thinking // Current TV

Getting Raped in College

One of the best teachers I've ever worked alongside tells me that, after we received tenure last spring, he "splurged" to actually buy furniture for his rental house. For the last three years, he and I and several other probationary instructors have been reluctant to put down any roots in this town, because we are subject to being fired at any time, depending upon the whims of the administrators who watch over us. In late summer, we were given contracts to sign that would ensure we could work for another year, so my friend took the big plunge and bought real furniture. Near age 60, after a lifetime of toil in the classroom, he allowed himself the luxury of having a comfortable place to sit down in the evening.

I haven't taken that plunge yet, and I'm now glad, because we got our layoff notices in November, just after the term had started. The newest college president has decided to play with our lives ( and the lives of our students) the way a six-year-old plays with Fischer Price's plastic people. The president makes three times what I do, and rather than take a pay cut, himself, he axed six of us (out of a total faculty of 39). Nine other instructors have been "reduced" or forced into retirement because the geniuses who are being paid over $100k each have mismanaged the school's finances so that ten percent of the total budget has vanished.

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. We instructors have been cheery little soldiers as we've conducted our classes as best we could, sat in meetings to prepare us to file for unemployment in March, and searched for job openings.

The same situations exist all over the United States as community colleges are being internally destroyed in favor of the creation of corporate job training centers that are "more responsive to local business needs." Now, you won't hear me argue against the need for schools to teach marketable job skills; people must learn useful and substantive information and skills to be valuable to potential employers. However, college administrators are acting as hired guns for political and economic masters who wish to create a class of working clones who cannot and will not question their motivations, decisions, or actions. Administrators target instructors who have not toed the line when it comes to blindly agreeing with administrative decisions, surrendering academic freedom, and abandoning unions. Instructors who persist in standing up for what they know is right are being axed faster than tax revenues are drying up, and administrators are positioning themselves to retain positions which already pay way more than they're worth.

I ask myself why there would be a need for even a single college administrator if there were no instructors. What is a college without a large variety of educated, opinionated, dedicated instructors who model the diversity and vibrancy of the larger society? A college without open-minded and academically free instructors is a warehouse where students shuffle through, accepting piecemeal information fed to them as if they were chickens in a poultry farm. Despite that, the new trend is to push our learning institutions into just that mode, offering a McDonald's menu-style "education" where the consuming world awaits just outside the graduation auditorium to digest the "product." How much should an administrator of such a place be paid? Wouldn't such an individual be better suited to work in a slaughterhouse, where it is much easier to track success by weighing the resulting meat?

So my friend and colleague "splurged," and now he doesn't know if he'll have a place in which to store his furniture. While he and I and thousands of excellent instructors across the nation face the open hostility of administrators who would have no jobs were it not for us, newspapers, radio, and online sources rail about how "selfish" we are and how terrible our schools have become. We are scapegoats being used to deflect the attention of the public away from the crooks and liars who have stolen our pensions, our jobs, and our futures.

As a teacher for many years, I have found that faculty rooms are chock full of gentle, unassertive souls who teach because they like people. Teachers are suckers when it comes to buying used cars, subscribing to magazines sold by kids who come to their doors, and working at bake sales for people who are sick, broke, or who just need a helping hand. The teachers I've worked with are naive when it comes to ramming through a business deal, finding income tax loopholes, and gaming the system. They look up to and trust administrators when it comes to protecting their workplace, supporting them in their right to teach and grade students, and help them continue when their wages are relatively low, given their training and expertise. The new class of school administrators, however, are like foxes in henhouses. They draw relatively enormous salaries and treat the instructors as if they are trash. The arrogance and lack of compassion in many college administrators is matched only by their selective ethical behavior that allows them to thrive while the true college, the students and teachers, slowly dissolves in a sea of red ink and political bile.

My friend and colleague, having been bullied by the college president, will have to be bullied into protecting his own rights, because he is a gentle and sincere man who cares about learning. He hates getting attention, and he is terrified that if he resists being laid off, he will be blacklisted online and never be able to get a teaching job again. He and thousands just like him are a permanent underclass of educated people who have been singled out for elimination by corporate liars who, having stolen the country's wealth, now wish to steal its future. It is a criminally absurd situation that makes one want to scream. But that would be unseemly behavior for a teacher.One of the best teachers I've ever worked alongside tells me that, after we... more

Progresshiv
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Why I Am Not a Liberal?

I do not label myself a liberal. As being a student of political philosophy, I have understood one thing for sure, that you can't entirely label a person's whole gamut of thoughts and opinions about everything under the sun into one segment and say he or she belongs to this stream of thought. A person's thought might suggest colours of one division in a whole continuum more than that of another, but to rule out completely would be making a slight error in judgment.

There are liberal conservatives and conservative liberals; hence there goes the mixing of ideas. It is only for the sake of debate that tags are put on issues and said that they are of concern or importance to one group or certain groups more than to some others. That if approached with this or that political or social ideal, we can solve the matter.
Even starting within a single premise in a whole structure of a complete theory, ideas do build up and develop in ways that are confusing as to where they should exactly belong.
If anything, I call myself a free-thinker, opened to ideas and possibilities. This very notion makes anyone a liberal. Now, what conservative would not say the same thing? It is merely the words that limit and trap our actual thoughts, sometimes conveying what we really think and feel and sometimes denying us the very function they are meant for.

To a question of whether liberal thinking is a panacea for all ills of human society, I would say, we should not hurry in becoming secure in an assumption that liberal thought is the very thing to give all answers and solutions. This very process of "thesis and antithesis" and then generating some synthesis is a method that has granted us progress, both in economics and structural sense. At the end of the day, we are all humans, whether we belong to any spectrum of political ideals. We tend to deal with issues keeping our moral and spiritual beliefs along with our civic and rational approaches intact, so that we remain ideological beings, regardless of what ideology we conform to. The very struggle of doing what "ought" to be done makes us humans and sometimes the struggle is what is it is that ought to be done which then creates contest of solving issues.

