"Liberal Indoctrination" in Colleges

The Cry:

“American colleges are liberal indoctrination camps!”

This is total bullshit and fearmongering.

The Truth

You want to know what’s really going on at colleges? I can state it in once sentence before I clarify:

In college, people learn how the world really is, and not just the filtered, sanitized, whitewashed fantasy world that doesn’t extend beyond the county line.

That’s it. Students are exposed to the reality of the larger world, the nature of human existence and how to think critically.

My Experience

I spent 5 years in undergrad at a University, obtaining two bachelor’s degrees, two years at a different University to get a Master’s degree, and I’ve been working for a community college for 14 years. I’ve also taught at another University part-time, and regularly work with faculty and staff from other institutions, accreditors and support organizations. I’ve met hundreds of people from other institutions and educational businesses and organizations.

I also continue to maintain friendships with people who worked in all areas, including facilities, IT, HR, business offices, student support, registration, library services, factuly and even the highest levels of college administration. Many of these individuals have worked at several institutions.

I’ve been part of many different committees, including curriculum, budget, distance education, IT, faculty evaluation and merit, faculy executive committee and I’ve been president of the faculty assembly. I’ve also been a part of development of two strategic plans, and have been on over a dozen hiring committees for various positions.

You know what is never on any meeting agenda, budget line-item, hiring question, job-description, or conference presentation? Not even in casual conversations?

Liberal indoctrination.

Maybe once in a while you find a professor who is vocal about their political leanings. I’ve seen that before myself. Interestingly, of the few I can think of about half were actually conservative leaning. Most people, including myself, leave their politics at home.

Reality, on the other hand, has a tendency to step on certain conservative views.

In College you Learn…

The Scientific Method

You learn that science isn’t a body of knowledge about how the world works. Science isn’t knowing that table salt is made of sodium and chlorine, or that humans have 46 chromosomes, or that F=ma. It’s not a list of facts that you memorize.

Science is a method. A process. It is specifically designed to overcome the flaws in human reasoning and cognition. It is based on observable evidence and data and finding the patterns in nature. It eliminates wrong hypotheses by falsifying them with experiments, and we are left with the hypotheses that still explain the evidence that we have.

Most importantly, you learn that scientific findings are always subject to new information. We get better instruments, more accurate information, new evidence and apply new theories, and sometimes this means scientific findings must be updated and/or refined. This is not a bad thing. This is the whole point.

History

You learn the historical method, very similar to the scientific method, and you learn what we currently know about history based on the historical evidence that we have.

This includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yes, this means that you learn about the skeletons in America’s closet. That our country has been very shitty to a lot of people, including slaves, native Americans, women and plenty of people in other countries.

This means you learn that the good guys aren’t always good, and the bad guys aren’t always bad. You learn the horrors of the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, or the Japanese internment camps. You learn about the awful firebombing of Dresden and just how crappy of a person Christopher Columbus was.

Yes, this means you are sometimes shaken. It means facing the fact that your ancestors may have done awful things, and that they weren’t the “pure as the driven snow”, perfect Americans we wish they were. It means we will likely feel very badly about how some people were treated.

But it doesn’t mean we have to feel guilty. See, something else we learn in college is nuance. The ability to see the world in shades of grey and understand its true complexity. You learn the ability to navigate uncertainty, and hold multiple views of the same incidents.

About Other Cultures

In college, you learn about other cultures, their beliefs, values, artwork and history. You learn that other people are just as proud of their country and heritage as we are. You learn that people in other countries can be very happy. You learn that some of them have freedoms that we do not in America.

To put it simply: you learn that America is not as exceptional as we are often taught that it is. This might be the biggest “liberal indoctrination” element that you pick up in college. But it happens to be reality.

How the Brain Works

Many students take one or more Psychology classes where you learn how the human brain and mind operate. You learn just how incredibly flawed it is, as well as how predictable it can be.

You learn the psychology of identity, and how certain cultural items can become core parts of one’s identity, such as nationality, religion, sports teams, car manufacturers and political parties.

