The wonderful education I received in the 60s and 70s is no longer available, its Intellectual Standards now utterly compromised by an educational system devoted to the requirements of the Left’s D.E.I. mandate. This statement is rooted in a fundamental respect for Human Intelligence and Achievement rather than any bias against individuals based on their Race or Gender. Examples of the deterioration in the standards of North America’s various “progressive” institutions of “higher learning” abound. Let me cite but a few.
Harvard recently announced its intention of bolstering its academic standards which have been allowed to flounder over the last few years. Apparently the garnering of an A in one’s field of study has become almost meaningless. One aspect of its agenda is the reinstatement of its mandatory standardized testing requirements for student admissions which were made optional in 2020 due to the difficulties caused by the Covid outbreak. Yet in response to the university’s renewed commitment to legitimate academic standards, there has been a significant outcry among students claiming their increased workload is likely to interfere with other more important aspects of their lives!
As reported in the National Post on Sept. 20, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor, attributes the decline in Intellectual Standards and genuine Critical Thought among most N. American universities to the dictatorship of the “social justice monoculture” born of the DEI Ideology embraced by most “academics.” A passionate believer in Free Speech, he strongly advocates for Viewpoint Diversity rather than Racial or Gender diversity. And yet, as pointed out in the same article, Canada’s federal government annually allocates 300 million dollars in funding to universities based on their adherence to strict gender and racial quotas. It is in deference to this policy that Simon Fraser University in B.C. recently announced the availability of 15 academic positions for which it would only consider Black applicants. In the same way the U. of Calgary Medical School has created a special admissions pathway for Black students, assuring them that their applications would only be assessed by people of their own colour! Such racially motivated practices are apparently okay to those who consider themselves anti-racists!
Things are no better in the States. On Nov. 12 The Free Press posted an article entitled: “The College Kids Who Can’t Do Basic Math.” In 2016 the University of California San Diego was forced to offer remedial courses to 1% of its first year entrants whose math skills fell far short of those expected of the average middle-school student. That number has now surged to 8.5%. Validating this disturbing trend, a recent report published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress stated that among America’s high school graduates, only 22% were proficient in Math and 35% in reading! How, one wonders, could one barely able to read or do math graduate from an American high school? The answer is both obvious and absurd. To the “compassionate” Left, Intellectual Excellence and the hard work and discipline needed to achieve it, are but aspects of the West’s “oppressive,” “colonialist” world-view. Hence liberals’ willingness to gift the members of “oppressed” demographics [women, the poor, people of colour, gays, etc.] with academic positions and degrees which in many cases they do not deserve. Hence our absurd world in which institutions of learning have actually put a political agenda ahead of their obligation to teach!
On Nov. 16 Canada’s Juno News posted the results of an interview with Mark Milke, the head of the Aristotle Foundation, a think tank launched in 2023 to defend the Enlightenment Values of Western Civilization. With simple logic Milke explains how the Left seizes upon the bigotry of certain individuals who use those values to justify their hatred, while then concluding Rational Humanism itself to be implicitly “hateful.” It is a stratagem designed to avoid any real discussion of the issues at hand. It is a stratagem evident in the hundreds of articles I have read which viciously condemn various “conservative” policies without ever confronting their irrefutable logic. Yes, defending the integrity of one’s national borders is clearly a matter of Racism and nothing more! Such is the stupidity of the fundamental tactic of the contemporary Left. Such is the degeneracy of Western “Educators” who put inane statistical mandates ahead of the actual importance of Human Intelligence, Self-Discipline, Integrity and Hard Work!