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| Classroom Bias - An Expos� | ||||||||||||||||
| For most students, college is a place where they go to further goals in achieving their career of choice and to decide what it is that they want to do with the rest of their lives.� For many, it is a place where one figures out who one is and what it is, exactly, that one believes in.� College is not a place for teachers to indoctrinate or proselytize their audience, the students, with their own personal beliefs and agendas. | ||||||||||||||||
| Some time ago, Jason Garthoffner, a friend of mine who writes for the Long Beach Union, brought a website to my attention.� This website, http://www.noindoctrination.org, is a resource that allows students to anonymously post about teachers that they find to be biased in lectures and readings, along with a rating of the degree of bias ranging from "noticeable" to "excessive."� Some of the accounts of bias I am about to describe are not only appalling but should not be occurring at any institution of higher learning, by any degree.� I do this not only as a public service, but also to inform you, the college student, of the frequent basis on which this occurs.� In the interest of fairness, I will leave the names of teachers that were accused of bias out of this article, however, those names can be seen on the aforementioned website. | ||||||||||||||||
| Let us start our educational bias expos� right down the road, at Long Beach City College, where one student was brave enough to post an account of his experience in a certain Physical Anthropology course taught by a teacher who just happened to be the department head.� The teacher, the student claims, "uses his Anthropology class as a forum for his excessively socialistic/political views."� The student also recalls how the teacher referred to the government as "nothing more than a giant war monger," democracy as "nothing more than a disguise for colonialism," and amazingly, women as being "too lazy to breast feed."� The teacher, who posted a rebuttal to these allegations, began by saying this callous and unbelievable comment: "I sometimes get such glib, knee-jerk patriotic 'you hurt my feelings' reactions to my lectures."� One would think the department head has more composure. | ||||||||||||||||
| Our lecture bias journey continues with a posting regarding a teacher from Minneapolis Community and Technical College, in a course entitled "American Minority Relations," a necessary class for prospective police officers in the state.� This particular teacher, the student notes, "created an environment that was hostile towards heterosexual white men," and said that she wanted to change the course title to "American Minority Oppression."� Astonishingly, this teacher declared "that she makes copies of the papers of 'questionable students' in order to testify against them if they are ever accused of shooting or harassing a minority."� The last time I checked this was called blackmail.� The student goes on to note that white males in the class were often referred to as "typical white guys," "hopeless white guys," and "f---ing white guys."� At least some justice was served: this particular teacher was not scheduled to be teaching there in the Spring 2003 semester.� At the end of the post, though, the student wonders, "Where will this woman go next?"� Hopefully, for our sake, into retirement. | ||||||||||||||||
| One of the most atrocious bias reports comes from a course called "Art and Archaeology of Ancient America," taught at the University of Maryland, College Park.� The student remembered this teacher, a terrorist sympathizer, "pretending to strap a bomb to himself, sitting down next to a student, and saying something to the effect of, 'If you try to get rid of us, we'll take you with us.'"� Wow. | ||||||||||||||||
| I hope this has opened eyes and made people realize the amount of bias that occurs so frequently at colleges and universities.� Bias should not be tolerated in any classroom and if you feel you have been a victim of this, I encourage you to report it on http://www.noindoctrination.org.� Doing this will not only help to halt this extremely unprofessional practice, but will hopefully encourage other students to follow suit. | ||||||||||||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2003, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||
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