runrussellrun wrote:MDlaxfan76 wrote:youthathletics wrote:Typical Lax Dad wrote:seacoaster wrote:"Why are you so wound up man?"
Mostly because I have children, and their country is leaving them and becoming something different and something not so great.
Absolutely
Anyone of you care to be specific about how our country is leaving them and becoming something not so great? I too have children, 1 in the military, 1 in a liberal arts chool where is teacher is cramming Communism down his throat as the best thing since sliced bread and do not feel that way....help me understand, seriously. I know I can also what you did and argue about jerk hat crazies, ANTIFA types threatening and acting out, people going after and killing first responders, shooting politicians playing baseball, etc...but I am sure you have something else in mind that I am missing.
youth, I'll agree with you that what is happening on the far left is worrisome as well.
But if your kid doesn't have the cojones and educational grounding to resist some college prof's "cramming Communism", I gotta say that could be on you. I had plenty of that in '70's at my Ivy institution, some real wing dingers, but somehow I emerged intact. Heck, I faced a pretty blistering barrage in my Government thesis defense in the Honors program, but came out of it with all sorts of acclaim from the very roughest of my lefty reviewers. They didn't necessarily agree with my willingness to see urban gentrification through a positive market-based lens (while also addressing the issues of displacement), but were ultimately persuaded of my scholarship and the actual logic of my argument. Turns out, in the long run, I was 'right' in my views and policy prescriptions; and some of those same profs has subsequently said so. So, tell your college boy to learn all that he can from the commie profs (they do tend to be smart folks and know a heck of a lot ) but think critically for himself at all times, wherever that takes him ideologically. If he come out of college capable of that, the $ were well spent.
But yes, the issues right now are the degradation of actual 'truth', the undermining of core institutions and norms, the disrespect for the rule of law, and the lifting up of the 'strong man', the authoritarian...I could go on and on.
Dangerous times, IMO. Not unlike some past precarious periods in US history, when we could easily have tipped to some form of authoritarianism in response to civil discord. We've been through some very rough times, but I don't think we've ever been so ill led as today.
And never have we been as close to a full-on authoritarian turn (though we could have gone that direction in the depths of the Depression with the rise of Fascism as an alternative to our constitutional democracy; instead we tacked towards a small measure of socialism and maintained our constitutional democracy).
So, folks are understandably concerned about the world we're making/leaving for our kids.
Not to mention concerns about climate change and a looming, inevitably crushing debt crisis.
While we "fiddle" on.
I like stories. You tell them so often, but your experience at Dartmouth, where my sister in law was in the second class of females admitted, can't be compared to ANYONE elses experiences. Did your political standoffs include poor grades b/c of those disagreements? Have at it in a STEM class, where philosophies matter little b/c mixing WHITE phosphorous instead of RED, with heat & water, would have been the one to use in Walter Whites camper. I had plenty of whacko Journalism Prof and my grades suffered because of different philosophies. (or, could have been that Obama like spring break trip that lasted 6 weeks instead of 1 ) Ivy' league don't eat their own, do they? (Does anyone graduate from Harvard with anything less than a 3.0 gpa? )
This is just ONE story
https://www.thecollegefix.com/conservat ... urt-rules/
My wife and I matriculated in the fall of '76, I think the 4th or 5th class with directly admitted women. 3:! male to female in our class. Admission requirements extremely high for the females and a big push to populate the sports teams meant that it was a pretty darn impressive bunch of gals. But they were called "co-hogs", very sexist songs sung outside the female dorms. Guys told on the freshman trip (which I missed due to a job to help pay the bills) that if they dated a "Dartmouth girl" they wouldn't be admitted to the most desired fraternities; true, happened to me in freshman year, though admitted the following year to "we need the dues" and "she's one of us". Really it was just that it had calmed down some. That said, we have friends who dated their 4 years in secret, married still today. We started holding hands freshman week and never hid it (costing me that frat admission first year). Daughter of a commercial fisherman and school nurse, she was valedictorian of her class, Junior Miss of Massachusetts and played basketball and ran track. Put herself entirely through college on various scholarships and work-study, no money from parents; her siblings did the same. As a freshman, she was a founding member of Kappa Kappa Gamma and later its second elected President. I played lax and joined Beta Theta Pi as a sophomore. Football backs and a few linemen, bunch of rugby,, handful of lacrosse players, and a broad mix otherwise. By the time we graduated the mix was getting closer to 50:50 and the social taboos about dating a Dartmouth woman were nearly fully gone.
