Pharyngula

I would like to think that after that outburst, the student would have not only been expelled, but also escorted to the edge of campus and given a list of fast food restaurants that were hiring.

Posted by: George Cauldron | May 20, 2006 5:57 PM

"but also escorted to the edge of campus and given a list of fast food restaurants that were hiring."

You know, I hate to tell you this, but snobbery aside, there are real human beings who actually have no other option that have work in those joints. Some of them may hail from different lattitudes and longitudes than those that geo reference the ole US of A. My guess though is that this particular student would have a very tough time in any of those environments. Working in such a place might do her a lot of good and teach her some humility as well. Nah, on second thought just buy her a brand new Lincoln Navigator and give her a gas allowance of twenty bucks a week, heh heh!

Posted by: Fred the Hun | May 20, 2006 7:23 PM

I got great comments this semester from tons of students that enjoyed the hominid evolution unit in my class. Many of them particularly enjoyed looking at actual fossils (casts, but ya know). One even wrote a paper about how he used to be a fundamentalist, but changed his mind during a freshman anthropology course. Stories like that just warm my heart:)

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | May 20, 2006 8:59 PM

You know, I hate to tell you this, but snobbery aside, there are real human beings who actually have no other option that have work in those joints. Some of them may hail from different lattitudes and longitudes than those that geo reference the ole US

Oh, I know. And in fact, I'm always very nice to people who work in such places, since I realize it's such a shit job. But my point is that the person under discussion here has an opportunity to benefit from a college education, and has essentially come out and said that if any information doesn't sit well with her socio-political biases,she prefers not to know about it. She's coming out and saying that she WANTS to be ignorant. She seems like the kind of person who won't even benefit from college education. Hence working at, say, Wendy's seems quite appropriate for her. Let someone who wants to learn have her space.

Posted by: George Cauldron | May 20, 2006 10:37 PM

Of course he doesn't have to listen to whatever it was. He's an adult and has a perfectly good right to leave the classroom at any point, or not to show up in class to begin with.

Of course, he has no right to avoid the consequences of those actions. Specifically, he can't complain that he fails the course exam due to not being able to answer questions about the objectionable material.

Posted by: Janne | May 21, 2006 12:33 AM

George,I did get your point with respect to this particular student's head in the sand attitude about the benefits of higher education. I'm sure you are a decent person and are careful to respect other people. However my point was partly to alert you to the fact that we all have subconcious biases, myself included, and sometimes they come to surface. In any case I concur with your with your general premise. I also think Wendy's is probably too good for her and that scrubbing latrines in a homeless shelter is where she really needs to be. That's just my bias... Cheers!

Posted by: Fred the Hun | May 21, 2006 6:43 AM

At least in history students have encountered the subject matter previously. In philosophy, most students have never encountered a philosophy course prior to one in university. You can predict the sadness and grief that sometimes provokes ... another one is the elementary logic classes that are "too mathy" for a lot of people.

Posted by: Keith Douglas | May 21, 2006 9:21 AM

I assume this woman is getting an F in the class. She thinks talk about civil rights is supposed to be relegated to some leftwing conspiracy?

Talk about a slap in the face to Rosa Parks, MLK, and on and on and on...

I'm sick of this conservative movement to play the sore loser because history proved them to be so utterly off the mark. They are intentionally tainting the waters so people forget what has really happened, and why it happened. I suppose I should expect it though.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | May 21, 2006 11:26 AM

Given how some Creationists like to refute evolution by asking "WERE YOU THERE?", and given how Conservatives have basically politicized all history, I wonder if there are (or some day will be) conservatives who deny that the Civil Rights movement happened? I mean, there are already Holocaust deniers and Slavery revisionists. Are we just one generation away from people who will claim that Blacks always had the right to vote and that Martin Luther King was never killed?

Posted by: George Cauldron | May 21, 2006 2:01 PM

No one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to confront unpleasant truths ...

Not quite tue.

The old West Germany manged quite well, and now the ossies are coming to terms with it. The French have woken up to the Algerian war.
Japan .. some, but officialdom won't budge.
Russia - ambivalent - soviet = bad, but mother Russia = good.

The trend in the USA is worrying though.

Posted by: G. Tingey | May 22, 2006 12:19 PM

For the record, I had a student tell me that the Civil War was entirely about the tariff and not about slavery.

Posted by: Fledgist | May 23, 2006 1:13 PM