senior year that was constantly telling me I wasn’t “disciplined enough to be a scientist”, that ended up apologizing profusely when I personally rubbed my SAT scores on her face.

It felt as good as when I rubbed my first book, a sci-fi novel (published when I was 17) on the face of my English teacher, who always said I didn’t have enough “talent” to write one. The first edition sold out within three months, and that’s how I got my first real job (as a journalist) that got me through college.

Today, as a professor, I support any student of mine that disagrees with me, and will be more than happy to spend time arguing their viewpoints with them. And, in many cases, they managed to sway me, and I’ve had many situations where I changed grades after discussing the reasoning behind their answers. If they can prove me wrong, or, better yet, convince me that their responses are based in logical, scientific reasoning and founded on a solid understanding of the subject matter, I’ll reward them accordingly, even if it’s not the answer I would give myself. There is never only one “right” answer.

In fact, the students I enjoy the most, and the ones I will write enthusiastic recommendation letters for are the ones that show that they think for themselves, rather than just tell me what I want to hear. In fact, if I get the feeling that a student is essentially telling me what I “want” to hear, rather than thinking for themselves, I will call him/her on that.

Of course, I know many of them, going (back) into the business world will probably start telling people what they want to hear the moment they walk out of my door. I am very aware that it is extremely difficult to do what I describe in the business world if you’re working for others rather than be self-employed. Even if you’re a business owner, in many cases you have to deal with people – like banks, venture capitalists and even customers – that will not take it lightly. You will be labeled “anti-social”. You will be told you “lack people skills” and frowned upon.

In the end, if you want to be just “normal” and fly below the radar, and get a comfortable living without much effort, go ahead and tell people what they want to hear. But if you want to become a leader, and be exceptional, you need to start telling them what you really think as soon as possible, even if that means you’ll get in trouble. And not whine about it – it’s a fact of life, especially in the US. You owe that to yourself and to all the people that are shot down every day for trying to be different.

Sounds idealistic? Maybe. Maybe being this idealistic limited my choices greatly. Maybe I have been a stubborn idiot. Maybe I’d be a billionaire CEO by now if I had played my cards differently. But, I have been ultimately successful enough to live a comfortable life and do not regret a moment of it.

65

[quote]hspder wrote:
In the end, if you want to be just “normal” and fly below the radar, and get a comfortable living without much effort, go ahead and tell people what they want to hear. But if you want to become a leader, and be exceptional, you need to start telling them what you really think as soon as possible, even if that means you’ll get in trouble. And not whine about it – it’s a fact of life, especially in the US. You owe that to yourself and to all the people that are shot down every day for trying to be different.
[/quote]

That is fine in the real world. College, despite how many might claim otherwise, is NOT the real world from a student’s perspective. It is a bunch of teachers whose curriculums you have to pass along with school life in a micro-environment.

The goal is very often to simply get the grade, not take every opportunity to find windmills to slay. I am all for teaching people to stand up for themselves. However, there comes a time when you ALSO teach them to use their heads before they use their mouths.

If shutting the fuck up will get you an “A” in some asshole teacher’s class, and speaking your ill-valued opinion will produce various other letters further down the alphabet, you learn to choose your battles wisely. My goal in life is to have no one above me in terms of my income or position. That was the goal from the beginning.

With that in mind, that nutrition teacher’s class that I spoke of is of no concern to me right now at this stage in my life. Stopping to fight that battle could have cost me success in much greater wars down the road.

Sometimes it simply makes sense to save your energy for what’s ahead, not the fist fight you are currently walking past.

66

[quote]vroom wrote:

It seems like conservatism is engaged in a holy war against liberal viewpoints…

[/quote]

What? You have to live in bizarro world to have watched that video and decided it was conservatives that were trying to silence liberal viewpoints.

67

[quote]Professor X wrote:
hspder wrote:
In the end, if you want to be just “normal” and fly below the radar, and get a comfortable living without much effort, go ahead and tell people what they want to hear. But if you want to become a leader, and be exceptional, you need to start telling them what you really think as soon as possible, even if that means you’ll get in trouble. And not whine about it – it’s a fact of life, especially in the US. You owe that to yourself and to all the people that are shot down every day for trying to be different.

