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From christinerickson@comcast.net Sent Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:05 am Subject Difficult situation in survey Hello, I’m hoping that folks on the list will be able to help me out – I’m in a real knot about this. I have a student in the U.S. survey, education major/social science emphasis (he’ll be teaching high school). He’s a transfer student from a conservative college just outside of Fort Wayne. Decent student – B range – absolutely loves history – and a libertarian (he told me at the beginning of the semester) – friendly guy, not a jerk (at least to my face). He has also just signed up for my fall course, upper division, U.S. history 1919-45. He wrote a paper (most of it dealing with Anne Moody’s The Coming of Age in Mississippi) – and in the last section, where he was supposed to contemplate whether or not he would have been involved in the civil rights movement, he utterly criticized the whole civil rights movement -- blacks asking for “special privileges” and such – and called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “despicable.” (He said it may have been fine for the gov’t to prohibit discrimination in public spaces, but not, absolutely not, in private places). He ended with a quote from Ayn Rand. Frankly, I’m at a loss to understand how anybody (esp. anyone who attends a university and who has some education) can reject the entire CRM – but perhaps there are other students out there who aren’t letting me know what they really think. I’m not sure what to do about it – do I sit down have a chat with him? Try to talk sense? Leave the lines of communication open – hoping that he will learn something? Hoping perhaps, that by taking college course he will begin to question some of his assumptions? (although I am not naïve enough to think that I can really change his world view)? I’m scared to think that this guy is going to get a teaching job. Note that this student also wanted the history department/history club to sponsor a speaker (about whom the student was almost giddy) whose books include The Politically Incorrect Guide to U.S. History (from Amazon – the entire New Deal/Great Society are socialist plots and historians in academe are all radicals) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (need I say anything here?) Colleagues, I am so troubled about this and I don’t know what to do. Thanks from the trenches, Chris Erickson Associate Professor Indiana U Purdue U, Fort Wayne christinerickson@comcast.net
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