Soapbox

Education in Ohio: Not so Much

Attention everybody who went to college here in Ohio, has kids who do, or just gives a darn:

“Intelligent Design” in the schools and Jerry Springer as the best candidate the dems can field for governor isn’t bad enough… the grinning Ken Blackwell as his Republican theocracy isn’t enough of a black eye for the Buckeye state….oh no.

Now an Ohio legislator has introduced a bill designed by the David Horowitz mind-control cult. Ironically called the “Academic Bill of Rights”, it prohibits professors, at both public and private universities in Ohio, from talking about certain controversial subjects. (Cause ya know, too much book-larning can be a dangerous thing)

Larry Mumper, R-Marion, claims the goal of this bill is to prohibit professors from discriminating against students based on their beliefs, but goes on to add that “80% or so of them (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying communists” who are trying to “indoctrinate” students. Mumper says he has been considering this for months, and hey, he heard from a student who says she was discriminated against because she supported Bush for president!

Oh…the poor dear thing. Dang- my kid got discriminated at a basketball game by the refs, who made dozens of calls in favor of the Christian school she was playing against. Can we have a bill outlawing Christians from playing sports?

No, I don’t suport someone being discriminated because of whom she supports for president, no matter who it is. But if that truely happens, there are procedures in place to deal with it. Go to the ombudsman and file a complaint. Write to the college newspaper. It is insane to advocate duct-taping ALL college professors’ mouths just to prevent a few from spouting off!

The language of this bill is so vague as to be ridiculous. It says that professors may not discuss “controversial issues” in class or use their class to push political, ideaological, religious or anti-religious views.”

So that leaves what that you can teach? Accounting 101, girls volleyball, CPR… that’s about it! A student could claim that geology class violates this law because the professor insists on “pushing” the idea that the earth is millions of years old, and that is controversial to them!

I would like to remind everyone that abolition of slavery was once a controversial subject. So was voting rights for women. The pro-democracy movement in China sprang in large part from” controversial ideas” in universities there. Yet this is the very kind of thinking that would be prohibited by Mumper’s bill.

Until all humans come from the same cookie-cutter there will always be topics some find controversial, and I can think of no better place to explore and validate or invalidate them than in college. How else will we learn and grow and develop new ideas if we don’t push the boundaries a little?

I’m not sure how this dip-wad thinks he can restrict what a private college can teach anyway. If a private school like Bob Jones university can teach students that race-mixing is a sin, why can’t a political science prof at OU teach that the U.S. has supported brutal dictatorships that have resulted in the deaths of millions? At least we have evidence that the latter is true!

This steaming pile of Regressive Thought-police mind-control is not new, having been introduced in Colorado and Indiana previously. This is a “bill of Rights” the way the “Clear Skies” initiative brings clear skies! It sounds like a joke…but no one with any brains is laughing!

It would be nice to just say “Oh please- this will never pass! This is ludicrous!” Yeah, well, so is “Defending” marriage by refusing to let some people get married, and teaching one group’s religious views in science classes, but here we are!

The scary thing is that a lot of the people of Ohio are such sheeple that the irony of a “bill of Rights” that takes away rights, a bill promoted as “restoring academic freedom” that takes away everything but your freedom to be conservative, may be lost on many of them.

“Holy s***: card-carrying communists!” they’ll think. “It’s true that when my boy went off to college, he got all sorts of crazy ideas, like how the United States doesn’t have the right to tell the whole world what to do. I believe I’d like to see this bill passed!”

I plan to let the Ohio legislature know that if this thing passes, there is no way we are sending our kids to college in this red-neck, homophobic, vote-suppressing, regressive backwater of a state! We’ll find the extra money somewhere! If they think the state is hemmoraging jobs and $$ now- just watch if even a watered-down version of this thing passes!

If it does, we’ll need a new State Slogan: Ohio is for Morons!