next »

[chronicle_moderator]

A crop of centers devoted to the study of Western civilization and America's founding have sprung up recently on campuses, and most of the centers are financed with donations from alumni and foundations. Whether explicitly conservative or focused on restoring civics to history curricula, they are designed to increase intellectual diversity on campuses. Do they succeed? Does their support from outside sources distort the role of the faculty in designing curricula? Should departmental faculty members have some control over them or remain entirely separate? Read more...

[larryc]

So an education professor, who "serves as editor for the Journal of the Middle States Council for the Social Studies, and co-edited the Handbook on Teaching Social Issues" (according to his web page) is going to develop a separate history curriculum at Penn State? 

That is just peachy.  In that case I am going to develop curriculum in education, physics and Sanskrit at my institution. I have no formal training in any of those areas mind you, but I convinced some congressman that those areas have too many liberals and that I am the antidote.  And I did read a couple of popular books in the fields.  It turns out that I am completely qualified.

[daurousseau]

This is all part of the funding effort by certain corporations and wealthy individuals to move from right-wing think tanks, already well established, to right-wing university programs. Take a look at the Ayn Rand-oriented new boongoggle at Clemson University: http://business.clemson.edu/BBTCENTER/cci/index.htm
This enterprise is led by a gentleman scholar who likes to refer constantly to the principles upon which our great nation was founded: "life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness." What, you hadn't heard about the "property" part? Well, come back in a few decades after the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism has done its job.

[alex369]

It is amazing to see how conservatives are able to confound and link their attack on "left" history and the lack of proper history education for K-12 students and teachers. They are successful at convincing politicians that the "half-baked history" is a result of an expanding understanding of history (labeled "left history") rather than of the neo-liberal cutbacks to education budgets since the early 1980s.

[benjamin_myers]

"life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness." What, you hadn't heard about the "property" part? Well, come back in a few decades after the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism has done its job.

I believe the "property" part comes from John Locke (though I think he may have called it "estate" -- Second Treatise on Government) and from Adam Smith, both founders of the liberal tradition.  So, the actual original formula of classical liberalism is indeed "life, liberty, property." 

Jefferson added the "pursuit of happiness," having, apparently, cribbed it from Dr. Johnson's Rasselas.  In fact, if we go back to the original passage in Johnson, the phrase becomes poignantly ironic in light of the inevitable failures of the "American Dream":

'“Yet what,” said she, “is to be expected from our pursuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such that happiness itself is the cause of misery?  Why should we endeavour to attain that of which the possession cannot be secured?  I shall henceforward fear to yield my heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however tender, lest I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah.”'