Sure, I did worry that my grades might suffer a bit when I took a position contrary to a far left leaning Professor's, but I was never a jerk about my disagreement. I quickly learned that if one fairly acknowledged what the Professor was teaching, making clear that one was paying attention, and simply dealt with the topic from a different angle respectfully, it would be rewarded fairly (or at least not egregiously punished). I wasn't any sort of radical conservative (the student body in general was far more conservative than most Ivies at the time, due to the weight put on alumni interviews and recommendations) and I think I genuinely came across as actually listening to the Profs, not fighting them for drill. That wasn't true of some campus conservatives, most famously the sophomoric jerks who started the Dartmouth Review, one of whose first editors was a fraternity brother of mine. And I say "sophomoric jerk" because he was exactly that. Bright as heck, though.
The one instance when I felt discriminated against was not due to conservative views but rather because I was an athlete. This particular professor apparently thought the athletes were the source of anti-intellectualism on campus, misogyny, taking up the place of a better student, etc, etc and went after athletes in the grade book not class. I didn't get the heads up in time to avoid wearing my lax gear (what else did I own??). I had to miss a couple of classes for bus trips for away games and that's when it became apparent that he had real antipathy. Ouch.
Years later with my son at Harvard, he told me that the freshmen lax players were told early on to not wear their athletic gear to classes as there was real concern about some professors. Ridiculous but real. So, some of these concerns are valid, IMO. That said, I recall my Government Prof for Constitutional Law, the very formidable Vincent Starzinger, frequently coming to watch us practice and making a lot of our games. I got an A in that class, which was unusual as he was reputed very tough marker, but I'd like to think it was because I found it fascinating and was bit scared of him as the class was a bit like being in One L. You better know your stuff and not fall behind. But I did know that he knew who I was outside of the classroom. So, who knows, I might have gotten a positive bump on that one.
But by and large, my takeaway was don't act like a jerk in one's disagreements and you'll be treated fairly most of the time. And, in some cases, the profs will relish the respectful debate and encourage one to stretch even further.
BTW, the 3.0 minimum stuff at Harvard is far from reality. Like everywhere there's some inflation, but there's still a curve that has a bunch of students below 3.0. It's an extremely brilliant group of students overall, of course, and very few wouldn't crush the grades, make Summa, at most universities given same effort level. But the 3.0 + ain't automatic. For instance, a minority of the athletes exceed 3.0. Their challenge (as well as not all having quite as much raw horsepower) is the # of hours they have for academics versus their sport. Sleep is the biggest problem. But also the prior preparation level of the non-athlete classmates is extremely high. I recall my son describing the math in his freshmen economics class and that most of the others in the class had already had twice as much calc as he had and had actually taken economics in HS. Not to mention math camp when he was likely on some lacrosse field. My son handled it well, but certainly the competition level was extraordinarily high. His only down academic periods were when he was concussed, which happened twice during his tenure and the freshman semester on crutches with hip surgery. Still needed to get to every practice and film study, but hobbling across campus and up 4 flights of steps to his dorm room. So, when the athletes do well, it actually says something about their discipline, not just their brains. BTW, whole lot of conservatives in the Harvard Econ Dept, as well as some in the Psychology Dept which my son took as a second concentration. Overall, though, like most campuses, more liberals than conservatives. To be expected, but IMO fully manageable.
....or Stony Brook to Duke...