Tracy Molm, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota, urged students to get involved in protests scheduled on the last day of the conventions.
"Students in this country are angry. We"re angry because it"s us that are asked to fight and die in this immoral and unjust war," Molm said Wednesday. "Bring that anger to the streets, because that is how social change in this country happens."
Activists have taken to the streets of St. Paul throughout the week to declare the Republican ticket a continuation of the Bush administration.
Chanting lines like, "Sarah Palin, we know what you stand for, you"ll save a fetus in the womb and send it off to war," CodePink has charged the Alaska governor with hypocrisy for opposing abortion while supporting a continued U.S. combat presence in Iraq.
I heard the other day that 27% of college students polled believed that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was in the Constitution...
Sigh . . . I think it is enough to observe that students don't always engage their brains or exercise judgment before they act/speak. Clearly there is a long tradition of students overreacting, exaggerating, misinterpreting politics. The example you cite is solidly conformable with that tradition. I think I will leave it at that.
Location: land of the Lilliputians, In the state of insanity
Posts: 24,186
RE: Are America's universities failing?
Did you go to college? If you did, you would know that those who have done nothing in life but live the college life (professers) have very little real world experience. I learned lots about science while in college, but not much about the real world. I learned that with years of experience. Some things you can learn in a book, others you have to learn by living it. Some of the biggest loones I have ever meet were professers. Knew their subject very well, but knew little about other things.
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kaafir mushrik
Unintended consequences and God have one thing in common: Liberals dont believe in either of them.
Did you go to college? If you did, you would know that those who have done nothing in life but live the college life (professers) have very little real world experience. I learned lots about science while in college, but not much about the real world. I learned that with years of experience. Some things you can learn in a book, others you have to learn by living it. Some of the biggest loones I have ever meet were professers. Knew their subject very well, but knew little about other things.
I can't speak to that myself since I just started college a couple weeks ago. But my husband would agree with you. He attributes it to the fact that college faculty hang out almost exclusively with each other and communicate almost exclusively with other faculty reducing the chance for cross-pollination of experience. Secondly, they are surrounded by students who are more or less expected to agree with what a faculty member says or risk alienating him/her. They get used to this and it increases the feeling that they must have a unique ability to be correct in their thinking.
I know, even in high school, I have sometimes kept my mouth shut because I felt that it was ultimately in my best interests.
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Proud parents of our own "Daddy's Little Girls"
I heard Jesus He drank wine and I bet we'd get along just fine.
bawanajim: I think my original statement was the most charitable I could make at the time. I also think it really says all that can be said about the protesters.
In a more general question about colleges -- independently of the RNC protestors -- I would be happy to share my opinion, but I'm likely to alienate and irritate folks. I think many people graduate from college woefully under educated. At a minimum, I think college ought to prepare its graduates to write correctly, articulately, and with well ordered arguments. Its graduates ought to have a deepened vocabulary. Its graduates ought to be competent to think using logic and to be on their guard against common logical fallacies. Maybe it exposes my biases and proclivities, but I think graduates of colleges ought to have a decent familliarity with great literature and great works of key philosophers. By "familiarity" I don't mean mere association of an author's name with a title and/or mere regurgitation of a hackneyed moral supposedly embodied by the works. No, I am looking for a familiarity like one has with an old friend, an old rifle that has worn a smooth spot on the back of one's shirt from long hikes in thewoods and over mountain passeswith the rifle slung across one's back. I think this familiarity with literature and philosophy deepens one significantly and is an essential part of being able to call oneself educated. I think a college graduate should be competent in a foreign language -- to the extent of being able to travel alone in the country depending on one's language skills (c'mon -- just order edible food, ask where the bathroom is, geta hotel room, and buy a train ticket -- it ain't rocket science), to the extent of being able to pick up a serious work of literature and, with the aid of a good dictionary, read and appreciate the work of literature.
So, I have some pretty high standards for a college education, and most college graduates fall short of my standards.
Are America's universities failing?
