UCLA alumni group says: We don’t know how to think.

By on January 21st, 2006

I’m not going to post much about the UCLA alumni group that’s paying students to report on their "radical" professors, because I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you’re going to insist that a professor talking about politics in the classroom is enough to "brainwash" and "indoctrinate" students, then what you’re really saying is that you think the students are too mindless to form an opinion of their own and too gutless to even think of disagreeing with their professors. Which is insulting to all concerned.

I’m surprised that these recent UCLA alumni would try so hard to imply that they and their fellow students are dumber than the proverbial box of hammers. The ironic thing is that this does, in fact, reflect badly on the quality of their education, but not at all in the way they intended. It suggests they have no idea how to think through the premises of their arguments, and that they never learned what a freshman composition student ought to know by the end of the semester.

The myth of the undergraduate as a fragile little flower whose sensibilities must be shielded at all costs from anything that would make them remotely uncomfortable, even an opinion they don’t share, is really bizarre when you look at it. It reminds me of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest:

I do
not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance
is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately
in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.
If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and
probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. (The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1)

I hereby suggest that the Bruin Alumni Association rename itself the Lady Bracknell Society for the Preservation of the Delicate Bloom of Ignorance.

(Other responses to the UCLA story by Jill at Feministe, Bardiac, Michael Bérubé, scribblingwoman, Kieran Healy, et alii.)

Categorized under: Academia.
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2 Responses to “UCLA alumni group says: We don’t know how to think.”

  1. Bardiac says:
    January 22, 2006 at 10:06 am

    So TRUE! Their education sure didn’t get in the way of their schooling, did it?
    I love the Lady Bracknell bit.

  2. Jane Dark says:
    January 22, 2006 at 11:08 pm

    Excellent.