Thursday, September 6, 2007

Choosing the Right College - Wrong for Me!

So, early this week I went to the local library to take out some books on colleges. I wanted books that had student perspectives. After all, you can only learn so much from a college's own website, where of course they only say all the good things about the school. I wanted something more in-depth and down to earth.

Well, there were only two college guides in the whole library and I checked them both out. One of them was Choosing the Right College. It was the 2006 edition, which has the word "Right" in red letters, which is apt.

I immediately flipped to the back of the book, expecting an index, so I could look up some of the schools I'm interested in. Instead of an index, there was a discussion of questions for students to ask while visiting colleges. At first it seemed inocuous - questions about what percent of classes are taught by TAs, and questions academic advising.

The next question struck me as a bit off. It was about asking whether there's a core curriculum - a list of courses that all students are required to take, or instead distribution requirements (meaning students must take, for example, two humanities classes, two social science classes, and so on, but are free to choose which classes within that area of study). In the explanation of the question, the book says, "Many colleges falsely state that they have a core curriculum when that is not at all the case. If [they say they do have a core curric], ask them how many choices exist within each disiplinary requirement. If the answer is more than one or two, there is no core curriculum worthy of the name."

That struck me as strange. I mean, why do they care? I'd much rather have the distribution requirements myself. I ALWAYS like choice. My thought was, well don't different approaches suit different students? I started to think the authors (not listed anywhere on the cover), might have some sort of agenda or slant.

I kept reading. There were questions about whether American history is a required class, because if not "it does reveal an administration lacking a commitment to foster in its students an understanding of our nation's past." Again, a bit here nor there. Maybe patriotic, but I think most people think American history is important.

Then I got to the section in this questions guide on "political atmosphere," which I thought was strange, to be included with much more typical, broader topics like Academics and Student Life. Here's where things got really wonky, and where I started to get pissed.

The first issue they bring up is, "Speech codes operating under the guise of sexual harassment codes." Now, let me tell you, I'm a pretty thorough person, there is a lot I want to know when looking into a school, but this is definitely NOT on the list! Never even ocurred to me. In the explanation of the issue, they talk about that in the 90s a lot of colleges instated "speech codes" to make sure people were politically correct. Then these codes were challenged, colleges lost court cases, so now may put these old speech codes into their sexual harassment policy, thus keeping the politically correct codes.

So, let's look at this a little bit. The FIRST issue in one of three major sections (political atmosphere) of inquiry into a college, is making sure it's okay to be politically incorrect? I mean, what the fuck? I just imagine prospective parents and teachers at an info session at a college, trying to make sure they can say "gaylord" and "bitch" or something, without getting in trouble. THAT's supposed to be a big concern?!

A sidenote here: I don't always agree with political correctness, because I think in a lot of cases, though it gives nicer phrases, a lot of times it shoves still-existing prejudices under the rug, and may not address those underlying prejudices. At the same time, it can give people a false sense that we are evolved and prejudice is taken care of, a thing of the past, and I don't believe that's true for a second. So, I think PC-ness can be a bandaid of sorts, but at least people are trying to be less hurtful, and aware of how words affect people. I think that is important. The fact that someone could think it's a major issue to make sure their kids don't have to be PC at college, is just completely absurd. What, they want to be sure it's okay for their kids to harass people, use racial slurs and commit hate crimes? I don't get it. And sorry, but I'd be a lot more concerned about what the actual policy is on sexual harassment (which if you ask me is a MUCH more serious issue than whether someone can open say faggot or something) and whether that is prevalent.

It got worse.

The next issue in this section was, "Ostracizing or punishing students for speakign their minds when they disagree with received acadmic opinion."

Now, in general, I'd agree that this is pretty important. I like to think for myself and think that, along with general critical thinking, are important skills students should develop in college. I think it's awesome when students learn to effectively communicate their viewpoint, even truly discover their viewpoint, watch it evolve, and assert themselves when necessary. So, on principle. I agree.