That is fine in the real world. College, despite how many might claim otherwise, is NOT the real world from a student’s perspective. It is a bunch of teachers whose curriculums you have to pass along with school life in a micro-environment.

The goal is very often to simply get the grade, not take every opportunity to find windmills to slay. I am all for teaching people to stand up for themselves. However, there comes a time when you ALSO teach them to use their heads before they use their mouths.

If shutting the fuck up will get you an “A” in some asshole teacher’s class, and speaking your ill-valued opinion will produce various other letters further down the alphabet, you learn to choose your battles wisely. My goal in life is to have no one above me in terms of my income or position. That was the goal from the beginning.

With that in mind, that nutrition teacher’s class that I spoke of is of no concern to me right now at this stage in my life. Stopping to fight that battle could have cost me success in much greater wars down the road.

Sometimes it simply makes sense to save your energy for what’s ahead, not the fist fight you are currently walking past.
[/quote]

Most important lesson I ever learned was, “Pick your battles”. It hurts to agree with Prof. X.

68

It seems as though we probably won’t know the other side of the story. On the surface though, it does make some of the things look pretty bad. Of course, even though I am not a liberal, it would be unfair to generalize all liberals as thinking or acting like how the video portrayed even if everything was as it seems.

The first thing of many things that seems hypocritical, and this is assuming what was said in the video was all there was to it, was the idea of those guys getting in trouble for dressing up as the Jackson 5. First of all, there is nothing offensive about the Jackson 5 in themselves.

Second, I doubt anyone would have an objection if 5 black guys dressed up as the Jackson 5. So, if we were to assume it is ok for 5 black guys to dress up as the Jackson 5, but not 5 white guys, than isn’t THAT being racist? This is of course assuming there wasn’t something not being told.

Secondly, please don’t anyone justify that by simply putting up a flyer that says “it’s ok to leave the plantation” that is offensive. It may be offensive if you are PRO slavery, but otherwise, if you are going to make an assumption on what something is about when you have no idea, the logical assumption is that something encouraging leaving a plantation is a good thing.

Even if the title was “going back to the plantation” which could be considered offensive, maybe, hypothetically, the book was about the evils of plantations. In fact, it was about neither. It was just a metaphor. The whole point is that people can say they are offended by anything they want. The guy had to go through that whole ordeal over posting a flyer!

I’m assuming that if there really was something he was doing wrong, he wouldn’t have gotten his $40,000. Nevertheless, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and say IF that is what all happened, it is unexcusable.

As far as the hateful email, the whole point was to show the double standard. They are overly strict about how any speech that could be considered offensive or inappropriate needs to be delt with and the person needs counseling. Yet, in this case, it was seen as no big deal and excuses were made.

The whole video was just to show that there is seemingly a double standard. Without knowing everything, that might not be the case. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was however.

69

liberal professors who espouse their viewpoints in class do society a favor. Often, they are so repulsive that they encourage the student to seek alternative viewpoints.

They remind me of many hollywood actors/cnn/nyt.

I encourage liberal profs to open their mouths’.

JeffR

70

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Sometimes it simply makes sense to save your energy for what’s ahead, not the fist fight you are currently walking past.[/quote]

That is very true, and I am not saying the opposite. Everybody has limited time and resources, and it is important to save your energy for what matters. However, I do believe that we owe not only to ourselves but also to our kids to actually fight against “bad” teaching. These are battles we need to pick. Bad teachers are like a virus – where the cells they can “infect” are their past, present and future students.

That is actually one of the other reasons I became a teacher myself: to fight against “bad” teaching from within.

71

[quote]Derock wrote:
Of course, even though I am not a liberal, it would be unfair to generalize all liberals as thinking or acting like how the video portrayed even if everything was as it seems.[/quote]

This has been said before, but I’ll say it again: imposing your views on others is completely against liberal ideals. It is part of our core beliefs, as liberals, that everyone is entitled to their opinion and should be able to form it in their own time and circumstances – and is welcome to think differently from everybody else. In fact, we LIKE diversity of opinions. We thrive on it. Even if it means being fragmented as a group (which we are).

Accepting the point this video is trying to get across would be like accepting that all Christians act like the KKK. It’s as silly and absurd as that.

