University of Iowa Professor Ellen Lewin is offended that a student referred to her as “Ellen” rather than “Professor Lewin.”

“She referred to me as Ellen, not Professor Lewin, which is the correct way for a student to address a faculty member, or indeed, for anyone to refer to an adult with whom they are not acquainted,” she wrote.

The deterioration of manners is much to be lamented.  I would have never called a professor by his first name.  As a child, I was taught not to call any adult by his first name.  So what changed?

Maybe this:

“F— you, Republicans” was professor Ellen Lewin’s response Monday to the recruiting pitch from UI College Republicans. She sent the email from her school account, drawing outrage from conservative students and one Republican lawmaker.

And it was at this point of the conversation that Natalie Ginty, 21-year-old student chairwoman of the College Republicans, had the temerity to use Ellen’s first name.  That works for me.  Ginty qualifies as an adult, if only barely, and Ellen qualifies as a spoiled child.

UI President Sally Mason responded to the incident Wednesday by condemning intolerant political speech.

I didn’t know “F— you” was political speech.  I’m hoping President Mason is so confused that she thinks “F— you, Republicans” is political speech.  Because otherwise it looks as though Sally is firmly backing Ellen’s childish vulgarity.

Glenn Reynolds (a/k/a Instapundit) writes about the growing bubble in higher education.  I think he’s right in the main.  The cost of college has skyrocketed far in excess what colleges deliver.  Easy credit in the form of student loans inflates the bubble.

But here’s where I disagree.  Reynolds offers three justifications for getting a college degree:

First, it may actually make them more economically productive by teaching them skills valued in the workplace: Computer programming, nursing or engineering, say. (Religious and women’s studies, not so much.)

Second, it may provide a credential that employers want, not because it represents actual skills, but because it’s a weeding tool that doesn’t produce civil-rights suits as, say, IQ tests might. A four-year college degree, even if its holder acquired no actual skills, at least indicates some ability to show up on time and perform as instructed.

And, third, a college degree – at least an elite one – may hook its holder up with a useful social network that can provide jobs and opportunities in the future. (This is more true if it’s a degree from Yale than if it’s one from Eastern Kentucky, but it’s true everywhere to some degree).

All of these look at how others will view the college graduate and say nothing about any inherent value in education.  Surely there is still some merit in the notion that education enhances the quality of one’s life, even in instances where it does not result directly in higher-paying employment.

But maybe not, and maybe that’s part of why colleges are failing: they are no longer focused on delivering knowledge and the skills needed to continue obtaining knowledge and to use it wisely.  In fact, colleges are delivering less and less of that as the costs increase.

The liberal arts have lost their currency in society.  Some of the blame goes to the liberal arts departments that stopped teaching liberal arts in favor of a mushy and very illiberal political ideology.  People suspect that liberal arts majors are infected primarily with women’s and gender studies that equip the student only for a lifetime of anger and a slightly more eloquent approach to whining.

Those who recognize the futility of such a liberal arts curriculum often compound the problem by turning their attention to “skills valued in the workplace” and job-training.  Their mantra is relevance.  I’m all for educating people in fields like nursing and engineering, but a smattering of liberal arts would make them better nurses and engineers, just as a smattering of medicine and physics would do wonders for liberal arts majors.

But let’s talk about computer programming, which I’m afraid represents a philosophy of educational relevance run amok.  Of course we need computer programmers, but do we need computer programming degrees?  For that matter, do we need degrees in advertising, journalism, family and consumer studies, parks and recreation, and myriad other over-specialized fields?

What these specialized majors too frequently lack is a curriculum that includes the core skills needed to be a true professional in those fields.  Too often, we end up with journalists with a marginal ability to write clear prose and computer programmers whose skills will be obsolete in three years.  We need journalists skilled in rhetoric and knowledgeable in the field they write about.  We need computer programmers skilled in math and logic.  Such skills are what we used to call the liberal arts.

Ask yourself what reaction you would have to a job applicant who earned a computer programming degree in 1990.  If you’re looking to hire a computer programmer, that degree means very little.  If you’re looking to hire that person in another field, then you need to know whether he acquired a decent education in the course of earning his degree – an education that goes beyond a narrow area of specialization.

Colleges need to do two things, and there isn’t a ghost of a chance that they will do either.  First, they need to restore rigor to their curricula – cut out the fluff, end the grade inflation, get back to core subjects in the liberal arts and hard sciences.  Second, they need to make teaching what they do and kill their bloated bureaucracies.  College administrations hire faculty for the wrong reasons, manage them ineffectively, and reward themselves at the faculty’s expense, forgetting that faculty members are (or ought to be) a college’s primary asset.  (How many faculty, as opposed to administrators, have reserved parking spaces?)

College faculties themselves will not allow most of this to occur because the current denizens of academia know it would be suicide.  And any steps that they might be willing to take would be shot down by the marriage of bureaucracy and government regulation, which support each other to the exclusion of all other concerns.

