Wow, wouldn’t want to disagree with your issues. Two or three jobs and full time school, I’m guessing you’re a high achieving student.
I am a conservative. I don’t particularly worry about my own children being indoctrinated in college. I’ve taught them to think for themselves. It doesn’t bother me at all if they come down differently on an issue than I do, as long as they can support their position with logic and reason, and they are as respectful of my viewpoint as I am of theirs.
That said, I have seen some militant tactics on college campuses that aren’t about reasoned discourse at all, but rather about silencing opposing viewpoints and shutting down speech. Especially when I see the faculty and administration excusing or even standing behind these types of tactics, I know it isn’t a place I would be comfortable sending one of my sons or my daughter.
Would add also I wouldn’t send one of my kids somewhere were they were socially isolated to tenth degree. Being in a minority position sometimes is fine, even healthy, but having to live in bunker mode throughout your entire college experience isn’t something I would wish on anyone.
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I’ve seen faculty agitating, encouraging, and organizing students to protest. Sometimes, it happenes during the class time. Sometimes, faculty gives extra credit for participation in protests. Oftentimes, faculty retaliates against students, who don’t share their views. This scares me.
The other issue is the survey questions don’t measure whether: college turns people into liberals, as the headline of one of the OP’s links stated. To do that the study would need to measure how liberal students are before and after their first year. Instead, the survey seems to measure whether the students think they can have common interests with people of different political beliefs and other banal questions.
"FallGirl: The idea that students are indoctrinated with liberal ideas from liberal professors has been floating around for at least 40 years. I certainly heard it back then when I was a student.
In my case I did become more progressive and open minded…"
Ok, I laughed out loud. Not at you, but at the idea that someone might suggest that this isn’t the typical trajectory (becoming more liberal like the professors, though the terms you used were value judgments), albeit different personality types can react differently.
OhMom: What the heck is “better” or “worse”? Those are meaningless terms, full of value judgment.
“TheGreyKing: I think this is a wonderful thread topic. I hope that colleges continue to have the effect of teaching students to be tolerant and accepting of others”
Tolerance really needs to cut both ways. That means you don’t disrupt the activities of the liberal groups - or the conservative groups. Tolerance that runs only one way is not tolerance at all. It’s compliance.
“Romani: I can’t even get my students to read let alone brainwash them.”
That’s really sad! I hate that reading isn’t as valued as it once was, among so many in this digital age.
But they are listening.
Insulting other posters isn’t cool. @romanigypsyeyes is indeed very high achieving, and made it without her parents putting her through college as well. Don’t sneer at people you don’t even know.
I’m an adult who has a small business that keeps me busy full time and more. I attend protests sometimes as well.
I had a parent (who knows I’m a college professor, but probably doesn’t know that I’m a pretty solidly left-leaning one) recently tell me that he was worried about his daughter going off to college and getting indoctrinated into liberalism by all the leftist professors out there.
I pointed out that if professors were really trying to turn their students into leftists, we’re doing a pretty bad job of it, what with all the, say, conservative lawyers and economists and such this country churns out.
Like @romanigypsyeyes indirectly pointed out, faculty are worried about subject matter, not creating political clones of ourselves. Sure, there are a few faculty (both liberal and conservative!) who do try to do so, but they’re extraordinarily rare, and in any event end up getting either shut down or roundly ignored.
It’s not relevant but not only did my parents not give me a cent, I helped them (and still help them) pay their bills.
But what if your kid is indoctrinated in a religion by a group that has been compared to a cult? My daughter has applied to three UC’s and several CSU’s because she doesn’t want to be far from home. She Chinese, adopted from China at age one. We are a non-religious Berkeley family. There is an evangelical Christian church organized and run by Asian Americans, with branches now in nearly every UC and CSU. They hold services on campus. She had a very bad experience at age 10 with the daughter of a local member of this group, who told her that we were all going to hell. Needless to say, this isn’t your garden variety political indoctrination. Although the acceptances haven’t come out yet, we are very nervous.
Re: #51
All kinds of outside political, religious, and other groups will show up on college campuses to recruit students (and public schools have to allow them for freedom of speech reasons). But surely your daughter’s past experience has made her suspicious about the particular group you are concerned about.
She’ll be suspicious, but she will be targeted because she’s Asian. And I know this sounds a little “tin-foil hat-ish” but this group is relentless. Just google Gracepoint or “Klesis” and any UC.
As in “think better/worse of”. The study defined those with:
Re: #53
If she is suspicious of them, then whatever effort they spend trying to recruit her will be to no avail.
I would guess most economists and lawyers lean left, but that’s a quibble. If you want to know how people’s political beliefs change during college, you need a tracking study that examines how people’s beliefs change from when they start undergrad to when graduate or drop out. You can’t cherry pick one or two professions. Nor does the fact there might be some conservative lawyers in their 50s, who went to college 30 years ago, tell you much about the undergrad experience of college students today.
We’ve been back and forth on this, @roethlisburger, as I recall. I’ll simply point out that (a) the proportion of adults in the United States with some college or a college degree has gone up the past couple decades, while simultaneously (b) the Overton window has shifted rightward. The correlation may only be indirect evidence, but it’s quite definitely evidence.
(And this is as far in that direction as I’m taking this subthread, since I don’t think further discussion can really reasonably remain within the topic of college attendance.)
I think it is interesting that there is an assumption that swaying someone’s beliefs is driven by professors at college. I suspect fellow students are also a big factor. I know my politics in college were more influenced by meeting friends who came from families of different backgrounds (although one memorable dinner at the house of Rep. John Dingell, whose D was a friend of mine, was also quite pivotal in making me examine my beliefs as well – but that is still the parent of a friend, not a professor).
I think a lot of students are exposed to more different types of people in general at college. Big cities, small towns, varying backgrounds, varying religious and ethnic groups. If the student was somewhat removed from those influences before, of course their understanding and belief systems may change as they learn more about other options and other people.
@intparent how did I sneer or insult? Saying I wouldn’t want to disagree is how I feel. And my pointing out that he’s high achieving working multiple jobs, school and protest is complementary