Imagine my excitement when I read the article by Janet Albrechtsen, arguing this. Let the magic not be spoilt by my words:
“We are funding our own demise. A country that is the product of Western civilisation has a death wish when it sends billions of taxpayer dollars to a swag of fancy universities, few of which teach students the tenets of Western civilisation. Each year the federal government — meaning we taxpayers — sends $16.8 billion to universities because educating the next generation is a fine way to spend our money. Except for this: a detailed history audit conducted last year by the Institute of Public Affairs found that few Australian universities teach the core subjects about the history of Western civilisation. More university subjects cover the history of film than democracy, more focus on identity than the Enlightenment.
… Using the most recent available data, the five Australian universities ranked worst in the history audit received $1.6bn from taxpayers in 2016. La Trobe University receives $465m from taxpayers and students can study Food for Thought: Discovering the World Through Commodities. But of the 20 most significant topics in the history of Western civilisation, La Trobe offers students just one. When universities draw on the public teat to teach humanities yet do not teach the basic foundations of Western civilisation, it is, frankly, a two-fingered salute to taxpayers, to our history and to our future. … Summing up these dismal numbers, we are not getting bang for our buck from our universities. And it became a teachable moment when the ANU turned down money to teach the great books of Western civilisation but readily takes money from the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Turkey to fund a Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.”
This is all a good start for a conservative, coming to level one in the understanding of the corruptness of the universities. But, there is no solution offered because none can be offered. There needs to be a radical change in higher education because the university, now infected with the terminal disease of leftism, has become pathological and no longer serves the real interests of the community, the common good. Remember, the academic socialist never learn because the university ivory tower, and their massive tax payer salaries, shelter them from the harsh realities of their communist dreams:
http://www.collapse.news/2018-06-24-left-wing-professor-claims-mass-starvation-under-socialist-venezuela.html
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11022
Equally shocking, and perhaps contrary to occupational health and safety regulations:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/06/25/cambridge-professor-attends-campus-event-naked-shocked-when-criticized/
The image is indeed a shocker. Then we have the utter madness of academics co-authoring academic research papers with their pets:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/06/25/university-of-memphis-professor-says-her-dead-cat-co-authored-research-paper/
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077800418784321
“We recognized the urgency of our shared multispecies inquiry, with the recent death of one of the cats, Amelie. In the intense singularity of death, we became very aware of how we tune and tend together—everyday practices in which humans (themselves animals) and animals live and perceive together—and how these practices shape our everyday lives. These practices are acts of multispecies survival in which we learn how to live and die together. We weave our multispecies living–dying together with the theories of Haraway and Rautio. Writing together as we disrupt the categories between humans and animals, human-centered philosophical concepts, and human-centered narrative inquiry. In so doing, we offer an evocative multispecies narrative that tells a different story, a becoming with multiple species in naturecultures.”
It is only 11.10 am, but already I feel the need for alcohol to restore for me, a scratch of sanity back into the world.