You learn about the “fight or flight” response that occurs when a person feels threatened, and that this response can also be triggered by psychological threats and not just physical. You learn that attacks on one’s identity can create the same response. That a perceived attack on one’s favorite sports team, religion, political party or nation of birth can result in a fight-or-flight response that shuts off one’s critical thinking abilities and resort to defense mechanims.

You learn about the psychological defense mechanisms that we employ when we are attacked, such as the backfire effect, projection, rationalization, and compartmentalization, and how these inhibit critical thinking and processing information.

About Diverse People

In college, you meet people from numerous walks of life. You meet people from all over the country an even all over the world. People of different ethnicities, skin colors, and traditions. You meet gay and bisexual people. You meet people of different gender identities. You meet people of various religions. You meet people with various disabilities.

And you know what you learn about them?

That they are real human beings with feelings, desires, dreams and hopes just like you. That they are doing their best to navigate the same world you are, have the same flaws you do and experience misfortunes just like you do.

You learn that gay people love the same way you do, just with the same gender. You learn that transgender people are just… people, who happen to experience life as a gender different from their physical sex.

You learn that Muslims, Jews and Hindus aren’t evil or misguided, and are just as driven to be the best person they can be as any Christian. You also learn that they can justify their beliefs the same way Christians can. You meet Atheists who are as moral or compassionate as any Christian you know. You find that they aren’t cold, unhappy people, wandering aimlessly wondering what to do with themselves.

And any of these diverse people can become a best and trusted friend who helps see you through difficult times, and share your accomplishments.

You learn that all those stories and stereotypes you heard about these different people simply aren’t true.

Evaluating Information Sources

In various classes, such as English/Composition and numerous classes that follow it, you learn how to evaluate the quality of information sources.

You see, not all information sources are reliable. Not all sources can demonstrate that their claims are true. They may not have data, or they may be misinterpreting or even misrepresenting data.

Critical Thinking

Perhaps the biggest one of all, you cannot get through college without developing critical thinking skills, at least assuming you put forth the effort to do well.

You learn how to process information, and interpret data. You learn about statistical outliers, such as that one family member who smoked all their life and didn’t get lung cancer, or that one person who got a vaccine and had a negative side effect.

You learn to provide justification for conclusions, ideas or actions.

You learn to process this information from different perspectives.

You learn how to spot flaws in arguments, and even label the logical fallacies. You learn to spot poor debate tactics, such as avoiding answering questions or addressing critical topics.

To put it simply, you learn to make decisions or judgements based on evidence and reason, separate from emotions and bias.

Oh, and you learn that there’s no such thing as “Common Sense”, and that it’s just a word that people use to make themselves feel good about their own beliefs. That their views are “common sense” and that if you think differently, that you “aren’t using common sense”. It’s a defense mechanism used to avoid considering viewpoints different from your own.

Conservative Kryptonite

As I stated at the beginning, in college, you learn how the world really works. How people work. How brains work. You learn that there’s more to the world than the little area you grew up in.

All of this is absolutely devastating to most modern conservative talking points and hot topics. When you learn how the world really is, it dismantles these talking points, so it’s no wonder that conservatives consider college “liberal indoctrination”. It’s no wonder that the current president “loves the uneducated”.

It’s no wonder that education funding is constantly being reduced, and that there are conservative movements to overhaul what is being taught in schools. It’s no wonder that there are movements to turn education into simple job training. Get you through school fast, quick, get that job, spend that money. There are shareholders to please, and we need you to be a cog in that machine as quickly as possible, and with as little education as possible.

Forget arts, humanities, psych, philosophy, writing papers, music, sociology or history. Just focus on getting the job. Learn just enough to get you employed, exhausted, burned out and easy to manipulate into spending more money. We certainly don’t want you to have the tools to escape that treadmill, or question the people who run it.

College is not indoctrination. It’s simply learning what is real.

Sorry if reality doesn’t comport with your views.