Many students attend college to experience a new level of independence and dive deeper into their studies. Now students are able to apply to more schools than ever, receive financial aid, and possibly be the first in their family to attend college.
This should provide the perfect opportunity to engage in constructive and informative conversations. Of course disagreements may arise, but that serves for fruitful conversation involving both students and professors. Both parties will have much to learn. Despite Miami’s Code of Student Conduct, there is limited conversation in the classroom that welcomes viewpoints that may not be “woke”.
Miami University’s code of Student Conduct states: “The Code embraces several important values: the rights of free speech and peaceable assembly; the freedom of inquiry and the right to make constructive criticism; the central importance of honesty to the community; and the desire that all students engage in a community that respects differences of age, color, ability, gender identity or expression, genetic information, military status, national origin (ancestry), pregnancy, race, religion, sex/gender, status as a parent or foster parent, sexual orientation or protected veteran status.”
The Code emphasizes the need for free speech and the right to express different views. Despite this, students still experience pushback from professors. Professors will teach from one perspective declaring it as fact rather than an alternative point of view taken.
Time and time again, professors will encourage diverse representation of perspectives in college courses, yet shut down students’ viewpoints that cross boundaries. There is a reluctance to participate in conversation because it delves into touchy subjects. The Knight Foundation released a study in January regarding college students and their perceptions of censorship in the classroom. It found that 65% of people on campus feel unable to speak freely. Professors should not advocate for free speech and then diminish students’ opinions for the sake of avoiding conflict.
Much of this reluctance can be attributed to the higher education system itself. Academics today, and for decades, have advocated for a postmodernist approach to teaching. In the 1960s and 1970s, the integration of social theory and a critique of modernism began. In The Journal of Higher Education published in 1995, a study consists of twelve reactions to postmodernism, and finishes with a summary of postmodernism’s impact on higher education.
To understand why professors teach with postmodernist undertones we must compare modernism and postmodernism and the roots of the perspectives. While postmodernism is a criticism of modernism, it is more of a perspective rather than a school of thought. Modernism is based on reason, the scientific method, and ideas revolving around freedom, justice, and merit. Along the lines of merit, “modernism provides expectations of more rigorous standards for and greater enjoyment of the arts and architecture” (523). Modernism gives an opportunity to use reason and find truths.
An example of a postmodernist approach to teaching is in media communications studies. It is the norm today in higher education for professors to tie in aspects of race, gender, or marginalized communities as to find a victim, and point out the instigator. Postmodernism draws in many respects from Marixsm, an ideology with the sole purpose of clarifying the oppressed and the oppressor; the good and the evil. Commenting on universities and higher education today, Heather MacDonald explains this most effectively: “After having been taught to self-victimize and to perceive hardship in every aspect of their lives, they have developed actual trauma. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy” (City Journal).
Gone are the days of reason, today we rationalize based on emotion and hold a mentality of the “system” being against you. Rather than unifying, universities strive to create barriers between different subgroups on campus. Who is more of a victim? Are we victims of the “system”? Or are professors and academics taking advantage of our lack of worldly experience?
Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, wrote an article in the National Review regarding today’s college campuses and their failure to encourage diversity of thought, and success in creating toxic echo chambers. “Campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression — and exposure to all sorts of weird ideas and mostly unpopular thoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodox pieties.”
Citing the Journal of Higher Education once again: “Postmodernism interrogates the modern system, which is built on continuing, persistent efforts to totalize or unify…” (525). Postmodernism disrupts the opportunity to observe topics through a perspective based on reason and logic. This lens has consumed the humanities, especially in media communication studies.
Within the humanities there are a plethora of theories and perspectives. Communications, anthropology, and history have all benefited from different political and social theories. That is not to say it is withoudrawbacks. Going too far into postmodernism encourages us to lose sight of the truth and of reason. The problem is not postmodernism as a whole, but the problem lies within the professors teaching through only one lens that is usually the most politically correct or socially acceptable.
Professors should encourage students to think critically by providing information that can be open for interpretation and discussion rather than one, agenda-driven perspective. 59% of students believe universities should be places where all types of speech are heard, even speech that may disrupt the status quo.
This observation is more than a conversation of free speech. It is to remind us of the importance of diversity of thought. The pendulum will swing with time, but the culture always changes.
Outstanding, spot on. Untested academics hide in their colleges and knowingly distort history and the truth for a Marxist/leftist narrative.