March 01, 2006
The State of Higher Education
Right Wing Prof of Right Wing Nation is back in school and having to grit his teeth. He has the excruciatingly painful duty of dealing with the leftwing students -- some are fresh out of high school. Check this out:
It was the beginning of the semester, and we were talking about distributions. My aha! experience went something like this:
"Why do you call it a normal distribution? That's a value judgment."
I'm rarely speechless, but I was then. What do you say to something that breathtakingly stupid? But then, another student chimed in:
"You're saying some distributions are more normal than others, and that's offensive."
And as if that weren't enough, a third student said:
"I agree. Can we call it something else?"
These were freshmen, and it was the fall semester. Had they just taken freshman comp or some wackjob "disadvantaged studies" class, that would have explained where they picked up this stupidity. But these kids were right out of high school, less than three months out of high school. (The good news is that most of the other students were at least curling their lips, if not out and out snickering.)
I'm afraid I was rather unyielding. No, it's not a value judgment, and no, we can't call it something else, because it's a normal distribution, period, the end, that's all folks, moving right along. The three students weren't happy that I hadn't caved to their PC braindeath, but they got over it.
That same, first student also objected to "deviation" in "standard deviation," and for the same reason (though nobody seemed to mind "standard"). She also objected to "error" (as in "standard error"), and said "it's just different, not in error."
Freshmen. Three months out of high school.
The PC culture has been so ingrained in today's students in their public school days that they can't even deal with accepted business phrases such as "normal distribution" and "[standard] deviation." They are quick to see insult in even the most benign of phrases, courtesy of your leftist-dominated school systems.
The Prof himself sums it up nicely:
Liberals are fond of talking about power, and in one thing they are correct: We do hold power over students. This is precisely why leftist indoctrination passing itself off as education is an abuse of that power, and should be strenuously punished.
Yep.
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