Heaneyland!

Exhuming McCarthy

Dennis Baxley, a Florida state legislator, feels that students who hold crazy beliefs should be able to sue their teachers for insufficient coddling. That is to say:

The law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for “public ridicule” -- for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class -- would also be given the right to sue.

Well, okay! Thank goodness someone is finally standing up for people who are unable and/or unwilling to defend their beliefs. And thank goodness its someone who has such a complete mastery of the language of propaganda!

While promoting the bill Tuesday, Baxley said a university education should be more than “one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom,” as part of “a misuse of their platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views.”

... “Professors are accountable for what they say or do,” he said. “They’re accountable to the rest of us in society … All of a sudden the faculty think they can do what they want and shut us out. Why is it so unheard of to say the professor shouldn’t be a dictator and control that room as their totalitarian niche?”

Whoa! Somebody didn't enjoy their college experience.

Anyway, though, I mean, I guess I can see his point. I mean, if students weren't forced against their will to go to a college that they had no say in choosing, then students with beliefs they didn't wish to have challenged could choose to attend a school that would be likely to hold sympathetic views. But since students have no control whatsoever over their post-high-school academic life, professors should -- what? You say students do make their own decisions about what colleges they want to attend? Well, that throws my whole argument into a cocked hat.

(Via Happyscrappy.)

Posted by Francis at 12:10 PM | TrackBack