Friday, May 10, 2013

Presented Without Context. I Mean, Unless You Consider the Bold-Facing a Sort of Comment on Things. Which, Shit, of Course it Is. And the Graphic. Shit, This Thing is FULL of Stuff.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 25% of U.S. Adults believe most full-time college professors share the values of American society. Forty percent (40%) think most full-time professors oppose American values. A sizable number (34%) are not sure.


14 comments:

  1. "American values?" What's that?

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  2. I'm completely opposed to the following American values:
    - Contempt for learning.
    - Thinking that anyone to whom you pay money for anything is your servant.
    - The damn fool idea that if you can dream it, you can do it. Sorry, Charlie, Star-Kist doesn't want tuna with big dreams, Star-Kist wants tuna that have a work ethic.

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    1. Oh, those. Maybe we can add to the list:
      _It's each man, woman and child for him/herself. Out of work, out of luck; it's your damn fault, you know. And do try to stay healthy.

      Yeah, opposed here, too. Say, are these in the Constitution?

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  3. Well, I AM against capitalism, sexism and racism. Well played, poll.

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  4. Interestingly, I just came out of a panel in which one of the panelists pointed out that academics were revered back when they were all white straight males, and now that there are women! and people of color! and GAYS! in the academy, somehow we're subversive and need to be "fixed."

    Seemed apropos.

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    1. Word. As TressieMc said, "I am suspicious of declarations of an institution being dead the minute I show up to it in my party dress."
      http://tressiemc.com/2013/04/05/blanket-dont-go-to-graduate-school-advice-ignores-race-and-reality/

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    2. Indeed. Pay also seems to be flattening out since women joined the profession in large numbers (and especially in departments that have large numbers of women. See: willingness to pay engineering and business proffies large sums due to need to compete with private-sector salaries, unwillingness to apply same logic to hiring nursing proffies). Of course, historically, being a professor was a poorly-paid job, open mostly to gentlemen with independent incomes and/or extremely thrifty habits, but there was a period of a few decades post-WWII where it was a respectable middle-class job with a respectable middle-class income.

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  5. John Kerry DID state to German students that Americans have the right to be stupid. Clearly, academics seek to curtail the rights and freedoms of Americans.

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  6. Meh, I'm teaching high school, and my kids are doing a project where they're planning and writing TV series. I told them there was very little off limits as far as what they wrote, but they couldn't actually film anything violent or overtly sexual (though they could imply however much they wanted and say in a supplementary paragraph what they would do in a real version of their show). One of my kids asked if she could have gay characters. I told her that while I didn't blame her for it, I consider it far more offensive that society has made people feel that they have to ask that question than it would ever be to show gay characters in her film. She nervously asked if she would get in trouble with the school for doing so; I told her to not make a big deal about it unless anyone called her out on it, and the second an administrator or anyone else said anything to imply she was in trouble, I'd fight for her as hard as I possibly could, career be damned. Then again, I'm teaching in Florida.

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  7. Apparently, we failed to teach students about variation.

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  8. Find the Forty percent.

    Shoot the Forty percent.

    Shoot their families for good measure.

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  9. I am opposed to unthinking patriotism. On the other hand, I support "best of flawed alternatives" patriotism, "embracing what we have while trying to improve the parts that don't truly live up to our stated values" patriotism, and other, similar approaches.

    I'm also a Christian who doesn't believe America was founded as a Christian nation, and who wholeheartedly supports the separation of church and state (while acknowledging that my faith plays a significant role in forming my political opinions. However, I'm willing to make secular arguments in secular contexts, and faith-based ones in faith contexts. This seems to me to work, but confuses some co-religionists.)

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  10. Feh. Proud to be un-American, given where we're at right now.

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