Middlebury’s Muddled Mission

Academia today abounds in ironies, although, more often than not, the irony is lost on the denizens of academe itself.

By now, the mobbing of conservative scholar Charles Murray at Middlebury College in Vermont has received widespread attention. I have covered Dr. Murray multiple times: Although he arrives at conclusions that go against prevailing wisdom, he does so painstakingly, always holding out the possibility that missed data may force him to revise his work, something he has always been willing to do.

Moreover, he is unfailingly gentlemanly and has never meted out the treatment to those who disagree with him that the Middlebury mob so obviously threw at him.  A look at the current course catalogue at Middlebury provides yet another rich irony in a story rife with them.

Here’s a course currently on offer there. Check out the description and ask yourself how Middlebury lives up to its own advertising:

“EDST 0115 Education in the USA (Fall 2016, Spring 2017)

“What are schools for? What makes education in a democracy unique? What counts as evidence of that uniqueness? What roles do schools play in educating citizens in a democracy for a democracy? In this course, we will engage these questions while investigating education as a social, cultural, political, and economic process. We will develop new understandings of current policy disputes regarding a broad range or educational issues by examining the familiar through different ideological and disciplinary lenses.”

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