Even if colleges were magically transformed tomorrow into true centers of higher education, they would face the other insurmountable problem: There would be very few high-school graduates anywhere near prepared to begin a serious course of study.

Is bullying the same as lynching? I suppose so, if you think hurt feelings are the same as death by asphyxiation.

But if you can’t distinguish verbal criticism, which is constitutionally protected, from homicide, then perhaps you should find a job other than law school professor. Instapundit links to this abstract of an article by Michael J. Higdon of the University of Tennessee College of Law:

[M]y article argues that bullying on the basis of gender non-conformity is, in essence, a form of lynching. First, both are driven by unwritten social codes—in one instance, white supremacy; in the other, gender stereotypes. Second, both are carried out by perpetrators who do not act in isolation but with the support and sometimes involvement of the larger community. As I explain, one of the reasons gender-based bullying is so frequent is the degree to which peers and school administrators ignore such behavior and, in some instances, even become active participants. Third, both result in extreme harm—lynching, in its most basic form, resulted in dead bodies; however, a lynching need not be defined so narrowly. In the case of segregation, for example, we had living children with “lynched” spirits.

Is gender-based taunting acceptable? No. Is it tantamount to lynching? Not by a long shot.

The author’s zealotry in promoting this false analogy does nothing to solve the problem, and I think in fact it tends to exacerbate it.

It is difficult enough to grow up male, but boys these days have to grow up without any clear model of what it means to be a man. Sure, when I was 11 years old, there were some boys who were not quite on track. I have no idea in most cases whether they turned out to be homosexual or if they were simply on a different developmental path. Luckily for them, they weren’t forced to decide at the ripe age of 11.

What cultural insanity has made it necessary for kids to grapple with their sexual orientation before puberty?

The answer seems rather obvious. There is an over-emphasis on sex and an irrational belief that people are largely defined by sexual orientation. This is not something that the heterosexual majority came up with, but rather part of the political agenda of homosexuals. It serves to promote the doubtful proposition that all people are either immutably heterosexual or homosexual from conception. There is no choice, only a realization. Sexual “preference” is a misnomer.

The tragedy of child suicide cannot be blamed so easily on taunts from peers and a failure to enforce more political correctness at school. In fact, gay seems to be the new cool at school. I have watched my own daughter’s classmates cheerfully declare themselves homosexual without fear of any backlash (and without sufficient evidence). It has become an easy alternative to the rough and competitive environment of young men, and the perfect excuse for shyness or rejection.

Perhaps we have become too accepting of homosexuality as the underlying reason behind any differences. Maybe the boys who wanted to take home economics instead of shop really just had different interests and skills rather than a gene that would determine their fate forever. Maybe labeling them early as having this immutable trait consigns them to a lifestyle that they don’t desire or understand. It is more than an 11-year-old should have to deal with.

We might avoid some suicides if we could give boys a chance to grow up without assuming that homosexuality is behind every bump on the road to manhood.

Maintaining a blog is not always easy. Sometimes it’s just too difficult to find the time to come up with new quality posts.

While I was out of town on business recently, some enterprising outfit apparently noticed the lack of activity at Arts & Ammo and offered to help. They offer “quality papers” for sale. I always thought such things were mostly aimed at the student market, and maybe that’s true, but I suddenly became the recipient of their email promotions.  Something about the title of my last post “Lost Honor” must have triggered it.

What is a quality paper?  Let’s look at an example.  One of the first examples to come up on their website (always lead with the best) begins like this:

The hijackers of the flight united 93 did not prevent the pessengers from making calls. When the passanger came to know abput the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagone, the understand what actually was going on. They realised that if they will do nothing than they will also die. So the . . .

Yessir, that kind of writing will get you a solid B+ in many institutions of higher learning these days.  What professor would notice the subtle variations in spelling and syntax?  After all, anyone who buys that paper and passes it off as his own apparently doesn’t notice, so the professor is not likely to be suspect it isn’t the student’s original work.

Readers of this site are, of course, more discriminating.  I’m sad to say I found nothing quite up to the editorial standards that prevail here and was forced to write this snide post all by myself.  I would give you the link to the quality paper’s site, but that would give them a promo they don’t deserve.  If my spam filters fail, maybe their comments will show up below.

Lost Honor, indeed.

Cranach, Velázquez, Gauguin, Delacroix, Eyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, the list of artists who chose to depict Christ’s crucifixion goes on and on.

Add one 8-year-old boy who gets suspended from school and is required to undergo psychological evaluation.

Is the boy’s work more horrific than that of Cranach? Does he exult in the details of suffering more than Rembrandt or Kriss? Should he have softened his image by adding cherubs in attendance, or did he intend some dark message by employing Xs for eyes and apparently omitting one leg. Picasso, your couch is waiting.

