Duke Pesta on the leftist chokehold on higher education – and its consequences:
I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test… just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students – I’m talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years – they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They’re 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention… How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that’s what they think of their own country – that America invented slavery? That’s all they know.
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/True_Negros/Assorted/The_History_of_Slavery.htm
HAMMURABI’S CODE OF LAWS (circa 1780 B.C.)
15: If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates [to escape], he shall be put to death.
16: If any one receive into his house a runaway male or female slave of the court, or of a freedman, and does not bring it out at the public proclamation of the [police], the master of the house shall be put to death.
About 2 millenia later…
“Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” Colossians 3:11
For the ancient world slavery was the NORM, hardly an exceptional or remarkable observation.
The world of ignorance abounds and is thriving…
The muslim world are no slouches in the matter of slavery…
https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-arab-slave-trade-and-200-million-non-muslim-slaves-of-all-skin-colors/
The Arab slave trade: 200 million non-Muslim slaves from all colors and nationalities
The Untold Story of Arab Slave Trade Of Africans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov9GFPmoOPg
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
They’ll also tell you it went on for 400 years, not roughly 150. The “400 years” meme is the “1 in 4 women” meme of U.S. race conversations.
… and, Kathy, the “97%” meme of climate conversations … though conversations are few, and declarations are many.
Exceptional!
Din’t we free-dem?
Slavery in what is now the USA cannot possibly be an American invention. Slavery was instituted in what is now the USA by the British, in what were then British colonies. I have been known to point this out to British visitors to the United States who tell me how terrible it is that there was slavery in the United States.
I like that Jim. It is a fact that few people ever point out.
The situation in Canada is no better. I was working with a trainee who had a degree in Canadian history. A point came up in a discussion in the room about the six nations of the Iroquois. Not only could he not name them; he wasn’t even aware of the existence of the Iroquois confederacy and its place in Canadian history. Vimy Ridge — blank. Andy McNaughton and the RCA in WWI — nada. He’d basically had four years of “the-evil-English-exploited-everyone-until-we-got-Pierre-Trudeau-and-the-charter-of-rights” BS, and the Canadian taxpayer paid handsomely for it.
It is frightening to me to see history (in general) and American history (in particular) both ignored and rewritten. Yes, both.
The U.S. prohibited the importation of slaves into the country starting in 1807-08. This of course did not abolish slavery but it changed the dynamic…. And it did not stop the importation into S.America and the Caribbean islands.
In about 1823, the Monroe Doctrine came into effect. The Doctrine is generally interpreted as a warning to European powers not to try to establish monarchical or other control over countries in the Americas (see the history of Mexico). Now one historian is alleging that:
“Monroe Doctrine was issued to protect this hemispheric economy based on the slave trade. The main target of Monroe’s warning about European intervention was Britain, and the main reason he wanted to keep Britain out of the Western hemisphere was because Britain would have interfered with the system. In 1823, Monroe wrote that Cuba had to resist “any attempt to get possession of the Island by England” (quoted 122). Chambers puts it bluntly: “The Monroe Doctrine was created to protect the illegal slave trade and the slave regimes it created”.
Now mind you there is not one shred of evidence for this allegation….. none. It is purely a conjecture based on circumstances more reasonably explained by other events taking place. History rewritten!!
“They’ll also tell you it went on for 400 years, not roughly 150.”
It was closer to 200 years, but still nowhere near 400 years. We’ve been on this continent for a only bit over 400 years.
The first person in American subjected to the legal category ‘slave’ was a (black) man named John Castor — enslaved in 1655, by permission and order of the judiciary(*) of Virginia, by *another* black man, named Anthony Johnson. And it wasn’t until several years later that *whites* in America were given the “right” to “own” other human beings.
(*) those great protectors of human freedom
The American Left believes that after the struggle of American Indians against foreign invaders and subsequent genocide, imperialist war expansion across the continent,slavery, Jim Crow and segregation, unionists and workers fighting capitalists, women fighting misogyny and patriarchy, and the subsequent civil rights struggles of minorities and gays, there’s really not any other history worth talking about.
“Slavery in what is now the USA cannot possibly be an American invention. Slavery was instituted in what is now the USA by the British, in what were then British colonies.”
