Woke university courses

[StripyCarpets]

I’m really bored of it.
I did the open day rounds with DD a couple of years ago when she was looking at a science subject. The subject itself was largely untainted as far as the content was concerned but the open days were heavy on the environment; understandable but also not necessarily relevant to all teaching in this subject. The talks from students were excruciating; nerdy kids talking about how they do drag etc and so many LGBTQIA+++ flags and signs everywhere. This was tolerable because it wasn’t affecting the actual course.
This year we’re looking at PPE (etc) for DS and obviously there’s so much scope for total capture, but I was really shocked by Bristol. The course leader was a Green Party fan boy, he explained what critical thinking was and demonstrated he doesn’t know what critical thinking is or how to do it. He explained that as well as teaching about politics students would taught how to make a difference in the real world. This is activist school. They can learn thus on Twitter.
If I was an employer, I think I’d be wary of employing a PPE graduate from Bristol. What I saw indicated that students would be indoctrinated rather than educated. It’s depressing, it’s expensive and it’s low quality.
Warwick was a completely different ballgame; very high calibre.

@Piggywaspushed No, you’re wrong. I want political neutrality and critical investigation of thought and argument. I don’t want an intellectual environment where intelligent argument is refused or dismissed due to political allegiances, be they from the left or right.
Yes, I am invested in DS’s decision about where and how to get educated. I think it really matters. He will make the final decision though and thankfully he’s intelligent and sensible, and he doesn’t want to be miseducated by ideologues of any stripe.

I agree with you OP. Too woke IMHO.

I have a rational and astute world view; those who disagree with me are juvenile fanatics lacking intellectual rigour and critical thinking skills. Got it.

I cannot see how anyone can argue with this view. Anything in HE that has a chilling effect on open and frank discussion of legally held views is wrong. Debate, freedom of speech and critical thinking skills are so important.

I did economics at university.

we were expected to write essays and produce arguments in favour of and against various positions and theories regardless of our own personal views.

obviously being exposed to new theories and models and ways of thinking does change your views - many 18 year olds don’t have fully formed opinions anyway and some have pretty much just taken their parents views.

OP if you think the green party is radical left wing politics I can only assume you think of reform as radical right wing politics?

I find it really weird that because I object to an ideological monoculture within university teaching, in this particular case a radical left wing agenda, it is assumed that I’m right wing and what I actually want is a right wing ideological monoculture within university teaching. I just want political neutrality and high quality rigorous academic standards. It’s really not hard.

@SilverliningHunter Thanks. Me too. It seems so obvious that this is the purpose of education;

Your soon to be student, will choose their own views and opinions, not fall into line with you, Green Party is hardly radical.
My DD who has just finished 3rd year, went to open days with friends as was her choice, applied to her choice of uni, it’s not your decision to make.

My 19 yr old has had fully formed opinions about politics and political theories (including Marxism and its various incarnations) since he was about 10 and he's not remotely influenced by his parents.

Please don't underestimate young people, or generalize in such a dreadful way.

What is politcal neutrality? You mean both sideim? It's not how intellectual work happens. A lecturer puts out a viewpoint and students are meant to develop critical skills to assess it, criticise it, develop it. This is not A level.

@rhabarbarmarmelade Quite right. What OP appears to want is some sort of Waitrose Essentials PPE degree which will enable her DC to hop seamlessly and unsullied onto a graduate employment scheme. Thank goodness they aren’t looking at LSE in the 80’s or Sussex in the 90’s. When I was at Oxford in the 2000’s one of my tutors had a perspective that was completely counter to the way I was inclined to think, and actually pretty wrong in my eyes. A couple of terms of thinking around that did me the world of good.

That’s not how universities work, thank goodness. Lecturers are partial, students are exposed to points of views they disagree with (or may be persuaded by, whatever their parents think) and the older generation hears what young people are thinking and don’t get it. Plus ca change…

I agree with you. A PPE degree should engender the highest level of critical thinking in order to fit graduates for the sort of future career they are aspiring to. The OP doesn’t really understand this process properly.

I liked the days when I went to university: parents were gently supportive from the background but left their young people to decide what course they wanted to study, and where. It’s their future, not that of the parents. This is the first big decision they will make for themselves. Being happy at university = the greatest chance of doing well. Let them choose what’s right for them, not you.

Yes, obviously. However if the set-up is that Left = correct, Right = not just wrong but also bad, then you are dictating an ethos and framework of thinking which is likely to preclude authentically free debate and interrogation of ideas.
Honestly I think a lot of you are part of the problem. You haven’t listened to the actual argument, just keen to counter it and make condescending and false accusations of mal intent without any acknowledgement that I might have an point about anything.

lol at how condescending some of you are without having much of a clue what you are talking about.
Anyway, as you were. I’m done with the silliness.

Blimey. Pot to kettle.

A couple of thoughts….

I wouldn’t apply to Bristol in any case their admissions strategy is too random to predict, and you only get 5 choices. They are not as high in the league tables as they used to be either.

Students and academics lean left. What matters is what gets put on the curriculum. Is it Marx, or Marx, Weber and Durkheim?
Is it Derrida, Foucault and Marcuse? Or post structuralist plus British Empiricists and Kant?

This is so hard to find out and so important. If they are just going to learn to spot power dynamics and whichever group has power is bad and whichever group doesn’t have power is good, then it’s not much of a degree. The power dynamic stuff is interesting and worth learning, but it is too facile and formulaic to be a full education.

You have no idea that is what the lecturer is always like, or that they are all like that. This was a lecturer who was probably most willing to give up his time on a Saturday (unpaid) to be judged by parents

Call it what you like, OP, but you are right leaning and you are judging him for being left. Or that is how it seems. We can't possibly know how you would have responded to right wing academics. You'll find them in Oxford PPE (and apparently in pockets in politics and history departments).

Oh no, it seems you are not the one with the very bright DS overlooked by his teachers. Apologies. I'll ask MN to remove.

Op, I know exactly what you mean. It seems counter to education and encouraging the ability to think, to spout trendy buzzwords. It’s tremendously limited and intellectually stale.

Don’t be daft. The fact that there are two sexes and humans can’t change sex is a fact of life, not an ideology.

Where was that mentioned?

Is talking about the environment considered ‘woke’ now? I must have lost track of what the word means.

DS has just done his first year at Bristol and is very happy there. He seems to have done some work (2:1 results), played a lot of rugby snd drunk an awful lot of beer. He’s a pretty balanced and kind kid (if a little lazy ). He’s not mentioned a thing about this to me. He does think I’m pretty woke though. In my view, students will be students…. Let them have their arguments and they can learn from them.

It's just become an insult, sadly.

I opened this thread wondering whether someone wanted a recommendation. Silly me.