72

[quote]vroom wrote:
The Hinkle case was the only one I had a problem with. Putting up posters with “It’s Time to Leave the Plantation” as the title will obviously be found offensive by some, I don’t care if it’s the title of some book by a black guy. The fact that Hinkle could not understand this meant he was either insensitive to race issues or just a moron. Anyway the university overreacted and handled the situation tactlessly, and they got what they deserved.[/quote]

Perhaps he was insensitive.

I wonder if Vroom thinks there would be the same result if the advertised speaker was a liberal discussing the war in Iraq and his poster had an upside down flag on it or a character of President Bush.

[quote]According to what was presented in the movie anyway. We have no idea how many other situations (if any) this guy might have been involved in, or if he’d invited himself into another meeting or something to spread word of his event while another group he previously annoyed was trying to use the space.

Perhaps they had already been on the wrong side of racial issues before and this poster was easily mistaken as another racial issue.

Perhaps there was no lead in to the situation… but when things seemed whacked, often there are things we aren’t being told.[/quote]

Yes, “if any” is correct. Really no reason to assume there was. I bet if there was it would have come out in the suit. The school lost, which obviously suggests Hinckle’s complaint was just. You seem to have trouble conceding It may have just been an accurate portrayal of what happened. It had to have been “whacked”.

73

[quote]hspder wrote:
This has been said before, but I’ll say it again: imposing your views on others is completely against liberal ideals. It is part of our core beliefs, as liberals, that everyone is entitled to their opinion and should be able to form it in their own time and circumstances – and is welcome to think differently from everybody else.[/quote]

I don’t think modern liberalism is necessarily the same thing. We aren’t talking about the classical liberalism of John Stuart Mill, or libertarianism. It’s helpful to think of conservatism or liberalism in terms of a matrix, with there being authoritarian conservatives and liberals, and what we would call “libertarian” conservatives and liberals. Perhaps libertarian is just somewhere between authoritarian and anarchic.

I’ve known quite a few liberals who were not big fans of the first amendment, particularly with regard to racial statements. Certainly, that isn’t classical liberalism. I’ve also known conservatives who are the same way, so don’t think I’m picking on anyone.

74

[quote]hspder wrote:

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius about his young life

[/quote]

I would never presume to tell my students to give up their beliefs in the pursuit of a grade. I have never chosen for them, but I do let them know what the likely outcomes are. A lot of my students come from lower-middle class families, and have had lots of trouble in their educational career. You might’ve been able to afford some Bs, but some of them are desperate for some decent grades.

Unfortunately, some teachers get a big kick out of bullying their students and forcing them to respond their way. Luckily, I didn’t have too many teachers like that of my own. And while you may have been “right” a lot of the time, or even all of the time, most teenagers think they’re right all the time.

It sounds like some of your teachers were real dicks, and I’m glad you proved them wrong. I am absolutely astounded that a teacher would actually tell a student that he or she didn’t have enough talent to do something.

Anyway, my rambling point (man, I am tired this morning) is that… I agree with Prof X.

75

In the interest of increasing the quality of our nations high school system, alot of people think that allowing parents to choose their school would go a long way to forcing schools to improve. I really like this idea, however I’m not up to speed on all of the details of a voucher system.

I have known three families that had to pack up and move so that their children could get a decent shot at an education. I know that everytime I’ve brought up the idea of a voucher system, the liberals that I’ve talked to tend t go crazy. Bureaucrats say they don’t want to be forced to support private school systems, however I’m forced to support a school system that’s possibly failing and doesn’t support how I would want my chils to be educated. That’s not fair.

I always ask this, why not improve our choices as parents?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-1_25_06_JS.html

January 25, 2006
Trapped in the Wrong Government School
By John Stossel

If you’re a public-school student, your chances in life may be largely dependent on where you live – not just which country, not just which state, but which little bureaucratic zone.
In San Jose, Calif., many parents want to get their kids in Fremont Union schools because they’re so much better than neighboring schools. So parents sometimes cheat to get their kids in. At least cheating is what local officials call it. Steve Rowley, district superintendent, said, “We have maybe hundreds of kids who are here illegally, under false pretenses.”

Illegally. False pretenses. Sounds like the kids are criminals. All they’re doing is trying to get a good public-school education. Don’t the public schools’ defenders insist all children have a right to a good public-school education?