It seems almost too patently obvious to have to state that slavery was not an “American invention” but rather a very ancient and longstanding human institution indeed (as a quick scan through the Old Testament would soon confirm). But yes, I suppose that’s precisely the point: that students are so ill-educated that they don’t know this.
The “British” didn’t bring slavery to what would become the Thirteen Colonies. English (and other European) colonists did (there was no sovereign entity called “Britain” until the 1707 Act of Union). And further, until the end of the War of Independence, every American colonist was British anyway.* So the argument about who brought slavery to America is almost entirely moot.
By the way, British visitors who say disingenuous and snide things like “how terrible it is that there was slavery in the United States” need to be reminded that British port cities like Liverpool and Bristol were built upon the 18th Century trade triangle – one side of which was the trafficking of African slaves.
And since the indigenous peoples of the Americas cheerfully practised slavery long before the arrival of any Europeans, it could be said that slavery in America pre-dated the colonial era. But then, that’s probably just a little too much history to confront these students with.
* I find Americans sometimes forget that the British in the Thirteen Colonies were not some sort of foreign interlopers; the very colonists themselves were, er, British.
The realization by the conservative movement that progressives control the education system has been known for decades. Universities but also from K-12. Add to that their control of media.
One has to ask what the conservative movement done to counter this reality? Conservative parties both federally and provincially have done almost nothing. If in fact they have tried they have failed miserably. Progressives know that over the long term they will succeed even more as their ‘educated’ youth assume power.
I support the Fraser Institute which is regularly vilified, particularly by the education system, because of the much hated report cards on all schools success/failures.
“Conservative parties both federally and provincially have done almost nothing”
Progressive politics enlarges the trough that they all feed off of. Why would they change that?
Universities are no longer places of learning, but places of indoctrination. With the exception of the REAL sciences (as opposed to the so-called social “sciences”), most of what is “taught” is bilge. That is why so many young people are so incredibly ignorant, but they are CERTAIN of their ignorance.
Proof positive of the dumbing down of education came home to me a couple of days ago when I responded to an NN article that stated three political science professors said there should NOT be a referendum on changing the Canadian system of election.
I opined that said professors were self-interested, self-satisfied academics who live in a cloistered world unencumbered by reality,admiring their own images in an echo chamber that reinforced how great and brilliant they are,and SO far above us peasants they are completely contemptuous of us.
I was met with remarks such as,”these people are scientists”,”they are experts”, “they know facts you don’t”,etc.,etc.. Not one commenter doubted the word of the three PS profs at Ryerson,U of T,and I can’t remember the other Ontario University.
No bloody wonder clowns,charlatans and thieves can so easily get elected in this Country,and no wonder specious claims such as climate change can be sold to the general public so easily.
The civics ignorance in the US is frightening (not that Canada is much better). While living there a few years ago, I took an online civics exam which claimed that the average score was 49% while college professors scored 55%. I did much better (88%) and have yet to find an American who could beat me including a recent UW PoliSci grad. I suspect that the average SDA readers would do much better. http://www.isi.org/quiz.aspx?q=FE5C3B47-9675-41E0-9CF3-072BB31E2692
I will be sharing the Youtube conversation between Dr. Pesta and Stefan Molyneux. Terrific stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCcvexAXEjM
actually Jim, the dutch wee in the fore front, more so than the brits, of starting slavery to the americas
Ha, after reading these comments I find the points I wanted to highlight are already well made.
JJM, indeed slavery has been around since mankind started and is clearly documented as being practiced by native N. Americans.
John, I would submit that the average Canadian probably understands US history better than the average American. To that end, given our non-stop exposure to American “culture”, I would suspect that same average Canadian likely knows more about US history than our own.
American public schools (from elementary thru college) are doing the equivalent of Egyptian Pharoahs chiseling the faces off statues of their predecessors. These leftist ghouls are shaping a warped sense of history to conform to their own malignant world view. They are effectively ERASING all cultural knowledge and history to warp reality. It is a vile and nasty twisting of reality meant to torque the minds of impressionable kids to HATE all N. European white people. To view them as only; destroyers of “noble” native cultures, destroyers of the environment, greedy thieves of resources, religious fanatics, etc. Nothing of the contributions, inventions, and improvements to the quality of life that these dead white men (and women) delivered to the entire world are taught. Our children are never taught the REALITY of life for blacks in Africa during the years of slavery. They believe that blacks lived wonderful, comfortable, disease-free lives in their native lands. They are NEVER taught that white Europeans didn’t run through the bush collecting men and women as slaves … but that rival AFRICAN TRIBES delivered their fellow blacks into the hands of European slavers. Our public education system is WORSE than Soviet, or Nazi schools … who taught a twisted and destructive brand of HATE. American public education = HATE
I got 97%, but if it had been fill-in-the-blank rather than multiple choice I wouldn’t have done nearly as well.
