**Previously Recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // 7-2011**
Harvey Mansfield is one conservative professor at Harvard University, and he recently wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal that is worth bringing to your attention, especially if you have a college student in your family. He points out that at colleges today, course choice is IN and requirements are OUT. Only the military academies, certain Great Books colleges, and some engineering schools tell students what they must study and what courses they must take. Most colleges offer a tremendous array of choices, and most of the choices are bad or useless. The bad and useless choices are more attractive because they are easy.
Take Sociology, for example. If you remember the TV sit-com with Archie Bunker, you may remember that Archie used to call his son-in-law “Meathead.” The son-in-law was a graduate student in Sociology, a department where students learn a lot of jargon and wishful thinking. Another college department that is pretty much a waste of time is Gender Studies or Women’s Studies, a very politicized department that misleads students about life. Gender Studies taint the whole university with its fantasies about sex and gender. I always advise students to avoid taking Women’s Studies courses because they are not Women’s Studies at all, they are Feminist Studies and often Lesbian studies. For example, it is dogma in most Women’s studies departments that students must accept the dogma that differences between males and females are not human nature, but are a social construct, brought about by our stereotyped upbringing. That means such things as mothers giving dolls to girl babies and trucks to boys.
Professor Mansfield says that the universities consider all departments as equal, and all courses equal, therefore no requirements can be justified as fundamental or more important. It’s no wonder, then, that students make poor choices, select easy courses that do nothing for a good education or a job after graduation.