I don't label myself a liberal or put myself in particular with any stream of thought, because aim is to give get solutions and put them on work. It is merely for debating and "political means" to garner any discussion on this thought is right and should be applied or that one would do.

To answer whether liberal thought can solve issues, I would say moderation would be good between both sides of the continuum and things should be dealt with as they come of, and not with any politically structured approach. Because essentially as humans, we have an instinct to do what we feel and think is right and that comfort of feeling and thinking can come from any approach.I do not label myself a liberal. As being a student of political philosophy, I have... more

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read from Chapter : Maryam (Mother of Jesus peace be upon him) English subtitles

Chapter : Maryam ( Mary )
From Verse 77 To Verse 98

Hast thou seen him who disbelieveth in Our revelations and saith: Assuredly I shall be given wealth and children? (77) Hath he perused the Unseen, or hath he made a pact with the Beneficent? (78) Nay, but We shall record that which he saith and prolong for him a span of torment. (79) And We shall inherit from him that whereof he spake, and he will come unto Us, alone (without his wealth and children). (80) And they have chosen (other) gods beside Allah that they may be a power for them. (81) Nay, but they will deny their worship of them, and become opponents unto them. (82) Seest thou not that We have set the devils on the disbelievers to confound them with confusion? (83) So make no haste against them (O Muhammad). We do but count out unto them a number (of days). (84) On the day when We shall gather the righteous unto the Beneficent, a goodly company. (85) And drive the guilty unto Hell, a weary herd, (86) They will have no power of intercession, save him who hath made a covenant with his Lord. (87) And they say: The Beneficent hath taken unto Himself a son. (88) Assuredly ye utter a disastrous thing (89) Whereby almost the heavens are torn, and the earth is split asunder and the mountains fall in ruins, (90) That ye ascribe unto the Beneficent a son, (91) When it is not meet for (the Majesty of) the Beneficent that He should choose a son. (92) There is none in the heavens and the earth but cometh unto the Beneficent as a slave. (93) Verily He knoweth them and numbereth them with (right) numbering. (94) And each one of them will come unto Him on the Day of Resurrection, alone. (95) Lo! those who believe and do good works, the Beneficent will appoint for them love. (96) And We make (this Scripture) easy in thy tongue, (O Muhammad) only that thou mayst bear good tidings therewith unto those who ward off (evil), and warn therewith the froward folk. (97) And how many a generation before them have We destroyed! Canst thou (Muhammad) see a single man of them, or hear from them the slightest sound? (98)Chapter : Maryam ( Mary ) From Verse 77 To Verse 98 Hast thou seen him who... more

baspren
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2 years ago
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Al-Haaqqa : Chapter 69

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
The Reality! (1) What is the Reality? (2) Ah, what will convey unto thee what the reality is! (3) (The tribes of) Thamud and A'ad disbelieved in the judgment to come. (4) As for Thamud, they were destroyed by the lightning. (5) And as for A'ad, they were destroyed by a fierce roaring wind, (6) Which He imposed on them for seven long nights and eight long days so that thou mightest have seen men lying overthrown, as they were hollow trunks of palm-trees. (7) Canst thou (O Muhammad) see any remnant of them? (8) And Pharaoh and those before him, and the communities that were destroyed, brought error, (9) And they disobeyed the messenger of their Lord, therefor did He grip them with a tightening grip. (10) Lo! when the waters rose, We carried you upon the ship (11) That We might make it a memorial for you, and that remembering ears (that heard the story) might remember. (12) And when the trumpet shall sound one blast (13) And the earth with the mountains shall be lifted up and crushed with one crash, (14) Then, on that day will the Event befall. (15) And the heaven will split asunder, for that day it will be frail. (16) And the angels will be on the sides thereof, and eight will uphold the Throne of thy Lord that day, above them. (17) On that day ye will be exposed; not a secret of you will be hidden. (18) Then, as for him who is given his record in his right hand, he will say: Take, read my book! (19) Surely I knew that I should have to meet my reckoning. (20) Then he will be in blissful state (21) In a high Garden (22) Whereof the clusters are in easy reach. (23) (And it will be said unto those therein): Eat and drink at ease for that which ye sent on before you in past days. (24) But as for him who is given his record in his left hand, he will say: Oh, would that I had not been given my book (25) And knew not what my reckoning is! (26) Oh, would that it had been death! (27) My wealth hath not availed me, (28) My power hath gone from me. (29) (It will be said): Take him and fetter him (30) And then expose him to hell-fire (31) And then insert him in a chain whereof the length is seventy cubits. (32) Lo! He used not to believe in Allah the Tremendous, (33) And urged not on the feeding of the wretched. (34) Therefor hath he no lover here this day, (35) Nor any food save filth (36) Which none but sinners eat. (37) But nay! I swear by all that ye see (38) And all that ye see not (39) That it is indeed the speech of an illustrious messenger. (40) It is not poet's speech - little is it that ye believe! (41) Nor diviner's speech - little is it that ye remember! (42) It is a revelation from the Lord of the Worlds. (43) And if he had invented false sayings concerning Us, (44) We assuredly had taken him by the right hand (45) And then severed his life-artery, (46) And not one of you could have held Us off from him. (47) And lo! it is a warrant unto those who ward off (evil). (48) And lo! We know that some among you will deny (it). (49) And lo! it is indeed an anguish for the disbelievers. (50) And lo! it is absolute truth. (51) So glorify the name of thy Tremendous Lord. (52)Al-Haaqqa : Chapter 69 In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful The... more

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