There’s so little time for actual math, history or economics courses with the need for social justice and women’s studies, along with puppetry, climate change science meme 101, and Marxism for Global Village Idiots, among other indoctrinateducation so unvalued by the labour market, leading to lucrative Starbucks careers, or of course, as publicly funded “activists.”
Right, working on their 1% masters of disinformation studies; too busy for reality. Precis: Trump is a racist. All done, got a D-. They done graduated!!
So difficult to decide between Pokémon and petulant protesting. No need to study – no teaching moments anyway or relevance to reality.
Boy oh boy!. All of the above in spades. We live in a post freedom world of Marxism.
Don Morris, it is really sad that these professors do not realize that they are advocating that only a select few among the elite progressives will determine all of our destinies and that all of the people will no longer have debate or a voice among leaders.
“…that these professors do not realize…”
What if…they are very aware of what they are saying?
You may well be right. If they are they might also at some point get an awakening as did the leftist professors that supported the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Ah, but in their own words, next time will be different. The Russians didn’t do it right, that’s all.
All I know is I won’t be coming to help them.
I found teaching at a technical college to be one of the most unsatisfying jobs I ever had.
One reason was that I had to deal with ill-prepared students, most of whom felt entitled to be amply rewarded for doing next to nothing. Another, unfortunately, there were administrators, institutional superiors, and even colleagues who thought this to be completely acceptable and if the students were unhappy, it was automatically my fault. (Little Johnny Know-It-All who graduated high school with straight As gets only 45% on his last exam because he didn’t think he had to apply himself or he thought that questions about basic concepts were “too hard”? Guess who got sent to the woodshed.)
Add to that a provincial government that had complete contempt for the educational system, particularly at the post-secondary level. If we were lucky, all we had to deal with was having our funding cut. There were times when it seemed that the government was actually meddling with what we were doing.
I taught there for about 10 years and I saw how the emphasis shifted from teaching knowledge and skills to “customer satisfaction” or “feelings”. (Can’t solve a quadratic equation or know any basic trigonometry? Don’t worry about it, kid, just as long as you’re happy with your “learning experience”. Oh, and don’t fret about your spelling–language is “evolving”, you see.)
Eventually, I came to see that my efforts to teach something and uphold standards–standards which, by the way, I had to adhere to when I was an undergraduate some 40 years ago–were futile, wasted, and a complete joke.
I’ve heard that the average teaching career in the public education system is about 5 years. I can see why. Many teachers, instructors, and professors that I’ve spoken with over the years said much the same thing I did. One complaint most of them had was stress and many couldn’t wait to get out.
I quit nearly 15 years ago. I looked at my investment portfolio and asked myself why I was still putting up with the idiocy, the aggravation, and the stress. Not long after that, I submitted my resignation.
To your point, as a Canadian I scored 84.5%. Anything less than that would be shameful for an American.
I’ve been doing some neuro testing lately. Turns out I broke the general knowledge and word knowledge tests. Perfect scores. Nobody is supposed to get a perfect score.
My concern is, the test wasn’t hard. At all. I’m left wondering, are people -really- that f-ing clueless out there? The examiner assured me they are.
This is somewhat terrifying.
I got 96.97%. Dunno what I got wrong.
The left is evil.
Almost everything they do is because they hate someone or something
they hate the USA
they hate white males
they hate capitalism
they hate anything remotely Christian
and so on and so forth
hatred is what is in their heart even though they claim they do what they do for the love of other cultures, for the love of social justice ( social justice means injustice for white males ) or love of the planet, or love of whatever the hell their stupid lying mouth is spitting out that day.
