If teaching is a branch of the entertainment
industry (which, arguably, it is*), then I must
congratulate Dr. Grant Morris, of the Victoria University of Wellington
Law School, for recently gaining a Teaching Excellence Award. It is
fully merited, and, with the benefit of the wide experience gained from
having been an almost perpetual student, I can only endorse the following
sentiments expressed in V. Alum (April 2006 issue):
"Students and colleagues speak incredibly highly of Dr. Morris's
influence, impact and enthusiasm, and claim that he is one of the
best lecturers the School of Law, indeed the University, has ever
seen."
However, I come to bury the politicisation
of education -- not to praise it (with apologies to Shakespeare).
Power
The above-mentioned article refers to Dr. Morris consistently achieving
exceptionally high ratings from students, and this raises the issue
of the power of students over lecturers at universities where student
ratings form part of the professional evaluation of lecturers. This
power means that lecturers feel pressure to conform with the mentality,
mores and political views of students.
For example, I know of one right-wing male lecturer at the same Law
School who (totally out of context) referred to his own inability to
"multi-task" -- an obvious display of subservience to the
pressure-group of Feminist bimbos in the class, since "multi-tasking"
has had a lot of publicity as being something that women can supposedly
do better than men can (I have seen no publicity about how well
women do tasks when they are multi-tasking, so I assume they do them
badly -- otherwise this would have received a lot of publicity, too,
in the Feminist media).
Stupidity
Anyone who knows the feudal model according to
which universities function knows that you get a PhD and your articles
published, etc., if, and only if, you follow the school of thought endorsed
by your thesis advisor, the particular journal you want to get published
in, or some other applicable authoritarian institution. So it is not
surprising that Feminist journals have sprung up that publish Feminist
rubbish, and that Feminism is now so powerful in academia that Feminist
rubbish gets published (and anti-Feminist articles excluded) in mainstream
jorunals.
When I say rubbish, I do mean rubbish -- self-contradictory
rubbish, no less. See Feminist
Jurisprudence Proves that a Woman's Place is in the Home.
That article originated as an essay for a course
on Jurisprudence which was excellently taught by Dr. Grant Morris. It
was a critique of one of the readings (on Feminist Jurisprudence) set
by him for the course. Since I found that the reading was self-contradictory,
I could criticise him for asking us to read it. However, that presumes
that Feminism is an academic thought-system which is evaluated according
to intellectual criteria. In fact, it is an ideology which is enforced
by believers who assault, shout down, and otherwise intimidate and victimise
people who disagree openly with it. So, in the highly political atmosphere
of that Law School, I have no right to expect lecturers to behave rationally
-- and they often don't.
Mob Rule
After writing the essay, I recall that I immediately put it onto the
Web and emailed Dr. Morris, drawing his attention to it. At the start
of the next class, he made a remark that indicated to me that he agree
with me that the Feminist Jusrisprudence article in question was rubbish.
Soon afterwards (either at an interval, or before the start of the
next class), I saw a group of Feminist bimbos talking to him. At a subsequent
lecture, he stated that Domestic Violence was a "women's issue".
This, of course, is a Feminist way of claiming that men do not suffer
Domestic Violence at the hands of women. I asked him what evidence he
had for this claim, and he was so taken aback that I had time to repeat
the word "evidence" and even to spell it out: "E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E"
! He looked for help -- in vain -- at the group of Feminist bimbos in
the audience. I then referred to Professor Martin
Fiebert's annotated Domestic Violence bibliography, which shows
that women are at least as violent towards men as vice-versa.
It is essential not to be misled by what universities
might have been in the past. Western universities at present are feudal
structures which have been taken over by Feminist mobs, like what happens
after a parasitic wasp lays its eggs in the body of a caterpillar, or
a virus or hacker takes over a computer.
*And I say that as a former secondary teacher
and lecturer myself.