Essay 3
The article Teach me, but don’t disagree with me, authored by Jodi Fisler, and John Foubert explores the critical social and political issue faced by students in the higher education environment. Fisler and Foubert explained the aspect of political indoctrination that is prevalent in most colleges in the US. Through the use of the website of Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), a renowned organization aimed at fighting political indoctrination in the higher education system, the article manages to clearly explain the existing political environment in colleges, between students and their lecturers in regard to alleged liberal indoctrination. The current challenges and perils in the higher education academic system is attributed to the lecturers dominance and lack of adequate student’s academic freedom. The notion of forcing specific ideologies to students and rejecting or opposing the line of thinking results from indoctrination (Kuh et al, 2010, p.133). Furthermore, it is important to understand that the educators approach to teaching their students should be confined within a forced ideology. Most of the concepts that college faculty teach are undoubtedly influenced by their personal values, social, political, professional and moral beliefs. Understanding the political and social environment as expressed in the article would is imperative for the readers to understand, since it introduces arguments that reveleant to social and political freedom.
In terms of social environment, as the authors claims, “Orientation tells students up front that they will encounter opinions that they don’t like, encounter people that they don’t like, feel like someone is trying to make them question their opinions, and that is all good” (Fisler & Foubert, 2006, p6). This is one aspect of the social environment that the authors used to communicate in the article to the audience through the use of the life experiences of the student who feels that other people appears differently from the,. On the other hand, it becomes apparent that many professors nowadays are facing a growing challenge from the new breed of discontent community (Fink, 2013, p.72). Some students, such as the one whose message on the SAF website was highlighted, object to the current perceived politically liberal stunt in most of our institutions of higher learning. This is a clear indication of the political atmosphere that the authors of this essay intends to convey.
Nonetheless, I consider this liberal indoctrination shift to be kairos. In the previous years, the opinion of the student in the classroom was totally ignored. It was obvious that most individual professors, as Fisler and Foubert suggests, punishes students for expressing their conservative viewpoints while they interject what the students might consider being an irrelevant political commentary (Fisler & Foubert, 2006, p. 4). Therefore, this shift has come at the right moment, the time when the curriculum was incorporated in the learning process to encompass collective contributions from both the professors and the students. In addition, it is Kairos because it also reflects the current trends in our cultural and political attitudes in our country. Taking an excerpt of the complain message that a freshman student wrote to the SAF:
I received a notification that I would have to read Nickel and Dimed for the incoming freshman orientation at my college in the fall. I decided to do a little research about the book and its authors Babs Ehnrenreich. I soon found out that the book is full of anti-capitalist views and Marxist rants. My parents and I are now questioning the agenda of the college (p 2).
The above quote is a clear call for concern of a distressed student who feels that the left-wing academia intends to indoctrinate him and his fellow students even before they enter college. The student ends his message by saying that he feels that he will be in for a lot of frustration and liberal indoctrination for the rest of his years in college. Consequently, such distressful opinions show that it is kairos for this article to highlight this social and political issue in our institutions of higher learning.
Conclusively, it is the right moment for the plight of the college students to be considered. This article is vital in highlighting this issue in detail. In addition, it has also provided adequate suggestions on how the mutual coexistence of the students and the professors with regard to respecting each other’s right of expression. College ought to be perceived to be a place where the students learn and test their interpersonal skills (Linvill, 2011, p.54). This article argues that it is the role of college educators to teach the students on the importance of understanding that the world will present different views and opinions. Therefore the students should make efforts to learn that is possible for them to respectively and passionately disagree with others without humiliating each other.
References
Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to
designing college courses. John Wiley & Sons.
Fisler, J., & Foubert, J. D. (2006). Teach me, but don't disagree with me. About Campus, 11
(5), 2-8.
Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., & Whitt, E. J. (2010). Student success in college:
Creating conditions that matter. John Wiley & Sons.
Linvill, D. L. (2011). The relationship between student identity development and the
perception of political bias in the college classroom. College Teaching,59(2), 49-55.