If our public schools get any sillier than this, it might be a welcome change because all indications are that the schools are deadly serious about stamping out Christianity.

Meanwhile, the boy has learned Paul’s lesson concerning the folly of proclaiming Christ crucified.

Image: Hinterglasbild Kreuzigung, Rudolf Kriss

Bill Whittle reminds us of Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial complex speech, which included this:

“. . . the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

(Emphasis mine – BW)

I wonder if this admonition from Eisenhower – uttered a few moments after he warned of the influence of the Military-Industrial complex – will be repeated among the Left with the same grave sense of somber warning as his previous few sentences?

Don’t be on it.

Haydn, call your office. That creation oratorio needs some updating. It is, according to Prof. Ellen van Wolde, “untenable now.”

You see, the good professor has done a fresh textual analysis of the Hebrew text of Genesis and concludes that it merely credits God with “separating” the Heavens and the Earth. First Things has the story.

A spokesman for the Radboud University said: “The new interpretation is a complete shake up of the story of the Creation as we know it.” Prof. Van Wolde added: “The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now.”

So Jewish history and scholarship is based on a misunderstanding of a single verb? Christianity and Islam foolishly forgot to do some fact-checking at the outset before sweeping across the world?

Where was Professor van Wolde when we needed her, and why did God (still a very clever fellow to have separated the Heavens and the Earth) wait so long to send a new a prophet to issue this retraction? I nominate van Wolde to chair the inquiry into this massive fraud. What did God know, and when did He know it?

First Things, however, has doubts about the professor’s textual analysis of English:

For instance, she seems to think the word “untenable” means “can’t be defended since I settled the issue” and that “fresh textual analysis” is synonymous with “stuff I just made up.”

Exactly. But take comfort. The traditional view of academic arrogance remains as tenable as ever.

Professor Carol offers her thoughts on the ever-popular Carmina Burana in a podcast entitled “A Modern Medieval Mega-Hit.”

Carl Orff selected vivid poems from a Medieval manuscript and super-charged them with color and energy to create the mega-hit “Carmina Burana” in 1937. An innovative music educator and proponent of Eurhythmics, Orff poured his understanding of natural melody and rhythm into this theatrical work, a spectacle for ear and eye.

For sheer asininity, it’s hard to top Juan Cole’s column comparing Sarah Palin to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cole has to stretch to find any notable differences. After all, both are charismatic populists grounding their appeal in religion and, at times, bucking their own party elders.

His larger point, if it can be called that, is that conservative leaders have cultivated a following of people who think their religious and cultural values are threatened. The kind of person who supports Palin closely resembles the kind of person who is enthralled by Ahmadinejad: ignorant, intolerant, and clearly dangerous.

Right-wing populism is centered on a theory of media conspiracy, a “my country right or wrong” chauvinism, a fascination with an armed citizenry, an intolerance of dissent and a willingness to declare political opponents mere terrorists. It is cavalier in its disregard of elementary facts and arrogant about the self-evident rightness of its religious and political doctrines. It therefore holds dangers both for the country in which it grows up and for the international community.

Unfortunately, we have people like Cole teaching in our major universities. They have a significant following of people who can’t distinguish Palin from Ahmadinejad or Bush from Hitler and who find these glib comparisons enlightening and sufficient. Their viewpoint could only result from a cavalier disregard of elementary facts and arrogance about the self-evident rightness of their anti-religious and undemocratic doctrines.

Cole’s facile reasoning passes for serious thought in certain circles. Fortunately, most relatively unschooled gun-toting conservative boobs can see through the argument, even if your average left-wing Ph.D. can’t.

A judge in North Carolina is ordering three children to go to public school rather than continue with their homeschooling. According to the news report, Judge Ned Mangum is presiding over divorce proceedings. The husband wants his children exposed to mainstream science and the wife wants to raise the children from a religious perspective.

In an oral ruling, Mangum said the children should go to public school.

“He was upfront and said that, ‘It’s not about religion.’ But yet when it came down to his ruling and reasons why, ‘He said this would be a good opportunity for the children to be tested in the beliefs that I have taught them,’” Venessa Mills said.

Just why children between the ages of 10 and 12 need to be tested in the beliefs they learn from their parents . . . well, the judge apparently didn’t say.

The wife says her children have scored two years above their grade level. The public schools can probably fix that as well.

Unless there are many unreported facts here, I suspect this judge is on a collision course with the court of appeals, and maybe he will have enough trouble writing a coherent opinion that he will think better of his initial ruling. He would need to find that the children are being harmed by the homeschooling, not by the constitutionally protected religious content of the homeschooling. That finding would be difficult to justify if the children test higher than their public-school peers.

And yes, a husband should have some say in how his children are educated, so if this husband is so intent on having his kids learn mainstream science, he should use some of his time with them to hit the science books. That way the husband can test his kids’ beliefs all he wants instead of relying on the state to do it for him.