Getting Raped in College

"people must learn useful and substantive information and skills to be valuable to potential employers"

This idea is why our schools are failing. What is taught in school, instead of critical thinking skills, is conformity, obedience, and fear of authority, which is very useful for potential slave masters... i mean employers. I think we should strive to be more than just obedient efficient work-units.

my college professor always talks about this...it's really sad that we pay sport players millions of dollars and teachers just about nothing..

And then parents, who let their kids run absolutely out of control, expect the teachers to teach the kids ethics, respect, motivate them, teach them not to rape girls or do drugs, or become a pimp, or whateverthefuck, then blame the teachers for their failure as parents to raise productive, respectful, successful kids.

My sympathies and total agreement, teachers get the short end of the stick almost everywhere. I wish you well and hope you do better.

I am sorry to hear what is happening . The college will close eventually from the Administrators Bad management . He will be out of a job too .

i feel you. but the headline is exploitative. rape is a very specific crime against humanity.

Teaching is the most important profession in the world, but in todays landscape teachers are expendable because the bottom line takes presidence over everything else. When will we learn and accord teachers the respect they have earned and deserve?

"The president has repeatedly warned all instructors not to put a bad face on this fiasco, because it may drive away students, and if that happens, he may lose his job, too."

I think the answer lies in there somewhere. Why should the chickens protect the fox? You owe him nothing. It may be against your gentle nature but sometimes we have to do things against our nature because others take advantage of our nature.

Oh Prog, I am so saddened by what you have written, and you have written such an accurate assessment of what is actually going on, at all levels, in public education today. Even high ranking universities employ low-paid instructors to engage in the real work of teaching, and few, if any of those instructors, feel appreciated by administration. It is the students who keep the teaching faculty coming to their jobs, and it is the students who make teaching faculty feel like what they are doing is worthwhile. The students too, are being cheated in this currently evolving definition of public education.

It is precisely because it is the students who crave the education underpaid instructors are providing them with, that the situation you describe is not hopeless. These same young people make up the greatest faction of those who are occupying everywhere, and I believe, it is time to occupy education as well. Clearly, the institutions that were created to foster education have devolved into corrupt, self-serving, corporately derived factories, exactly as you have so eloquently stated. I honestly believe that it is not only our right and responsibility to re-define public education, but in fact, it is our privilege. We need not be defeated by what is happening, but rather, it is time for those who envision a different society and world, to abandon the architecture of failed economic and educational systems, and rebuild those failed and failing institutions in the way we envision them.

I honestly believe that alternative approaches to education can and will outshine the corporate clone factories colleges and universities are turning into. If public education continues down this self-destructive path, it will manufacture its own demise. Whilst corporate overlords like the Koch brothers envision a society sharply divided by the haves and have nots, this is not the vision of those whom they seek to divide, and human beings have an innate craving for knowledge. The Koch brothers and their ilk can continue to manipulate the pieces on the game board they have purchased, but if the rest of us are no longer playing on their game board, they may finally see themselves as the spoiled, elitist and isolated figures they have always been, sitting in their corners, clutching their toys, with no one to play with. Society does not need them, nor has it ever needed them to flourish. Find your laid-off friends and colleagues, and create alternative approaches to higher education. Start your own schools. Find a way out of the box, off the game board, and build what we all really want and need. I can see you doing it Prog....you are a powerful force on Current, and I suspect in your world as well....

Teaching as an adjunct Instructor in a local community college, I feel your pain. I have seen many good people squeezed out of a job because of budget cuts, and I, like many of my colleagues, have no real job security.

I was surprised at your situation, however, since if I understand correctly, you indicated you and your friend were granted tenure. I thought once you were granted tenure you were immune from such a disaster. It seems particularly cruel to grant you tenure and then a year later give you the boot. Do you and your friend have any legal recourse? I would go to war if they gave me tenure and then a year later tried to can me.

Anyway, good luck. I hope you get another teaching gig. As far as I am concerned, teaching is the best job in the world.

Progressive is a bad word in my neighborhood
I am thankful for the words of truth being written about the unaccountables
lets us put their feet to the flames of truth
the sooner the better

Unfortunately, this is the sad result of accountability. . . across the whole spectrum.

