I can’t begin to tell you how much news media frustrates me. From the 2012 presidential debates to the most current news on Syria, networks find it necessary to explain to me what I have just heard and tell me exactly what I am supposed to think. But this attempt at brainwashing isn’t just happening in the media; it’s happening in classrooms and textbooks.
I don’t have anything against those who openly state their opinions and philosophies. In fact, I respect them for standing up for what they believe in. However, when authorities do not give honest accounts of both sides of an argument, they are simply indoctrinating.
That might sound crazy, but allow me to explain.
Far too often we believe our professors and textbooks not because they offer sound logic, but because we blindly trust their authority.
Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity is mandatory reading for future educators in humanities and social sciences like myself. Chapter three focused on equity, which, according to the book, “draws attention to ways in which resources or opportunities might need to be distributed unequally if groups that start with unequal advantages are to succeed.”
Redistribution of wealth is a controversial political subject, but the authors did not address that. By reading between the lines, I could see the entire chapter was filled with liberal ideology and trivialized any opposition. While the book often gave facts and figures to support its claims, it failed to honestly recognize the other side.
“The information age can also be the misinformation age unless we investigate the sources and think critically about what we learn,” says LSU Professor Sarah Liggett, who teaches a class designed to prepare students to effectively tutor other students in writing.
The required book for the class advocates certain approaches to tutoring that the authors deem most successful. But instead of having students read solely from this textbook, Liggett also assigns two or three supplemental readings on Moodle that often completely contradict each other. Because of this, her students glean from proponents of many different tutoring techniques. Who would have guessed there were so many different opinions on how to be an effective writing tutor? More professors should adopt this method of teaching.
There are also plenty of factual examples of errors by scientists, professors, and textbooks. My all-time favorite is “Nebraska Man,” also known as Hesperopithicus. Professor Henry Fairfield Osborne discovered a fossil tooth that he and his colleagues unanimously concluded was evidence of an intermediate link between apes and humans.
Much to the scientific community’s dismay, further discoveries at the site revealed that this tooth actually belonged not to an ape-man but to a peccary: a type of pig. This embarrassing incident illustrates that even when scientists or other authorities present their conclusions as fact, their conclusions may be based on extremely limited data and may be inaccurate.
Universities are glorious institutions made up of a diverse group of students — a group of students all being taught to think alike. With the pressure to please our teachers, make good grades, and follow the conventions of the system, it’s easy to neglect critically thinking through the information being fed to us. We must realize that a PhD does not make a person’s words infallible.
Ultimately the problem lies not with textbooks and professors, but with our own ignorance and apathy. If an issue seems simple, it’s probably not. It is crucial that we take responsibility for our own education and that we are well-informed in our personal opinions and beliefs. I don’t want to be just another brainwashed product of an institution. Let’s get back to critical thinking and rise above it.
Christine Guttery is a 20-year-old English junior from Baton Rouge.