Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato
1d 3h ago by lemmy.world/u/Stamau123 in news from www.nytimes.com
The university is reviewing courses under new rules restricting teaching about race and gender. Administrators told a philosophy professor to cut some lessons on Plato to comply.
Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, was thunderstruck when he was told on Tuesday that he needed to excise some teachings of Plato from his syllabus. It was one way, his department head wrote in an email, that Dr. Peterson’s philosophy class could comply with new policies limiting discussion of race and gender.
Days before the start of the spring semester, one of the nation’s largest public universities is racing to interpret and enforce the A&M system’s rules. Some professors are reconsidering syllabuses at the direction of administrators, or are unsure whether they will be able to lead certain classes. Course sections are being canceled or potentially reclassified, threatening students’ schedules.
And professors are worried that they are losing the academic freedom they prize.
“A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato?” Dr. Peterson said in an interview on Wednesday. “What kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”
“How,” he added, “can we possibly teach philosophy without being allowed to discuss Plato, even if some of Plato’s ideas are a little bit controversial?”
"How can we possibly teach philosophy without being allowed to discuss Plato?"
Because hamstringing education and freedom of thought is a basic tenet of fascist autocracy. Can't teach people how to think if you want the kind of citizens that will be wage slaves and willing troops in a technofascist meat grinder.
Yesterday my six year old daughter said that when she's ready to go to college, she's going to go to A&M. She doesn't know anything about it other than that her mother and some other family members went there.
I told her that A&M used to be a good school, but it isn't anymore. I said maybe it'd be good again by the time she's old enough.
This feels like the modern day example of Indiana attempting to pass a law that would have inadvertently redefined the value of pi in 1897. It would have passed, but for a mathematician in the audience who spoke up. Nobody passing these stupid ass laws is sitting there going ‘oh yeah, no more Plato in philosophy class, that makes sense,’ they’ve just ideologically exiled anyone that would have told them why any of this masturbatory horseshit is a bad idea.
Philosophy classes from now on will be limited to studying the Bible, "Mein Kampf" and "The Art of the Deal".
Again, teaching about something does not equal advocacy, dumbasses. Do they think history professors are all Nazis? That all psychology professors are Freud fanatics?
Plato!? Fucking why?
Be stupid, or else.
This is what happens when political decisions by high school drop outs are allowed to run things. School board members should be required to have bachelors or better degrees.
Good thing the students can still hear a critique of political economy.
Plato is Say-no
Fuck you informations about how people thought in the past...fuck you informations that put down what some people thought at one time that might be built upon...fuck the informations....juses wapt.............../s