Inspector John Lozano goes door to door to check if kids really live where they say they do.

At one house, a mother and daughter answer the door, so Lozano sees that the daughter is there, but he still tells them that he needs to look inside the house to make sure. The school district police can go into your daughter’s bedroom, even go through drawers and closets. “Well,” he said, “we have a computer, we have some ‘Seventeen’ magazines. We have pictures of the student and her friends on the wall.”

So she passed the inspection.

But then he went an address listed by Esterlita Tapang, whose grandson attends a Fremont Union high school. He told the man who answered the door, “She said she lives here and her grandson is going to live here so he can go to the high school.” The man shook his head and said she didn’t live there. “Caught,” Lozano told us. “She’s definitely caught!”

Granted, Tapang broke the rules. The rules said her grandson, because of where he lived, wasn’t entitled to the quality education Fremont Union schools provide. But which is worse: a system that traps students in bad schools, or a grandmother who lies to save her grandson from being denied a decent education? I asked her, “Isn’t it creepy that they force you to go to the black market to get your kid a better education?”

She thought it was. “I was crying in front of this 14-year-old,” said the grandmother. “Why can’t they just let parents get in the school of their choice?”

Why can’t they? Changing schools can change a child’s life. In Florida, Patty Bower’s kids were stuck in a school that wasn’t teaching them. But then they got vouchers, which let them attend a private school that works with kids who have special needs.

“Joey has been brought up four grade levels in reading,” Bowers said. “He’s gone from C’s, and D’s to being an honor roll student.” But the Florida Supreme Court this month killed a similar choice program, and Patty fears her kids will soon be forced back into public school. “If they take the McKay scholarship away, I don’t think – I’m sorry. I don’t think Joey will finish school.”

Why can’t she choose her child’s school? Most countries that beat America on international tests give their students that choice. In Belgium, the government spends less than American schools do on each student, but the money is attached to the kids. So they can go wherever they want – to a state-run school, a Montessori school, or even a religious school.

“I wouldn’t send my child to an American public school,” said Maria Loth. “Not even for a million dollars.”

Her son lives in Belgium now, but when he was 6, his family lived in America. “In America, I had to beg, please, please give me good school for my child. And here in Belgium, they’re all over the place.”

That’s right. In public education, our land of the free is now a bunch of local fiefs, where petty-bureaucrats-turned-lords-of-the-manor decide whether you can get a decent education, and parents must go to them, begging for their children’s future. Meanwhile, in Belgium and much of the rest of the world, students and their parents have the freedom to choose their schools – and the opportunity that comes with that freedom.

76

Public schools have little incentive to strive for excellence.

They are mostly about getting kids to sit down, shut up and be good little drones.

77

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
The school district police can go into your daughter’s bedroom, even go through drawers and closets. “Well,” he said, “we have a computer, we have some ‘Seventeen’ magazines. We have pictures of the student and her friends on the wall.” [/quote]

Someone ought to go to the ACLU… there’s no way that’s a legal search. You do not give up your Constitutional protections by going to public school.

78

[quote]nephorm wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
The school district police can go into your daughter’s bedroom, even go through drawers and closets. “Well,” he said, “we have a computer, we have some ‘Seventeen’ magazines. We have pictures of the student and her friends on the wall.”

Someone ought to go to the ACLU… there’s no way that’s a legal search. You do not give up your Constitutional protections by going to public school.[/quote]

Interesting.

79

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Public schools have little incentive to strive for excellence.

They are mostly about getting kids to sit down, shut up and be good little drones.[/quote]

Standardized tests are the downfall of public schools. Not only Bush’s “No Child” tests, but the California Tests that I had take when I was in grade school and the AP Exams given in high school.

Teachers spend so much fucking time teaching for these tests that they ignore things that should be taught, and they ignore all kinds of creativity just to teach to these bastard tests that do not mean shit. Infuriates me.

80

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Teachers spend so much fucking time teaching for these tests that they ignore things that should be taught, and they ignore all kinds of creativity just to teach to these bastard tests that do not mean shit. Infuriates me. [/quote]

It goes both ways… standardized testing is a reaction to the perceived indifference of many educators who are held to no objective standard of their performance as teachers.