But then I read the explanation for thisi issue. Get a load of this: "Numerous examples exist of official harassment of students who voice dissenting opininions on matters ranging from the importance of feminist scholarship or the morality of affirmative action to questions of religious beliefs and sexual propriety. Beliefs associated with traditional virtues are sometimes ridiculed and even banned." Ehhhh, does that seem a little one-sided to anyone else? Again, it seems to me they want people to be free to speak their racist, sexist points of view. I guess college can be a pretty liberal place, and conservative students want to make sure they're not excluded, but I honestly think things at most schools are pretty moderate. When I went to school, there was a huge right-wing Christian influence, to the point where in one dorm, I felt ostracized for not being Christian - I got tricked into going to Campus Crusade for Christ open mic nights, had people at my door all the time, questions, confrontations. Anyway, my gripe with this whole part of the book is that it's so one-sided, there's no concern that students won't be ostracized for speaking their mind on the other side of these issues.

The next issue is about "literature courses that focus on topics other than great works of literature, such as...marginalized voices..."

Now that just outright pissed me off, because why do we always assume that the books by old, dead, white men are more important, and better, than those by women, blacks, asians, contemporary writers, and so on and so on and so on? Why should those old things have more literary value? I think that's bullshit. I went through and actually looked through the sections on some specific colleges and found even more of this kind of talk within discussions of particular schools. There were repetitious complaints about this and that school having classes on women writers, african-american lit, (referred to as "silly, grievance-inspired courses") and so on. There was one school I was reading about (and I wish I could remember the exact one so I could quote it here), and there was something about a tendency to focus on lower-quality minority literature and less on great works. Okay, author guy, your prejudice is really showing now.

For every school, there's a suggest core curriculum, because we all know now how horrible it is that schools don't have exact, choiceless core curricula anymore. A lot of them have things listed like, "No suitable course." The classes they do list usually include some greek philosophy, religion classes, and Bible as Literature/Bible as Scripture. Again, agenda showing, buddy! I think reading sacred texts is fine (honestly, I'd actually really like to take a Bible as Lit class, though I am not at all religious), but why ONLY the Bible? Why not the Koran? The Baghavad-Gita?

I guess even rigorous academics aren't great. Here's what they say about Princeton: "Academics at Princeton are quite rigorous. Talk to a student for ten minutes and he'll bore you with how many tests he has this week, how productive he was last night, and so forth." In other school descriptions, rigorous academics are applauded, so I sort of think this was just an attempt to make a dig at Princeton.

Another gem included this introduction to the part on NYU: "If going to a college nestled between gay bars and drug dealers bothers you, NYU is not your school." LOL!!! I mean, maybe it's true, the school IS in the Village, but really, that made me laugh. At another part in the NYU section, taking about its endowment and how other schools invested theirs in high-flying stocks in the 90s and NYU didn't, the book reads, "NYU followed a boring bond strategy..." Okay, like, what they did WORKED, and was successful, as the next sentence says, but they still have to put it down. THAT's what bothers me about this book, that everything is so slanted, that there are always qualifiers, opinions, derision, thrown in, instead of just the facts. Talk about Spin.

But here is my FAVORITE part. In that questions section in the back, there's a Student Life section, mostly full of questions about are bathrooms or dorm rooms coed, I found this question that people are supposed to ask prospective schools, "Is there any mandatory student orientation that exposes students to sexually explicit material or graphic explanations of sexual practices?" The explanation says that porn is "often shown" during orientation. WHAT?! I apparently missed out on the best part of orientation!!! Kidding, but seriously, I have NEVER heard of this. I think it's a scare tactic, another way to make students and parents think they're going to be marginalized for their so-called sexual propriety.

I mean, WHAT?!?!?! Were they at some frat party that they thought was orientation? Has ANYONE ever experienced this at mandatory orientation?! If on the off-chance this actually does happen somewhere, they can send me a list of these schools at...no, kidding again (sort of)! It's just toooooo absurd.

So, in conclusion, Choosing the Right (which I think they meant as opposed to left, instead of as opposed to wrong) College is totally wrong for me. I prefer much more straightforward information about schools, so I can make my own decisions. Luckily the other book they had at the library was The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, which is a lot more normal.

Currently Listening:
"The Grudge" - Tool

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