Now the far right is coming for college too -- with taxpayer-funded "classical education"
Now the far right is coming for college too with taxpayer-funded "classical education"
Republicans are channeling tax dollars to right-wing institutes at colleges across the nation. What's the endgame?
By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED MAY 31, 2022 6:00AM (EDT)
(Salon) Last fall, when professors at Flagler College, a private liberal arts school in St. Augustine, Florida, gathered for a faculty senate meeting, they learned that the college administration had worked with their local legislator to propose a new academic center on campus, the Flagler College Institute for Classical Education. To administrators, it was an exciting prospect: the chance to receive $5 million from the state to shore up their "first year seminar," a universal core curriculum for incoming freshmen intended to help students, particularly first-generation students, prepare for the rigors of college.
But some faculty members felt concerned, reading between the lines in a state that has become ground zero for the nation's education debates where Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump-style Republican with his eyes on the White House, has imposed gag orders and mandates on K-12 schools and described universities as "hotbeds of stale ideology" and "indoctrination factories."
Flagler's institute would, the proposal said, promote "free inquiry" and "critical thinking," which struck some faculty members as a confusing restatement of what was already their primary job. Then there was the promise to promote "a balanced world-view," "the value and responsibilities of citizenship," or what the college's president characterized as classical education without an "ideological slant," which sounded like potentially coded language for the sorts of measures DeSantis and his allies had been promoting.
....(snip)....
While the outcome at Flagler is still unclear on multiple levels, there were legitimate reasons for faculty to be alarmed, given the range of recent conservative assaults on public education, particularly but not exclusively in Florida. At a number of prominent colleges and universities around the country, big-money conservative interests are proposing and creating a roster of educational centers dedicated to conservative ideology or laissez-faire economics, often wrapped in the language of "classical education," "civics" or "freedom." The concept in itself isn't new; right-wing philanthropists have been creating academic programs in their own image for decades. But these days, the model has been adopted by Republican-led legislatures too, effectively using taxpayer dollars to implant conservative ideology in public institutions.
"It's not that the faculty suspect the administration is scheming or duplicitous in any way," said Flagler history professor Michael Butler, director of the school's African American studies program. "The concern is that the culture wars of 2022 are moving into higher education, and we're not sure what that means for Flagler College. This proposal does not come in a vacuum." ............(more)
https://www.salon.com/2022/05/31/exclusive-now-the-far-right-is-coming-for-college-too--with-taxpayer-funded-classical-education/
Jilly_in_VA
(9,852 posts)There is "classical education", which incorporates Greek and Latin studies early on, along with a strong foundation in what used to be called the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and later the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy). Then there is "Christian classical education" which is a "Biblically based" mishmash of standard subjects. There is an excellent regular (non-Christian) classical homeschooling curriculum available but I forget now who offers it. It may be several sources these days. I found it when I was considering homeschooling my kids.
Here's the Wikipedia page on Flagler College:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagler_College
I found this paragraph to be of particular interest:
"In 2014, Flagler College was ranked eighth among regional colleges in the South according to the U.S. News & World Report college survey. But in February 2014 the college's vice president of enrollment management resigned after it was determined that he had been altering student test scores, GPAs, and student rankings to enhance the college's image, standing, and reputation.[5] The college hired a Jacksonville law firm to investigate.[6] The report indicated that the college had been reporting false information since 2004 to various organizations, including the U.S. Department of Education and various ranking organizations.[7]"
malthaussen
(17,065 posts)rampartc
(5,263 posts)koch is funding, at "conservative " universities like george mason, economics departments focused on his favorite "public choice" economics."
if this sounds like gobbly gook, it is:
https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/public-choice-economics
koch also plans to fund professors of history in order to make sure that "the truth" has nothing to do with history either.
my own alma mater hosts the "von mises institute of austrian economics." chicago school on steroids.
https://mises.org/
malthaussen
(17,065 posts)No comment.
-- Mal
LastDemocratInSC
(3,625 posts)Skittles
(152,964 posts)let's call it what it is
Response to marmar (Original post)
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gopiscrap
(23,674 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,212 posts)Response to marmar (Original post)
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Brother Buzz
(36,212 posts)Fla Dem
(23,351 posts)Poster was advocating that students NOT use services that write dissertations.
appalachiablue
(41,052 posts)- Why the Koch brothers find higher education worth their money, 2018
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/why-the-koch-brothers-find-higher-education-worth-their-money/
- Koch Funding of Universities Topped $100 million in 2019
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/11/23/koch-funding-of-universities-topped-100-million-in-2019/
- Facing South: Organizing against Koch influence on college campuses, 2019
https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/03/organizing-against-koch-influence-college-campuses
keep_left
(1,750 posts)...radtrad Catholics have been creating ridiculous simulacrums of "college" to silo their kids off from whatever they don't like for decades now. Anyone who is unfortunate enough to have seen EWTN programming will be familiar with Franciscan "University" of Stupidville...er...Steubenville, Ave Maria "University", and Christendom "College". But true to form, the ratrad fundamentalists always end up in schism and becoming more extreme. So if you think Steubenville is a little too liberal, you can now silo your kid off from the world at John Paul the Great Catholic University, Thomas Aquinas College, or the University of Mary (yes, that's actually for real--it's in ND).