It's appalling to read a story like this and I know it's being repeated in a hundred different forms in schools all over our country.
The long and brutal assault on colleges in the US has reached its endgame. Attacks on academic freedom and free speech lead by right-wing interests disguised as a concern over tenure harming the "quality" of education; the relentless commercialization of college sports as a more important "money stream' than education itself; bloated administrative salaries misdirecting the most vital resources of the school; and lab research distorted and privatized by big business interests, have deformed American College education into a sick and sickening mutant.
My heart goes out to all those hurt by this system and to the ones fighting it with the tools they have at hand.
Oftentimes I counsel the best solution as "voting with your feet" but in this case, like so many in America today, there is no where else to go.
Time to make a final stand where we are now.
There in no more ground to give up and nothing left to lose.

Even more than "accumulating knowledge", education is about teaching students to THINK ~~ about honing the ability for abstract thought. 

Problem solving is more than regurgitating formulae and punching data into a computer.. it is being able to actualize the formulae ~~ design the computer.

We need visionaries more than we need expeditors ~~ creators more than dispatchers.

The Classical Greeks knew that music was the most important focus of all study (in fact, those without a knowledge of it were considered illiterate for thousands of years hence in just about every enlightened society) ~~ and that math and science were outgrowths of it.

Believe it or not, art and music, literature and drama are all as important subjects as are math and science (the "panaceas-du-jour") ~~ for without them, creative abilities atrophy and we end up with a society of drones ~~ which might very well be the goal of the corporatists, the oligarchs and the plutocrats who seem hellbent on establishing a permanent underclass of indentured servants.

Milton Friedmans wettest of dreams.

It also never ceases to amaze me that so many republicans, teabaggers and right-wingers in general feel that a comprehensive liberal arts education is somehow a “liability” ~~ that being "creative", an "intellectual" or an "academic" is somehow a “fault” ~~ that to be a "scholar" and to be honored as part of an “elite” group of achievers somehow makes one worthy of contempt. 

These are not pejoratives. 

These are things to take great pride in.

What I find even more disturbing is that these very same semi-literates insist on controlling our schools in what all evidence points to is a deliberate move to dumb this Nation down even more than it has already been (if that is even possible), not only intellectually but morally as well.

An uneducated populace is easiest to control.

We must no longer allow the thugs and the haters, those who conjure the 
pounding of jackbooted lockstep with every utterance to hijack the language 
and sciences ~~ our history (warts and all) and the arts ~~ just as they have our 
culture ~~ a slimy, cynical tactic used by those craving despotic power who once 
(and still do) sport virtual armbands to try to lull the masses into thinking that 
they are somehow in danger by those who have dared read a book or enter the 
halls of a museum.


Filling them with ignorance, with fear, with hatred.

FDR, in similar economic circumstances to that we currently suffer knew, in his infinite wisdom, what we must relearn today.

Amongst other stimuli, he created the Works Progress Administration which commissioned artists and composers, architects and writers that not only created an American culture enjoyed by all, but introduced and made accessible to the public to great works that defined a nation comprised of literate, refined, cultivated people.

Our “Greatest Generation”.

There is more to a country than just it's “economy”.

There is also a tremendous need to rejuvenate our culture and to, once again, promote and fund more Art and Music, more Literature and Theatre, and finally retake our National Identity, one that has been hijacked by "cheap imports", vapid amusement and corporate mediocrity.

It’s finally time raise the bar for a change.

Have you gauged community response to this Progresshiv? Could you count on the community this college is in backing you up in any way? I'm sorry you have to go through this, I can empathize.

Thank you for sharing your story, Progresshiv. This is just another part of what is so wrong with this country and this world. :( Keep everyone here at Current posted.
This very thing just happened to my husband who was working as a contractor for a major corporation, who was told his contract was picked up for all of 2012, but the contingency that his position was based upon suddenly changed and he was told his contribution was no longer needed. Promises have come to be meaningless in the work place and no one is safe in their profession, just fodder for the bottom line.

Unfortunately the rising tide of the bureaucrats has swamped the colleges and universities. The same thing has happened to friends of mine. The bureaucrats continue to account for a larger percentage of the operating budget each year, thus leaving less for education. And the students are suffering as well. Keep up the fight!

The president has repeatedly warned all instructors not to put a bad face on this fiasco, because it may drive away students, and if that happens, he may lose his job, too.

I would be letting more folks know about this...