The left is evil.
narcissistic, self centered, self serving, entitled and evil.
and that is the short list
in sane times, the tyranny of the left would have been stopped – a long time ago and by force if necessary…although this may happen in a few decades.
what else but violence will stop those completely insane leftists???
A number of years ago I worked with a very educated FN woman but don’t get her on a rant about the oppression of FN. I willingly admit that previous governments treatment of FN was poor, particularly if you put a 21st century lens on a 19th century solution. But she was convinced that only FNs had been oppressed and subjected to genocide. I mentioned to her the Holocaust, the Holodmor, the Highland clearances, the killing fields of Cambodia, Rawanda, the cultural revolution in China etc. etc. and she would not believe that those things happened. I sent her to various credible internet sites and her only response was that none of those compared to the sufferings of FN. Maybe, but I don’t think at any point in time 6 million FNs individuals were gassed.
There has to be a willingness to learn and unfortunately our education systems don’t allow that.
The intention of the residential school system was charitable. Were white people in residential schools less abused, sexually or physically, than Indian students? I doubt it. Remember that the Anglican Church had one more white residential school than Indian. Most Indian sexual abuse complaints came after they started paying $250,000 for rape complaints without evidence.
I’ve often said that if you put a 3 piece suit on one of these academics and told the liberals they were professors they could sell the same liberals the recipe for ice cubes
My result screen posted below that of course would not have posted if my guesses didn’t work out. A lot of answers gained by reading SDA over the years. A lot of information gets posted here. Kate should give out university credits.
“You answered 32 out of 33 correctly — 96.97 %
If you have any comments or questions about the quiz, please email americancivicliteracy@isi.org.
You can consult the following table to see how citizens and elected officials scored on each question.”
If you are fast you can swipe and do a control C before their solicitation for your e-mail pops up and covers the results.
I took some, maybe 3, guesses that worked out, don’t deserve the 32 out of 33.
The Phantom…..Last year I took entrance tests for UBC to finish off a degree. Scored 360/360. The examiner wanted to know how I did it. I looked at him and said seriously? Told him I had harder exams going from grade 6 to 7. The dumbing down and indoctrination in our “education” systems must be getting pretty close to as low as they can go,without actually banning the testing all together.
That doesn’t surprise me. I was specifically told that all I was supposed to do was “teach the formula and how to use it” and, it was implied, to use colouring book language.
In other words, I wasn’t supposed to give any explanations as to the principles behind an equation, how it’s derived, my own personal insights or experiences in using it, or even convey any understanding behind it. I was prohibited from using anything resembling much of a vocabulary because, apparently, using appropriate terminology, expressions, and jargon would have only confused many of them. (The majority of my students, by the way, grew up in this country with extensive exposure to the English language. Then again, most of their vocabulary consisted of letters which were 4 letters in length and were, generally, of a sexual or scatological nature.)
It was highly unlikely that I would ever ask something like that on an exam, but that extra information, that which I wouldn’t have tested my students on, is what’s called *education*.
Most of what passes for post-secondary “education* is, really, training, though what I just described could hardly be called that. The information I was supposed to teach could have been easily found in any number of books, for which my presence wouldn’t have been necessary.
But letting them figure it all out by themselves, if I actually taught the course material that way, would have meant that they had to be literate, let alone fluent in the language.
I sometimes felt that my efforts were about as futile as draining a river by bailing out the water with a sieve.
If you want to have an idea of how unworkable and idiotic the post-secondary system has become, look up the book “Australian Universities: A Portrait of Decline”. I read it 2 years ago and found it as a free downloadable PDF file.
It describes what’s going on in Australia, but change a few details, such as names and places, and it’s an accurate picture of what the situation is like in Canada. The really sad part about it is that those who have the power to change the situation, such as politicians or institutional administrators, have shown next to no interest whatsoever in fixing a completely broken system.
A question for the ignorant: how could whites be responsible for African slavery if they only penetrated the Dark Continent in the 1870s (“Dr. Livingstone I presume?”) ? Of course they sat on the coasts and let black and Arab slavers bring the slaves to them. Men like John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace.”
The West Coast Indians maintained a slavery chain running from the Arctic to California. The UBC anthropological museum has a large statue of a chief abusing a slave.
B….remember the kerfuffle here in Edmonchuck a couple of years ago when a student was given a ZERO for NOT even turning in an essay?
Prime example of leftist group think.
Yes – consider Mike Harris as Ontario PM. He quarrelled incessantly and ineffectually with a teacher’s union. It never occurred to the dear little boy that to effect remediation of the system, he needed only to wander a few hundred yards and fire the educational bureaucrats, who were responsible for what was taught. Duh!
4 or 5 years ago I took the train (Via-not Poncho) across the great fruited plain. I found myself seated in the dining car for breakfast with 2 delightful ladies who were travelling across Canada for the first time. They were not together.
I wasn’t feeling particularly talkative as Johnny Walker had pinned me 2 outa 3 at a bar in Edmonton the previous evening.
Anyway we politely introduced ourselves and made small talk. We were eventually joined by a young man in his mid 20’s. The gals naturally turned their attention to buddy which suited me. One of them asked him what it was that he did. Proudly he stated that he was a student in a master program.
“What discipline”, one asked.
“Science” he replied.
“What branch of science”, was the next obvious question.
“Politics”, he retorted.
With that answer I convulsed. My memory is somewhat unfocused as to what might have happened next. Perhaps a railroad poached egg found it’s exit through my nostril as I was completely unprepared for his answer. Needless to say breakfast ended rather abruptly with the ‘scientist’ taking his leave.
Since when did the study of politics become a science? I took a PoliSci course at university. It’s nonsense to present yourself as a scientist when you have a degree in social studies.
That’s one of the things wrong with the education system.
I remember hearing about that incident. Educationists nowadays have removed the students from all the responsibility for doing anything. Responsibility means one might be blamed for one’s shortcomings and holding students accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, might damage their self-esteems.
Thank you for the correction about the establishment of Great Britain. I had assumed that, because it is rather common for descendants of slaves to have Scots or Welsh surnames, that the owners of their ancestors were Scots or Welsh.
Thank you for the correction regarding the establishment of Great Britain. I’ll remember it in the future.
“I had assumed that, because it is rather common for descendants of slaves to have Scots or Welsh surnames, that the owners of their ancestors were Scots or Welsh.”
They might well have been!
The term “British” is often misused. It is a national rather than an ethnic identity (in this respect, it is like “American” or “Canadian” or “Australian”). Every subject of the Crown – whether in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales or any of the colonies effectively became “British” with the Act of Union in 1707.
Nowhere has the term “British” been more problematic than in Ireland. Irish nationalists have always used it as a synonym for “English rule”. But until Ireland – the republic that is – gained independence, every inhabitant of that island was British (whether they liked it or not). In many cases, the “hated British” authorities that the Irish republicans fought against – the army and police – were Irishmen just like themselves. Very similar in fact to your own War of Independence which saw Americans on both sides of the conflict.
“Of course they [Europeans] sat on the coasts and let black and Arab slavers bring the slaves to them. Men like John Newton, who wrote ‘Amazing Grace.'”
I have always considered it a tremendous irony that many African Americans have turned to Islam whether in the pseudo-Muslim-cult variety (The Nation of Islam) or by changing their names (Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali).
Particularly as the Arabs and Muslim East Africans were – and still are in some places – the very backbone of the African slave trade.
29 of 33 for 87.88%.
Not bad for a senile old geezer who didn’t have the good sense to vote for Justin Trudeau. 😉
I love it when they tell me how it was in the 60s. I was in college in the 60s. I was in the Marines in the 70s. Keep talking, professor.
OMG– you are going to love this one. As a faculty wife I was dragged to a New Year’s eve party given by/for faculty and family.
A woman came up to me and said, “I hear you are Mrs X, I hear you lived on the Navajo Reservation–your so lucky!” I
responded with yes, I had lived there only for a very short time (couple of school term breaks). I asked her what she taught, she replied: “I teach 7th and 8th grade civics–did you know that Ben Franklin, T. Jefferson, and G. Washington all went on a 2 year camping trip along the east coast? Did you know they got all the ideas for our Bill of Rights from the Indians?”
Stunned, I responded with this question: “oh really, which tribes did they stay with/learn from?” Her response, “oh–it doesn’t matter–they’re all the same, they all had that info before we did!”
At which point I walked into the kitchen where DH was standing with a small group. I handed him my wine glass and told him to fill it to the brim, or take me home !